include her own language tuition in the nanny’s job description.
Only it was the second day of her marriage, she still knew barely anything about her husband—except that he was apparently more reasonable than she’d expected him to be—and she was most definitely getting ahead of herself.
She stepped out of the library and continued her walk through the house, heading downstairs and checking his office—empty—before moving to the ground floor.
A noise alerted her—splashing—and she went towards it.
It wasn’t a particularly surprising discovery that he should be in the pool, but when she stepped onto the timber deck she stopped walking abruptly and could only stare.
Antonio was doing laps, and he wore only a skimpy pair of black briefs. As his legs kicked and his arms pulled him through the water, she stared at him, her eyes chasing his movements, her body hot all over.
He turned underwater and when he came up for breath, midway through another length, his eyes met hers and he stopped, standing in the pool water. The look he sent her was a more powerful aphrodisiac than even the image of him pulling through the water.
It was a look of absolute speculation, and something more. Something else altogether, like fierce masculine possession. Her fingers knotted in front of her, echoing the knots in her stomach. ‘I thought I was going to have to wake you,’ he said after a moment. ‘It is almost midday.’
She nodded, moving closer to the pool and dipping her toe in. The water was delightfully cool. ‘I know. I can’t believe it. I guess that’s pregnancy.’
He was watchful, his intelligent eyes moving analytically over her face. ‘The books I read all say exhaustion is a symptom.’
‘You’ve read pregnancy books?’
He frowned then shrugged, so water droplets ran over his shoulders and her eyes dropped to his smooth caramel flesh. ‘Of course.’
He swam across the pool, coming to the coping right beside Amelia’s feet. ‘Have there been any other symptoms?’ he asked, looking directly up at her.
She sat down, dropping her legs into the water and kicking them forward. The relief was heaven against her warm skin. ‘A bit of nausea.’ She shrugged. ‘A headache, from time to time. Nothing remarkable.’
‘How did you discover you were pregnant?’
‘I went to the doctor,’ she said simply.
‘But why? Were you ill?’
‘Oh, no. I just...the dates.’ She shook her head, remembering that surreal moment. ‘I couldn’t believe it.’
‘Did you think about keeping it from me?’
She looked away from him, swallowing. ‘Not for even a second,’ she said honestly.
She didn’t see the way his lips pulled downwards at the corner. ‘That surprises me.’
‘Why?’
‘You hardly know me, as you pointed out. And our family situation...’
She shook her head. ‘I think what’s surprising is that any woman would keep a baby from its father. A child isn’t solely a mother’s or a father’s. To deprive someone of being a parent, for whatever reason...it seems wrong.’
‘I agree,’ he said, steel in the words. ‘From the moment you told me I was a father my world changed. I cannot imagine how I would feel if you had elected to keep this to yourself.’
She swallowed past a lump in her throat as memories of her own childhood taunted her. ‘To raise our baby to think either that their father didn’t want them, or wondering at who and why... I wouldn’t do that.’
Perhaps the words were laced with her own pain because, beneath the water, one of his hands wrapped gently around her ankle and he stroked it, so that heat flared in her skin. ‘You weren’t close to your own father, growing up.’
They both knew the truth of that statement.
But Amelia sighed heavily, regarding him with eyes that were unknowingly wary. ‘No.’ She bit down on her lip and focused on the small patterns formed in the water’s reflection. ‘I didn’t even know who he was until my mother died.’
‘You mean you’d never met him?’ he enquired with obvious disbelief, moving to stand in front of her now, transferring his grip so he had a hand clamped around each of her ankles.
‘I mean I’d never met him, and I didn’t even know his name.’ Her eyes dropped to the water. ‘My mother never told me about him.’
‘But he knew of you?’
‘No.’
‘No?’ The word was bitten out with shock.
‘No. She never told him about me. And any time I asked her about my father she’d get angry, and then say she couldn’t remember, as though falling pregnant was something trivial and unimportant.’
Her face flashed with emotion. ‘When she died her lawyer gave me the answers I’d wanted all my life—and, because I was a minor, I was sent to live with my father—a man who was as blindsided by my existence as I was his.’
A muscle jerked in his square jaw and her gaze fell to it instinctively. ‘How could she have been so selfish?’
‘That was my mother,’ Amelia observed drily. ‘She was the absolute definition of selfish. I suppose she thought she’d never die—utterly juvenile, given her lifestyle. Or maybe she thought she’d tell me when I was older. More likely, she just didn’t think it through at all. She definitely knew who my father was, though, because in her will—and, believe me, I was shocked to discover she’d had the maturity to even draft one—my parentage was clearly noted. To this day, I have no idea why she chose to raise me on her own. God knows there were about a thousand things she’d have preferred to do with her life.’
The pain-filled invective lay around them, dark and spiky. Antonio’s fingers stroked the flesh at her ankles and he stood at her legs, looking up at her contemplatively. ‘And did your father take you in straight away?’
Her cheeks stained pink as the mortification of that summer wrapped around her anew. ‘You make me sound like a puppy,’ she said with a shake of her head, in an attempt to lighten the conversation.
He didn’t smile. ‘Did he?’
‘More or less,’ she answered, her eyes sparking with memories. ‘He had a DNA test to be sure. I can’t blame him,’ Amelia was quick to offer in defence. ‘Their relationship was brief, and he never heard from my mother again. His scepticism makes sense.’
‘Perhaps. But I imagine his caution hurt you, as a young woman?’
Her expression was wary. ‘I understood,’ she said sharply, unable to admit the deep pain she’d felt at his decision.
‘And once the results came back?’
Now
