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CHAPTER TWO
THE SILENCE THAT FOLLOWED Alessandra’s stark statement was total.
Christian seemed to deflate before her eyes, as if he’d suffered a body blow.
Which no doubt her news was, she thought miserably.
How she’d kept herself together throughout the day she would never know, her only thought having been that she mustn’t ruin Rocco and Olivia’s special day. She mustn’t.
She’d spent pretty much her entire life trying to keep herself together in public, the hardest before tonight being two months ago when they’d buried her grandfather. The paparazzi had been out in force. She’d worn dark glasses until they’d entered the church, refusing to give them the money shot they so desired. Even when Sandro, her alcoholic father, had turned up drunk and made that dreadful scene, she’d kept her composure. Christian and Zayed had been the ones who’d calmly approached him and dragged him away.
Christian staggered over to the bed and sat heavily on it, clutching his head.
‘Please. Say something,’ she beseeched. The back of her retinas burned and she blinked furiously. No matter what happened in the next few minutes, she would not cry. She’d done enough of that.
He fixed his blue eyes on her. ‘How long have you known?’
‘A while, I guess, but I only took the test a couple of days ago.’ She laughed, a hollow sound even to her own ears. ‘I took three of them, hoping they were wrong.’ At the third positive reading, she’d climbed onto her bed and sobbed.
‘Have you seen a doctor?’
‘Not yet.’ She bit into her lip. It had taken her almost a fortnight to entertain the possibility that her late period might actually mean something, another fortnight before she’d unburied her head from the sand and crossed the threshold into the pharmacy.
She’d never believed she would be a mother. Motherhood went hand in hand with relationships and she certainly didn’t believe in them.
‘But you’re certain?’
‘Yes.’ Once the reality of her condition had sunk into her shell-shocked brain, the tears had stopped.
Inside her, right in the heart of her womanhood, a tiny life grew.
Whatever the outcome of this conversation with Christian, nothing could change the fact that this life—her baby—was a part of her. Nothing could have prepared her for the host of emotions pregnancy would bring. It might be early days in pregnancy terms but already she loved it, this little alien developing within her; knew she would do anything to nurture and protect it. Anything.
Silence rang out, the only sound Christian’s heavy breathing. She’d never seen his features—all angles and straight lines forming what had been dubbed one of the most handsome faces in Europe—look so empty.
‘I’m so sorry.’
His brows drew together. ‘Sorry for what?’
‘I screwed up.’ She forced herself to look him straight in the eye. ‘I didn’t take my pill properly.’
He shook his head and expelled a breath through his mouth, running a hand through his cropped dirty-blond hair. ‘And you didn’t think to tell me that?’
‘I didn’t know the dangers, not properly.’
‘How could you not know? It’s basic biology.’ He swore under his breath.
‘I was put on the pill because my periods were painful, not for the purpose of contraception.’
‘You should have told me. Theos, if I’d known you didn’t take it at regular intervals I would have made certain to use a condom.’
‘I am sorry, truly sorry.’
The knuckles of his hands were white. She could see his temper hanging by a thread.
‘You can’t put this on yourself—I can’t put it on you,’ he eventually said. ‘We were both there. I should have had the sense to use a condom like I normally do.’
She closed her eyes, pushing away thoughts of him with other women. ‘Christian...I can’t do this on my own. I need your support—not financially but in other ways.’ Financially she could do it alone. She had her apartment, her career was thriving...
She opened her eyes and looked at his still-dazed face. ‘I know I’ve had a head start getting my head around all this, and that’s unfair on you, but I need your word—on your honour—that you’ll be there for me and our baby.’ Not that she could trust it. He was a man. Men always broke their promises.
All the same, she had to try and put a little faith in him. He was the father of her child. But then, her own father was the worst liar of all. He’d lied to her mother on her deathbed, promising to care for their children, never to leave them. That had been the biggest lie of all.
The only men she trusted were her brother and her grandfather. It had broken her grieving heart to learn recently that her grandfather had had his own dark secrets.
If it hadn’t been for his death, she would never have slept with Christian. She’d bumped into him in the House of Mondelli headquarters after she’d had a meeting with the fashion director about a campaign she’d been hired to shoot. Christian had turned up to take her brother out but Rocco had been in New York.
She’d been in a bad place, she could see that now, trying to cope with her grief but not having a clue how to manage it. She’d never known pain like it. It still had the power to lance her.
Christian had presented the perfect opportunity for a night out where she could forget her pain for one evening, so she’d talked him into going out with her instead. Not for a minute had she imagined she would fall into bed with him.
But she had done just that and now she had to pay the consequences.
And so did Christian.
She might never be able to trust him but she’d had enough faith, whatever her state of mind, to lose her virginity to him. That had to account for something.
She wished he would say something. His frame was still but his eyes were alert. She couldn’t read them. Couldn’t read him.
‘When news of the pregnancy comes out the press are going to swarm all over it. I’ve lived through one scandal and I can’t go through that again on my own. I just can’t.’ Simply imagining going through it all again made her hands go clammy and her stomach churn. How clearly she remembered those awful days when the paparazzi had laid siege to Villa Mondelli, leaving her a prisoner in her own home. She’d never been so scared and alone in all her life. ‘If I know I can rely on you for support when I need it, and later on when our baby needs it, I might be able to sleep again.’
Christian’s throat rose before he twisted onto his side and grabbed his bourbon and glass. He poured a hefty measure and offered it to her.
She
