Page 59 of Twin Surprise for the Italian Doc

The maternity ward of this old Edinburgh hospital was never really quiet.

Even in the earliest hours of this new day, there were sounds to be heard. The squeak of wheels or soft-soled shoes in thecorridor, a phone ringing somewhere or a cry from a hungry baby.

That sound generated an odd tingling sensation in Georgia’s breasts and took her straight back to the miracle of feeding her babies for the first time, less than an hour ago, up in the neonatal intensive care unit.

She wanted to be there now. Had asked that she be allowed to stay beside their incubators all night, but the staffhad been kind but firm. She needed to rest. She could come back as soon as she’d had a few hours of sleep and, in the meantime, her babies would have the very best of care.

She didn’t need to worry. Her babies were both healthy—just small enough to need their breathing monitored for a day or two. So she’d left them—those two tiny bundles, one with a soft, woolly blue hat and one with a pink one.

Not that there was any chance of sleeping just yet, despite an exhaustion like nothing she had ever experienced before. Propped up against her pillows, Georgia was floating on the sea of this huge new life, trying to catch and process everything that had happened in the last, tumultuous hours.

The fear that had come with that unexpectedly early and precipitous birth.

The fact that Matteo haddelivered his own children.

The bombshell of him having to find that out in what was probably the worst possible way.

But all those things paled in comparison to the knowledge that she was now a mother. That her precious babies were healthy.

Herbabies...

This room felt incredibly empty. The need to get up and go back to where they were was so strong that Georgia actually pushed the coversback on her bed and began to move, as she turned her head to look towards the light coming through the open door of her room.

Two things made her freeze.

One was the painful cramping in her belly.

The other was the silhouette of a silent figure standing in her doorway.

For a long, long moment, they simply stared at each other. As her eyes adjusted to the contrast in light, Matteo’s featuresbecame clearer and Georgia’s heart sank like a stone as she saw how tight they were.

As frozen as her body felt right now.

He stepped closer. Just as far as the end of the bed. Into the gentle light from her bedside table.

And now she could see his eyes and that made it all so much worse because he looked absolutely...devastated.

His words, when he finally spoke, were quiet. Calm even. Hewas just announcing a fact.

‘You lied to me.’

‘Not directly...’

A soft snort from Matteo made her ashamed of even going there.

‘You told me you were already pregnant the night that we were first together.’

Georgia swallowed hard. ‘Technically, I was. At the end...’

‘Stop this.’ The flicker of real anger in his eyes sent a chill down Georgia’s spine. ‘I don’t want to hear any more of yourhalf-truths. You lied to me, even if it was just letting me believe something that wasn’t right, and you know it. Unless...’ He was closing his eyes as he spoke. ‘Unless there was someone else at Rakovi? And you didn’t know for sure who the father was? Is that what this cover-up was all about?’

‘No.’ That he could even think that was astonishingly painful. ‘There was no one else, Matteo. It wasonly you. It could only have been you.’

And she wasn’t only referring to the fathering of her babies. Matteo was the only man she could ever feel like this about.Lovethis much...

His eyes snapped open. ‘So these babiesaremine, then.’

It had been painful enough when he’d been speaking with his eyes closed. This was way harder, being unable to look away from him and having to absorb his painon top of her own.

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