Page 25 of The Venetian One-Night Baby

He covered her hand with his and attempted a smile. ‘You’re a sweet girl, Sabrina. But I have a habit of letting people down in the end. That’s why I keep my relationships simple. But nothing about us is simple now, is it? We’ve made a baby.’

Sabrina hadn’t realised until now how deeply sensitive Max was. He was aware of the pain his mother had suffered and was doing all he could to protect Sabrina during the early days of her pregnancy. But marrying him was a big step. Sleeping with him six weeks ago had changed her life in more ways than she had thought possible. ‘Max...this offer of yours to marry me...’

His hands came up to cradle her face, his eyes moving back and forth from her gaze to her mouth. His breathing had altered, so too had hers. Their breaths mingled in the small space between their mouths, weaving an intoxicating spell on her senses. ‘Maybe I need to work a little harder to convince you, hmm?’

His mouth came down and covered hers, his lips moving in soft massaging movements that made every bone in her body feel like it had been dissolved. She swayed against him, dizzy with need, her body on fire with every spine-tingling stroke and glide of his tongue. The dance of their mouths was like sophisticated choreography, no one else could have kissed her with such exquisite expertise. No one else could have made her mouth feel so alive, so vibrantly, feverishly alive. Her heart picked up its pace, sending blood in a fiery rush to all the erogenous zones of her body, making her acutely aware of pleasure spots that ached to be touched, longed to be caressed. Longed to be filled with his intimate invasion.

Max lifted his mouth off hers, his eyes still gleaming with arousal. ‘That one night was never going to be enough. We both know that.’

‘Then why didn’t you contact me afterwards?’

His mouth shifted in a rueful manner. ‘We agreed to stay clear of each other but there wasn’t a day that went past that I didn’t regret agreeing to that rule.’

Sabrina hadn’t been too enamoured with that rule either. Every day of those six weeks she’d ached to see him. Ached to touch him. Ached to give herself to him. But that was how she’d got in to this mess in the first place. Max and she had made a child together from their one night of passion.

Passion but not love.

Max didn’t love her and was only offering to marry her because of their child. Her dreams of a romantic happily ever after with a man who adored her were fast disappearing.

‘Do you regret this?’ Sabrina couldn’t hold back the question. ‘Taking our relationship to this level?’

His frown deepened and his hand stilled on her hair. ‘No.’ He released a jagged sigh and added, ‘But I don’t want you to get hurt. I’m offering you marriage. Not quite the sort you’re after but it’s all I can offer.’

Sabrina aimed her gaze at his Adam’s apple. ‘I know what you’re offering, Max... I’m just not sure I can accept it...’

He brought her chin up with his finger and did that back and forth thing again with his eyes, searching hers for any trace of ambiguity. ‘We’re good together, Sabrina. You know that. We can make a go of this. We’ve both come from stable backgrounds so we know it’ll be the best thing for our child to have both its parents together.’

She felt torn because there was nothing she wanted more than to give her baby a stable upbringing like the ones she and Max had experienced. Didn’t every mother want that for her baby? But would marrying a man who didn’t love her be enough in the long run? He might come to love their child, but would he ever come to love her as well? And why was she even asking such a question? She wasn’t in love with Max. Was she? She had to keep her feelings out of it. If she fell for him it would make her even more vulnerable than she already was.

But she couldn’t ignore the chemistry between them when her body was still tingling from head to foot from his lovemaking. Neither could she ignore the dread that if she refused to marry him, he would be free to go back to his playboy life. Sure, he would be an involved father but not permanently on site like hers had been. Sabrina released a sigh and rested her hand against his thudding heart.

‘Okay, I will marry you, but we can’t tell anyone until after the twelve-week mark. We’ll have to keep our relationship secret from our families until then, because no way am I going to be subject to pressure and well-meaning but unsolicited advice from our families.’

The frown relaxed slightly on his forehead but it seemed to lurk in the grey shadows of his eyes. He brushed back her hair from her face and pressed a soft kiss to her lips. ‘They won’t hear about it from me.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

TWO WEEKS PASSED and Sabrina’s noisy and cramped flat became a distant memory. All of her things had now been moved and were either in storage or at Max’s house. She was touched by his attention to detail, the way he made sure everything was perfectly set up for her. Nothing seemed too much trouble for him, but she couldn’t help wondering if he was finding the rapid change in his neat and ordered life a little confronting.

But for her, living with him showed her how seriously she had misjudged him in the past. It made it harder and harder to remember exactly why she had hated him so much. Or had that been a defence mechanism on her part? Somehow her heart had recognised that he was the one man who could make her fall for him and fall hard.

Each time Holly came in for a fitting, Sabrina had to quell her own feelings of disappointment that her wedding wasn’t going to be as she had dreamed and planned for most of her life.

But Holly wasn’t Sabrina’s best friend for nothing and it didn’t take her long to pick up on Sabrina’s mood at her fitting that afternoon. ‘You don’t seem yourself today, Sabrina. Is something wrong?’

Sabrina placed another pin in the skirt of Holly’s gown to mark where she needed to take it in. ‘Other than my husband-to-be is only marrying me out of duty because I’m pregnant with his baby?’

‘Oh, honey,’ Holly sighed. ‘Do you really think Max doesn’t care about you? Personally, I think he’s been in love with you for months.’

Sabrina sat back on her heels and looked up at her friend. ‘What makes you think that?’

Holly lifted one shoulder. ‘It’s just a vibe I got when I saw him at that party a few months ago. He was acting all dog-in-the-manger when you were dancing with that other guy.’

‘So? He was probably just annoyed with me for drawing attention to myself.’ Sabrina picked up another pin. ‘Turn a little to the left. That’s it.’ She inserted the pin at Holly’s waistline. ‘Have you been dieting? This is the third time I’ve had to take this dress in.’

Holly laughed. ‘Wedding nerves. Or excitement more like.’

There was a silence broken only by the rustle of fabric as Sabrina fiddled with the alterations on the dress.

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