Page 26 of The Venetian One-Night Baby

‘Have you and Max set a date for the wedding?’ Holly asked.

Sabrina scrambled to her feet and stabbed the pins back in her pincushion. ‘Not yet...’ she sighed. ‘I can’t see him wanting a big one. He’s never been one for large gatherings. He missed out on the Firbank party animal gene.’

Holly’s look was as probing as a spotlight. ‘Have you decided what you feel about him?’

Sabrina made a business of tidying up her dressmaking tools. She had been deliberately avoiding thinking about her feelings for Max. They were confusing and bewildering, to say the least. He was the last person she had thought she would fall in love with, but how could she not lose her heart to such a wonderful man? He was everything she wanted in a life partner. He was stable and strong and dependable. He had good family values, he was hard working and supportive.

Yes, he was nervous about becoming a father, which was understandable given what had happened to his baby brother. But she wished he would open up more to her about his concerns. To let her in to his innermost doubts and fears. She had hated him for so long, loathed and resented him, and yet these days she only had to think of him and her heart would flutter and a warm feeling spread through her body. ‘It’s complicated...’ She glanced at her friend. ‘I used to think I hated him but now I wonder if I ever did. Was it like that for you with Zack?’

Holly’s toffee-brown eyes melted at the sound of her fiancé’s name. ‘It was exactly like that. I hated him when I first met him but as soon as he kissed me...’ she gave a dreamy smile ‘...I think that’s when I fell completely and hopelessly in love.’

Sabrina knew from earlier conversations with Holly that handsome playboy Zack Knight had fallen in love with Holly the moment he’d met her. With Zack’s reputation as a celebrity divorce lawyer and Holly a twice-jilted wedding florist, their romance had been the talk of London. And while Sabrina was thrilled Holly and Zack were so in love and looking forward to their wedding in a few weeks’ time, it made her situation all the more heart-wrenching. She longed for Max to love her the way she had come to love him. Her feelings for him—now that she’d acknowledged them—were intense and irreversible.

But would she be happy knowing, deep down, he was only marrying her out of a sense of duty?

* * *

Max was still privately congratulating himself on keeping his relationship with Sabrina a secret from his family. There was something deeply intimate about keeping their involvement quiet. The bubble of secrecy made every moment with her intensely special, as if they were the only two people left on the planet. He had never felt that close to anyone else before and it was both terrifying and tempting. Tempting to think it could grow and develop into something he had told himself never to aspire to because he didn’t deserve it.

Worried he would somehow jinx it, destroy it.

It was still too early for Sabrina to be showing her pregnancy, but just knowing his baby was nestled inside her womb made him feel things he had never expected to feel. Not just fear, although that was there big-time, but flickers of excitement, anticipation, wonder. He caught himself wondering what their child would look like, who it would take after, what traits or quirks of personality it would inherit. He had even stopped avoiding people with prams and now took covert glances at the babies inside.

And he had gone to London’s most famous toyshop and bought two handmade teddy bears—one with a blue ribbon and one wearing a pink tutu, because, for some reason, he couldn’t get the idea of a tiny little girl just like Sabrina out of his mind. He was keeping the bears for when he and Sabrina came home from their first ultrasound appointment.

The day of the appointment, Max cleared his diary for the whole day because he was in no fit state to work even though it would only take up half an hour or so. He was barely able to speak on the way to the radiography centre as he was so lost in his tangled thoughts. His stomach pitched and pinched, his heart raced and his pulse rioted. What if there was something wrong with the baby?

He hadn’t realised until now how much he cared about that little bunch of cells. The feelings ambushed him, making him wonder if other fathers felt like this. Men were mostly at arm’s length from a pregnancy, distant from what was going on in their partner’s body as it nurtured and sustained new life. But he felt an overwhelming sense of love for the child that was growing in Sabrina’s womb. What was ahead for their child? What sort of person would they become? How could he as its father make sure it had everything it needed for a long and fulfilling and healthy life?

Max sat beside Sabrina in the waiting room, took her hand and rested it on his thigh. ‘Nervous?’

She gave a wobbly smile. ‘A little. Are you? You’ve been awfully quiet.’

He squeezed her hand. ‘Sorry. I’m still getting my head around everything.’

A flicker of worry passed through her blue gaze and she looked down at their joined hands. ‘I’m sorry about all of this... I can’t help feeling it’s my fault we’re in this situation.’

‘Sabrina.’ He tipped up her chin and locked his eyes with hers. ‘It’s not your fault. If it’s anyone’s fault it’s mine.’

Max was relieved Sabrina had finally agreed to marry him. He wanted nothing more than to provide a stable and loving home for their child. And it would be a loving relationship, though perhaps not in the most romantic sense. He genuinely cared about Sabrina, she had been a part of his life for so long, and yet it had only been recently that he had found out the more complex layers to her personality.

He had been deeply touched when she’d revealed to him what had happened to her as a teenager. He wished she had told him that night in Venice but she hadn’t and he had to accept it. Would he have still made love to her? He couldn’t answer that question. The need between them was so strong and seemed to be getting stronger.

Sabrina’s name was called and they were led into the examination room. Max continued to hold her hand as the sonographer moved the probe over Sabrina’s still flat abdomen. How could a baby—his baby—be growing inside her? It didn’t seem real until he saw the image of the foetus come up on the screen. He could barely register what the sonographer was saying. All he could think was that was his child floating around in the amniotic sac that would feed and nurture it until it was born in seven months’ time.

His chest suddenly felt tight with emotion, his heart thumping with a combination of dread and wonder. What sort of father would he be? How could he trust that he would always do the right thing by his child? He had never thought this day would occur and yet here he was sitting with his wife-to-be and staring at a 3D image of their baby.

His wife-to-be. Sabrina, his fiancée. The mother of his child.

Sabrina’s hand grasped his tighter. ‘Isn’t it incredible?’ Her eyes shone with the same wonder he was feeling. ‘That’s our baby.’

Max squeezed her hand and smiled. ‘It sure is.’

‘You have a few more weeks to decide if you want to know the sex,’ the sonographer said. ‘It’s usually pretty clear from about eighteen to twenty weeks.’

‘Do you want to know the sex of the baby?’ Sabrina asked Max after the scan was completed.

‘Do you?’

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