Page 12 of The Venetian One-Night Baby

But wait, women had pregnancy scares all the time. Her cycle was crazy in any case. She had always planned to have kids, but not yet. She was still building up her business. Still trying to prove to her family her career choice was as viable, rewarding and fulfilling as theirs.

She’d had it all planned: get her business well established, hopefully one day fall in love with a man who would treat her the way she had always longed to be treated. Not that she had actively gone looking for the love of her life. She had been too worried about a repeat of her embarrassing falling-in-love episode during her teens. But getting married and having babies was what she wanted. One day. How could she have got it so messed up by falling pregnant? Now? While being on the Pill and using condoms? She was still living in a poky little bedsit, for God’s sake.

Sabrina moved past Holly to get out of the bathroom. ‘I can’t tell him until I know for sure. I need to get a test kit. I have to do it today because there’s a Midhurst and Firbank family gathering tomorrow night and I can’t do a no-show. It’s Max’s mother’s birthday. She’d be hurt if I didn’t go.’

‘You could say you’ve got a stomach bug.’

Sabrina gave her a side-eye. ‘My parents and brothers will be there and once they hear I’ve got a stomach bug, one or all of them will be on my doorstep with their doctor’s bag.’ She clutched two handfuls of her hair with her hands. ‘Argh. Why am I such a disaster? This wasn’t meant to happen. Not no-o-o-w.’ To her shame, her last word came as a childish wail.

‘Oh, sweetie, you’re not a disaster. Falling pregnant to a guy you love is not a catastrophe. Not in this day and age in any case.’

Sabrina dropped her hands from her head and glared at her friend. ‘Who said I was in love with Max? Why do you keep going on about it?’

Holly placed her hands on her hips in an I know you better than you do yourself pose. ‘Hello? You haven’t slept with anyone for ten years, and then you spend a night in bed with a man you’ve known since you were in nappies? You wouldn’t have slept with him if you didn’t feel something for him.’

Sabrina rolled her lips together and turned away to smooth the fabric out on the worktable. ‘Okay, so maybe I don’t hate him as much as I used to, but I’m not in love with him. I wouldn’t be so...so...stupid.’ Would she? She had promised herself she would never find herself in that situation again. Fancying herself in love with someone who might reject her in the end like her teenage boyfriend had. Falling in love with Max would be asking for the sort of trouble she could do without. More trouble, that was, because finding herself pregnant to him was surely trouble enough.

Holly touched Sabrina on the arm. ‘Do you want me to stay with you while you do the test?’

Sabrina gulped back a sob. ‘Oh...would you?’

Holly smiled. ‘That’s what best friends are for—through thick and thin, and sick and sin, right?’

* * *

If it hadn’t been his mother’s birthday Max would have found some excuse to not show up. Not that he didn’t want to see Sabrina. He did, which was The Problem. Wanting to see her, wanting to touch her, wanting to kiss her, wanting, wanting, wanting to make love to her again. He had told himself one night and one night only and here he was six weeks later still replaying every minute of that stolen night of seriously hot sex. Sex so amazing he could still feel aftershocks when he so much as pictured her lying in his arms. Sex so planet-dislodging he hadn’t bothered hooking up with anyone else and wondered in his darkest moments if he ever would.

He couldn’t imagine touching another woman after making love with Sabrina. How could he kiss another mouth as sweet and responsive as hers? How could he slide his hands down a body so lush and ripe and feminine if it didn’t belong to Sabrina?

Max arrived at his parents’ gracious home in Hampton Court, and after greeting his mother and father took up his usual place at the back of the crowded room to do his people-watching thing. He searched the sea of faces to see if Sabrina was among them, more than a little shocked at how disappointed he was not to find her. But then a thought shot like a stray dart into his brain. What if she brought someone with her? Another man? A new date? A man she was now sleeping with and doing all the sexy red-hot things she had done with him?

Max took a tumbler of spirits off the tray of a passing waiter and downed it in one swallow. He had to get a hold of himself. He was thirty-four years old, not some hormone-driven teenager suffering his first crush. So what if Sabrina slept with someone else? What business was it of his? They’d made an agreement of one night to get the lust bug out of the way.

No repeats.

No replays.

No sequel.

No happy-ever-after.

Max turned to put his empty glass down on a table next to him and saw Sabrina greeting his mother on the other side of the room. The way his parents adored her was understandable given they hadn’t had any children after the loss of Daniel. Sabrina, as their only godchild, had been lavished with love and attention. Max knew their affection for her had helped them to heal as much as was possible after the tragic loss of an infant. Not that his parents hadn’t adored him too. They had been fabulous parents trying to do their best after such sad circumstances, which, in an ill-advised but no less understandable way, had fed their little fantasy of him and Sabrina one day getting together and playing happy families.

But it was a step too far.

Way, way too far.

Sabrina finally stepped out of his mother’s bone-crushing hug and met his gaze. Her eyes widened and then flicked away, her cheeks going an intense shade of pink. She turned and hurriedly made her way through the knot of guests and disappeared through the door that led out to the gallery-wide corridor.

Max followed her, weaving his way through the crowd just in time to see Sabrina scuttling into the library further down the corridor, like a terrified mouse trying to escape a notoriously cruel cat. In spite of the background noise of the party, the sound of the key turning in the lock was like a rifle shot. Or a slap on the face.

Okay, so he had left her in Venice without saying goodbye in person but surely that didn’t warrant this type of reaction?

Max knocked on the library door. ‘Sabrina? Let me in.’

He could hear the sound of her breathing on the other side of the door—hectic and panicked as if she really was trying to avoid someone menacing. But after a moment the key turned in the lock and the door creaked open.

‘Are you alone?’ Sabrina’s voice sounded as creaky as the door, her eyes wide and bluer than he had ever seen them. And, he realised with a jolt, reddened as if she’d been recently crying. A lot.

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