Page 14 of The Venetian One-Night Baby

He swung back to face her; suddenly conscious of how appallingly he was taking her announcement. But nothing could have prepared him for this moment. He had never in his wildest imaginings ever thought he would be standing in front of a woman—any woman—bearing this bombshell news. Pregnant. A baby. His baby. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s such a shock.’ Understatement. His heart was pounding so hard he wouldn’t have been out of place on a critical care cardiac ward. Sweat was pouring down between his shoulder blades. Something was scrabbling and scratching like there was a frantic animal trapped in his guts.

He stepped towards her and held out his hands but she stepped back again. His hands fell back by his sides. ‘So...what have you decided to do?’

Her small neat chin came up and her cornflower-blue eyes hardened with determination. ‘I’m not having a termination. Please don’t ask me to.’

Max flinched. ‘Do you really think I’m the sort of man to do something like that? I’m firmly of the opinion that it’s solely a woman’s choice whether she continues with a pregnancy or not.’

Relief washed over her pinched features but there was still a cloud of worry in her gaze. ‘I’m not against someone else making that difficult choice but I can’t bring myself to do it. Not under these circumstances. I don’t expect you to be involved if that’s not what you want. I know this is a terrible shock and not something you want, but I thought you should know about the pregnancy first, before it becomes obvious, I mean.’ Her hand went protectively to her belly again. ‘I won’t even tell people it’s yours if you’d rather not have them know.’

Max was ashamed that for a nanosecond he considered that as an option. But how could he call himself a man and ignore his own flesh and blood? It wasn’t the child’s fault so why should it be robbed of a relationship with its father? He had grown up with a loving and involved father and couldn’t imagine how different his life might have been without the solid and dependable support of his dad.

No. He would do the right thing by Sabrina and the baby. He would try his hardest not to fail them like he had failed his baby brother and his parents. He stepped forward and captured her hands before she could escape. ‘I want my child to have my name. We’ll marry as soon as I can arrange it.’

Sabrina pulled out of his hold as if his hands had burned her. ‘You don’t have to be so old-fashioned about it, Max. I’m not asking you to marry me.’

‘I’m not asking you. I’m telling you what’s going to happen.’ As proposals went, Max knew it wasn’t flash. But he’d proposed in a past life and he had sworn he would never do it again. But this was different. This was about duty and responsibility, not foolish, fleeting, fickle feelings. ‘We will marry next month.’

‘Next month?’ Her eyes went round in shock. ‘Are you crazy? This is the twenty-first century. Couples don’t have to marry because they happened to get pregnant. No one is holding a gun to your head.’

‘Do you really think I would walk away from the responsibility to my own flesh and blood? We will marry and that’s final.’

Sabrina’s eyes flashed blue sparks of defiance and her hands clenched into fists. ‘You could do with some work on your proposal, buddy. No way am I marrying you. You don’t love me.’

‘So? You don’t love me either,’ Max said. ‘This is not about us. This is about the baby we’ve made. You need someone to support you and that someone is me. I won’t take no for an answer.’

Her chin came up so high she could have given a herd of mules a master class in stubbornness. ‘Then we’re at an impasse because no way am I marrying a man who didn’t even have the decency to say goodbye in person the night we...had sex.’

Max blew out a breath and shoved a hand back through his hair again. ‘Okay, so my exit might have lacked a little finesse, but I didn’t want you to get any crazy ideas about our one night turning into something else.’

‘Oh, yeah? Well, because of the quality of your stupid condoms, our one-night has turned into something else—a damn baby!’ She buried her face in her hands and promptly burst into tears.

Max winced and stepped towards her, gathering her close against his body. This time she didn’t resist, and he wrapped his arms around her as the sobs racked her slim frame. He stroked the back of her silky head, his mind whirling with emotions he had no idea how to handle. Regret, shame and blistering anger at himself. He had done this to her. He had got her pregnant. Had the condoms failed? He was always so careful. He always wore one. No exceptions. Had he left it on too long? At one point he had fallen asleep with her wrapped in his arms, his body still encased in the warm wet velvet of hers.

Was that when it had happened? He should never have given in to the temptation of touching her. He had acted on primal instinct, ruled by his hormones instead of his head. ‘I’m sorry. So sorry. But I thought you said you were on the Pill?’

She eased away from his chest to look up at him through tear-washed eyes. ‘I’m on a low dose one but I was so caught up with nerves about the expo, I had an upset tummy the day before I left for Venice. Plus, I was sick after having that champagne at the cocktail party.’ She tried to suppress a hiccup but didn’t quite manage it.

Max brushed the hair back from her face. ‘Look, no one is to blame for this other than me. I shouldn’t have touched you. I shouldn’t have kissed you that first time and I definitely shouldn’t have booked you into my room and—’

‘Do you really regret what happened between us that night?’ Her expression reminded him of a wounded puppy—big eyes, long face, fragile hope.

He cradled her face in his hands. ‘That’s the whole trouble. I don’t regret it. Not a minute of it. I’ve thought of that night thousands of times since then.’ He brushed his thumbs over her cheeks while still cupping her face. ‘We’ll make this work, Sabrina. We might not love each other in the traditional way, but we can make do.’

She tugged his hands away from her face and stepped a metre away to stand in front of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. ‘Make do? Is that all you want out of life? To...’ she waved her hand in a sweeping gesture ‘...make do? What about love? Isn’t that an essential ingredient of a good marriage?’

‘I’m not offering you that sort of marriage.’

Her eyes flashed and she planted her hands on her hips. ‘Well, guess what? I’m not accepting that sort of proposal.’

‘Would you prefer me to lie to you?’ Max tried to keep his voice steady but he could feel ridges of anger lining his throat. ‘To get down on bended knee and say a whole lot of flowery words we both know I don’t mean?’

‘Did you say them to Lydia?’

‘Let’s keep Lydia out of this.’ This time the anger nearly choked him. He hated thinking about his proposal six years ago to his ex-fiancée. He hated thinking about his failure to see the relationship for what it had been—a mistake from start to finish. It had occurred to him only recently that he had asked Lydia to marry him so his parents would back off about Sabrina. Not the best reason, by anyone’s measure.

‘You still have feelings for her, don’t you? That’s why you can’t commit to anyone else.’

Max rolled his eyes and gave a short bark of a laugh. ‘Oh, please spare me the pop psychoanalysis. No, I do not still love Lydia. In fact, I never loved her.’

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