The midwife sniffled and swiped at her eyes, becoming brusque and businesslike. ‘Let’s get you organised then, shall we?’ She showed Angie how to get the baby to latch on. Angie was a quick learner. The baby was even quicker and soon she was contentedly suckling.
Beautiful, Dominic thought as he watched mother and child together. Truly beautiful.
‘This is the woman,’ he whispered in awed reverence when the midwife had departed and the baby had fallen asleep, ‘who never wanted a child. Look at you. You’re a natural. What happened?’
She shrugged, and smiled down at the baby in her arms, lifted her and drank in her magical new baby scent. ‘I didn’t want a baby. At least, not with Shayne. I know that now. I was happy when I found out it wasn’t his. And then I was afraid to get attached to this little one because I knew I would be leaving. I couldn’t afford to love it, even though, as it grew and as I felt it move inside, I couldn’t help but feel a connection.’ She sighed, a slow sad smile emerging. ‘I tried to fight it. I tried to keep my distance because I knew I’d end up hurt. But it was impossible.’
‘Marry me.’
She blinked and looked up at his brusque demand. ‘What did you say?’
‘Marry me, Angelina. Become my wife.’
She shook her head. She was dreaming, the painkillers affecting her brain. ‘Don’t think you have to marry me. You don’t have to try to make up for what happened. It was an accident.’
‘I don’t want to marry you because I feel guilty for what happened.’
A frisson of fear zipped down her spine. ‘But you can’t marry me. Look at where I come from. What would people think?’
‘I don’t care what people think. You know that.’
‘But people will still talk.’
‘And all they will discover is that we grew up three blocks and however many years apart. Yes, Angelina,’ he said in answer to her look of disbelief, ‘I spent the first fifteen years of my life in the very next suburb. I lived there with my nonna and poppa, and mother, until none of them were left, then I was determined to find their house by the sea for them. The home they never had.’
He smiled. ‘So you see, there’s no reason why you should refuse me now, surely.’
‘But I still don’t understand why you want to.’
He took one of her hands in his and gave her a crooked grin. ‘Why? Because I love you. I was too damned stupid to admit it or even recognise it before, but nearly losing you made me realise that I love you.’
Even under the sensation-numbing drugs being pumped into her body, she could still feel the unmistakable trip of her heart, and the swell of emotion as hope sprouted and blossomed into something magnificent. Something real. Real. There was that word again—the word that seemed to surround this man from the moment she’d met him.
Yet still she dared not believe it could be true. ‘But Carla. I thought you were still in love with Carla. This is her child. I thought that’s why you wanted it so much.’
He smiled a sad smile, reaching over to brush his baby’s hair, skimming his thumb over her brow. ‘Carla will always have a place in my heart.’
‘She was so very beautiful.’
He nodded. ‘She was, and yet so brittle at the same time.’ He turned his eyes from his sleeping child to the woman holding her. ‘She wasn’t like you, Angelina, so strong and resilient. Carla always wanted what she couldn’t have, thinking it would make her happy, thinking it would be enough. But nothing was ever enough for her. Money wasn’t enough. The house wasn’t enough. Still she wasn’t happy.
‘And then she decided a baby would make her happy. But by then she was already losing weight, already starving herself. There was no way she could conceive and no way she would listen to anyone.’
He sighed. ‘When I first met you, you reminded me of how she looked. So gaunt and half-starved. I couldn’t understand why you had been able to grow this child, when she hadn’t.’
‘You said you hated me back then.’
‘I know.’ He blew out through his teeth. ‘I didn’t know you. I didn’t trust you. I was angry.’