Why was she looking so down in the mouth and wan-faced? Giancarlo thought bitterly. As long as she had him over a barrel, she was sitting pretty!
Then it happened. No hint, no warning. She was just coming to her feet with some murmured excuse about going to the cloakroom, then she swayed and her eyes closed, and he saw her face turn deathly pale as her legs began to go from under her.
He was there to catch her. Anger forgotten, frustrations, resentments—everything sluiced away in that single swift move of his body from his chair to her side so he could take her weight for her.
‘Okay?’ he asked roughly.
‘Yes,’ she breathed, but he knew she wasn’t. He could feel her trembling, and she was having to fight the need to lean heavily on him. ‘Do you think we can go now?’ she begged shakily.
‘Of course.’ Without another word, he carefully fed her slender frame beneath his shoulder and began carefully guiding her between tables with curious eyes following them…
Natalia couldn’t really blame them for their curiosity. Giancarlo was holding her so close that she was finding it difficult to put one foot in front of the other. He continued to hold her like that while he paid the bill, and only released her for as long as it took to help her into her coat. Then she was back beneath the protection of his arm before she had a chance to move a single step.
‘You can let go of me now,’ she told him when they eventually made it outside.
‘No,’ he replied, that was all. It was gruff and it was tight and it declared no room for argument as he herded her down the street to the nearest taxi rank, and helped her inside a black cab.
She wasn’t sure why they had come by taxi tonight, unless it had something to do with the amount of wine Giancarlo had drunk through dinner. She had a horrible feeling he had come out with the specific intention of getting himself drunk. And his mood had been so short and surly she hadn’t known quite how to deal with it.
It didn’t help that she had been feeling under the weather for most of the evening—ever since he’d noticed her watch, in fact.
No, don’t think about that, she told herself with a small shudder.
The shudder made him turn his head to glance at her sharply. ‘I’m okay,’ she assured him, but it wasn’t the truth.
She felt weak and dizzy, and she knew she should have said something sooner. Her own quiet mood had affected his mood. But she had been worried and frightened of saying anything in case it forced the whole wretched problem right out in the open.
Now the problem didn’t need forcing out, because it was sitting here between them like a great lump of ro
ck just waiting to be shattered by one tiny comment—I think I’m pregnant. Or—I think you are pregnant, depending on which one of them decided to say it first.
Yet neither of them said a single word all the way back to the apartment. He was grim-faced and withdrawn and she felt her heart sting every time she dared a quick glance at his profile. Handsome didn’t even begin to cover what made Giancarlo Cardinale the compelling force he was to her. She adored every lean, hard, noble feature, every flicker of his lashes, every twitch of his flat-lined, sensually moulded mouth. She even adored the way he was being very careful to keep his eyes away from her eyes because it showed that he was as aware as she was that the moment of truth was too close for comfort.
And she adored the way his hand was gripping her hand so tightly, even over that imaginary lump of rock which had trouble stamped all over it…
He couldn’t say a word. He didn’t dare. Not until he’d had time to think—though what that meant he had been doing for the last few weeks made it anybody’s guess, he grimly admitted. Because this was thinking, which just went to show how suspicion could fool you where reality could not.
‘Incinta…’ he murmured, feeling a whole new set of powerful emotions grab a tight hold of him by the sheer weight of her condition.
‘What?’ Natalia prompted.
‘Nothing,’ he said, not realising he’d spoken out loud, and glad she didn’t understand his language.
The taxi drew up outside the apartment then, saving either of them the need to speak again while he paid the driver and climbed out himself before helping Natalia down onto the path beside him.
She still looked pale, and her hand gripped his arm with enough force to tell him that she still felt frail. Without a word he folded her back beneath his arm to take her into the building. The concierge was there, they all smiled politely at each other, and the lift waited at the ready to transport them into privacy.
He needed that, he acknowledged. Privacy to think with this brand-new clarity of mind he was now experiencing.
Keeping her close to him while he activated the lift, he then spent the time it took to reach their floor in silent communion with the top of her head, thinking, feeling—Dio, feeling more than he could actually believe was possible just because one small suspicion had become hard fact…
God, she felt awful. Sick in the stomach and light in the head. If he didn’t say something she was going to start crying! She just knew she was because, if it wasn’t enough that his silence was killing her, then this gentle, protective way he was treating her was enough to make the tears flow.
Did he have to crowd her into the corner like this? she thought on a sudden bout of breathlessness that had her sinking back further into the lift corner. He was all brawn and bone and familiar scents that were beginning to make her feel really dizzy.
‘Stai bene?’ he enquired, clearly sensing something.
‘What’s happened to your English?’ she snapped at him in an effort to dispel whatever it was that was happening to her.