He swallowed.
This was a physical manifestation of time passing—because Aisling looked as if she could give birth at any moment!
For a moment, a dark tide of fury washed over him as he acknowledged that she had kept him out of the loop right until the very end. How dared she? How dared she?
His heart was pounding but he sucked in a deep breath because instinct told him that he must tread very carefully. That he needed to know what her game was. If ever there was a time when he needed his ability to think logically, it was now.
He let her walk right past.
She didn’t notice the car. Didn’t stop to glance at the shadowed figure sitting statue-still in the back seat. He could see the faint beads of sweat on her pale forehead and watched while she walked up to her front door and put the carrier bags down, briefly searching around inside her handbag before pulling out a set of keys.
He waited until the front door had shut behind her. Like a tiger who forced himself to linger despite knowing that his prey lay waiting, Gianluca made himself stay in the car for a full five minutes. And then he stepped out.
‘Wait here,’ he told the driver.
‘Any idea how long you might be, sir?’
‘None,’ Gianluca clipped out and walked up to the door.
It was clearly an apartment—for there were several bells—and he jammed his thumb on the one which said ‘A. Armstrong'. And then he remembered her telling him that she lived in a one-bedded apartment!
Her voice—sounding disembodied—floated out from the intercom. ‘Hello?’
‘Hello, Aisling,’ he said silkily.
In her stuffy apartment, Aisling’s knees went weak and she slumped against the wall, and that was just pure physical reaction to the sound of his deeply sonorous voice. She had known he would come, yes—of course she had—and yet the reality of his impending presence was like a fierce body-blow.
‘Gianluca?’ she said uncertainly.
‘Just open the door, Aisling.’
At least his quietly furious voice gave her some clue what to expect. Weakly, she lifted her hand to buzz him in, when that horrible tight sensation in her back which had been plaguing her since yesterday caught her off guard, and she hesitated.
‘Open the door!’
Sucking in a deep breath to try to ease the spasm, she pressed the entry button and then went to stand beside the French windows she’d just opened—as if trying to put as much space between them as possible.
Stay calm, she told herself. Just stay calm.
But that was easier said than done. Her heart was pounding so rapidly and so loudly that she was worried about the baby. The baby. She felt the hot shudder of her breath as the tightening in her back increased. Why the hell was she getting back pain at a time like this? Hearing the sound of his approaching footsteps, she turned to look out at the garden, not wanting to see his face. Not daring to.
Why, Aisling? Frightened you’ll give yourself away—let him know that you can’t get him out of your head, and now he’s embedded his seed in your body, too.
Shutting the door with a click which sounded like a gun hammer being cocked, Gianluca stopped and stared at her for one long moment. From the back she looked no different. Just a tall, slim woman in a linen skirt and silk shirt, her dark hair caught up in a chignon—though, unusually, a couple of strands of it had escaped and were clinging damply to the back of her long neck.
‘Turn around,’ he said, and then when she didn’t he spoke again. ‘I said, turn around and look at me, Aisling.’
Slowly, she complied and Gianluca sucked in a disbelieving breath as he stared at the ripe swell of the unborn child. Even out on the pavement it hadn’t seemed quite real. She could have been one of the many passers-by who played their walk-on parts in everyday life—but up here there was no denying it. The evidence was here—as large as life itself.
‘What the hell have you done?’
In a way his livid eyes and furious voice helped. At least it told her what she had suspected—that Gianluca would want nothing to do with this baby. Yet Aisling had been too independent for too long not to bristle at the unfairness of his accusation. And wasn’t justifiable anger a stronger emotion for her to hide behind? Wouldn’t that prevent her from doing something regrettable like sinking to the floor and begging him to take care of them both?
‘What have I done?’ she demanded. ‘Shouldn’t that be what have we done? Surely you know that it takes two to make a baby!’
‘But which two?’ he lashed out.
Aisling blinked at him uncomprehendingly. ‘I’m sorry?’