On my tail, you mean. She would have said it, but brake lights glowed—
“Watch out!”
Paolo made a lightning move to nip around the stalled car.
“Would you quit driving like a maniac? You’re going to kill us both.” Adrenaline stung her arteries. She blamed the dangerous roads, but suspected it had more to do with the dangerous man next to her.
“I’m trying to get us out of this traffic. Just because you don’t know how to drive in America.” He grew serious, geared up and down and jockeyed for advantage among his equally reckless compatriots.
“I’m Canadian, and we drive like there’s ice on the roads because there often is.” Still, Lauren couldn’t help choking on a giggle as she observed the craziness of it all, looking for the landmarks she’d seen from the air. “I am definitely not in Kansas anymore.”
“I thought you were living in Quebec?”
“I am. Was. Paolo, how?” She opened her palms in bafflement, wishing away the skip that plucked at her heart when she looked at him. But he was so masculine and sure. His sunglasses obscured his eyes, setting off his blade-straight nose, his stern jaw, his mouth with its narrow upper lip and the squared-off but full bottom one.
That mouth had traveled everywhere on her, tender and wicked and determined to draw forth every last ounce of pleasure. Her stomach contracted in a clench of desire remembering the way he’d devoted himself to kissing the arch of her foot, the backs of her knees, her inner thighs....
Flushing, burning in a hell of sins, she jerked her gaze back to streets she didn’t see. “You didn’t say anything about coming to Italy last night,” she said in a strained voice. “Your assistant said you were leaving town after the benefit and gone until the New Year, but she didn’t say where you were going. How are you here ahead of me? Were you on my flight, too?”#p#????#e#
“No, I arrived ahead of you.” He pursed his lips with dismay before saying, “I didn’t wish anyone to know we were associating beyond our brief conversation last night. You have put me in a difficult position. You understand that, si?”
She had put him...? Defensive anger poured through her. She’d grown up with step-siblings who had always pointed to her as being at fault and she didn’t take that sort of blame any longer.
“I didn’t rape you and steal your sperm, Paolo.”
“Who knows you are pregnant?” he demanded.
“Just my doctor.”
“Who else?”
“No one! All the books said to wait three months before telling anyone.”
“They don’t mean the father, Lauren. Or did you try telling him and things didn’t work out? Is that why you’ve come to me? What happened with the real father? Tell me. I’ll help you.”
Lauren stopped thumbing the clasp on her pocketbook, annoyance making her heart ring and come out fighting. “The real father didn’t believe me and is behaving like an ass.”
He shot her a sharp glance until he read her meaning in the withering look she offered. His sexy mouth firmed into a hard line.
“You are being an ass,” she asserted. “I needed time to figure out what my life would look like as a single mother so I kept it to myself. Why didn’t you call?” she challenged. “You knew we hadn’t used any condoms.”
A muscle twitched under his eye. “I believed you were unable to get pregnant so even though I didn’t mean to take that risk, the likelihood of conception didn’t seem high enough to follow up on.”
All she heard was the first part and it caused her a sensation like a knife had been thrust into her throat. Another one turned slowly about eight inches lower, deeper in her chest. “Ryan told you I couldn’t get pregnant?” she choked out.
“Not in so many words, but I’m Italian. We have big families. You always struck me as—” He stopped, seeming to rethink what he’d been about to say.
“What?” she prompted. Sad? Pathetic? Gullible? She braced herself, willing him to continue.
“You seemed like a woman who wanted to be a mother,” he allowed as though it grated to acknowledge that. “Whenever I saw Ryan, I naturally asked if babies were on the way and he always said, ‘No luck yet.’ So I knew you were trying.”
“Very enlightened of you to assume it was my deficiency, not his,” she bit out.
“No matter whose deficiency it was, you have to admit it’s a stretch for me to believe one night is all it took for you to get pregnant after that many years of trying with your husband.”