He was still holding her hand. His skin was rougher than she remembered, but his voice was soft, gentle in a way that made her throat constrict.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
His words replayed inside her head. She imagined that a lot of men—particularly wealthy, powerful men, who liked being in control of every tiny detail of their lives—would have got extremely bent out of shape, being confronted by the unplanned pregnancy of a woman they barely knew. But César seemed remarkably unfazed.
Of course, you didn’t take charge of a small-time family business and turn it into a global brand before the age of thirty unless you could handle what life threw at you. Even so, finding out you were going to be a parent was a personal and extraordinary milestone for anybody...
‘You’re being very kind,’ she said quietly. ‘Very fair.’
His gaze rested on her face. ‘What happened wasn’t just down to you, Kitty. We both got swept away.’
For a second they stared at one another, wide-eyed, the sound of their breathing punctuating the silence of the room as they remembered.
As Kitty stared at him she felt her heart oscillating against her ribs. The heat of his body, the swell of his muscles beneath his shirt was crowding her mind. He was so solid and male and real, and everything inside her was reaching out to him—only should she be feeling like this? Was it normal or right to feel such a strong physical need for a stranger when her heart was aching for the husband who had missed out on realising his dreams?
‘Yes, we did,’ she whispered.
‘And now we both have to work this out. And we can work it out. We can work it out together.’
His eyes were boring into hers. ‘If that’s what you want.’
She stared at him, mesmerised by the faint trace of stubble on his jaw and the determination in his green gaze. She knew that Lizzie and Bill, and her parents, would be falling over themselves to help her, but she knew César would make this work. She trusted him to do it because managing complex, challenging situations was what he did every day, and it would be wonderful to have his support—not just for her, but for their child.
‘I’d like that.’
‘Good.’ He smiled, and then pulled out his phone. ‘I’ll call the doctor first, and then I have a couple of contacts who can probably pull some strings...speed up the paperwork.’
Paperwork?
The word scraped against her skin. Presumably he was talking about some kind of financial settlement or an agreement over visiting rights, but—
‘Isn’t that a little premature?’ She gave him a small stiff smile. ‘I mean, the baby’s not due for seven or eight months.’
He frowned. ‘I know—and that’s why you need to stop worrying about all this right now. Just concentrate on yourself and our baby, and let me deal with the wedding arrangements.’
Her ears were buzzing.
Wedding? What wedding?
She stared at him in confusion. ‘I don’t understand...’
His eyes dropped to her face. ‘What’s there to understand? You said you wanted to make this work.’
He was speaking patiently, but she could feel the tautness in his body vibrating from his fingers into hers. She felt her pulse accelerate. She hardly knew César, and she certainly didn’t move in his kind of circles, but she knew enough about the world—his world—to know that making this situation ‘work’ didn’t typically include a marriage proposal.
‘I know I did,’ she protested, ‘and I do. But—’
‘But what?’
Gone was the softness in the voice. Now he sounded as she imagined he did in the boardroom, when confronted by bad sales figures. Cool. Distant. Hostile.
‘Marriage is the quickest and most efficient way to tie up all the loose ends.’
Loose ends. Was that what she and the baby were?
‘I just assumed that you...’ She hesitated. ‘Well, that you were talking about being involved in the baby’s life—not mine.’
Surely he didn’t actually mean what he was saying. It must be the knee-jerk reaction of a powerful man who wanted to call the shots.