‘Since when?’ he demanded icily, moving closer.
Her hands dropped to her stomach and he could see that she was in turmoil, that she was agonising over what to say. But apparently a need for reassurance eclipsed all other concerns. ‘Is he okay? Is my baby okay?’
CHAPTER THREE
EVERY SOUND IN the hospital was audible. The beeping of far-away machines monitoring the life signs of patients. The low-key chat of staff. The ringing of a phone. The whir of an overhead fan. Everything was audible in that way when things take on an almost supersonic quality in moments of shock and duress. The sounds had a brightness beyond their due.
Skye waited, her breath held, her worry lurching desperately.
‘Matteo?’ It was a whisper. A strangled, hoarse cry. ‘Please tell me...’
‘Our baby is fine,’ he said with a coldness that perforated her relief and doused it in ice.
Skye’s eyes fell closed. The whole point of coming to Italy and forcing his hand, of giving him the hotel, had been to ensure they were divorced before it was too late. Before her stomach became rounded, before she had given birth to their child, before he had any concept there even was a child. But she wasn’t sure she could summon the energy to care in that moment.
None of that mattered.
She felt only relief.
Tears stung her eyes. ‘Thank God. Oh, Matteo, I’m so relieved.’
‘They’re going to monitor you,’ he said, taking a step back from the bed and crossing his arms. ‘For a few more hours.’
‘I’m fine.’ Skye reached for the IV cable that was attached to her wrist and pulled it out. Matteo winced as the inch-long needle fell from her arm. ‘Fainting is one of the symptoms I’m learning to live with.’
She stood, but was so unsteady that Matteo couldn’t help but reach for her. His touch was clinical, but he didn’t want to see his wife—no, the mother of his child—splayed across the bed, unconscious again.
‘I’m fine,’ she reiterated snappishly, and her teeth were bared, her body language the definition of defensive. But it was the behaviour of a badly wounded lioness defending her cub.
She was terrified.
Of him? Of his anger? Of what she thought he’d do? So she should be! To attempt to conceal the Vin Santo heir from him... Just who did she think he was? ‘So you obviously knew you were pregnant.’ The words held a latent threat.
She winced and pulled back, moving away from him by skirting the bed.
‘When the hell were you planning on telling me?’
‘Would you stop yelling?’ she murmured.
Matteo ran his hand through his hair, pulling at it with barely suppressed frustration. He hadn’t intended to yell; only a rage he hadn’t felt for many years, since the last time he’d come up against a Johnson in a confrontation, had completely usurped all his other impulses. He spoke more softly, but there was an inherent danger to the silky edges of his words. ‘You weren’t going to tell me, were you?’
Skye looked at him for a moment and then turned her attention back to the bed. ‘I didn’t...feel it was any of your business,’ she said, and somehow managed to look confidently defiant even as she extolled the absurd explanation.
‘My baby is none of my business?’ he responded with scathing disbelief. ‘How exactly do you figure?’
‘You don’t want a child. Not with me. I was doing you a favour.’ She shook her head. ‘I was doing us all a favour. I don’t want to raise a baby with you any more than you do with me. And the baby deserves to be born into a world that’s not...full of bitterness and acrimony.’
‘The baby deserves a chance to know both his parents,’ Matteo responded sharply. ‘You were going to deny both it and me that opportunity. Weren’t you?’
She glared at him. ‘You went into this marriage wanting one thing, and one thing only. And now you have it. Children were no part of this.’
‘That is beside the point. You are, in fact, pregnant with my child. This is not in the realms of the hypothetical. I had a right to know.’
Her mouth dropped open and she stared at him, searching for something to say—anything—that might explain her point of view.
The hurt she’d felt at realising that he’d used her. The fact that he’d conned her into falling in love with him, had used her inexperience and desire against her, knowing that he would never be able to give her the only thing she really wanted.
Love.