‘Sì...’Sev lapsed into Italian in shock at the commitment he had just made, yet that same statement of intent had not fazed her at all. He marvelled at her calm. She had caught him without even trying to catch him and now he was where he had believed he never wanted to be, he reminded himself grimly,involvedwith a woman in a steady relationship for the first time ever, and on some level it scared him to know that, also for the first time ever, he had boundaries to his freedom.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ONLYTENDAYSLATER, Amy lowered her maternity jeans while the technician wielded the wand over the little bump that was developing much faster than Amy had appreciated it would. That was the main reason that Sev had got away with kitting her out with an entire new wardrobe, she conceded ruefully, because, with neither income nor clothes that fitted any longer, she hadn’t had much choice. Surprised by the rate of her expansion, the consultant Sev had insisted she see had sent her straight upstairs for a scan.
‘Oh, my goodness,’ the technician carolled in apparent delight. ‘Mummy and Daddy are expecting twins...’
Amy went into shock and just lay there like a felled tree, gaping at the screen as two little blips were pointed out. Sev’s grip became so taut he was almost crushing her fingers.
‘Two...’ Sev said gruffly.
A nightmare, by his estimation, Amy thought sadly. One baby was a lot to handle, the prospect oftwocould only strike a resolutely single man as a nightmare. That wasn’t howshefelt but, although she was certain that Sev would not be that frank and hurt her feelings, secretly that had to be how he felt, and she couldn’t bring herself to look at him.
‘How soon will we know the gender?’ Sev asked shakily, the slight tremor in his usually calm voice all too revealing.
It would be quite a few weeks, he was told, and armed with that knowledge they returned to the consultant. In company with the older man, Sev put on a very good show of a man excited to death by the prospect of twins. Amy felt overwhelmed but quietly happy that her pregnancy was progressing well, even though she would also have to worry about a greater risk of complications.
Back in the limo, Sev closed a hand over hers. ‘We’llhaveto get married now. We can’t havetwoof them running round without my name,’ he told her with unhidden amusement.
‘Sev...’ Amy murmured quietly, tugging her hand away. ‘These days nobodyhasto marry anyone.’
‘Sometimes, you’re so literal!’ Sev groaned impatiently. ‘OK, I agree that that wasn’t a romantic proposal but let me emphasise the obvious... I’mnota romantic guy.’
‘We’re perfectly happy as we are,’ Amy broke in tightly.
‘You may be... I’m not,’ Sev admitted bluntly, agitated by the lack of permanence to their living arrangements. ‘Two kids?I think we need to get married ASAP.’
Amy breathed in deep and slow. Tears were stinging behind her eyelids. Being pregnant was making her incredibly emotional. The silliest things could make her eyes well up. ‘I don’t think any woman wants to get married just because she’s pregnant,’ she told him unevenly. ‘I think that if you sit down and really think about that, you’ll agree.’
‘It’s not because you’re pregnant...it’s all the other stuff as well.’ Abruptly, Sev swallowed hard and fell silent, registering that he had presented the idea badly and possibly at the ultimate wrong moment.
‘What stuff?’ Amy prompted eagerly.
‘Us...we work really well together,’ Sev told her prosaically, because he literally did not have the vocabulary to describe what he couldn’t even interpret for his own benefit. Amy had been living with him for only days, but he already knew that his life wasbetterwith her in it and that was the baseline from which he worked. How was he supposed to present that to her in a prettier package? He could only suppose that she expected a ring and all that malarkey. As if he was trying to sell himself as a good catch? So, he would buy a ring, take her out for dinner, do it the old-fashioned way, he reasoned, when allhewanted to do was marry her yesterday...
Without hesitation, he tugged her gently up against him and splayed a large possessive hand across the slight mound of her stomach. It was such a turn-on knowing his babies were in there, he reflected with satisfaction. Lean brown hands swept up from her thighs and slid under her top to rise and cup her swelling breasts, his thumbs brushing across the sensitive tips.
And just that easily Amy’s body went into sensual overdrive, heart racing, an inner clenching between her thighs, and the shock of that immediate electrifying response made her shudder. She told herself to peel herself off him, but the iron bar of his arousal was obvious beneath her and the wanton part of her, the part of her he had awakened and controlled, just wanted to allow him to go ahead. Even as he bent down and crushed her upturned parted lips under his, sending her heart hammering even faster, she was pulling back in defiance of that weakness, that vulnerability that could make her shiver and shake around him. No power on earth could make her crave anything the way Sev did, but she knew she had to resist and protect herself from putting all her faith in Sev.
She had made that mistake too often in her life, first with her mother, then with Cordy’s death when everything had fallen apart for her and then with Harold, who had had no choice in what he had done but whose actions had still ripped away every piece of security she had. How could she now trust Sev? In the end, people always chose to put their own needs and happiness ahead of those of others, and sooner or later Sev would realise that playing house with the woman he had accidentally got pregnant was more of a temporary novelty than a permanent new blueprint for his future. And where would she be then, when he wanted to walk away?
Chilled by that thought, Amy yanked herself away with clumsy determination and took refuge in the opposite corner of the back seat, her face flushed, her breath heaving in her lungs at the effort that severance had demanded from her because, in truth, stepping away from Sev in any fashionhurt. She had accepted that, for the moment, loving him was not something she could change. But she did not see a future with him because he didn’t feel the same.
He couldn’t keep his hands off her, but that was sex and that wasn’t enough. He was so generous and good to her in every way that mattered but that wasn’t love either, it was merely the way a decent man treated the woman carrying his babies. None of that was sufficient to sustain a marriage, she reasoned wretchedly.
Moving into Oaktree Hall had only plunged her more deeply in love with Sev than ever. She walked into the house by his side, quietly appreciating the changes that she had made. She had eradicated the clutter, the definite Victorian vibe that his elderly aunt had once maintained in the house. The fussier pieces of furniture had been put back into storage as well and what was left would definitely have featured in Oaktree Hall’s heyday in the nineteen twenties.
The Christmas tree in the hall looked fantastic. Amy had dug through boxes in the giant attics to find glorious blown-glass antique ornaments and had hung them, supplemented with more contemporary additions. Lights twinkled and glowed over the tree under the light of the fire in the hall and both Harley and Hopper were sprawled on the hearth in front of it. Happiness flooded Amy and she suppressed the regrets licking up underneath because nobody goteverything.
What she had with Sev right now was perfectly acceptable, she told herself urgently, as long as she also accepted that he wasn’t likely to stay with her for ever. Eventually some other,flashierwoman would attract his interest and she would have to move out and on with her own life, no longer anchored to his. And that was normal because no man stayed for ever with a woman simply because of a contraceptive oversight and sexual attraction, did he?
In exactly the same way not every motherlovedher child and Lorraine Taylor’s lack of interest and rejection had wounded Amy deeply. Even after Amy had settled down again and was living with Cordy, her mother hadn’t cared enough to let Amy back into her life. If her own mother hadn’t managed to love her, how could Sev ever love her? Or care enough to stay with her in the long term?
Of course, in her opinion, Sev was only pushing out the marriage idea because his family from Greece and his sister, Annabel, were arriving the next day for Christmas. By all accounts, his Greek father, Hallas Sarantos, was a fairly traditional man, who might wellexpectSev to want to marry the mother of his unborn children. Naturally Sev would want to please his father.
Amy knew all about that kind of engrained seeking of approval with a distant parent. As a young child she had done everything possible to try and win her mother’s approval, herlove, but nothing, not the working hard at school, the obedience or the helping with meals or the cleaning or laundry had provoked one ounce of genuine warmth from her mother, Lorraine. It was little wonder, she now thought as she looked back, that she had gone off the rails in adolescence, because she had lacked that anchor of parental love and caring that would have given her stronger self-esteem. Not that she had done anythingthatbad when she rebelled, she conceded ruefully, but she was still ashamed of skipping school, cheeking teachers for the first time ever and refusing to listen to people who had tried to talk sense into her again.
It had been back then that her dreams of a father who might not know about her existence, who might want her if he found out about her, had begun, only to be shattered by her mother’s assurance that he had not even wanted her to be born. It had been an ugly truth, but a truth she had nonetheless seen for herself in her birth father’s face that night at the party when he had been confronted with his daughter.