* * *
Gaetano was strangely disappointed when Poppy didn’t greet him downstairs as Muffin did. Muffin hurled himself cheerfully at Gaetano’s legs, refused to sit when told and barked like mad. Muffin didn’t discriminate. Everyone who came through the front door received the same boisterous, undisciplined welcome. Dolores informed Gaetano that Poppy had gone up to lie down and concern quickened the long strides with which he mounted the stairs. Suddenly Gaetano was worrying about what the doctor might have told his wife about her health because taking forty winks in the evening was more Rodolfo’s style.
As Gaetano entered the bedroom, Poppy, roused by Muffin’s barks, pushed herself up on her elbows and smiled, tousled red hair falling round her sleep-flushed face.
‘I exhausted you last night,’ Gaetano assumed with a wolfish grin of all-male satisfaction as he stood at the foot of the bed. ‘I wondered what you were doing in bed and started worrying about what Mr Abramo might have said but that was before I remembered that you had another very good reason to need some extra rest.’
‘It’s the heat. It makes me feel drowsy.’ Butterflies danced to a jungle beat in her tummy while she studied him.
In his beautifully tailored designer suit, Gaetano was a vision of masculine elegance and sex appeal. He was gorgeous with dark stubble outlining his strong jaw line and those intense dark eyes below his extraordinary lashes. Her breasts tingled and heat simmered low in her pelvis.
‘It’s weird because I’ve only been away a few hours...but I missed you,’ Gaetano confided in a constrained undertone. ‘What did Mr Abramo have to say?’
Poppy tensed and swung her legs off the side of the bed so that she was half turned away from him. ‘He had some news for me after the tests,’ she told him tautly.
‘What sort of news?’ Gaetano prompted, shedding his jacket and jerking loose his tie while wondering if she would consider him excessively demanding and greedy if he joined her on the bed.
‘Unexpected news,’ Poppy qualified tightly. ‘You’re going to be surprised.’
‘So, go ahead and surprise me,’ Gaetano urged, unsettled by her uncharacteristic reluctance to meet his eyes and shelving the sexual trail to force his brain to focus.
‘I’m pregnant.’ She framed the words curtly, refusing to sound apologetic or nervous, putting it out there exactly like the fact of life it was.
‘How could you possibly be pregnant?’ Gaetano shot at her with an incredulous frown. ‘If it had only just happened, it would be too soon to know and the one and only other time...it isn’t possible...’
‘It is possible. I fell ill that same day and I missed taking my pill. Mr Abramo also believes the drugs I was given could have interfered with my birth control,’ she told him flatly.
‘You got pregnant on our wedding night?’ Gaetano queried in astonishment. ‘From one time? What are you? The fertility queen?’
‘You didn’t use a condom,’ she reminded him.
‘There shouldn’t have been a risk.’
‘If you’re having sex there’s always a risk,’ she pointed out ruefully. ‘The odds weren’t good that night because I ended up in hospital. In any other circumstances we’d probably have got away with it.’
‘Pregnant,’ Gaetano repeated, expelling his breath on a long slow hiss as he paced over to the windows, the taut muscles in his lean behind and long, powerful legs braced rigid with tension. ‘You’re pregnant.’
Although there was little expression in his dark, deep drawl Poppy took strength from his lack of anger and his ability to joke. Gaetano was dealing with it, wasn’t he? He was good in a crisis, very cool-headed and logical and what they had right now was undeniably a huge crisis. A baby nobody had counted on was on the way, a baby she would nonetheless love and protect to the best of her ability.
Gaetano was still feeling light-headed with shock. A baby! He was going to be a father? Dio mio...he was in no way prepared to be a parent. Having a child was a massive responsibility. It had proved a challenge too much for his own parents and even Rodolfo had struggled with the test of raising Gaetano’s good-for-nothing father. How the hell would he manage? What did he have to offer a child?
‘Gaetano?’ Poppy probed in the tense silence.
He swung round and raked long brown fingers through his cropped black hair in a gesture of frustration. ‘A baby... I can’t believe it. That’s some curve ball to be thrown.’
‘Yes,’ Poppy agreed stiffly. ‘For both of us.’
‘In fact it’s a nightmare,’ Gaetano framed, shocking her with that assessment, which was so much more pessimistic than her own.