She thought he’d object. Instead, he said, ‘Call if you need anything.’
Absurdly, as Stella watched him go, she had the crazy desire to call him back. She resisted it and closed her eyes. She needed to recruit her strength.
‘Morning sickness, exacerbated by lack of sleep and stress.’
The doctor’s piercing look as she pronounced her verdict was vivid in Gio’s mind even now, well after her departure. Her disapproval had been obvious in her clipped tone. She’d made it clear she was sharing that information only because her patient permitted it.
It was a reminder that Stella was her own woman and that without a paternity test he had no legal rights over their child.
Damn it, it wasn’t about legal rights. Not yet. For now he just wanted to know Stella and their child were safe.
Their child.
He finished another lap and grabbed the end of the pool, heart hammering. Not from exertion, despite his attempt to work off his emotions in the pool. His heart was racing at the knowledge he’d been right. Stella was pregnant, with his child.
He scrubbed his hand over his wet face. He’d been sure before but the doctor’s confirmation of morning sickness had made it real.
All being well, he was going to be a father.
He’d have a family.
Jumbled feelings sideswiped him. For years he’d prided himself on managing his feelings, keeping them restrained. He couldn’t any more. Hadn’t been able to from the moment he learned Stella planned to marry another man.
Now her pregnancy turned his world on its head.
Gio had avoided the idea of creating a family, unwilling to become hostage again to the marrow-deep pain of loss.
But now it wasn’t a matter of choice. The decision was made for him.
The news opened the rusty gates of the past he tried not to revisit, taking him to a long-lost childhood.
His sister’s teasing and her smiles as she played with her little brother. His mother’s hugs, her lullabies and the taste of her cooking. Nothing in the world tasted as good as that. And his father, not the dour, haunted man he’d become, but a vital and happy man, always with time to play.
That was what Gio wanted forhischild. A warm, safe world full of love and unshadowed by grief and distress.
But could he, who’d turned his back utterly on emotional connections, provide that? Did he even want to try?
Yet if he didn’t, another man would take his place with Stella and his child.
Gio’s palm slapped wet tiles. The idea was untenable.
Were his early childhood memories enough to show him how to be the father he wanted to be? Or did he share his father’s fatal weakness? The inability to pick himself up when the world fell apart? A selfish obsession with his own loss?
After the disaster that killed half his family, his father had ignored Gio, giving himself over to unending bereavement. His world had shrunk to grief and the need to avenge his wife and dead child, as if his living son didn’t matter.
Gio hadn’t been enough for him.
What if Gio carried that same flaw? Would it be better for his child if hewasn’tin its life? Everything told him Stella would be a tigress when it came to protecting her baby. She wouldn’t need him.
But distancing himself meant leaving Stella free to be with someone else. A stranger would become his child’s father.
An inner voice howled in protest.
He wasn’t sure he trusted himself to be a father but he couldn’t relinquish that role to a stranger.
Tension tore at him as he levered himself out of the pool and grabbed his towel, drying his hair and body.
It wasn’t just a baby. There was Stella too.
