‘You accusedmy wife to beof what, exactly? Of being agold-digger?’
‘We have enough experience of those sorts to be on guard.’
‘Those sorts?’Rocco left that derogatory judgement simmering in the air between them for a few seconds.
‘Is this all that was said?’ He turned to Ella and felt something pierce deep inside him at the hurt and dismay on her pretty face.A surge of possessiveness, a driving urge to protect her, washed through him and he dimly recognised that it had nothing to do with the fact that she was carrying his child. He didn’t need her to answer because he could take a pretty good shot at guessing just what had happened.
‘You sent me off on a wild goose chase about something and nothing so that you could corner my fiancée and cause her distress?’ he asked coldly.
His parents had the grace to flush and exchanged a quick look.
‘We thought, Rocco, that…’
‘I don’t want to hear any of your excuses. You’ve upset Ella and, in my books, that is unforgivable. Let me make one thing absolutely straight.’ He took a step towards his parents and outstared them. ‘If you want anything to do with our child, then you will never say anything to Ella again that might upset her. Do I make myself clear?’
‘There are duties that must be fulfilled. This is how you were raised, Rocco.’
‘And rest assured what has to be done will always be done. In my way and on my terms. Now, I’m going to head upstairs with Ella and, when we return for dinner, no more will be said on this matter. I expect my fiancée to be treated as a welcome member of the Mancini family.’
Fine words, Ella thought. Yes, they’d warmed to her. It was nice that he’d stuck up for her, because she had been lost and out of her depth in the face of his icily disapproving parents. But no amount of warm sentiments could erase the bitterness of knowing that, in his mind, marrying her had been a fait accompli the second he’d known about the pregnancy.
Ella waited until they were in the bedroom before she turned to him, schooling her expression. How could he stand there, so beautiful, so sophisticated, so unfairly sexy, so ready to say whathe knew she’d want to hear and knowing just how to deliver the words to the best possible effect?
‘Thank you for having my back in there, Rocco.’
‘I apologise for my parents. I’m afraid, this is who they are. I had, however, expected better from them. At the very least, a show of polite good will. It seems they dispatched me so that they could see you on your own and…well…again, I apologise on their behalf.’
‘I understand their concerns. Maybe they thought you’d inherited your uncle’s predisposition for ending up with someone out for his money.’
‘You’re upset. I get that. Do you want to skip the dinner they’ve had prepared? It might be better to face them, and I can assure you there won’t be a repeat of what happened down there. You have my word.’
‘Your word. Now,that’sinteresting, isn’t it, Rocco?’ Her words were cool and precise but her body still yearned for him in a way that made her feel angry, distraught and hopeless.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You lied to me, didn’t you?’
‘I lied to you?’ He stilled as wariness replaced the warm reassurances of moments ago.
‘You made your mind up that we were going to get married from the very second I told you I was pregnant.’ The heat coming from him was too much. He was too close to her. She couldn’t think straight when she could breathe him in the way she could now. She watched in alarmed fascination as he strolled towards the window. He looked out for a couple of seconds then turned to look at her. She absolutely loathed the shudder of sexual awareness that rippled through her, alive and alert, despite the emotions raging through her.
‘Ella, please…’ He nodded to the velvet sofa by the window. ‘Sit down and let’s talk about this. You’re pregnant. Gettingstressed the way you are now isn’t good for your blood pressure. You’ve already been stressed out enough by my parents.’
Ella stared at him expressionlessly for a few seconds and then heeded his advice, because her legs were wobbly, and she knew that he was right insofar as stress on her body wasn’t a good idea.
‘You were never going to takenofor an answer, were you?’ she said quietly. ‘When I told you that I was pregnant, when you proposed marriage, I wasn’t in favour of it. It was never where I saw my life going. It was never what I wanted. I wanted to be loved, to love someone, to know that there would be a strong bond between me and the father of my child—a bond glued together with all the love that came when two peoplewantedto spend their lives together. Not when two people felt they had no choicebutto spend their lives together.
‘You didn’t love me, Rocco, and you were never going to love me. Not in the way you knew I wanted. But you didn’t want an illegitimate child.’ She looked around at the grand bedroom, the decades and decades of family wealth wrapped up in suffocating, restrictive traditionalism.
He was conditioned for this extraordinarily high level of obligation and duty. Maybe there had been that window of letting his hair down when they had first met, but he’d always known that that window was going to close. She understood him, and yet could never forgive what she now saw as a calculating attempt to win her over by pretending to be someone he wasn’t.
‘I can’t deny that the thought of sharing custody of my own flesh and blood was abhorrent to me, Ella,’ he admitted.
‘Was it all a game for you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The way you set about proving to me that you could be the perfect father and the perfect husband. The way you strung mealong, wearing me down a little at a time, having already spoken to your parents as though everything was a done deal.’
