by Lynne Graham
Other thoughts began to intrude. She was pregnant. She hadn’t thought she could be when the nurse had asked for samples on her first visit to the surgery. No chance, she had cheerfully told the nurse, secure in her conviction that she could not conceive. But she had gone to the surgery in the first place because she was having troublesome symptoms. Very tender breasts, heartburn, occasional bouts of dizziness, increasing nausea and a sensitivity towards certain smells. Ironically she had suspected the pill, the only medication she took, might be causing those effects and had thought she might be offered another brand to try. Oh, dear heaven, what was she going to tell her mother? Her mother would be so disappointed in her daughter when she became a single parent...
Jazz heaved a distraught sigh, her eyes stinging madly. Peggy Dickens had always been very frank about the reality that she had had to get married back in the days in Ireland when a man was still expected to marry a pregnant girlfriend. She had admitted that she would never have married her daughter’s father otherwise because she had already seen worrying evidence of his violent temper. Well, there would be no question of marriage to worry anyone, Jazz reflected limply. Vitale was highly unlikely to propose to a housekeeper’s daughter, whom he had hired to fulfil a bet.
But Jazz also knew that she wanted her baby. Her baby, part of her and Vitale, which was an unexpectedly precious thought, she acknowledged. And it would be a royal baby too, she reflected, because Vitale was a prince. Although maybe her baby wouldn’t be royal, she reasoned hesitantly, because their child would be born illegitimate. They were only involved in a casual sexual affair, she reminded herself with painful honesty, because on some level that truth made her feel ashamed, as though she secretly thought she had traded herself too cheaply. There was, after all, nothing solid or secure about their current intimacy. For the sake of the bet, Vitale had trotted her out to dinner several times and once to a West End showing of a new film. Only it still wasn’t a real relationship, was it?
For six weeks, she had suppressed the wounding fear that she was merely a convenient sexual outlet for Vitale because she was living in the same house. The only time he didn’t share her bed was when he was travelling on business or returning to Lerovia to appear at some royal function. Should she have kicked him out of bed?
A rueful smile tilted Jazz’s generous mouth. Pride said one thing, her heart said another. She loved having Vitale in her bed and his uninhibited hunger for her delighted her. Was that why she had never once said no? He behaved as though he needed her and that made her feel special and important. Perhaps that fiery sexual intimacy wasn’t very much to celebrate but it was certainly more than she had ever hoped to have with Vitale and it made her happy.
Now it seemed that she was paying the price for that freewheeling happiness. She must have conceived right at the beginning of their relationship, she reckoned heavily, to be already six whole weeks along. What was she going to do if he asked her to have a termination? She would simply have to tell him that she was very sorry but, while her pregnancy might be unplanned and inconvenient, she still wanted her child. His child too, she conceded wretchedly, digging out her phone to text him.
We need to talk when you get back tonight.
Problem?
Don’t try to second-guess me.
She knew that if she wasn’t careful he would dig and dig by text until he got it out of her, and it really wasn’t something she was prepared to divulge remotely.
The phone pinged and kept on pinging with more texts. More questions for clarification, Vitale getting increasingly impatient and annoyed with her for her lack of response. Maybe she shouldn’t have said anything at all, maybe that would have been more sensible. But Jazz had always suffered from the kind of almost painful honest streak that made immediate confession a necessity. She ignored her phone and stared down into her tea, feeling as if the world had crashed down on her shoulders because her discovery meant that she and Vitale were already over and done.
The end, she thought melodramatically because what little they had would not survive the fallout from a pregnancy that she already knew he didn’t want.
* * *
‘Leave your phone alone!’ Sofia Castiglione, the Queen of Lerovia, snapped furiously at her son in the office of the royal palace. ‘I want you to look at these profiles.’
Vitale resisted even glancing fleetingly down at the women’s photographs lined up on his mother’s glass desk and the neatly typed background info set beside each. Even a glance would encourage his mother’s delusions and he refused to be bullied by her. ‘I’ve already made it clear that I have no intention of getting married any time in the near future. It’s pointless to play this game with me. It’s not as though you want to step down from the throne. It’s not as though we are in need of another generation in waiting,’ he intoned drily.
‘You are almost thirty years old!’ his mother practically spat at him. ‘I married in my twenties.’
‘And think of how well that turned out,’ her son advised sardonically, recognising that his mother appeared to dislike him even more now than she had disliked him when he was a child and wondering if that was his fault.
As a little boy he had found her scorn and constant criticism profoundly distressing. He had soon discovered that even when he excelled at something he did not receive praise. For a long time he had struggled to understand what it was about him that evidently made him so deeply unlovable. Did he remind her of his father? Or was it simply that she would have resented any son or daughter waiting in the royal wings to become her heir? Or was Jazz right and was it simply that his mother disliked children?
‘Don’t you dare say that to me!’ the older woman launched in a tone of pure venom, her heavily Botoxed and still-beautiful face straining with rage. ‘I did my duty and produced an heir and I expect you to do your duty now as well!’
‘No, possibly in another ten years, not now,’ Vitale spelt out with emphatic finality and strode out of the room to continue texting Jazz, whose refusal to reply was seriously taxing his already shredded temper.
CHAPTER SIX
‘I SAW IT at the airport,’ Vitale lied, because for some reason Jazz was staring at the very expensive snow globe he had bought her as though it had risen up out of hell accompanied by the devil waving a pitchfork.
Jazz could feel silly tears flooding her eyes, knew it was probably another side effect of pregnancy and inwardly cringed. Why now? Why now, this evening of all evenings, did he have to do something really thoughtful and generous? It was the snow globe to top all other snow globes too, she acknowledged numbly, large, gilded and magnificent, full of little flying cupids, whose wings looked suspiciously diamond-studded and, when you shook it, it rained golden snow rather than white. It put her Santa globe to shame, lowering it to plastic bargain-basement level.
‘It’s really, really beautiful,’ she told him chokily because it was, it was divine, but even if it had been hideous she would have said the same because she was so touched that he had bought her a personal gift. The globe, unlike the new wardrobe and the jewellery he had purchased and insisted she wear, had not been given to facilitate her leading role in a bet to be staged at a royal ball. All of that was fake, like the fake accent she had picked up from the elocution and the knowledge of how to curtsy to royalty that she had learned. She was to pretend to be something she was not for Vitale’s benefit.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Vitale demanded with a raw edge to his dark, deep voice. ‘And why did you send me that weird text?’
Jazz’s legs turned all weak and she dropped down abruptly on the edge of a sofa in the big imposing drawing room where she never ever felt comfortable because it was stuffed with exceedingly grand furniture and seats as hard as nails. ‘Something’s happened, well, actually it happened weeks ago although I didn’t know it then,’ she muttered in a rush. ‘You should sit down and take a very deep breath because you’re going to be furious.’
‘Only my mother
makes me furious,’ Vitale contended impatiently, studying her with keen assessing eyes, picking up on her pallor and the faint bluish shadows below her eyes. ‘Are you ill?’
Jazz focused on him, poised there so straight and tall and gorgeous with his blue-black hair, arresting features and wonderful eyes, and she snatched in a very deep breath. ‘Not ill...pregnant,’ she told him with pained reluctance.
Vitale froze, engulfed in a sudden ice storm. He stared back at her, his eyes hardening and narrowing, and she watched him swallow back hasty words and seal his mouth firmly shut again.
‘No, you can say what you like,’ Jazz promised him ruefully. ‘No offence will be taken. Neither of us were expecting this development and I know it’s bad news as far as you’re concerned.’
‘Very bad news,’ Vitale admitted in shock, paler than she had ever seen him below his naturally bronzed complexion. ‘You said you were on birth control. Was that a lie?’
‘No, it wasn’t,’ Jazz assured him. ‘But for whatever reason, although I didn’t miss taking a single pill, I’ve conceived and I’m about six weeks in.’
‘And we’ve only been together around seven weeks!’ Vitale thundered, cursing in Italian only half under his breath, his lean hands coiling with tension. ‘Right, the first thing we will do is check this out in case it’s a false alarm.’
‘It’s not a false alarm,’ Jazz argued but Vitale had already stalked angrily to the far end of the room to use his phone, where she listened to him talking to someone in fast and fluent Italian.
All of a sudden even the sound of his voice was grating on her because, within the space of a second, everything had changed in his attitude to her. His voice was now ice-cool and his gaze had blanked her because he was determined to reveal no normal human reaction beyond that ‘very bad news’, which really, when she thought about it, said all that she needed to hear and know. He had seemed so relaxed with her before and now that was gone, probably never to return.
Vitale studied Jazz while he spoke to his friend and discomfiture lanced through him. No, it wasn’t a deliberate conception, and he knew that because he trusted her, and there she sat as if the roof had fallen in on top of her and she wasn’t a skilled enough actress to look like that if that wasn’t how she truly felt. Pregnant? A baby? Vitale was shattered but, unlike his brother Angel, he wouldn’t make the mistake of running away from his responsibilities. He also knew that Jazz was a devout churchgoer from a rural Irish Catholic background and that a termination was a choice she was unlikely to make. He would be a father whether he liked it or not. But, before he agonised over that truth and its consequences, he was determined to take her to see a gynaecologist, who was a close friend and could be trusted to be discreet.
‘Giulio Verratti is a close friend, whom I’ve known since my teens,’ he volunteered stiffly. ‘He also has a private practice as a consultant gynaecologist here in London.’
In silence, Jazz nodded, resigned to his need for a second opinion.
‘I’ll feel happier if he confirms it,’ Vitale completed grimly.
Jazz thought that that was the wrong choice of words because the taut, forbidding lines of Vitale’s lean, strong face suggested he might never be happy again. Regret filled her to overflowing. Her announcement had destroyed their affair. It would have ended anyway after the royal ball, she reminded herself ruefully. There had always been a clock ticking on their relationship and the ball was now only a week away.
‘Let’s talk about something else,’ Vitale suggested as he steered her out to the waiting limo.
‘How can we?’ Jazz exclaimed.
‘How do you feel about this situation?’ he shot at her without warning.
‘I was devastated at first,’ Jazz confided. ‘But now I can’t help being a little bit excited too... Sorry.’
‘You don’t need to apologise,’ Vitale intoned. ‘Obviously you like children.’
‘Don’t you?’
‘It’s not something I’ve thought about. It’s something I assumed was light years away in the future,’ he breathed tautly.
He had defrosted a tad and she wanted to reach for his hand but resisted the temptation, recognising that it was not a good moment. Only two nights back, he had slept with her in his arms all night, but those days were over, she thought sadly. In a casual affair, a pregnancy was divisive, a source of concern rather than celebration. He would want their child to remain a secret as well, she mused unhappily. He wouldn’t want the existence of an illegitimate kid splashed all over the media. Would he want to be involved in their child’s life in any way? Or would he hope that giving her money would keep her quiet and persuade her to accept that he could not play any sort of active paternal role?
* * *
Giulio Verratti was a suave Italian in his thirties with prematurely greying hair. They didn’t even have to sit down in the waiting room before a nurse swept them into the consulting room and the gynaecologist explained the tests that could be done on the spot. The nurse shepherded Jazz off to perform the tests before Jazz returned to the plush consulting room where the results were passed to Giulio.
‘You’re definitely pregnant,’ he announced.
Vitale’s shuttered expression betrayed nothing to her anxious glance.
‘I’m a little concerned by a rather high reading in your hCG,’ he confided and he went on to offer her a transvaginal ultrasound, which could be more accurate at an earlier stage than a normal scan.
Vitale flinched. ‘No. We won’t put her through that unless it is strictly necessary for her health.’
‘Are there any twins in your family?’ Mr Verratti asked smoothly.
‘Several,’ Jazz volunteered. ‘My grandmother and some cousins.’
‘There’s a strong possibility that this could be a multiple pregnancy and I’ll do an ordinary ultrasound now to see if I can pick up the heartbeat or heartbeats yet,’ the older man informed them calmly and he called the nurse to help Jazz prepare for the scan.
Gel was rubbed on her abdomen and a hand-held scanner was run over her. Eyes wide, she stared at the monitor and then she heard the very fast sound of the foetal heartbeat and Mr Verratti laughed with satisfaction. He pointed at the monitor to indicate two blurred areas that he said were her babies. ‘You do indeed carry twins,’ he assured her.
Twins? Vitale had never worked so hard at controlling his expression. More than one child? The bad news just got worse and worse, he conceded helplessly. But every cloud had a silver lining, he instructed himself grimly. There had to be a plus side to even this disaster, although he had yet to see it. He would gain the heir his mother was so keen for him to produce but to achieve that he would have to marry Jazz, an alliance that Queen Sofia, the supreme elitist, would never agree to. But then he was fortunate that he did not actually require his mother’s consent to marry. She had always assumed that, somewhere in the Lerovian tomes of royal dynastic law, such a prohibition existed but Vitale knew for a fact that it didn’t. He was free to marry whomever he liked even if, at that precise moment, he hadn’t the slightest desire to get married to Jazz or any other woman.
And he blamed himself entirely for taking on that crazy competitive bet with his younger brother, Zac. What insanity had possessed him? Of all three of the brothers, Vitale was indisputably the sensible, steady one and yet look at the mess he was in now! Somehow, he had contrived to choreograph his own downfall by moving a young woman into his home, whom he couldn’t keep his hands off, he thought with raw self-loathing and distaste. He had known from the outset that Jazz attracted him and he had still gone ahead, believing that he had vast self-discipline and learning differently very, very quickly.
And it was hardly surprising that it threatened to be a multiple pregnancy, he conceded even more grimly, considering that they had been having sex every night for weeks on end. Not once had he used a condom as an extra safeguard. His own mistakes, his own indefensible errors of judgement, piled up on top of Vitale like a multiple
road crash and plunged him into brooding silence.
Jazz lay awake alone most of that night. Vitale had barely spoken after leaving Mr Verratti’s surgery. He hadn’t even come to say goodnight to her, indeed had been noticeably careful not to touch her again in any way. It was as if she now had a giant defensive forcefield wrapped round her. Or as if her sudden overwhelming attraction had just died the very instant he’d realised she was pregnant with twins. The truth of their predicament was finally settling in on him and of course, he was upset. But she had kind of—secretly—hoped he would come to her if he was upset, as he had one other night after a more than usually distressing argument on the phone with his shrewish mother. He had shared that with her and she had felt important to him in a different way for the first time.
A little less fanciful now, she sat up in bed and put on the light to study her gilded and very ornate snow globe and her eyes simply overflowed again, tears trickling down her cheeks while she sniffed and dashed them away and generally hated herself for being such a drip. She had got attached to him, hadn’t she? She was more than fond of Vitale after so many weeks of living with him.
How had she felt as though they were tailor-made for each other when that was so patently untrue? She, a housekeeper’s daughter, he, a royal prince? Would he even continue with the bet now? He wouldn’t want her in the public eye again, she reckoned, wouldn’t wish to be associated with a woman who would be looking very pregnant in a few months’ time. When Mr Verratti had mentioned that provocative word, ‘twins’, Vitale had looked as though he had been hand sculpted out of granite. She had practically heard Vitale thinking that one child would have been quite enough to contend with. She recognised that she was getting all het up with no prospect of calming herself down again. Eventually sheer exhaustion made her sleep.
First thing the next morning, she found herself in the bathroom being horribly sick and that shift from nausea to actual illness felt like the last straw. Washing away the evidence, she examined her wan reflection in the mirror and decided she had a slight greenish cast that was not the tiniest bit attractive. The sore boobs squashed into a bra that had become too small didn’t help either, she thought miserably as she got dressed, selecting jeans and a colourful top in the hope of looking brighter and less emotionally sensitive than she actually felt.