The Ultimate Risk

by Chantelle Shaw

  She stared out of the window at the sea sparkling in the summer sunshine and felt a shiver run through her at the idea of Lanzo being injured—or worse. She would have to bring up her child alone. But perhaps she would be doing that anyway, her brain pointed out. She might be overjoyed about this baby, but there was a possibility that Lanzo would not feel the same way.

  By the time she heard the throb of the motorbike engine almost an hour later her nerves were as taut as an overstrung bow. Wiping her damp palms down her jeans, she hurried out to the hall just as he walked through the front door, and despite her tension she did not miss the way his eyes went immediately to the portrait of his dead fiancée. Neither did she miss the fact that he looked lethally sexy in his black biker leathers, and she closed her eyes briefly, wishing he did not make her feel like an over-awed eighteen-year-old.

  Lanzo studied Gina’s pale face and frowned. ‘Are you feeling dizzy again?’ he demanded, concern sweeping through him. He was puzzled too, wondering why she seemed distinctly on edge, and he noted that she was carefully avoiding his gaze. ‘What’s wrong, cara?’

  ‘I need to talk to you.’ She swallowed and glanced at the painting of his fiancée. ‘But not here.’

  ‘Come into my study.’

  Gina would have preferred the lounge; his study was too formal, somehow, to discuss something as personal as the fact that she had conceived his child. When he closed the door she felt a crazy impulse to wrench it open again and run away.

  He rounded his desk and sat down, indicating that she should do the same. But she remained standing, and it struck her as she darted him a nervous glance how forbidding he seemed, with his hard jaw and slashing cheekbones, and those curious green eyes that at this moment were coolly assessing her.

  ‘What is the matter, Gina?’ he asked again.

  Her heart was thumping, and she was sure it could not be good for the baby. Dear heaven, she thought shakily, the baby—she was going to have a baby. It still seemed unreal.

  She took a deep breath and met his gaze. ‘I’m … pregnant. The doctor gave me a pregnancy test—he said it would be a good idea to rule out the possibility,’ she continued quickly, when Lanzo made no response. For once he wasn’t wearing sunglasses, but she still had no idea what he was thinking. She wished he would say something; his silence was shredding her nerves. ‘It … the test … was positive.’

  Everything inside Lanzo rejected Gina’s shocking statement. For a few seconds his brain simply would not accept it could be true, but common sense told him there was no reason why she would have made it up. His next thought was to acknowledge that he did not want it to be true. But it seemed that fate could not give a damn about what he wanted, he thought savagely.

  She was watching him, and seemed to be waiting for him to say something. What was he supposed to say? Congratulations? he wondered sardonically. How wonderful? Dio, he felt as though his life had ended—and in a way it had, he realised grimly. Because, whatever happened now, his life was never going to be quite the same. If Gina was really expecting his child, he would be responsible for her and the baby.

  He felt trapped by the situation that had been thrust upon him, and a feeling of mingled dread and panic filled him. Fifteen years ago he had failed to protect his fiancée and his unborn child. He knew he could not have prevented the fire, but if he had stayed at home with Cristina, as she had begged him to do, he could have saved all of them. He would have married the woman he had loved, his parents would have seen their grandchild, and his child would now be a teenager.

  The familiar feeling of guilt that he had not been there for Cristina surged through him. The pain of losing her had almost destroyed him, and he had vowed that he would never allow himself to care for anyone else. He did not allow himself to feel emotions, and he was certain he would feel nothing for the child Gina had told him she was carrying.

  ‘How could it happen?’ he asked harshly. There had only been that first night when they had become lovers when he had not used protection, but she had assured him it was safe. ‘You told me you were on the pill.’

  ‘I …’ Gina frowned, startled by his assertion. ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘You said there was no risk,’ he drawled, in a dangerously soft tone.

  She had expected him to be angry, Gina acknowledged. He had a typical Latin temperament, and she had steeled herself for a blast of his explosive temper. Nothing had prepared her for this cold, controlled fury.

  ‘I didn’t mean that I was on the pill….’ Gina bit her lip. ‘When I told you there was no risk that I could fall pregnant I was absolutely certain that was true,’ she said urgently. ‘I believed I was infertile. I … I tried for over a year to have a baby with Simon, and when nothing happened I had various tests which revealed that I have a condition called endometriosis. It’s a common cause of infertility, and further tests showed that my fallopian tubes were so badly scarred that my only hope of having a child was with medical intervention such as IVF.’

  She pushed her hair back from her face with a shaky hand and stared at Lanzo, silently pleading for him to understand. ‘This baby …’ She swallowed the tears that clogged her throat. ‘The fact that I am pregnant is nothing short of a miracle, and although I accept that the circumstances are not ideal, I have to be honest and tell you that I am overjoyed that my dream of having a baby might come true.’

  He stared back at her, his face hard and implacable, his eyes still coldly accusing. ‘It might be your dream,’ he said harshly, ‘but it is not mine. I do not want a child, and I have always taken scrupulous care to ensure that I would not father one. The fact that you have accidentally fallen pregnant does not alter how I feel.’

  A child needed to be loved, but he had no love inside him, Lanzo brooded. All his emotions had withered and died the night of the fire, and it would be better for the child Gina carried to grow up without him instead of yearning for the father’s love that he simply could not give.

  Gina shivered, reaction setting in both to the astounding news that she was expecting Lanzo’s baby and his insistence that he did not want a child. She did not know what she had expected from him. It was only natural that he was shocked by her news, but she had assumed that once he had grown used to the idea they would discuss how they would bring the baby up—together.

  A wave of fierce maternal protectiveness surged through Gina. She wanted the fragile life nestled inside her, and she would love and care for her child on her own. Lanzo need not be involved in any way. But it was only fair to make clear to him that—fate willing—she was going to have this baby.

  ‘I’m sorry you feel that way,’ she said quietly. ‘But the fact is that because of the endometriosis this is probably my only chance to be a mother, and nothing could persuade me to terminate my pregnancy.’

  Lanzo jerked his head back as if she had slapped him. ‘Dio, I do not expect that,’ he said, as shocked as he had been minutes earlier, when she had told him she was pregnant.

  The idea was repugnant to him. But did that mean then that he wanted her to have his child? He could not think straight. His brain was reeling. He stood up abruptly, the sound of his chair legs scraping on the tiled floor shattering the tense silence.

  ‘I accept that I am partly responsible for the problem,’ he said tersely. ‘When I come back we will discuss a financial settlement for the child.’

  His stark words caused something inside Gina to shatter. ‘Come back from where?’ she asked shakily.

  ‘I’m going out on the bike.’ He had already snatched up his crash helmet, and did not look at her as he strode towards the door.

  Fear that he would ride too fast turned to a slow-burning anger that he was prepared to walk away from his child.

  ‘That’s right—go and endanger your life for the sheer hell of it,’ she said bitterly. ‘That just about sums you up, Lanzo—you’d do anything to avoid a discussion that might in any way involve your emotions.’

  He stopped dea
d and jerked his head round, his face so dark with fury that she took an involuntary step backwards. But as the silence stretched between them the expression in his eyes changed and became bleak, almost haunted. Without another word he strode out of the room, slamming the door behind him with such force that the sound echoed in her head long after he had gone.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  RICHARD MELTON and his wife, Sarah—Gina’s stepsister—lived in a recently built house on the outskirts of Poole. Lanzo parked in the narrow cul-de-sac and glanced at the six identical houses built in a semi-circle. The Meltons lived at number four. As he walked up the path to the front door he could see a baby’s crib in the front living room, and he felt his heart give a curious little lurch, even though he knew that it was not his child sleeping within the wicker basket.

  The Meltons’ baby was two months old: a boy, so Gina had informed him during their one short telephone conversation, when he had struggled to hear her over the highpitched wailing of a newborn infant. That had been pretty well all that she had said—apart from explaining that she had not answered his calls to her mobile because she did not want to speak to him.

  There had been little point in him tracking down her whereabouts through her brother-in-law, she had told him coldly. For, desperate to find her, Lanzo had recalled that Richard Melton ran a company called Nautica World, and he had eventually persuaded the other man to give him a phone number where he could contact Gina, on the strict understanding that he did not upset her.

  They had nothing to say to one another, she had continued, her voice stiff with pride. She was well, and there were no problems with her pregnancy—an early scan had shown that she was eight weeks pregnant—and she was managing just fine, thank you. She would appreciate it if he did not phone again.

  What did she expect him to do? Twiddle his thumbs for the next seven months and hope she remembered to send him a ‘baby’s arrived’ card? That was probably what she did expect him to do, he thought heavily as he pressed the front doorbell. Certainly he had not expected her to have left his home in Positano when he’d returned from racing his motorbike along the winding road that hugged the Amalfi Coast. He had only been gone for an hour, needing time to come to terms with her announcement that she was expecting his baby. His shock had receded now, but his fundamental feeling had not changed. He still did not want to be a father.

  A harassed-looking woman clutching a toddler in her arms opened the front door.

  ‘Yes, Gina’s in,’ Sarah Melton admitted begrudgingly, eyeing him with deep suspicion when he introduced himself. ‘But I’m not sure she’ll want to see you.’

  ‘Why don’t we allow Gina to decide for herself?’ Lanzo said, polite but determined, edging his foot over the doorstep as he spoke. He frowned as the unmistakable sound of somebody being sick came from upstairs.

  ‘She’s in the loo—throwing up. It’s a pretty regular occurrence,’ Sarah said wryly. ‘You’d better come in and wait.’

  Gina wiped her face with a damp flannel, her whole body trembling from the effort of losing her lunch twenty minutes after she had eaten it. The same thing had happened after breakfast. At this rate she might as well cut out the middle man and simply flush her meals down the toilet, she thought dismally.

  ‘Unfortunately a small percentage of women suffer from extreme morning sickness,’ her GP had explained. ‘And, as you are no doubt aware, it is not only limited to mornings. Your baby will be perfectly all right,’ he’d reassured her, when she had been close to tears, terrified that she might miscarry the baby. ‘All I can recommend is plenty of fluids, small meals, and plenty of rest.’

  Out of the three, she was just about managing the fluids. Food of any type bounced back with tedious regularity, and as for resting—it was proving impossible to sleep when she was so worried about how she was going to manage as a single mother, and if she did manage to drop off in the early hours her dreams were haunted by Lanzo.

  She opened the bathroom door and staggered along the landing to the tiny boxroom where Sarah and Richard had put up a camp bed for her, after she had fled from Lanzo’s home in Italy and arrived back in Poole, homeless and distraught.

  Golden late-September sunshine was streaming through the window, so that the tall figure standing by the bed was silhouetted against the light. But the broad shoulders and the proud tilt of his head were instantly recognizable, and she stopped dead in the doorway, acute shock causing her heart to beat so fast that she could feel it jerking against her ribs.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded, cursing herself for the distinct wobble in her voice.

  ‘We need to talk,’ Lanzo said steadily.

  His deep, sensual accent tugged on her heartstrings, and she hated the fact that the sight of him, after three weeks apart, made her knees feel weak. It did not help that he looked utterly gorgeous, in black jeans and matching polo shirt, topped with a butter-soft tan leather jacket. His hair was shorter than she remembered, gleaming like raw silk in the sunlight, and his face was all angles and planes, softened by the beautifully shaped mouth that she had a vivid recall of moving hungrily over her lips when he kissed her.

  From his shocked expression it was clear that kissing her was not on his agenda now, she thought grimly. She caught sight of her reflection in the mirror and saw what he could see—grey skin, dull eyes with great purple smudges beneath them, and lank hair scraped back in a ponytail.

  ‘You look terrible,’ he said bluntly, as if he could not hold back the words.

  Despite telling herself she didn’t care what he thought of her, tears stung her eyes. ‘I doubt you would look so great if you were sick a dozen times a day,’ she muttered.

  Lanzo frowned. ‘I know sickness is common in early pregnancy, but is it normal to be sick so frequently?’

  ‘Do you care?’ Pride was her only shield against the note of concern in his voice. He had made it clear that he did not care about her or the baby, she reminded herself.

  He sighed heavily. ‘Si, I care about your well-being, Gina. That is why I am here—to make sure that you have everything you need.’ He glanced around the cramped room, at the uncomfortable-looking camp bed and at her clothes piled on a chair and spilling out of her suitcase because there was no space to put a wardrobe.

  ‘Your brother-in-law told me you are living here.’

  ‘Temporarily,’ Gina said shortly. ‘If you remember, I rented out my flat when I started working for you, and the tenancy agreement runs until December.’

  ‘So, do you then plan to move back into your flat? I thought there was a mortgage on it. How do you intend to meet the monthly payments when the baby is born and you cannot work?’ Lanzo pushed for answers to the questions that had been circling endlessly in Gina’s mind since her mad dash back to England. She avoided his gaze and sank weakly down onto the camp bed, which creaked alarmingly.

  ‘I’m going to sell the flat and buy somewhere …’ She had been about to say cheaper, but she refused to reveal her money worries to Lanzo and so mumbled, ‘Somewhere more suitable to bring up the baby.’

  He stared speculatively at her pale face and his stomach clenched. She looked so fragile, so unlike the strong-willed, confident Gina he was used to. His eyes dropped to her flat stomach. If anything she looked thinner than he remembered—perhaps not surprising, if she was being sick numerous times a day. He wondered if she was eating properly, getting the necessary vitamins and nutrients for the baby to develop. It was hard to believe that his child was growing within her when there were no outward signs of her pregnancy, he mused. Yet he sensed a difference in her—a vulnerability that filled him with guilt.

  ‘Are you working?’ he asked abruptly, thinking that her obvious tiredness might be because she was overdoing things.

  Gina twisted her fingers together, tension churning inside her. ‘Not at the moment,’ she admitted. ‘It’s been impossible to look for a job when I’m constantly being sick. But hopefully I’ll feel better in another w
eek or so, and then …’ She tailed off, trying to imagine how she would cope with holding down a full-time job when she had no energy and felt like a limp rag.

  ‘So how are you managing financially?’

  ‘I have some savings.’ That were dwindling fast—but she was not going to tell Lanzo that. ‘Look,’ she said, jumping to her feet and immediately wishing she hadn’t when the room swayed, ‘I don’t know why you’re here …’

  Her legs were so stupidly wobbly. She felt her knees give way, but before she fell Lanzo was beside her, sliding his arm around her waist to support her. The scent of his aftershave assailed her senses and she felt a crazy longing to rest her cheek against his broad chest and absorb some of his strength.

  ‘I am here because it is my responsibility to help you,’ he murmured.

  She rejected his words violently, jerking away from him. ‘No. I am not your responsibility, and neither is my baby. You made it clear that you don’t want your child.’

  Lanzo glimpsed the hurt in her eyes and sighed heavily. ‘Sit down, cara, before you fall down.’ He helped her back down onto the camp bed and hunkered down next to her. ‘I did some research about the condition you suffer from, and I accept that you were convinced you were infertile because of the damage done by endometriosis,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I was about to start a course of IVF when I was with Simon, but our marriage was struggling as his drink problem grew worse and I knew it wouldn’t be fair to bring a child into that situation,’ she explained huskily. ‘I believed I would never have a baby. But now I have this one chance, I’m terrified something is going to go wrong,’ she whispered, her deepest fears spilling out. ‘I know you don’t want a child, but I don’t think I could bear it if I lost this baby.’

  Once again her vulnerability evoked an ache inside Lanzo, but he knew his limitations—knew he could not give her the emotional support she needed—and so he resisted the urge to take her in his arms and hold her close while he soothed her fears.