The Venetian One-Night Baby

by MELANIE MILBURNE

  Relief washed over her pinched features but there was still a cloud of worry in her gaze. ‘I’m not against someone else making that difficult choice but I can’t bring myself to do it. Not under these circumstances. I don’t expect you to be involved if that’s not what you want. I know this is a terrible shock and not something you want, but I thought you should know about the pregnancy first, before it becomes obvious, I mean.’ Her hand went protectively to her belly again. ‘I won’t even tell people it’s yours if you’d rather not have them know.’

  Max was ashamed that for a nanosecond he considered that as an option. But how could he call himself a man and ignore his own flesh and blood? It wasn’t the child’s fault so why should it be robbed of a relationship with its father? He had grown up with a loving and involved father and couldn’t imagine how different his life might have been without the solid and dependable support of his dad.

  No. He would do the right thing by Sabrina and the baby. He would try his hardest not to fail them like he had failed his baby brother and his parents. He stepped forward and captured her hands before she could escape. ‘I want my child to have my name. We’ll marry as soon as I can arrange it.’

  Sabrina pulled out of his hold as if his hands had burned her. ‘You don’t have to be so old-fashioned about it, Max. I’m not asking you to marry me.’

  ‘I’m not asking you. I’m telling you what’s going to happen.’ As proposals went, Max knew it wasn’t flash. But he’d proposed in a past life and he had sworn he would never do it again. But this was different. This was about duty and responsibility, not foolish, fleeting, fickle feelings. ‘We will marry next month.’

  ‘Next month?’ Her eyes went round in shock. ‘Are you crazy? This is the twenty-first century. Couples don’t have to marry because they happened to get pregnant. No one is holding a gun to your head.’

  ‘Do you really think I would walk away from the responsibility to my own flesh and blood? We will marry and that’s final.’

  Sabrina’s eyes flashed blue sparks of defiance and her hands clenched into fists. ‘You could do with some work on your proposal, buddy. No way am I marrying you. You don’t love me.’

  ‘So? You don’t love me either,’ Max said. ‘This is not about us. This is about the baby we’ve made. You need someone to support you and that someone is me. I won’t take no for an answer.’

  Her chin came up so high she could have given a herd of mules a master class in stubbornness. ‘Then we’re at an impasse because no way am I marrying a man who didn’t even have the decency to say goodbye in person the night we...had sex.’

  Max blew out a breath and shoved a hand back through his hair again. ‘Okay, so my exit might have lacked a little finesse, but I didn’t want you to get any crazy ideas about our one night turning into something else.’

  ‘Oh, yeah? Well, because of the quality of your stupid condoms, our one-night has turned into something else—a damn baby!’ She buried her face in her hands and promptly burst into tears.

  Max winced and stepped towards her, gathering her close against his body. This time she didn’t resist, and he wrapped his arms around her as the sobs racked her slim frame. He stroked the back of her silky head, his mind whirling with emotions he had no idea how to handle. Regret, shame and blistering anger at himself. He had done this to her. He had got her pregnant. Had the condoms failed? He was always so careful. He always wore one. No exceptions. Had he left it on too long? At one point he had fallen asleep with her wrapped in his arms, his body still encased in the warm wet velvet of hers.

  Was that when it had happened? He should never have given in to the temptation of touching her. He had acted on primal instinct, ruled by his hormones instead of his head. ‘I’m sorry. So sorry. But I thought you said you were on the Pill?’

  She eased away from his chest to look up at him through tear-washed eyes. ‘I’m on a low dose one but I was so caught up with nerves about the expo, I had an upset tummy the day before I left for Venice. Plus, I was sick after having that champagne at the cocktail party.’ She tried to suppress a hiccup but didn’t quite manage it.

  Max brushed the hair back from her face. ‘Look, no one is to blame for this other than me. I shouldn’t have touched you. I shouldn’t have kissed you that first time and I definitely shouldn’t have booked you into my room and—’

  ‘Do you really regret what happened between us that night?’ Her expression reminded him of a wounded puppy—big eyes, long face, fragile hope.

  He cradled her face in his hands. ‘That’s the whole trouble. I don’t regret it. Not a minute of it. I’ve thought of that night thousands of times since then.’ He brushed his thumbs over her cheeks while still cupping her face. ‘We’ll make this work, Sabrina. We might not love each other in the traditional way, but we can make do.’

  She tugged his hands away from her face and stepped a metre away to stand in front of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. ‘Make do? Is that all you want out of life? To...’ she waved her hand in a sweeping gesture ‘...make do? What about love? Isn’t that an essential ingredient of a good marriage?’

  ‘I’m not offering you that sort of marriage.’

  Her eyes flashed and she planted her hands on her hips. ‘Well, guess what? I’m not accepting that sort of proposal.’

  ‘Would you prefer me to lie to you?’ Max tried to keep his voice steady but he could feel ridges of anger lining his throat. ‘To get down on bended knee and say a whole lot of flowery words we both know I don’t mean?’

  ‘Did you say them to Lydia?’

  ‘Let’s keep Lydia out of this.’ This time the anger nearly choked him. He hated thinking about his proposal six years ago to his ex-fiancée. He hated thinking about his failure to see the relationship for what it had been—a mistake from start to finish. It had occurred to him only recently that he had asked Lydia to marry him so his parents would back off about Sabrina. Not the best reason, by anyone’s measure.

  ‘You still have feelings for her, don’t you? That’s why you can’t commit to anyone else.’

  Max rolled his eyes and gave a short bark of a laugh. ‘Oh, please spare me the pop psychoanalysis. No, I do not still love Lydia. In fact, I never loved her.’

  Sabrina blinked rapidly. ‘Then why did you ask her to marry you?’

  He walked over to the leather-topped mahogany desk and picked up the paperweight he had given his father when he was ten. He passed it from hand to hand, wondering how to answer. ‘Good question,’ he said, putting the paperweight down and turning to look at her. ‘When we first dated, she seemed fine with my decision not to have kids. We had stuff in common, books, movies, that sort of thing.’ He gave a quick open-close movement of his lips. ‘But clearly it wasn’t enough for her.’

  ‘It might not have been about the kid thing. It might have been because she knew you didn’t love her. I never thought your chemistry with her was all that good.’

  Max moved closer to her, drawn by a force he couldn’t resist. ‘Unlike ours, you mean?’ He traced a line from below her ear to her chin with his finger, watching as her pupils darkened and her breath hitched. Her spring flowers perfume danced around his nostrils, her warm womanly body making his blood thrum and hum and drum with lust. Don’t touch her. His conscience pinged with a reminder but he ignored it.

  Her hands came up to rest against his chest, the tip of her tongue sweeping over her rosebud lips. But then her eyes hardened and she pushed back from him and put some distance between them. ‘I know what you’re trying to do but it won’t work. I will not be seduced into marrying you.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Sabrina,’ Max said. ‘This is not about seducing you into changing your mind. You’re having my baby. I would never leave you to fend for yourself. That’s not the sort of man I am.’

  ‘Look, I know you mean well, but I can’t marry you. I’m only just pregnant. I can’t
bear the thought of everyone talking about me, judging me for falling pregnant after a one-night stand, especially to you when I’ve done nothing but criticise you for years. Anyway, what if I were to have a miscarriage or something before the twelve-week mark? Then you’d hate me for sure for trapping you in a marriage neither of us wanted in the first place.’

  The mention of miscarriage gave him pause. He had seen his mother go through several of them before and after the death of Daniel. It had been torture to watch her suffer not just physically but emotionally. The endless tears, the longing looks at passing prams or pregnant women. He had been young, but not too young to notice the despair on his mother’s face. ‘Okay. So we will wait until the twelve-week mark. But I’m only compromising because it makes sense to keep this news to ourselves until then.’

  Sabrina bit her lower lip and it made him want to kiss away the indentation her teeth made when she released it. ‘I’ve kind of told Holly. She was with me when I did the test.’

  ‘Can you trust her to keep it to herself?’

  ‘She’ll probably tell Zack, but she assures me he won’t blab either.’

  Max stepped closer again and took her hands, stroking the backs of them with his thumbs. ‘How are you feeling? I’m sorry I didn’t ask earlier. Not just about how you’re feeling about being pregnant but are you sick? Is there anything you need?’

  Fresh tears pooled in her eyes and she swallowed a couple of times. ‘I’m a bit sick and my breasts are a little tender.’

  ‘Is it too early to have a scan?’

  ‘I’m not sure, I haven’t been to see the doctor yet.’

  ‘I’ll go with you to all of your appointments, that is, if you want me there?’ Who knew he could be such a model father-to-be? But, then, he figured he’d had a great role model in his own dad. Even so, he wanted to be involved for the child’s sake.

  ‘Do you want to be there or would you only be doing it out of duty?’

  ‘I want to be there to see our baby for the first time.’ Max was a little surprised to realise how much he meant it. But he needed to see the baby to believe this pregnancy had really happened. He still felt as if he’d stepped into a parallel universe. Could his and Sabrina’s DNAs really be getting it on inside her womb? A baby. A little person who would look like one or the other, or a combination of both of them. A child who would grow up and look to him for protection and nurturing. Did he trust himself to do a good job? How could he when he had let his baby brother down so badly?

  The door suddenly opened behind them and Max glanced over his shoulder to see his mother standing there. ‘Oh, there you two are.’ Her warm brown eyes sparkled with fairy godmother delight.

  Sabrina sprang away from Max but she bumped into the mahogany desk behind her and yelped. ‘Ouch!’

  Max reached for Sabrina, steadying her by bringing her close to his side. ‘Are you okay?’

  She rubbed her left hip, her cheeks a vivid shade of pink. ‘Yes...’

  ‘Did I startle you?’ Max’s mother asked. ‘Sorry, darling, but I was wondering where you’d gone. You seemed a little upset earlier.’

  ‘I’m not upset,’ Sabrina said, biting her lip.

  His mother raised her eyebrows and then glanced at Max. ‘I hope you two aren’t fighting again? No wonder the poor girl gets upset with you glaring at her all the time. I don’t want my party spoilt by your boorish behaviour. Why can’t you just kiss and make up for a change?’

  Max could have laughed at the irony of the situation if his sense of humour hadn’t already been on life support. He’d done way more than kiss Sabrina and now there were consequences he would be dealing with for the rest of his life. But there was no way he could tell his mother what had gone on between them. No way he could say anything until she was through the first trimester of her pregnancy. It would get everybody’s hopes up and the pressure would be unbearable—even more unbearable than it already was.

  ‘It’s fine, Aunty Gillian. Max is being perfectly civil to me,’ Sabrina said, carefully avoiding his gaze.

  Max’s mother shifted her lips from side to side. ‘Mmm, I’m not sure it’s safe to leave you two alone for more than five minutes. Who knows what might happen?’

  Who knew, indeed?

  * * *

  As soon as the door closed behind Gillian Firbank, Sabrina swung her gaze to Max. ‘Do you think she suspects anything?’

  ‘I don’t think so. But we have to keep our relationship quiet until you get through the first trimester. Then we can tell everyone we’re marrying.’

  She stared at him, still not sure how to handle this change in him. So much for the one night and one night only stance he’d taken before. Now he was insisting on marrying her and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  She blew out a breath, whirled away and crossed her arms over her middle. ‘You’re being ridiculous, Max. We can’t do this. We can’t get married just because I’m pregnant. We’d end up hating each other even more than we do now.’

  ‘When have I ever said I hated you?’ Max’s jaw looked like it was set in stone. A muscle moved in and out next to his flattened mouth as if he was mentally counting to ten. And his smoky blue eyes smouldered, making something fizz at the back of her knees like sherbet.

  ‘You don’t have to say it. It’s in your actions. You can barely speak to me without criticising something about me.’

  He came to her and before she could move away he took her by the upper arms in a gentle but firm hold. Deep down, Sabrina knew she’d had plenty of time to escape those warm strong fingers, but right then her body was craving his touch. Six long weeks had passed since their stolen night of passion and now she was alone with him, her senses were firing, her needs clamouring, her resolve to resist him faltering. ‘I don’t hate you, Sabrina.’

  But you don’t love me either.

  She didn’t say the words out loud but the silence seemed to ring with their echo. ‘We’d better get back to the party otherwise people will start talking.’

  His hands tightened. ‘Not yet.’ His voice was low and deep and husky, his eyes flicking to her mouth as if drawn by a force he couldn’t counteract.

  Sabrina breathed in the clean male scent of him, the hint of musk, the base note of bergamot and a top note of lemon. She leaned towards him, pushed by the need to feel him close against her, to feel his body respond to hers. He stirred against her, the tempting hardness of his body reminding hers of everything that had passed between them six weeks ago. ‘Max... I can’t think straight when you touch me.’

  ‘Then don’t think.’

  She stepped out of his hold with a willpower she hadn’t known she possessed. ‘I need a couple of weeks to get my head around this...situation. It’s been such a shock and I don’t want to rush into anything I might later regret.’

  She didn’t want to think about all the madly-in-love brides who came to her for their wedding dresses. She didn’t want to think about Max’s offer, which had come out of a sense of duty instead of love. But she didn’t want to think about bringing up a baby on her own either. She walked to the library door, knowing that if she stayed a minute longer she would end up in his arms.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Max asked.

  She glanced over her shoulder. ‘The party, remember?’

  He dragged a hand over his face and scowled. ‘I hate parties.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  BY THE TIME Max dragged himself out of the library to re-join the party there was no sign of Sabrina. He moved through the house, pretending an interest in the other guests he was nowhere near feeling, surreptitiously sweeping his gaze through the crowd to catch a glimpse of her. He didn’t want to make it too obvious he was looking for her, but he didn’t want her to leave his parents’ house until he was sure she was okay.

  He was having enough trouble dealing with the shock news of her pregnancy, so
he could only imagine how it was impacting on her. Even though he knew she had always wanted children, she wanted them at the right time with the right guy. He wasn’t that guy. But it was too late to turn back the clock. He was the father of her child and there was no way he was going to abandon her, even if he had to drag her kicking, screaming and swearing to the altar.

  Max wandered out into the garden where large scented candles were burning in stands next to the formal garden beds. There was no silky honey-brown head in the crowd gathered outside. The sting of disappointment soured his mood even further. The only way to survive one of his parents’ parties was to spar with Sabrina. He hadn’t realised until then how much he looked forward to it. Was he weird or what? Looking forward to their unfriendly fire was not healthy. It was sick.

  And so too was wanting to make love to a woman you got pregnant six weeks ago. But he couldn’t deny the longing that was pounding through him. He’d wanted to kiss her so badly back in the library. Kiss her and hold her and remind her of the chemistry they shared. Hadn’t it always been there? The tension that vibrated between them whenever their gazes locked. How the slightest touch of her hand sent a rocket charge through his flesh. That first kiss all those weeks ago had set in motion a ferocious longing that refused to be suppressed.

  But it had to be suppressed. It must be suppressed. He was no expert on pregnancy, having avoided the topic for most of his adult life, but wasn’t sex between the parents dangerous to the baby under some circumstances? Particularly if the pregnancy was a high-risk one? How could he live with himself if he harmed the baby before it even got a chance to be born? Besides, he didn’t want their families to get too excited about him and Sabrina seeing each other. He could only imagine his mother’s disappointment if she thought she was going to be a grandmother only to have it snatched away from her if Sabrina’s pregnancy failed.

  No. He would do the noble thing. He would resist the temptation and get her safely through to the twelve-week mark. Even if it damn near killed him.