Chapter 5 #2
At least she’d been prepared for the pregnancy. The early signs had been so strong that by the time she’d taken the test, she’d have been more surprised if it had come back negative. Niccolo had had no such forewarning. He needed time to digest it and gather his thoughts.
Climbing out of bed, Georgia knocked tentatively on the ensuite door. “I’m going to take a shower in one of the other bathrooms.”
There was no answer, but she knew he’d heard her. She also knew better than to tell him not to get his wound wet. The mood Niccolo was in, he might just soak it to spite her.
Leaving the bedroom door ajar, she returned to the bedroom she’d originally claimed as her own and left that door open too before helping herself to another shirt from the wardrobe.
The shower in the ensuite was easy to work, and she stood beneath it, closing her eyes as the hot water poured over her.
Her sleep had done her some good. It had cleared the worst of the exhaustion from her mind and body, but now there was tightness in the pits of her stomach and chest. While Georgia and Niccolo were hiding out in the middle of the English countryside, the Espositos were inching closer to finding them.
Every minute that passed brought them nearer.
And yet, even when knowing danger was so imminent, the tightness inside her was all for Niccolo.
At least he hadn’t asked who the father was. He’d accepted paternity without question. That was something. They might not live long enough for it to matter, but it was the one straw she could cling to for comfort.
After scrubbing her body clean and washing her hair, she rinsed off the last of the detritus of fear that had ingrained itself in her pores and watched it swirl away.
Cleansed in body if not in spirit, she dried herself with a towel that was small but did the job, then wrapped her hair in it and brushed her teeth.
She had no clean underwear, but the shirt was long enough to cover her modesty.
It would do for now. Later, she would overcome her qualms about breaching the privacy of a stranger and hunt for clothes.
She’d also suss the washing machine. The thought of being caught by the Espositos without any underwear on was just too stomach-churning to contemplate.
While Georgia had showered, the door of the bedroom she’d shared with Niccolo had been closed. She sensed his movement within the bedroom’s walls. Sensed, too, that her presence was still unwelcome.
Down in the kitchen, the afternoon sun poured through the windows but did nothing to lift her deflated spirits or warm the coldness of fear that had settled back in her veins.
It was a fear that only sprang to life and pounded its own beat in her heart when she was alone.
It was only Niccolo’s presence that soothed it.
For all her complicated feelings for him, knowing he was there at all was more comforting than she should ever let it be.
This was the man who’d ended their relationship without discussion.
At the first hint of Georgia’s distress and anger at his insulting proposition to make her his ‘official mistress’, he’d closed down.
Just as in her dreams, where he was blind to her tears and deaf to her screams, he’d closed off his senses to her pain.
He’d stormed into the bathroom and then reemerged with all the emotions of a robot.
The fun, sexy, generous, open-hearted man she’d fallen in love with had refused to engage.
The few times the poison between them had threatened to choke her on their journey back to England and she’d tried to speak to him, he’d blanked her.
He’d dropped her home without looking at her and without a word of goodbye.
And yet he was here. Niccolo had the means to go anywhere in the world, but he’d come to her, to protect her.
It occurred to her that she didn’t know how he’d found her. Hadn’t even asked.
So many questions that needed answering. So much that needed to be said. Did they have enough time left to get it all out in the open?
Needing a distraction from her escalating thoughts, Georgia fixed coffee for Niccolo. Once the machine was working its magic and the kitchen filled with the gorgeous scent of fresh coffee, she rooted through the cupboards for something non-caffeinated she could drink. Peppermint tea. That would do.
She put the kettle on and, finally, turned her attention to the paraphernalia they’d left strewn over the kitchen table when exhaustion had driven them to bed.
Her stomach turned at the bowl of cold, red water.
Red from all the blood she’d washed off Niccolo’s torso.
Blood from the knife wound she’d inflicted on him.
How could she ever forgive herself for that?
She’d just finished cleaning up when he appeared like an apparition in the doorway.
He’d put his trousers on, but his magnificent torso and feet were bare. The bandage above his hip was dotted with red where his wound had bled. It gave little solace that most of the bandage remained white.
She caught his stare. Caught the tightness of his jaw. It was the only visible sign of his fury, and she felt her own anger ignite and swirl into the mix of emotions that were already only a heartbeat away from overwhelming her… And felt the guilt rise up with it.
Damn him for making her feel guilty. She’d never denied that he deserved to know, but she’d been trying to protect him. Even after everything he’d put her through, she’d been trying to protect the bastard.
Before he could speak, she swallowed her emotions and steadily said, “I know you’re angry with me, but please sit down and take some painkillers before you start shouting at me again.”
Dark brown eyes narrowing to slits, he treaded to the kitchen table, pulled out a chair and sat on it.
Feeling his baleful stare penetrating her, she poured his coffee, trying her best to act nonchalant when her heart was thrashing wildly and her hands were shaking.
She could feel his loathing; taste it in the air thickening around them, and she pulled in a long breath for courage before placing the mug and two paracetamol in front of him, saying, “I’m going to have a look around and see if there’s anything stronger in the house that you can take for the… ”
Her words cut off with a gasp as he came to life, snatching hold of her wrist and deftly twisting her around to trap her between his thighs.
“Nic…” His expressionless stare silenced her. Expressionless, but there was something underlying it, a something so far removed from hate that it made her chest fill with all the emotion she’d been so desperately trying to smother.
His ankles hooked around hers, trapping her even more effectively.
He didn’t utter a word. His dark, inscrutable eyes boring into hers, he lifted his hands to the top button of the shirt she was wearing.
His nostrils flared. Slowly, methodically, he undid the buttons of the shirt. Georgia offered not a word of protest. She couldn’t. She was frozen in his stare, her thrashing heart caught in her throat.
When he’d unbuttoned the final one, he pulled the shirt apart. Only then did he drop his stare. Only then did a flicker of emotion spasm over his features.
How had he missed it, Niccolo wondered bleakly. Even with everything that had gone on since he’d crept into the Bayswater apartment in the dead of night, he should have noticed. Should have seen.
The curves he’d worshipped had grown. The breasts were, impossible though he’d have believed it to be, fuller.
The hips wider. But it was the gently rounded stomach where the change was most pronounced.
Georgia’s stomach had always been flat in comparison to her other curves, a result of daily Pilates sessions in her living room, but now there was a definable roundedness to it which only someone who knew her intimately would notice.
That definable roundness contained their baby.
His baby.
A long breath of air expelled from his lungs, and he lifted his chin to gaze back into the big blue eyes he’d once had the fleeting, foolish notion of spending the rest of his life staring into.
He was met with defiance. Angry defiance laced with apprehension.
A strange mixture of wonder, anger, compassion and lust surged through his veins, and he spread his fingers over the rounded belly his child lived within, hating Georgia more than he’d ever hated anyone. She’d deliberately kept this miracle from him.
Her bottom lip trembled.
Good. Let her see his rage. Let her feel it.
“This is why your sister came to Naples, yes?” he said, still gazing into her defiant eyes as his fingers explored her stomach. If she’d conceived in Paris, that meant she was four months pregnant. He’d missed nearly half the pregnancy.
She jerked a nod.
“She was going to tell me?”
Another nod.
“You lied to me.” Lied about her sister’s reasons for flying to Naples.
Callie hadn’t been seeking to stop the wedding, or humiliate him or the Espositos with intimate pictures that belonged only to him and Georgia.
She’d been trying to reach him with the truth about Georgia being pregnant with his child.
Her voice, though barely audible, was strong. “Yes. I’m sorry, but I…”
Despising the bitter virulence of the emotions coursing through him at her admission, he dipped his face and took a rose-red nipple in his mouth. Georgia’s pathetic excuses cut off with a throaty gasp, and he slid a hand behind her back, filling his mouth with her voluptuousness.
Taste buds roaring into life, he closed his eyes and let the rest of his senses roar back into life too, let his lust for her fill him and drive out everything else.