Claiming His One-Night Baby

Alone, Matteo took himself to the day room and sat on the sofa, cradling his head in his hands while he waited. In the adjoining room was a bar where he and Pieta had had a drink together. The temptation to help himself to a drink now was strong but not strong enough to overcome his revulsion. He’d already helped himself to his best friend and cousin’s wife. He wasn’t going to add to his list of crimes by helping himself to Pieta’s alcohol.

He’d read the instructions himself. The test took three minutes to produce an answer.

He checked his watch. Natasha had been upstairs for ten minutes.

The seconds ticked past like minutes, the minutes like hours. All he had to occupy his mind were the furnishings the man who’d been like a brother to him had chosen. He couldn’t see any sign of Natasha’s influence in the decoration.

She’d once wanted to be an interior designer. He remembered her telling him that during a phone conversation held when he’d returned home after an eighteen-hour shift.

Matteo had thought he could never hate himself more than he had when he’d been ten and his dereliction of duty had ruined his little brother’s life. The loathing he felt for what he’d done with Natasha matched it, an ugly rancid feeling that lived in his guts. The loathing he felt for Natasha matched it too. Damn her, but she’d been Pieta’s wife. Hours after burying her husband she’d thrown herself into his arms and he...

Damn him, he’d let her.

He wished he could erase the memories of that night but every moment was imprinted in him. He’d woken that morning with the vivid feeling of entering her for the first time and the certainty that something had been wrong. It was a feeling that nagged at him more, growing stronger as time passed.

He rubbed the nape of his neck and cursed his fallible memory.

Natasha had been no virgin. She’d been married, for heaven’s sake, and had been trying for a baby with her husband.

Another five minutes passed before he heard movement.

She appeared in the doorway.

One look at her face told him the answer.

‘There’s got to be some mistake,’ Natasha croaked, clinging onto the door frame for support. ‘I need to do another test.’

She’d stared at the positive sign for so long her eyes had gone as blurry as the cold mist swimming in her head.

For two weeks she’d refused to believe it could happen. She’d refused to even contemplate it.

They had been reckless beyond belief but surely, surely nature wouldn’t punish them further for it? Surely the guilt and self-loathing they both had to live with was punishment enough?

Eyes of cold green steel stared back at her. It was a long time before he spoke.

‘That test is the most accurate one on the market. If it’s showing as positive then you are pregnant. So that leaves only one issue to be resolved and that’s determining who the father is.’

Afraid she was going to faint, she sank onto the floor and cuddled her knees.

‘When did you and Pieta last...?’ The distaste that laced his voice as he failed to complete his sentence sent a wave of heat through her cold head.

For the first time in her life she didn’t know what to say or do. Whenever life had posed her with a dilemma the answer had always been clear. Do what her parents wanted. It was why she’d married Pieta.

But now her parents were the least of her considerations.

‘Do I take your silence to mean that you and Pieta were active until his death?’

How could she answer that? She couldn’t.

‘If your last period was a month ago then it stands to reason you and I were together when you were at your most fertile. However, all women’s cycles differ to a certain degree so if you and Pieta were intimate until his death there’s a good chance he could be the father. Who else is in line?’

Her head spinning at the medical knowledge that meant he had a much better understanding of how her body worked than she did, she didn’t understand what he meant. ‘What?’

‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean. Who else have you had sex with in the past month?’

She recoiled. ‘That’s offensive.’

His laughter crackled between them like a bullet. ‘Don’t get me wrong, you’re playing the grieving widow admirably but you were like a dog on heat with me so it stands to reason there have been others.’

A dog on heat?

She covered her ears, digging her nails into her skull.

A dog on heat?

How had he not known? And him a doctor?

There had been a moment, when he’d first entered her, that he’d stilled, but it had only been a moment, and then she had kissed him again, as desperate for him to continue what they’d started as she had been terrified he would figure out the truth.

‘I’m waiting for an answer.’ His curt voice cut through her thoughts. ‘How many others?’

She remembered a time so long ago when his rich voice, the Italian accent faint behind the impeccable English, had always softened around her. She guessed that’s what happened when you created a business reputed to be worth billions out of nothing, your basic humanity was thrown in the gutter along with your principles.

‘No one.’ She raised her head to look him square in the eye. ‘There has been no one else.’

He stared back for the longest time before nodding and getting to his feet. ‘A scan will pinpoint the date of conception to a degree of accuracy so we can use that to determine who the likely father is.’

His cutting tone sliced through her.

Then the thought of a scan, of seeing the little one growing inside her...

Suddenly it hit her that she was pregnant.

She was going to be a mother.

Placing a hand to her belly, she blurred out Matteo’s bitter face and imagined the life growing inside her.

Hello, my little one, she said silently to it, overwhelming joy spreading through every part of her.

She’d wanted a child for so long. After everything that had gone on with Pieta she had thought it would be a long and torturous road to get there if it ever happened and if she’d ever decided to take the road he’d wanted to conceive one. But it had happened as if by magic.

She was going to have a baby.

‘How can you be smiling at such a time?’ Matteo said acidly. ‘Is this amusing to you?’

The smile she hadn’t even known she was wearing fell but as it fell her spine straightened.

Whatever the future held for her, even if it was only humiliation, she had her little seed to think about. She couldn’t fall into despair. She would be strong. She would be a mother.