Читать книгу Pregnant with His Baby! - Ким Лоренс, Laura Iding - Страница 11

OF COURSE you are.

Gianfranco dragged a hand through his hair and glanced at his reflection in the mirrored surface of a wall cabinet. Despite the concerted efforts of his nearest and dearest there were no white streaks in the hair of the man who looked back at him.

But it could only be a matter of time.

‘I’m assuming this is some kind of joke?’

It seemed a safe assumption. Having broken family tradition, he had sent his son to a day school in Florence. Alberto was on a school field trip to Brussels to see the European Parliament in action, safely supervised by teachers.

‘I’m in Calais at the moment, but the ferry leaves in a few minutes.’

Staring out of the window at the traffic below, he shook his head, still feeling slightly more irritation than concern. ‘You’re in Brussels.’

‘No, Calais.’

Gianfranco felt the concern versus irritation dip towards concern.

‘Calais?’

‘I told you—I’ve run away.’

Gianfranco’s stomach muscles clenched in icy dread as he realised this was no warped teenage sense of humour he was dealing with, but a genuine situation.

‘You are actually in Calais …?’ Gianfranco struggled to get his head around it.

How could a thirteen-year-old schoolboy meant to be in Brussels in the care of teachers be in Calais?

Thoughts of abduction and kidnap flashed into his head to be almost immediately dismissed. Alberto’s voice was not that of a scared victim. Like someone coming out of a trance, he dragged a hand down his jaw and exhaled.

‘You’ve run away? From me?’ Why not? It was becoming quite a fashionable thing to do. If this was true Alberto wouldn’t be sounding so chirpy once he got his hands on him, Gianfranco decided grimly.

‘Yes, I just said so, didn’t I? So if the school contacts you tell them I’m fine. They might have noticed I’m missing by now.’

‘Might have noticed!’ Gianfranco choked. He pushed aside the thought of what he would say to the teachers who had failed so miserably in their duty. There were more important things to think about. ‘How did you get to Calais? Are you alone?’

‘I hitched.’

His teenage son’s explanation made Gianfranco’s blood run cold. ‘You hitched a lift?’

Impervious to the horror in his father’s voice, the teenager added tetchily, ‘You’re not usually this slow, Dad. I know what you’re thinking but the lorry driver was a really nice guy, not a pervert or anything. I told him I was seventeen and he believed me.’

Gianfranco bit back a curse and rolled his eyes heavenwards. He was having a nightmare, that was the only explanation, he decided.

Every parent knew it was a delicate line—the one between wrapping your children up in cotton wool and letting them run around oblivious to the dangers that lurked for the unsuspecting.

Like every other parent he wanted to keep his child safe. He had always been conscious that there was also a danger that an overprotective parent could stifle any sense of adventure in a child. In his efforts not to quash the spirit of adventure in his son he might, Gianfranco acknowledged grimly, have gone a little too far the other way.

‘Listen to me very carefully,’ Gianfranco said slowly.

‘I can’t. My battery’s low and, don’t worry, I can look after myself, you know, Dad.’

‘Would it be pushy of me to ask why you’re running away?’

‘You might be divorcing Dervla, but I’m not.’

‘Divorce!’ Gianfranco yelled down the line. ‘There will be no divorce.’

‘That was my eardrum you just perforated. And if anyone asks I’ll tell them I’d prefer to live with her.’

‘Thank you very much,’ Gianfranco inserted drily in response to this warning. ‘Let me remind you again, nobody has mentioned divorce.’ And nobody will.

‘Not yet,’ his son said darkly. ‘But it doesn’t take a genius to see where things were heading left to you two. So I decided you needed some help.’

‘This form of help involves you running away?’ Gianfranco tried to control his temper as he made a rapid mental calculation of how soon he could get to England before his son got into any more trouble.

‘But where, or rather who, am I running to? I mean as a responsible parent you have to come get me, it’s totally legit and there’s no question of you chasing after her. I reckon you’ll be all over each other about twenty seconds after you see each other.’

Not many things shocked Gianfranco to silence, but this nonchalant prediction did.

I’m being manipulated by a thirteen-year-old. A reluctant laugh was torn from his throat. If he’s like this now, what will he be like by the time he’s eighteen?

Hearing the laugh, the boy gave a sigh of relief. ‘I knew you’d like my plan. Cool or what? Which reminds me, Dad, would you ring Dervla and ask her to pick me up at the ferry terminal? I think the boat gets in around six. Look, my battery really is low. I’ll be in touch later …’

The line went dead and after a short pause Gianfranco keyed in a number.

Dervla took another doughnut from the bag that Sue had dumped on the tea tray. ‘I don’t usually like these,’ she said, taking a large bite.

‘You need a sugar hit. Trust me, I’m a nurse,’ Sue said, helping herself. ‘Look, Dervla, I think things have just got out of proportion. You two are meant to be together. Give him time and I guarantee he’ll come around about the baby thing. He loves you.’

‘You’re totally wrong. Gianfranco doesn’t love me. He never pretended to be in love with me, not even when he proposed,’ she admitted in a voice that cracked with emotion.

In fact he had made it pretty clear that romantic love was an encumbrance that had no place in his life.

Sue looked sympathetic but unsurprised. ‘Some men find it hard to articulate their feelings.’

Dervla’s eyelashes swept upwards. Her green eyes were bleak as she gave an odd little laugh. ‘Not Gianfranco,’ she promised.

Gianfranco could be very articulate, especially when it came to exposing romantic love for the sham he believed it was. His feelings on the subject were clear and Gianfranco had no problem when it came to clarity.

Clarity was his thing, she reflected bitterly. Her husband was not a man for whom grey areas existed.

‘He just doesn’t have the feelings to express … not for me, at least,’ she added bleakly.

Dervla had suspected early on that it wasn’t love that Gianfranco didn’t believe in, it was the possibility of him ever finding the love he had shared with his first wife, the love of his life, with anyone else.

Being a woman in love, she had ignored the deafening warning bells and decided she would be the one to teach him he could love again.

Feeling the frustrated resentment building inside her, she defiantly reached for another doughnut. It would serve Gianfranco—who had likened her to a sleek and supple little cat—right if she gained twenty pounds! She was definitely beginning to see the attraction of comfort eating.

‘He told me when he proposed that he wasn’t in love with me.’

The older girl shook her head in disbelief. ‘And I thought Italian men were meant to be romantic,’ she exclaimed, looking disillusioned.

‘He still loves Alberto’s mother. She was beautiful and perfect and—’

‘I hate to point out the obvious, but this paragon is also no longer with us, Dervla.’

Dervla’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile. ‘Have you ever tried competing with a ghost?’

Sue’s expression softened with sympathy. ‘Is that how you felt?’

‘She was beautiful.’

‘So are you!’ Sue protested.

Dervla gave an exasperated shake of her head. ‘Not pretty—beautiful.’

‘Does he mention her a lot?’

Dervla gave a sniff and shook her head. ‘Never. See,’ she said when she saw Sue’s expression. ‘You think that’s a bad sign too.’

‘Not necessarily.’

‘Carla says he finds it too painful. She says Sara was his soul mate, they never argued and she—’

‘I get the picture,’ Sue intervened quickly. ‘The man has baggage and a son.’ She chewed worriedly on her lower lip as she studied her friend’s unhappy, downcast features. ‘God, Dervla, did you have to marry him? Couldn’t you have just had sex?’

‘That’s what he said.’

Sue’s eyes went saucer-wide. ‘And you said …?’

‘Obviously we’d already—’ Dervla broke off, blushing, and Sue repressed a grin. ‘He made this ridiculously big thing of me being a virgin at twenty-six.’

‘You were a virgin!’

Sue’s astonished exclamation brought Dervla’s head up with a jerk.

‘Gianfranco was your first lover?’

Dervla bit her lip and nodded.

‘Wow!’

They both reached in unison for another doughnut as the phone began to ring.

Sue moved towards it and Dervla cried out urgently, ‘No, leave it!’

Her friend shrugged and settled back in her seat.

Teeth clenched, Dervla stood ten more seconds before she broke and picked it up.

‘Hello.’

‘Dervla.’

His deep honey-timbred drawl was more frayed around the edges than normal but Dervla would have been able to distinguish it in the middle of a male voice choir.

Her mind went blank.

‘Is that you or a heavy breather?’

She expelled the air trapped in her lungs in one gusty sigh and wiped her wet palm against her thigh.

‘Hello, Gianfranco, how are you?’ How are you? Why stop there, Dervla? Why not sound like a complete moron and ask him how the weather is there?

‘How do you think I am, cara?’

She winced at the acid in his biting response and felt her anger and resentment stir. As if he were the only one suffering here; as if she hadn’t spent two days of hell.

‘How would I know? Silence is kind of hard to interpret. I couldn’t even read between the lines, because there weren’t any. I’m actually feeling fairly honoured that you spared a moment to pick up the phone.’

There was a protracted silence that was more than adequate for Dervla to regret her hasty comments.

‘So you missed me, then.’

He sounded so smug that if there hadn’t been several hundred miles separating them she’d have hit him. Acknowledgement of the distance between them drew a desolate little sigh from her. How could you feel lonely in a place that until recently you had called home? But she did, her home was not here any longer, it was wherever Gianfranco was.

‘Actually I’ve been too busy to miss you. There’s been no time. I’ve been shopping and to lunch, catching up on old friends. We’re on out way our now, actually. You only just caught me.’

At the other end of the phone Gianfranco snapped the pencil he was threading between his long fingers in two. ‘So should I expect to see photos of you staggering out of nightclubs to appear in the tabloids?’ he wondered in a sub-zero tone.

‘Don’t be absurd!’ she snapped, conscious that nothing he said could be as absurd as her trying to convince anyone she didn’t miss him.

God, the ache for him went bone deep.

‘Well, if you could spare a moment out of your busy social diary …?’

Dervla nibbled on the sensitive flesh of her full lower lip. If he’d rung to say come back what was she going to do? Of course, he might have rung to say let’s call it a day. The second possibility almost tipped her over the edge into total panic.

‘If you’ve got something to say, Gianfranco, just say it.’ Whatever he said, she told herself she could deal with it.

‘We have a problem, Dervla.’

She closed her eyes, sure she knew what was coming: it was the second possibility. He was going to say let’s call it a day—this relationship is more trouble than it’s worth.

She had always wondered what she’d feel like when this happened. Now she knew—she wasn’t going to feel anything at all.

She was numb.

‘Well, it could be worse—you could have sent me an email.’ Perhaps one day you’d be able to legally end a marriage that way, neat and clinically without any need for even looking at your partner.

Anger swelled inside her. She wanted to see Gianfranco. She wanted to tell him to his face what he was throwing away. She wanted to tell him that he was damned lucky she loved him and it was his loss.

Her chest tightened … Oh God, and mine, she thought, thinking of her life stretching ahead, a life of days when she would not hear Gianfranco’s voice or see his face.

‘Email? What are you talking about? No, don’t tell me, there’s no time. It’s Alberto.’

‘Alberto?’ she echoed. ‘Not a divorce?’

‘Divorce?’ A volley of Italian words they didn’t teach in the polite surroundings of her language class came down the line. ‘Have you been talking to Alberto?’

‘No,’ she said, turning her back on a wildly gesticulating Sue so that she could concentrate on what he was saying.

‘Alberto has run away.’

It took several moments for the blunt statement to penetrate. When it did the blood drained from Dervla’s face. She swayed.

‘Oh, my God, no, is he …? How long? The police …’ She sank into the chair that Sue placed behind her knees and whispered, ‘I feel sick.’

Sue took the phone from her limp grasp and with a marshal light in her eyes waded right in.

‘What the hell have you said to her? No, she damned well isn’t all right!’

‘I’m fine, Sue, will you give me—?’

‘You’re not fine,’ Sue contradicted. ‘She nearly passed out, you blithering idiot.’

Dervla, struggling to contain her nausea, groaned; with the best intentions in the world Sue was making matters worse. She could just imagine how Gianfranco would react under normal circumstances to being called a blithering idiot, but these were not normal circumstances—his son was missing.

If anything happened to Alberto she could not bear to think of how Gianfranco would react. He adored the boy. So did she.

I should be there with him.

Consumed with guilt that she wasn’t there when he needed her most, Dervla got unsteadily to her feet. This was not a moment for wimpy fainting.

The next blistering instalment of Sue’s indictment came to an abrupt halt as she said, ‘Oh, God, I’m sorry. When … how …?’ And began to listen.

‘He’s all right, Dervla. He rang his dad from Calais.’

With a gasp of relief Dervla snatched the phone from her friend’s hand. ‘Is it true? Alberto is safe?’

‘He’s fine, cara, though he won’t be when I get my hands on him.’ This grim observation drew a weak laugh from Dervla. ‘He took a slight detour from the school excursion and ended up in Calais. You’ve got to admit the boy has ingenuity. He rang from the ferry. Apparently he’s on the way to England.’

‘Here! Well, at least you know he’s safe. I wonder what on earth made him do something like that?’ she puzzled. Alberto was about the most unmixed-up adolescent she had ever met. He was a total stranger to teenage angst. ‘It’s just so unlike him.’

‘Who knows why a teenager does anything?’

Something in Gianfranco’s voice made her wonder if he knew something that he wasn’t telling her. It hurt that he was excluding her again.

‘Can I do anything?’

‘Yes, that’s why I rang.’

Not because you needed to hear my voice. For a moment she longed with every fibre of her being for Gianfranco to want and need her as much as she did him. She wanted him to feel the same aching emptiness she did at this moment. She wanted him to love her.

Then on the heels of the thought came guilt. What a selfish, self-centred cow I am, she thought in disgust. Gianfranco was already feeling as bad as he could. His son was out there alone and, no matter how mature he seemed, Alberto was still a child and he was the only part Gianfranco had left of the woman he had loved—so Gianfranco already knew about the aching emptiness.

‘Anything.’ The word emerged with far more force than she had intended.

‘That’s a rash offer.’

‘It’s a genuine offer, Gianfranco. I love Alberto too, you know.’

‘I know. He speaks very highly of you too.’ This time she was sure the edge in Gianfranco’s voice was unmistakable.

‘Try not to worry,’ she said, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say that wasn’t ‘I love you’.

‘I’m sending Eduardo over with the car. He’ll be there in about half an hour. If you could meet Alberto off the ferry and take him back to the house?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

‘Fine, I’ll see you then,’ she said, trying to match his businesslike tone and, she suspected, failing pretty comprehensively.

She put the phone down and turned to Sue. ‘You got the gist of that?’

Sue nodded. ‘You’re riding shotgun on the kid until Dad gets here.’

Dervla nodded.

‘And after that?’

‘After that, I suppose …’ Dervla’s slender shoulders lifted. ‘I don’t really know,’ she admitted. ‘He’ll be here in about half an hour. I suppose I’d better get my things together.’

‘I put your holdall in my bedroom.’

‘Thanks.’ Sue followed her into the bedroom and watched while she unzipped the bag to check the contents.

‘So you’re not coming back, then?’

‘I suppose that depends.’

‘On whether you choose Gianfranco or a baby?’

Hearing it put so bluntly made Dervla blanch.

‘You know, I never even knew you wanted a baby. I thought you were totally all right with the situation.’

‘I was, or at least I thought I was,’ she amended huskily. ‘Maybe,’ she speculated, pushing her hair from her face with the crook of one elbow as she bent forward to pick up her toiletries from the floor, ‘I’d just never met a man whose children I wanted to have.’

‘You really love him, don’t you?’

Dervla gave a laugh, pulled a scarf from her bag and, bunching her hair at the base of her neck, wound it around to secure it there. ‘He’s the only one who doesn’t seem to realise I do, which, considering he’s supposed to have a mind like a steel trap, is kind of ironic.’

‘You could tell him?’

Dervla turned and angled her helpful friend an incredulous look. ‘It’s the last thing he wants to hear.’

‘Maybe he should hear it. What are you going to do about the fertility treatment?’

‘I suppose I’ll just have to forget it.’

‘Can you?’

Dervla’s face creased with anguish as she admitted, ‘It won’t be easy. It was much easier to accept never having a child of my own while I knew there was no hope, but now …’ Dervla stopped, unable to continue as her voice became totally suspended by tears.

Her visit to the fertility specialist had opened up all sorts of possibilities she hadn’t let herself think about before.

Before Gianfranco had entered her life she had genuinely believed that she had accepted her infertility. There were, after all, other things in life than children.

It didn’t make her any less of a woman.

Or did it, in Gianfranco’s eyes at least?

She had never been able to push the question from her mind. He was such a terrific father to Alberto it seemed impossible to her that he wouldn’t want other children and a woman who could provide those children.

As it turned out her fears had been totally unfounded. Gianfranco didn’t want her babies.

‘The chances of me conceiving naturally are virtually zero. Or “entering miracle territory”, to quote the fertility specialist I saw.’

‘You’ve already been to see a specialist?’

Dervla could understand her friend’s surprise. It was a bit of a turn-about for someone who had always said she couldn’t understand women who put themselves through repeated courses of IVF when statistically the chances of conceiving were so low.

‘I know I said there was no way I’d put myself through that sort of thing, but at the time it wasn’t a viable option for me. If you can’t have something it makes life easier if you tell yourself you don’t really want it.

‘The doctor was cautiously optimistic, but this is a new technique and they’re looking for suitable patients to be involved in a clinical trial. The chances are it wouldn’t have worked anyway,’ she said, zipping the bag and hefting it onto her shoulder.

Was she going to allow her reluctance to let go of that faint possibility kill her marriage stone-dead?

‘Marriage is about compromise,’ she said, as much for her own benefit as Sue’s. Halfway to the door she stopped and turned, her eyes filled with tears she refused to allow to fall.

‘You know, every time I feel like I’m getting close he pushes me away. He doesn’t care for me the way I—’ She stopped abruptly. Regretting and deeply embarrassed by the impulsive confidence the moment it left her lips, Dervla lifted her chin to a determined angle and smiled mechanically as her eyes slid from Sue’s. ‘I’d better go downstairs and wait for Eduardo.’

She was on the stairs when Sue’s voice drifted down the stairwell echoing against the concrete walls.

‘Maybe he cares too much, Dervla, and it scares him. Just a thought …’

Sue meant well, but she didn’t know Gianfranco; he wasn’t scared of anything.

The limousine was waiting for her. The chauffeur jumped out when he saw her and took her bag, enquiring politely after her health.

Dervla slid into the back with a murmured, ‘Hello, Eduardo.’

As the engine purred to life she was unable to prevent her thoughts returning to the first time she had travelled in this car. It had been a day for firsts: her first trip in a limo and her first time with a man.

Neither had been planned. She had not woken up that day and thought, Hey, this would be a good day to lose my virginity. Who can I think of to oblige? And if he owns a limo that would be a ‘two birds with one stone’ scenario.