LITMIR.BIZ

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should I know what you would or wouldn’t do?’ Her voice was really shaking now. ‘You’re a stranger to me now, Renzo—or maybe you always were. So eager to think badly of someone. So quick to apportion blame.’

      ‘And what conclusion would you have come to,’ he demanded, ‘if you’d arrived home to find a seedy stranger leaving and a costly piece of jewellery missing?’

      ‘I might have stopped to ask questions before I started accusing.’

      ‘Okay. I’ll ask them now. What was he doing there?’

      ‘He turned up out of the blue.’ She pushed away a sweat-damp curl which was sticking to her clammy cheek. ‘He’d seen a photo of me at the ball. He was the last person I expected or wanted to see.’

      ‘Yet you offered him a beer.’

      Because she’d been afraid. Afraid of the damage Drake could inflict if he got to Renzo before she did because she hadn’t wanted her golden present to come tumbling down around her ears. But it had come tumbling down anyway, hadn’t it?

      ‘I thought he would blackmail me by telling you about my mother,’ she said at last, in a low voice. ‘Only now you know all my secrets.’

      ‘Do I?’ he questioned coolly.

      She didn’t flinch beneath that quizzical black gaze. She kept her face bland as her old habit for self-preservation kept her lips tightly sealed. He knew her mother had been a drug addict and that was bad enough, but what if she explained how she had funded her habit? Darcy could imagine only too well how that contemptuous look would deepen. Something told her there were things this proud man would find intolerable and her mother’s profession was one of them. Who knew how he might try to use it against her?

      Suddenly, she realised she would put nothing past him. He had accused her of all kinds of things—including using her virginity as some kind of bartering tool. Why shouldn’t she keep secrets from him when he had such a brutal opinion of her?

      ‘Of course you do. I’m the illegitimate daughter of a junkie—how much worse could it be?’ She sucked in a deep breath and willed herself to keep her nerve. ‘Look, Renzo, I know I’m expecting your baby and it must be the last thing you want but maybe we can work something out to our mutual satisfaction. I don’t imagine you’ll want anything more to do with me but I shan’t make any attempt to stop you from having regular contact with your son. In fact, I’ll do everything in my power to accommodate access to him.’ She forced a smile. ‘Every child should have a father.’

      ‘That’s good of you,’ he said softly before elevating his dark eyebrows enquiringly. ‘So what do you propose we do, Darcy? Perhaps you’d like me to start making regular payments until the baby is born? That way you could give up work and not have to worry.’

      Hardly able to believe he was being so acquiescent, Darcy sat up in bed a little, nervously smoothing the thin sheet with her hand. ‘That’s a very generous offer,’ she said cautiously.

      ‘And in the meantime you could look for a nice house to live in for when our son arrives—budget no obstacle, obviously. In the country of your choice—that, too, goes without saying.’

      She flashed him an uncertain smile. ‘That’s…that’s unbelievably kind of you, Renzo.’

      ‘And perhaps we could find you a street paved with gold while we’re at it? That way you could bypass me completely and simply help yourself to whatever it was you wanted?’

      It took a moment or two for her to realise he was being sarcastic but the darkly sardonic look on his face left her in no doubt. ‘You were joking,’ she said woodenly.

      ‘Yes, I was joking,’ he bit back. ‘Unless you think I’m gullible enough to write you an open cheque so you can go away and bring up my son in whatever chaotic state you choose? Is that your dream scenario? Setting yourself up for life with a rich but absent babyfather?’

      ‘As if,’ she returned, her fingers digging into the thin hospital sheet. ‘If I had gone looking for a wealthy sperm donor, I’d have chosen someone with a little more heart than you!’

      Her words were forceful but as Renzo absorbed her defiant response he noticed that her face had gone as white as the sheet she was clutching. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, Darcy,’ he said, self-reproach suddenly rippling through him.

      ‘Being able to hurt me would imply I cared.’ Her mouth barely moved as she spoke. ‘And I don’t. At least, not about you—only about our baby.’

      Her fingers fluttered over the swell of her belly and Renzo’s heart gave a sudden leap as he allowed his gaze to rest on it. ‘I am prepared to support you both.’ His voice thickened and deepened. ‘But on one condition.’

      ‘Let me guess. Sole custody for you, I suppose? With the occasional access visit for me, probably accompanied by some ghastly nanny of your choice?’

      ‘I’m hoping it won’t come to that,’ he said evenly. ‘But I will not have a Sabatini heir growing up illegitimately.’ He walked over to the window and stared out at the heavy winter clouds before turning back again. ‘This child stands to inherit my empire, but only if he or she bears my name. So yes, I will support you, Darcy—but it will be on my terms. And the first, non-negotiable one is that you marry me.’

      She stared at him. ‘You have to be out of your mind,’ she whispered.

      ‘I was about to say that you have no choice but it seems to me you do. But be warned that if you refuse me and continue to live like this—patently unable to cope and putting our child at risk—I will be on my lawyers so fast you won’t believe it. And I will instruct them to do everything in their power to prove you are an unfit mother.’

      Darcy shivered as she heard the dark determination in his voice. Because wouldn’t that bit be easy? If that situation arose he would start digging around in her past—and what a bonanza of further unsavoury facts he would discover. The drug addict bit was bad enough, but would the courts look favourably on the child of a prostitute without a single qualification to her name, one who was struggling to make ends meet and who had been admitted to hospital with severe exhaustion? Of course they wouldn’t. Not when she was up against a world-famous architect with more money than he knew what to do with.

      She licked her lips, naked appeal in her eyes. ‘And if the marriage is unbearable, what then? If I do want a divorce sometime in the future, does that mean you won’t give me one?’

      He shook his head. ‘I’m not going to keep you a prisoner, Darcy—you have my word on that. Perhaps we could surprise ourselves by negotiating a relationship that works. But that isn’t something we need to think about today. My priority is to get you out of here and into a more favourable environment, if you agree to my terms.’ His gaze swept over her, settling at last on her face so that she was captured by the dark intensity of that look. ‘So…do I have your consent? Will you be my wife?’

      A hundred reasons to refuse flooded into her mind but at that precise moment Darcy felt her son kicking. The unmistakable shape of a tiny heel skimmed beneath the surface of her belly and a powerful wave of emotion flooded over her. All she wanted was the best for her child, so how could she possibly subject him to a life like the one she had known? A life of uncertainty, with the gnawing sense of hunger. A life spent living on the margins of society with all the dangers that entailed. Secondhand clothes and having to make do. Free meals at school and charity trips to the seaside. Did she want all that for her little boy?

      Of course she didn’t.

      She stared into Renzo’s face—at all the unshakable confidence she saw written on his shuttered features. It would be easier if she felt nothing for him but she wasn’t self-deluding enough to believe that. She thought how infuriating it was that, despite his arrogance and determination to get his own way, she should still want him. But she did. Her mind might not be willing but her flesh was very weak. Even though he’d wounded her with his words and was blackmailing her into marriage—she couldn’t deny the quiver

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