Claiming His One-Night Baby. Michelle Smart

      NATASHA HAD TO wait until they were back in his car before she had an inkling of what Matteo was thinking.

      ‘This changes everything,’ he said after a long period of silence.

      ‘Not really,’ she refuted quietly. ‘You already knew it could be yours.’

      ‘I know, I was praying that it wasn’t,’ he spat.

      She dug her nails into the palms of her hands. She’d had two weeks to prepare for this moment, researching everything she could about pregnancy whilst hiding any nausea or backache from her steady stream of visitors.

      If she hadn’t been in such shock at the test coming up positive—who could expect to fall pregnant on their very first time of making love?—she would have been able think much more quickly on her feet and not put Matteo through the turmoil he must have been in over the past fortnight. When he’d asked when she’d last been intimate with Pieta her brain had been too frazzled to think of a straight-up lie. How badly she’d wanted to tell him the truth and spare him all the uncertainty.

      The truth would shatter him. The truth would shatter everyone.

      It had to be this way. As hard and as painful as it was, it was the lesser of two evils.

      If there was a hell she would surely be sent to it for all the lies of omission she’d had to tell and would continue having to tell.

      ‘Do you have any idea of the nightmare you’ve pulled me into?’ he said scathingly, driving them out of the city and into the Tuscan hills.

      ‘The nightmare I’ve pulled you into?’ she retorted, raising her voice. ‘As far as I recall, you were there too. I accept I behaved badly but you behaved badly too so don’t you dare place all the blame on me.’

      He changed gear with so much force she thought the gearstick would snap.

      His jaw clenched, he drove them on in silence.

      As a rule, Natasha loved Tuscany. She loved the glimpses of vineyards and olive groves, the old hidden monasteries that would suddenly spring into view, some old and decrepit, others renovated, beautiful whatever their states. Today the scenery passed her by without notice. Not until they entered a town they hadn’t travelled through on their way to Florence did she realise he was taking a different route back.