His father had talked about this arranged marriage recently, before departing on his extended holiday. There had been pressure but the pressure had been slight.
An arranged marriage. What suited him from an emotional point of view, not to mention financial point of view, was, deep down, anathema to a man like Giovanni Baresi, who had always enjoyed the highs and lows of an emotional-roller-coaster personal life. His great love had died too young but that had not stopped him from searching for its replacement in every unsuitable nook and cranny.
It had been enough to turn Luca off the whole messy business of falling in love for ever, which was something he suspected his father had never really understood.
So to have the news broken to him that his son had got a girl pregnant because he had been careless, had behaved out of character, would probably bring a sheen to the old man’s eyes.
Luca would have to quench any romantic visions his father might have with brutal finality.
Then he would have to break the glad tidings to Isabella and finally to her parents.
Then the whole world would know and another, different life would begin for him.
He thought of Cornwall and the free, wild girl without make-up and he wondered how she would cope with life in Italy. He concluded, before that thought could go anywhere, that she would cope just fine because she would have limitless supplies of money and that always oiled the nuts and bolts of any discomfort.
He focused on her and narrowed his eyes because she was hardly looking as though she’d won the lottery.
‘This won’t be running along the normal lines,’ he informed her with clipped gravity. ‘There is a lot of unravelling that will have to take place. Unpicking expectations will always be a nightmare and expectations about my eventual nuptials with Isabella have long been embedded. Naturally, there will be disappointment all round. Tell me, how did your father take the news?’
Cordelia hadn’t managed to squeeze a word out. Her head was buzzing. She felt as though she’d been whipped into some other parallel universe, the rules of which she didn’t know and the scenery was not one with which she was familiar.
‘My father?’ she parroted weakly, clinging to the one thing he’d said that made any sense.
‘Was he...surprised? I don’t suppose...’ Luca had the grace to flush ‘...it was what might have been expected of you.’
‘He...he doesn’t know.’ She blushed and looked away.
‘I’m sorry,’ Luca said gruffly and her eyes shot towards him.
She heard the rough sincerity in his voice and for a split second remembered the guy she had given herself to. He hadn’t been this cold-eyed stranger. He’d been the guy who had just told her that he was sorry.
‘Don’t be. Things happen. You can’t always predict the future.’ She cleared her throat. His gaze on her was making her uncomfortable, reminding her of sensations that were no longer appropriate. She sternly told herself that it was precisely because of how he had made her feel that she had ended up here.
‘Actually,’ Luca confessed, ‘I’ve always prided myself on being able to do just that.’
‘In which case, I should be the one apologising.’
‘For leading me astray?’ His eyebrows shot up and the taut cast of his features relaxed into something approaching a smile. ‘As they say, it takes two to tango and I was very much a willing dance partner.’
A sudden sense of danger rippled through her. The hairs on the back of her neck were standing on end and there was a tingle between her legs, a shameful feminine awareness that felt utterly inappropriate given the circumstances.
‘I...’ She cleared her throat to get a grip and directed her thoughts to her poor dad, who had been handed over to the safekeeping of his arch nemesis, Doris. ‘I plan on telling him when I...get back...’
‘This situation is pretty messy for both of us, isn’t it?’ Luca said quietly. ‘How did you manage to get away? I was under the impression that he had quite a hold over you.’
Cordelia shot Luca a wry look from under her lashes. When they weren’t talking about the pregnancy, she could feel herself noticeably relax even though asking about her father wasn’t so much changing the subject as circling around it.
‘I...it’s a long story.’
‘I’m all ears.’
‘One of the women in the village happened to be in the very same chemist’s a million miles away from home where I went to buy a...er...test. I didn’t want to be spotted by anyone I knew and there was no way I could go to the local pharmacy, not unless I wanted the news to be shouted from the rooftops before I got to the end of the street.’
‘And as luck would have it...?’
Cordelia nodded. Their eyes met and for a few seconds, neither looked away. Her heart was thumping like a sledgehammer and a fine perspiration had broken out all over her. She wanted to tear her eyes away but she couldn’t and, in fact, he was the one to break eye contact, a dark flush spreading over his high cheekbones as he did so.
‘As luck would have it,’ she repeated breathlessly. She sucked in some air and steadied herself. ‘The thing is, Doris isn’t just any old nosey parker. She’s had her eye on teaming up with Dad for ages, years, and she used the opportunity when she realised what was going on to nudge her way past the front door.’
‘Surely you could have laughed and told her that it was for someone else.’
‘I could have but I guess I just wasn’t thinking straight at
