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be alone,” he said. “Able to choose when you share your life and bed with someone, and able to go home again when you’re tired of the work that being with another person takes.”
    “It sounds like an empty life,” she said sadly.
    His jaw tightened only slightly, but she knew she’d scored a hit. What she didn’t know was why. She’d spent the past few years reading about him in the papers, and he seemed anything but lonely or empty. Yet he reacted to her words as if he had been. It made her wonder what he kept hidden from the world.
    “Show me the scar,” he commanded her, and her feelings of empathy dissolved like smoke.
    Tina clenched her teeth together. She wanted to refuse, but what was the point? She
was
pregnant with his child. She’d started this ball rolling down the hill and she had no choice but to go along for the ride.
    Angrily, she ripped her shirt from her jeans and shoved the waistband down just enough for him to see the short scar running diagonally across her lower abdomen. She heard his breath hiss in, and then his fingertips slid along her skin, tracing the edges.
    Tina went utterly still while inside her body sizzled and sparked like fireworks on New Year’s Eve. Flame followed in the wake of his fingers, and pain, as well. Not from the scar—it was too old to hurt—but from the strength of the need that took up residence in her core and refused to abate.
    Nico looked up then, his eyes reflecting the same heat that she knew must be in her own. With a strength of will she would have never guessed she possessed, she pushed his hand away and hastily tucked her shirt back in. Her cheeks were hot, and she refused to look at him.
    He didn’t speak for a long moment. When he did, his voice was more tender than she’d expected it to be.
    “It was you.”
    Tina realized that tears were pricking her eyes. She looked up at him, uncaring if he saw the emotion written on her face.
    “I wish it hadn’t been,” she told him truthfully. Once, she’d fantasized about him, when she’d been young and naive and didn’t know what making love meant. She’d wanted him to fall in love with her, to kiss her and marry her and think she was the most beautiful woman alive—that’s all she knew when she’d been a teenager, but it had been her happy fantasy for at least a year. And then, once he’d gone away, she’d continued to dream about him.
    Yes, she’d wanted him, but not like this. Not with this kind of animosity and mistrust. What had happened between them in Venice, beautiful though it might have been, was a mistake.
    His lips thinned, the corners of his mouth white with suppressed anger. Though they were true, she wished she could take back the words, if only to try and rebuild whatever fragile peace they might have made, but it was too late.
    The car stopped while she tried to think of something to say, and the driver came to open the door. Silently, Nico ushered her into the obstetrician’s office, his fingers firm and burning in her back. His scent wrappedaround her senses and made her throat ache with memories of their night together.
    The girl on duty at the front desk didn’t even look up as they approached. She handed over a clipboard and told Tina to fill it out without ever once making eye contact.
    “We are expected,” Nico said tightly, “and I am a busy man.”
    The girl’s head snapped up, her eyes widening as she recognized the man standing before her. “Signore Gavretti—I mean, my lord—forgive me. Please come this way.”
    From that moment on, things moved quickly. Tina was shown into an ultrasound room and made to disrobe. After the technician took images and dated the pregnancy, she dressed and went into the doctor’s office where Nico sat silently sending messages on his phone. A few moments later, the doctor arrived and talked to them about her health, the baby and what needed to happen every few weeks.
    There would be regular ultrasounds, and at twenty weeks