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       CHAPTER EIGHT

      ‘HOW ARE YOUR PARENTS?’

      Sergio had seen them only once since the wedding. They had come down to London before leaving to go to Tuscany for two weeks. He had taken them out to the restaurant he owned—the very same restaurant where he had met their daughter. He had wined and dined them and no mention had been made of where he was going with Susie. With that well-bred reticence so typical of the upper classes they had steered diplomatically clear of any contentious subjects.

      ‘Fine.’

      ‘Have you mentioned our financial arrangements to them?’

      ‘I’ve said that you won’t be doing a runner,’ Susie told him vaguely.

      Sergio frowned. ‘That’s not really good enough, is it?’

      ‘They understand that just because I’m pregnant it doesn’t mean that we’re going to be walking up the aisle.’

      ‘Even though I expect that is what they would like to see?’

      She shrugged and held his stare. ‘I haven’t gone into lots of detail, but I think they understand that in this day and age people don’t get married because of an accidental pregnancy. They know that you’re…you’re…’

      ‘Not going to leave you in the lurch. But you haven’t mentioned the fact that you’ll be getting a house?’

      ‘I’ve said that I’m looking for somewhere more suitable to live once the baby’s born. They offered to get me somewhere, but I told them that you were insistent on getting involved in the financial side, so you needn’t worry that they don’t see you as a responsible person. They do.’

      ‘And I take it you haven’t mentioned that I asked you to marry me?’

      ‘Why would I do that when we’re not going to be married?’

      It was the first time he had raised the subject for several weeks, and she wondered where she would be now if she had accepted his proposal. Would she now be Mrs Susannah Burzi? It was unfairly alluring and she pushed the thought aside—because if you weren’t embarking on a life of at least hopefully happily married bliss, then what was the point? She could never, would never, see marriage as a convenient arrangement.

      Furthermore, she was still simmering at the thought of a house being bought behind her back, and was gearing up to finding fault—because what did he know about her tastes when it came to houses? He had only ever seen her in her ‘rented hovel’, as he liked to call it. His own apartment was the height of what money could buy, but it wasn’t the sort of thing she personally liked. Too clinical, too lacking in atmosphere.

      She envisaged somewhere smart and modern…maybe in a discreetly upmarket estate.

      Sergio didn’t say anything. With every passing day he could feel her withdrawal. The fire that had raged between them still managed to keep him up at night, but for her it was gradually being snuffed out—overtaken by events that neither of them had anticipated.

      Occasionally, yes, he could feel the heat emanating from her, but often, like now, he could sense her blocking him out. More than anything else he wanted to shake her out of her retreat and return her to the land of the living—which included him.

      Right now her profile was averted, her mouth set in a tight line. He fancied she might be silently cursing him for having found somewhere for her to live, thereby removing all possibility of her returning to the wilds of Yorkshire to take up residence on her parents’ sprawling country estate.

      If they had given her a hard time things might have been slightly different, but they hadn’t. He had known from the very first second he had been introduced to Louise and Robert Sadler that their youngest daughter’s driving need to please them, her keen sense of being the least able of the crew, the one doomed to disappoint, was largely in her imagination.

      She had grown up in the shadow of her enormously academic sister, and both her parents had likewise been hugely academic, gifted in their separate fields. From there had sprung Susie’s oversensitivity—which, in turn, had led her to misinterpret things her parents might have said in the past.

      In fact they had absorbed the whole pregnancy deal with aplomb.

      Hence he knew that whereas before she might have hesitated to ask for their help, things had subtly changed, and the lure of Yorkshire was a very real threat to his plans to get her to remain as close to him as possible.

      He had debated informing her parents that he had proposed, and thereby really throwing the cat among the pigeons, but had regretfully discarded that option—because forcing a woman to do something she didn’t want to do would bring cheaply won and very short-lived success.

      He might enjoy controlling situations, but he drew the line at being a complete fool.

      ‘You could make an effort to not look as though you’re being led to a torture chamber,’ he said drily, and Susie, who had been staring through the window, turned to look at him.

      She wondered if the day would ever come when she would be able to look at him without melting inside. Probably not. And in the meantime the only thing that helped was to avoid looking at him as much as possible.

      ‘Sorry. I was miles away.’

      ‘Thinking about what?’

      ‘Just about the illustration I’m doing at the moment,’ she lied. ‘It’s very intricate.’

      Sergio thought that there was no reason for her