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The announceut It turned her to stone, freezing her usually expressive face, but she could feel the blood slowly draining away from below her skin, the suddenof pain deep down in her stomach

Could he know… could he possibly know about the child she had miscarried? A shred of sanity returned to soothe her There was absolutely no way that Vito could know about her pregnancy back then

'You don't have any children?' She had to force the question from between dry, strained lips For the past four years she had rigidly refused to think about the fact that Vito wouldthe children he had always admitted he wanted with another woman, the children she had flatly refused even to consider having with him

'Six e, Carina became ill,' Vito volunteered with visible reluctance 'She had leukaemia With the treatment involved there was naturally no question of even atte to conceive a child'

Ashley was shattered In the ht, it had not even occurred to her to wonder how so young a woht have been a car accident, so like that This was entirely different 'I'ether what he was telling her

'Why should you be?'

'Because I' bitch!' Ashley lanced back at him furiously 'Is my sympathy less acceptable than other people's?'

Pale beneath his dark skin, Vito released his breath in a hiss 'Yes,' he admitted 'Somehow it is'

She was trying to put together what he had so far said A glimmer of the truth threatened and she thrust it away, unable to believe that her own reasoning was leading her in the right direction 'What,' she began a little unsteadily, 'has the fact that you want a child got to do with me?'

'I'ive me that child'

Ashley slid slowly upright in a race A dark, deep flush had overlaid her translucent skin 'You're insane!' she gasped

'I don't see why it should be so impossible a request It's certainly not insane,' Vito countered 'You're absolutely perfect for the role of surrogate mother You don't want children of your own After the child was born ould divorce and you would be free to continue your life as you ithout any interference from me'

Ashley raked a shaking hand through her tousled hair and stared at hi this It's the o out there and marry any one of a dozen women, I'm quite sure, and have a family the same way anyone else does!'

'But I don't want another wife' Vito cast her a grim smile 'Not a "forever and ever" wife It would be wickedly unfair of me to marry another woman purely and simply to have a child I could not sustain such an empty pretence of a relationship-'

'But you evidently don't consider it wickedly unfair to do that to me!' Ashley interrupted tempestuously

'There would be no pretences in our relationship and, in any case, you are scarcely in the normal run of your sex You don't even like children You have never had any intention of tying yourself down to such a responsibility or of risking your career by taking tiettably four years ago'

She wanted to scream at him that she had been nineteen years old and as opinionated and untried in her convictions asdistaste fronancy had been fored down by a countless succession of es in pursuit of the son her father had been so selfishly determined to have

'You have years ahead of you in which you couldat him tautly

'But I may never meet someone I wish to marry Apart from that possibility,' Vito rejoined, 'I have no desire to be an elderly father My father was nearly fifty when I was born, and now he's dead We were never close There was too big an age-gap'

He had never told her that his father had been so much older Elena di Cavalieri must have been at least thirty years her husband's junior Ashley's mind shifted away from the side-issue, which was so much more easy to consider than the absolutely i before her A hysterical laugh fluttered in her throat Dear God, if only he knew that he had so nearly become… but then, it hadn't been so nearly, she reically short-lived her pregnancy had been and then reflecting in the saynaecological history of her family, she would be the very last woman he would have approached with such a demand!

'I never dreamt you would even consideryou with an heir,' Ashley delivered, terrified that her perilously thin control would splinter into shards in front of him 'Not with the opinion you have of me'