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But then he would say that, wouldn’t he? Holly thought, unimpressed Of course he had found the silly note she had left behind and he had done nothing with it And in doing nothing he had taught her all she needed to know about how he saw her She had gone over the events of thatin her one out for a walk to get a break froetherness had already worn thin He had ignored her note one He had seen that night as a casual one-night stand that he had no desire to repeat

‘Whatever It’s pointless to discuss it after the amount of tied thinly ‘I didn’t co…er…physical I ca much more important’

At her emphasis, Vito raised a level dark brow in cool querywith i steadily colder and less welco Naturally She had taken sex off the lunch table, as it were, and he was no longer interested in anything she ht have to say to him And ould he be interested? She was poor and he was rich He was educated and she was more of a self-educated person, which ely successful and a high achiever while she worked in dead-end jobs without a career ladder for advancement It was incredible, she finally conceded, that they had ever got involved in the first place

‘More important?’ Vito prompted, his irritation barely hidden

Defiance and ue combined inside Holly She had held on to her temper but it was a close-run battle His assu him for another sexual encounter had shocked her, possibly because she had persuaded herself that they had shared so more than sex Now she saw her illusions for the pitiful lies that they were, lies she had told herself to bolster her sagging self-estee round with a massive tummy

‘Yes,her chin and siht ere together’

Vito froze as if she had threatened to fling a grenade at hi bone structure suddenly clearly etched below his skin by raw tension ‘You said you were on the pill—’

Holly wasn’t in the o into the intricacies of missed pills and antibiotic treatment ‘You must know that every form of contraception has a failure rate and I’nant but I had no way of contacting you, particularly not when you had given me a fake name’

Vito was in shock Indeed Vito could never recall being plunged into such a state of shock before Everything he had assumed had been turned upside down and inside out with those sinant

‘And do you usually reintroduce yourself with a very evocative Santa hat and a sprig of holly when this happens?’ he heard hi the words ‘Is this some sort of a scam?’

Holly’s selo is not a scaht’

‘You co and throw this announceround out in condemnation, no fan of major surprises in his life, as yet not even capable of thinking of what she was telling hi struck him as a possibility as remote as the moon He had known fatherhood was on the cards somewhere down the line if he married Marzia but he had also known that neither of them were in any hurry to start a family

‘No, I did not If I challenged you it would be an awful lot tougher!’ Holly shot back at hiht ot a C-section Tough is working as a childh sleep You wouldn’t know tough if it leapt on you and bit you…because in your whole blasted spoilt-rotten life you have had everything handed to you on a plate!’

A dark line of colour had delineated Vito’s high cheekbones as he viewed her in growing disbelief ‘That is enough’

‘No, it’s not enough, and you do not tell h!’ Holly fired back at hier