One Last Night by Melanie Milburne

going to drop into a faint. But somehow she managed to get to the front door and opened it, bleary-eyed and sick as she was.
    'Dio! What the hell?' Giorgio instantly sprang into action. He took her by the upper arms, holding her steady, sending a curt command to Gonzo to back off. 'Are you sick, Maya?' he asked, his frown so tense and serious it made his head ache.
    'I've got the most awful nausea,' she said weakly. 'I've been sick for the last hour. Gonzo's food set me off…'
    'Right, that settles it,' he said. 'I will send someone over to pack up your things. You need to rest.
    I will feed Gonzo in the future. You need to concentrate on looking after this baby. The first thing that needs to happen is a doctor's appointment. Right now, as soon as I can arrange it.'

    She pushed back her damp blond hair from her pale forehead. 'I don't want to be told how likely it is I'm going to lose this baby,' she said, her chin wobbling slightly. 'I don't have a great track record.'
    Giorgio felt a hand clutch at his insides. 'You are not going to lose this baby, not if I can help it.'
    She looked up at him with a pained expression. 'You can't control everything, Giorgio; surely you realise that by now?'
    He refused to consider the possibility of failure. He set his jaw, pushing it forward indomitably.
    'We have got this far, Maya,' he said. 'I know it is still early days but you are extremely nauseous. I think I read somewhere that it is a good sign of strong hormonal activity when a woman is so nauseous in the early days of pregnancy. We have to cling to that. To hope that this one will be the success we have hoped for all this time.'
    She turned away from him, her shoulders slumped forward as if already preparing for defeat. 'I'm so frightened to hope,' she said in a whisper-soft voice. 'I feel like a gift has been handed to me but it's not quite in my hands. I can't help feeling it will be snatched away at the last minute if I get my hopes up.'
    'You can't think like that, Maya,' he insisted. 'You have to remain positive.'
    She turned and faced him. 'There are no guarantees, though, are there?' she asked. 'I know you don't like talking about it but you lost your sister when she was three months old. She was a living, breathing, interactive baby. This baby is a tiny embryo, not even independent of my body.
    What hope is there that we won't lose him or her in the future, just like your little sister?'
    A shutter came down over his face, just like a heavy curtain over a stage. Maya knew she had overstepped the mark. She had mentioned the unmentionable. But she longed to be reassured, she longed for the confidence she lacked-that this pregnancy would be the glue that would stick their marriage back into place.
    'This is an entirely different situation,' he said in a flat emotionless tone. 'We have been down this path before. It is tricky and uncertain but there are things we can cling to in hope this time around. This is a natural conception, one that occurred a long time after your previous miscarriages. This is a totally different ballgame. We did this all by ourselves: no hormone injections, no temperature charts-we just got down and did what had to be done and now we are expecting a baby. We have to go with this; we have to take it as it comes.'
    She pressed her lips together, making them as white as her face. 'And if we fail?'
    He gave her a look of steely determination. 'We are not going to fail, Maya, not this time.'
    Maya longed for his confidence, if indeed what he was exhibiting was confidence. She had a feeling he was as worried as she was, but he was not letting on. 'Giorgio…' she began uncertainly. 'What did you feel when I lost the other babies?'

    He drew in a breath and let it out in a slow uneven stream. 'I was devastated for you and for me. I know I didn't show it, but it's what I've always done in a crisis.' He paused. 'I had to be strong so you could lean on me. I didn't realise until now how wrong that approach