Seeing that she was about to close the door in his face, Jago planted a powerful hand in the middle and pushed it open.

‘She won’t be marrying him.’

Given no choice but to let him in, Libby backed away from the door and glared at him. ‘It took years for her to recover when you walked out last time,’ she said frostily. ‘Because of what you did she’s avoided men like the plague. Don’t think Alex and I are going to stand by and let you do it again.’

‘I’m not going to hurt her.’ Jago stood still, wondering why he felt the need to explain himself to Katy’s sister. He wasn’t in the habit of explaining himself to anyone. ‘I came to finish a conversation. She finally told me everything this morning.’

Libby’s blue eyes were suddenly wary. ‘What do you mean, everything?’

Pushing away the slight niggle that he wasn’t playing fair, Jago took instant advantage. He needed the information. He needed to know.

‘Everything. I know about the baby.’ It was no more than an educated guess but he could see from the look in his eyes that he’d hit the jackpot.

‘She told you that?’ Libby’s eyes narrowed. ‘She didn’t mention it to me this evening.’

Jago’s fabled intellect was working overtime, trying to map out a conversation that would give him the information he needed without revealing that there had been no confession.

‘Let’s just say we’ve finally started talking about things we should have talked about a long time ago. It must have been terrible for her.’

‘It was terrible for all of us. We thought she was going to die for a while,’ Libby said softly, her eyes clouded by unpleasant memories. ‘She was devastated when you left, but then to lose the baby was the final straw. And she was so ill.’

She lost the baby?

His baby?

Stunned by the news, Jago masked his expression, determined to elicit all the facts. ‘She was in hospital?’

‘Of course.’ Libby frowned, as if surprised that he should ask such a strange question. ‘It was such a bad fall they were really worried about her.’

Jago was battling with the shock of discovering that Katy had been pregnant when he’d left her and had then lost the baby. He was utterly appalled by the notion that he’d somehow failed to protect her. And confused. How could she have become pregnant?

His hard jaw clenched. Had her father known she was pregnant? And why had she fallen?

His brain was still scanning through a variety of equally distasteful scenarios when the door opened and Katy walked into the room.

Dressed for an evening out, she looked incredibly beautiful in a silky black dress and he felt his body tighten in the most basic of male responses. He adored her curves. Like most men, his preference was for women to be shaped like women rather than sticks, and Katy was every inch a woman. The only thing that was wrong with her appearance was her hair.