Chapter Seven
CHAPTER SEVEN
S HE FELT DEVASTATED . Standing there looking up at the horror on his face. She hadn’t been able to let him think that she was sick. She just couldn’t do it. Even after...
When she had seen him charging up the steps she had been certain that he had known somehow. How could he? She wasn’t certain, but he was well-connected with the medical world, and she wouldn’t put it past him to put some kind of alert on her name, privacy laws or not.
They hadn’t used a condom the night that they were together, and surely he must realize that.
She hadn’t thought about it until it was far too late to do anything about it. But he must have... Luca Salvatore did not forget anything. And yet, he had forgotten a condom. And she was living with the consequences of it.
Though, she had decided that she was not... She wasn’t sad about those consequences.
She had been shell-shocked at first, of course. But the more she had sat with that, the more she had realized she wanted this baby. That she wanted a chance to build a real, healthy connection with her child, to love someone wholly and utterly without the need for protection. Not only that, she was more than able to take care of a child physically. She had an extremely supportive employer, she made enough money.
She knew enough not to repeat the mistakes of her parents.
And perhaps it wasn’t ideal for her baby to not know its father, but she had thought that maybe someday in the future...
Except she couldn’t imagine Luca as a father.
Staring at him now, at the abject horror on his face, she still couldn’t.
He hadn’t come for her. He had come for her excellent personal assistant skills. He had not come for the baby, he had come for his own convenience.
She hated that moment where she’d hoped it was for her. She hated herself for feeling it, for being so weak with him. Always.
She had decided that she would not be telling him about the child. Except... Except then that horrible, stricken look on his face when he had thought that she might be genuinely ill.
“You cannot be,” he said.
“I assure you, I am. Medically confirmed and everything.”
“No,” he said. “That isn’t possible. I have taken my share of lovers, and I have always exercised precautions.”
“Luca,” she said, outraged on so many levels right at that moment. “You didn’t use a condom.”
Yes, they were in fact standing on the steps of the Milan fashion house yelling about condoms, but at least they were speaking English. So probably only three quarters of the people around them knew what they were talking about.
“Yes, I did,” he said. “I never forget such things.”
“You did,” she said. “You did with me. You forgot, because you had a...a human moment. That’s what people do, Luca. They throw away all of their good sense so that they can have an orgasm. And that’s what we did. We didn’t think of anything. Not the repercussions, not the consequences to each other, not the devastation that it might create. We decided that nothing else mattered except being together, and look at what it’s gotten us.”
He looked undone. And the thing was, she was pretty sure that he was more upset about forgetting to use a condom than he was about her being pregnant. More upset that he had been called out on overlooking something, which she was entirely certain he had never done before.
“You must come with me,” he said.
“I must do no such thing. I am on my lunch break, and I intend to go eat.”
“Then I will go with you.”
“No,” she said, beginning to walk away from him.
“You cannot stop me from walking on a public street,” he said.
“I could call the police and tell them that you’re harassing me.”
“People know who we are,” he said. “They know that we have an association.”
“You’re a genius, Luca. You cannot be unaware that women are often harassed by men they know. Particularly men they had slept with.”
“It is not harassing you to want to know more about the situation that you find yourself in.” He paused for a moment. “The situation we find ourselves in.”
She let out a heavy sigh. “Oh, Luca. You don’t have to do anything in response to this. I had already decided.”
“Are you not keeping the baby?”
“I am,” she said. “I had a difficult relationship with my parents, and I am never going to have a family if I don’t make one myself. This is an opportunity for me to do that. I’m financially able. And therefore it just seems...like a reasonable time for me to have a baby. But I don’t need you to be involved.”
He frowned. “But I am the baby’s father.”
“Yes. You are. But many fathers are not involved in the day-to-day lives of their children.”
“But those men are bad fathers.”
“Maybe not. Not if it benefits everybody for the man to stay away.”
“You think the child would be better off without me?”
He said that with so much genuine wonder that it made her feel like she had been stabbed clean through. It was easy to think that Luca couldn’t be wounded. Yet it was clear she had hurt him.
It was so difficult, because the truth was, she suspected that he wouldn’t be a good father because of the way that he was. Because of everything about him. Because of the way that he had to live his life. And yet she didn’t want to hurt him.
She hated the revelation that she was able to hurt him.
Luca had always seemed invulnerable and untouchable, and today he seemed undone in a way that she didn’t care for.
She especially didn’t want to be the cause of it.
“Think about it,” she said. “You don’t want a child. You can’t even handle having to get a new personal assistant. If you think your life is disordered now, think of how disordered it will be when there’s a baby. You won’t be able to do things whenever you want, you will be subject to the schedule of another human being. You’ve never even had a relationship, have you?”
He shook his head. “No. I haven’t.”
“And why is that?”
“It doesn’t fit into my life.”
“Exactly. And I knew that about you. I knew that about you when I slept with you, and I know it about you now. I never expected more from you than one night.”
“You did not ask me what I wanted.”
“You just said it doesn’t fit into your life.”
He met her gaze, his eyes like steel. “Then my life will have to change. Because it already has. Because you are pregnant with my baby, and I will not be a bad father.”
“I don’t know what you think—”
“You will marry me. And return to Rome with me today.”
Luca’s brain was working as fast as it ever had. He had to react appropriately. It had never been more important. He was a genius. He knew that. He understood the inner workings of the human body in ways that most did not. His brain was filled with an enormous amount of education, but while he understood the inner workings of the human body he often did not understand the workings of the human mind. The human soul.
It hadn’t bothered him, not in general. Because he had fashioned a life that catered to his strengths and not his weaknesses. Because what he was accomplishing with the human body mattered much more than him connecting with a few other people.
He had assumed, when he had bothered to think about it at all, that this was simply the balance of things. If you could understand one, you would not be graced with understanding of the other.
But he needed both now. He needed all of it now.
Because he knew one thing for certain, he would not be shut out of his child’s life. He would not have his child thinking that its father didn’t want them.
That was impossible.
He knew what that felt like. He had been a motherless boy, because his mother had died. She had not chosen to be away from him, and it had been an unbearable pain.
But in many ways he had been fatherless. With the man living in the same house that he did. In many ways, he had not had a father, and that was the other man’s choice.
If any one thing had devastated him in a way he could not find purpose for, it was that.
He had lost his mother, but at least in that he had found the aim of his life.
He found nothing in the rejection of his father except pain.
He could not bear the idea of being that for his child.
Could not bear the thought of a child walking out in the world with a wound because he had not been able to...change.
“I have a job here,” she said.
“Can you do it remotely?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to.”
He wanted to offer to move his own work, and yet he did not think that he could manage that. He was on the verge of changing many things in his life, but that felt a bridge too far.
“We can sort that out later. It does not have to be all the time. But while you are pregnant I want you near me. I want to be able to see for myself that you are okay.”
“I’m going to be fine. Many, many women carry babies and give birth every year.”
“And some of them die.”
He had meant that to be an expression of concern. She looked at him in horror. “Luca,” she said. “No pregnant woman wants to hear that.”
“I’ve never spoken to a pregnant woman before, not as far as I know, so how would I know that?”
“Clearly. Clearly you never have.”
“Marry me,” he said.
“No,” she said. “You ran me down in the streets of Milan to demand that I come back and work for you after we had a night together. I don’t want to marry that man. I don’t want to marry a man who can’t even acknowledge that he forgot to use a condom with me, because he needs so desperately to maintain his control.”
“I admit it then,” he said. “I lost control with you. I didn’t even realize that I did. Do you have any idea how terrifying that is? I have never once in my entire life done something that I wasn’t fully aware of.”
It galled him to admit it to her. It was something he hadn’t even fully been able to admit to himself.
“I think that isn’t true. I think that you have done a great many things in your life you’re unaware of, it’s just that you don’t realize you’ve done them because they affect other people’s feelings. And you don’t care about that. You never have. Everything in your life is about you. And I... I accept that on some level, I understand it. I even... I understand why it needs to be that way. But that doesn’t mean they are the kind of man I want to marry. Caring about you would be a terrible mistake. It would end only in pain.”
He felt like he had been slashed about the chest. Felt like he had been physically wounded. What she had said about him was so...so desperately unflattering. So outright, plainly...true. He was everything that she said. His life was centered wholly on himself.
Hearing her say it made it seem like less a necessity of his work, of himself, and more of a flaw.
And he would have to change it, but in order to do that he would need her to come back to Rome with him. In order to do that, he would need her to come with him. He would need his child. So he had to stay uncompromising, he had to continue to see things his way in this moment so that he could do the things that she was suggesting he try to do. At least, that’s what he thought she was doing.
“You must let me,” he said. “You must let me try.”
“You can try by inches. You can try by coming to see me. By fostering a relationship with me that has nothing to do with the company. By...coming to visit your child after they’re born.”
“No,” he said. “You must marry me because that is the right thing to do. Because statistically children do better when they have two parents in the home.”
“Statistically, maybe, but when one of the parents is a genius billionaire, and the other one is financially solvent herself, I’m pretty sure that they might be able to defy generalized statistics.”
“If you care about this baby then you must want what’s best.”
“Of course I want what’s best. Don’t forget that you found out about this baby fifteen minutes ago and I have known for a while now.”
“You weren’t going to tell me.”
He might have gone his whole life never knowing. She had thought it would be best.
It was like a stab wound. He did not indulge his feelings. He never had. If he did...he would never get anything done. He practiced perfect control in all areas of his life because if he did not, the world would control him .
His father had despised him. Everything he was. Everything he thought and did. To live in that sort of environment and feel the weight of his every disapproving breath would have killed Luca. And so he had learned to close off his own sensitivities and focus on his mind, not his body or his heart.
But she had gotten to him.
Deep.
She shook her head. “I really wasn’t. Because I knew that it would end... I knew that it would be this. Proclamations and demands, and forcing me to meet your expectations.”
“You knew that I would want the baby, and you were going to withhold them from me?” Any guilt that he might’ve felt at forcing her hand now was completely mitigated by that.
“That isn’t exactly...”
“You will marry me. Or I will fight you for full custody of the child.”
“How dare you?” She took a step toward him, and he was almost certain she was going to strike him. “How dare you threaten me.”
“It isn’t a threat, it is a fact. One of us has to have primary custody of the child, you think it should be you simply because you’re a woman, simply because you’re the mother. I do not. I think that it should be me because I possess greater resources than you do.”
“Financially, maybe, but when we are talking about the thimble where you keep your emotions, believe me when I tell you your resources are not greater than mine.”
“Do you think I’m this way because I feel nothing?” He leaned closer to her, the rage inside of him building, growing, expanding, claiming every part of him, taking control of him. “I am this way because I feel everything. And if I paused every moment of every day to ponder those feelings I would never get anything done. I would never do anything. If I felt all the things within myself, there would be no new screenings. There would be no new discoveries. I would be lying on a floor somewhere probably addled out of my mind on some substance or another trying to figure out a way to stem the tide of pain that lived within me. Do not ever tell me that I don’t feel as much as other people. The air around me offends me. Why do you think I need everything managed the way that I do? I feel everything .”
She looked shocked by that. Good. He did not speak about himself. It wasn’t an interesting topic of conversation, and he wasn’t friends with anybody. So there was never a reason to try and explain to another person how the world worked for him.
It had never been a reason. But there was one now.
“And if you have a child who was like me, if you have a child who cares only about toy cars, and doesn’t know how to speak to other children, then what? Because I know... I know what it’s like.”
“It doesn’t give you the right to force me into things,” she said.
“The way I am doesn’t give you the right to exclude me from them either. And because we are both immovable, we are at an impasse. And the one with the most power is the one that can force the bend. I have the power, cara . You can decide what you wish to do in response. Bend or break.”
Any guilt he might’ve felt was stemmed by his resolve.
Her eyes filled with tears. And he did not let himself care.
“Fine. I’ll marry you. Legally. I’ll give you what you’re asking for, but on paper only. You will... You will make me second-in-command at your company. But I will not work directly beneath you. I will work in the public relations portion.”
“That is acceptable.”
“I want my own wing of your house. I will not encounter you in a hallway unless I choose to.”
“Done.”
“That means we will not be living in your penthouse.”
“I don’t care. Consider it vacated.”
“If you wish, you could stay there.”
“I will live under the same roof as my child.”
“As you wish.” She looked at him, her gaze hard. “If you make this miserable, believe me when I tell you I know how to make it hard for you too. Because I grew up with parents who were extremely accomplished making each other’s lives hell.”
“And how will that be for the child?”
She looked as if he had struck her. “I know enough to know how to keep it away from the child, because that is something my parents declined to do.”
“Do you think they also thought they were not including you in their games?”
“Don’t speak to me of games. Not when you’re playing them just the same.”
He shook his head. “This is not a game to me. You will be my wife. There will be no argument.”
“I’m not sleeping with you.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
They never made it to lunch. Instead, she was bundled back on his plane, she quit her job over the phone, and they were back in Rome before dinner.
“I’m sorry, I don’t have this imaginary house you imagine we will be sharing different wings of,” he said. “We’ll have to make do with another room in the penthouse tonight.”
He gestured to the door, and then went off to his own room.
He closed himself inside, and let the silence bear down on him. Everything in his life had changed in a single day. He preferred change to take place over a very long period of time, slowly and surely, if it had to occur at all.
But he would marry Polly as soon as he could obtain a license. He would change.
For his child, he would change everything.
Because everything he was, everything he had done until this point had been a tribute to his mother. And what would any of it matter if he could not pay tribute to the flesh and blood he had created?
It would not matter at all.
And neither would he.
Polly didn’t think that he would be a good father. But it didn’t matter what she thought.
What mattered was what he would do.