Chapter Eight
CHAPTER EIGHT
P OLLY SAT ON the edge of the bed, shell-shocked.
She had said things to Luca that she deeply regretted. Because they had been unnecessarily hurtful. She had been lashing out because she was upset. Because she was afraid. But then he had reacted... He had reacted the way that she had been certain he would. Inflexible, cruel in kind, when he didn’t even mean to be.
She hadn’t told him the honest truth. She hadn’t thought that caring about him would be hell.
But that loving him would be.
She cared about him already. That was the problem. She had cared about him for quite some time, in spite of herself.
And now she had let him drag her back here, had quit her job...
If she had loved her job then perhaps she would have fought harder on that point.
The truth was, it was difficult to care as much about marketing for the fashion house when...she really did believe that Luca was changing the world. And she really had felt in some small part that when she was working with him, she was working in tandem to do so as well.
She believed so strongly in what he was doing.
Part of her was happy to be back working for the company, particularly in a position that suited her better.
None of her was happy about the surrounding circumstances.
She hated herself for the threat that she had issued. Was it so easy for her to decide to be like her parents when it suited her?
They had been so cruel. It had been up to her to manage their feelings, and it had been such a painful existence.
And when backed into a corner, she had been the same. Manipulative, taking things she knew to be weaknesses and exploiting that to hurt the other person.
She was deeply unhappy with herself. And yet, she was so tender regarding the whole situation that she didn’t know what she could’ve done differently.
How could she accuse Luca of not knowing how to deal with people when she had just proven that in a difficult situation she was no better?
The question he’d asked haunted her. Would she know what to do with a child like him?
She wanted to think so. After all, she had been very good with Luca. And not in a sacrificial way. She... She had come to appreciate him. The way that he was. Except then she had been cruel. She had used that as an excuse to allow herself to not deal with the complexities of their situation. Because that was the truth of it.
She had chosen what she had thought to be the path of least resistance.
It had been cowardly.
Maybe that was why she had given in to the marriage demand. Of course, she didn’t want to find herself in a situation where she didn’t have custody of her child, but she had to wonder if in part she had given in as penance. Because when she had heard herself throwing her own reasoning back in his face she had been appalled.
She was appalled by him as well.
Neither of them had been the best versions of themselves.
But they had both been true to type. And even more difficult truths to stomach. He had been inflexible, and she had bent round his inflexibility to whisper poison in his ear.
She had hurt him, and so he had lashed out. She didn’t want to be hurt so she had done the same.
And now she was marrying him.
If she didn’t marry him, she might lose custody of her child. He was a billionaire after all.
More to the point the idea of sharing anything with Luca—especially a human being—seemed exhausting and impossible.
Maybe what you’re really afraid of is living in the in between.
Maybe.
Maybe what really felt impossible was being with him without being with him.
In her ideal scenario, she didn’t have to be with him at all. It made it easier, to just ignore that he’d ever been the biggest part of her life. If she could make him disappear.
But she couldn’t have that so in many ways marrying him seemed easier than...
Than living near him, seeing him, dealing with him, without actually having him.
That made her feel like she was weak but...
She might be weak right now. Just a little. She certainly wasn’t cool, collected Polly who knew how to work a room, but didn’t let it work her.
She felt thoroughly worked .
She stood up from the bed, and wiped at her eyes. She should go and apologize to him. Maybe. Except she was afraid. Afraid of what would happen if she went to his room. Afraid of what would happen if they were alone. Not because of what he would do, but because of what she would do.
He had haunted her dreams this past month.
The terrible truth was, she had missed him. Even the infuriating things about him.
It would be such a terrible thing to love him.
I feel everything...
His words scraped against a raw part of her soul. She didn’t want to consider that. Didn’t want to think about the possibility that he felt more than everyone else. And that was why he was the way that he was. It was easier to dismiss him when she had convinced herself he wouldn’t care.
But she had been confronted with how very much he did care.
With her own callousness, and her own inability to look at another person and really see them.
How could she accuse him of that when she had done the same? How could she act like he was somehow less able to consider other people when it was clear every person did it all the time.
Everyone made themselves the main character.
She had done the same.
She lay down on her bed, and tried not to weep.
But she did anyway.
She could remember crying piteously the first time she was aware of her parents forgetting her birthday. They’d been on a high with each other and had planned a weekend trip away. She’d been left alone at nine to make her own dinner and put herself to bed.
She’d cried, and no one had been there to care.
She had never wanted to be sad and small and crying because she couldn’t get what she wanted from another person, never again.
But here she was, weeping over a man as impossible as the situation she found herself in.
And she couldn’t escape to Rome, because that’s where he was.
She had been running for a very long time, and she had finally reached the end.
The next morning, when Polly got up, it was late, and Luca was nowhere to be found.
But it was past time for him to be at the office, so it stood to reason that he was there. He was a creature of habit.
She maneuvered around the kitchen, which was relatively familiar to her. It was perhaps childish to demand that he buy a whole new house so that they could avoid each other. She had been angry. Furious.
They were going to have to have a talk, and she was going to have to find a way to be fair. Because she hadn’t been.
She had beaten herself up about that until she had fallen asleep. She knew that she was going to have to bite back a few of the more regrettable things that had come out of her mouth.
She went to his very fancy espresso machine and made herself a coffee. Then she stood at the window, looking out at the city below. It was difficult to fully figure out how she had gotten here.
And yet, it was five years in the making.
Of ignoring feelings for him that had been building, of declining to take care of her sex drive. Yeah. That was the problem. Her latent sex drive. And not the fact that she had been wholly obsessed with Luca.
She gritted her teeth. She had heard of pregnancy hormones making women emotional, but she had never heard of pregnancy hormones forcing women to be brazenly honest with themselves. She didn’t like it.
She sat down on the wide, ridiculously large couch that took up most of his living area. And when the door opened behind her, she nearly jumped out of her skin.
“Luca,” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
“I didn’t expect you.”
“Why is that?”
“I assumed that you were at work.”
“Why?”
“Because that is your routine,” she said.
How absurd, to sit here with him and speak to him about work. How absurd the last few days had been. They had been naked. She had tasted this man. He had been inside of her. And yet... He had come after her about the job. And then he had claimed her because she was having his baby.
And still, they weren’t acknowledging the passion.
Truly, her internal honesty was getting to be a little bit much. “I was not at work,” he said. “I was seeing to the business of getting our marriage license.”
“What?”
“Yes. We’re getting married. Now.”
“Now?”
“Yes. Should you like us to wait?”
“I... I assumed that we would be having a wedding.”
“It will be a wedding. Though not one that is traditional or shrouded in ceremony. Simply something legal to ensure that everything is as it ought to be.”
“Oh.”
She had never really given any thought to getting married. She had never thought she would get married.
She scanned herself, trying to see if she felt any sadness over not getting a fancy wedding with a wedding dress and people looking on.
No. She didn’t want that anyway. Would his father come? Her parents? All of that seemed silly. And anyway, a lot like inviting pain and trauma that neither of them especially needed especially in the middle of all of this.
“It will... It will be in the news,” she pointed out.
“I’m known for being practical. I don’t think anyone will think anything of it. Anyway, this is not pretense. You’re having my baby, we are getting married.”
“People already know we... There were some items about us sneaking away during the summit. After your triumphant speech.”
“Were there?”
“Do you really not read any press about yourself?”
“You know that I don’t. I find myself steadfastly uninterested in anyone else’s opinion of me. It does not benefit me to read, therefore I don’t.”
“Very admirable, Luca, but a great many people wouldn’t be able to keep that up.”
“I’m not other people.”
She let out a hard breath. “No. You aren’t. To that end, I have to tell you that I’m sorry about some of the things that I said yesterday.”
“That’s nice,” he said.
That rankled. Was he not sorry?
“We both said things we didn’t mean.”
“I didn’t.”
“You... You didn’t?”
“No. Not at all. I only say things that I mean, Polly, you should know this about me.”
“You mean, you weren’t being a less evolved version of yourself to get your way?”
“Of course I said things in order to get my way, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t mean them.”
“I... Never mind. I’m not sorry.”
“You were quite hurtful.”
“I don’t care.”
He shrugged. “That’s fine. You’re not the first person to say such things to me.”
That, she found, was more bothersome than it had a right to be. That he found her basic, and like everyone else. What a horror.
“I... Let’s go. Let’s just get this over with.”
“You are angry with me,” he said.
“Well spotted.”
She stood up, and just stood there for a moment. “I should change.”
“You don’t have to.”
She was wearing a soft pair of black pants and a matching shirt. “I should.”
“Because it’s a wedding?”
He was wearing a suit.
“No. Because I don’t want to look shabby next to you.”
It was a silly thing to say, because anyone or anything would look shabby standing next to him. Luca Salvatore was nothing if not spectacular at all times.
With that in mind, she disappeared into the bedroom, and procured one of the items of clothing that he had set there. It was a soft blue dress, knitwear, and forgiving. But it was nice, and it flattered her figure, even as it changed. She put on some makeup. A bit of nude lipstick and some shiny eyeshadow. Some blush, because otherwise she was going to look like the corpse bride.
She was marrying him.
And as she walked back out to the living room and saw him standing there in that dark suit, it was like a truth rang inside her, clear and bright as a gong. It wasn’t even that weird that she was marrying him. Because if she was going to marry somebody it almost had to be him.
Because Luca was the single most defining relationship of her life. He had been, even before she had slept with him. He was a man that she was singularly preoccupied with. A man unlike any other. She shouldn’t want to touch him again.
It would be the worst thing in the world to love him.
She reminded herself of that. She didn’t feel quite as much conviction as she had before.
“Now we can go,” she said, eager to move past the moment.
She noticed that Luca’s tie was crooked. Out of habit and impulse she moved forward to straighten it. But when her hands made contact with the fabric, she was far too aware of the heat emanating from his body. The scent of him. The sound of his breathing. She saw about her task, and moved away from him quickly. “There. Everything is right.”
“Yes,” he said, his dark eyes fathomless. “It is.”
They did not touch one another as they departed from the penthouse, and made their way down to the lobby. He opened the waiting car door for her once they got outside, but she managed to avoid his touch even then.
They were driven to a small building, historic in spite of the fact that it was nothing more than a registrar’s office.
“I thought it was slightly complicated to get a marriage license in Italy.”
He laughed. “Nothing is complicated when you are a billionaire. And of course we’ll draw up a document to protect both of our assets.”
“A prenup?”
He nodded. “Of course. It is sensible. It will hold both of us to the terms we’d agreed to.”
“I suspect you already have that all handled?”
“Obviously.”
She wondered right then if that was the real reason he pursued wealth. Another way to eliminate complications. He certainly didn’t seem to revel in luxury.
She was marrying a billionaire.
That thought made her feel slightly off-kilter.
They were taken before the officiant, and the ceremony was done in Italian, with no fanfare whatsoever, and no kiss. It was simply a legal matter. They both signed paperwork, and she had to sign an extra paper making it clear there were no impediments to the legality or morality of her marriage.
All in all, it took no time. And she felt foolish for changing. Felt foolish for believing it would even be half so momentous as a ceremony in front of a justice of the peace. It wasn’t that. It wasn’t anything.
It was quintessentially Luca, she supposed. All business, nothing else. When they found themselves back in the car, though, his gaze met hers.
“You are my wife,” he said.
He said it matter-of-factly, as he did many things, and yet it made her burn.
There was an answering heat in his eyes that made it difficult for her to breathe.
“And you are my husband,” she said. But the moment she did, she had to purse her lips together, as if to bite off the rest of that statement.
She looked out the window, her heart beating in her chest like a trapped bird in a cage. They had agreed that this wouldn’t be...physical.
She was supposed to have a job at the company. They were going to raise the baby together.
She looked at his profile, taking a chance at pinning her gaze to him again. What would it look like? Raising a baby with him? She hadn’t even wrapped her head around what it would look like for her to raise a baby with herself.
She was caught up in a sweeping tide of change. One that had begun with her deciding to leave him. And had ended with her back here, married to him.
She was utterly stunned by the whole thing.
Suddenly, she felt dizzy. She had been unwell off and on the past few weeks. Not morning sickness so much as sickness whenever it felt like showing up. And it was definitely happening now.
He studied her. “You don’t look well.”
“I’m...fine.”
What good would it do to let him know that she felt like collapsing? What good would it do to show weakness?
Her parents had only ever used it against her. He had tried to use the baby against her.
She turned over that harsh, sharp thought. What he’d done amounted to using their child as leverage, it was true. But the subtle difference was he had laid it all out on the table in front of her, rather than trying to manipulate her.
She shoved that to the side.
She wasn’t angry with him, not like she had been before, but she couldn’t trust him either.
She couldn’t trust anybody. She never had, she was hardly going to start now not when she needed to keep her guard up the most.
She was vulnerable. More than she had ever been. She was growing a life, thank you very much.
And then she was going to have to figure out how to raise that life.
That made her falter internally. Because there were things about herself she wasn’t sure she had dealt with. Things that gave her pause when it came to the idea of raising a child. Because her child would depend on her. Her child was going to be learning about life from her, and...
She suddenly felt utterly, desperately unqualified.
“What is the matter?” he asked.
“I’m overwhelmed. By the idea of raising a baby. By the fact that we’re married. You can understand that, surely.”
“Perhaps that’s true, but I also think you’re physically unwell.”
The car pulled up to the front of their building, and she began to unbuckle, but he got out of the other side of the car and rounded it, opening her door before she managed to free herself. Then he bent at the waist, and reached down to pluck her up from the car like she weighed nothing.
She wasn’t used to that. He had never touched her before that night in Singapore. And then, his touch had been decisive, and bracingly, unapologetically sexual.
But this was...
He was holding her like she was a fragile thing. Like she was precious. He had her head pressed against his chest, and she could hear his heart beating.
A reminder that he was a human man. Whatever she had said to him. However he sometimes behaved.
And she felt awash in guilt all over again. She had apologized to him once. But she wasn’t sure if she had meant it. Or if it had been about soothing her own guilt, rather than truly acknowledging that she had potentially caused him pain.
She knew him well enough to know that he was...so in control of everything around him that of course his biggest vulnerability was that which he wasn’t proficient at. She had stabbed him right there. Between the ribs. Right where she knew she could get to him.
And as he held her close, she felt...him.
His warmth. His strength.
She didn’t care that people were staring at them.
It didn’t really feel like there were any other people there at all.
She was dizzy, lightheaded. Maybe her illness was the cause of all of these feelings. Fizzing up inside of her.
Maybe it was them.
He held her, even in the elevator. They said nothing, and she was painfully aware of the sound of their breathing.
Of them.
Then they reached the top floor, and he whisked her out of the elevator, and into the penthouse.
He laid her down on the couch, and went into the kitchen, where he turned the tap which had instant hot water in it, and began to make her tea.
“Something herbal,” he said. “It will settle your stomach. You like cinnamon, don’t you?”
She did. Quite a bit. She usually got a sprinkle of cinnamon on top of her coffee. She often got a spice cake, or a pumpkin spice cake, or similar treat. She enjoyed a chai latte occasionally. What shocked her was that he knew that.
“I do,” she said. “How do you know that?”
“I have watched you eat these many years now, have I not?”
“Yes,” she said. “But I didn’t think...”
“You did not think I would notice.”
She winced. “No. I didn’t. But that says more about me and what I think about myself than it does about what I think about you.”
He arched a brow. “Does it?”
She let out a long, pained breath. “Yes. It does.” She sat for a moment and stared down at the floor. “I’m sorry.”