Chapter Twelve
CHAPTER TWELVE
L UCA HAD GONE back to work after their afternoon lovemaking session. She wasn’t even really mad about it. Really, she wasn’t mad about it at all. Because if he didn’t do something that felt quintessentially Luca she might start to get concerned about him. But she didn’t want to sit at home, and she hadn’t started her job at Salvatore yet. Really, she wasn’t entirely clear on what she was going to do. But for the first time in her memory that wasn’t the most all-consuming thing on her mind.
They were committing to... Well, in his mind it was real marriage. Love and romance and the like didn’t seem to signify for him. And she wondered why it should matter to her at all. Because he was right. Her parents’ marriage had started real enough. She didn’t know anything about the relationship between his parents but he made it sound like his father was useless. At least, when it came to Luca. So what did it matter if people got married for conventional reasons? It didn’t guarantee happiness. Why should love mean anything to her?
It never had before. But maybe that was part of the problem. She had avoided the concept of marriage and childbearing because she hadn’t wanted anything that looked like her parents. But now that she was married, now that she had a child on the way, she couldn’t help but wonder if...
It really would be a terrible thing to love him.
Except, she couldn’t look at him anymore and see the remote man that she had once imagined existed behind that armor he wore all day every day. That man of steel who was so committed to work that everything else was an inconvenience.
No.
He was passionate. He was hot. A fire blazing inside the shape of a man.
How had she ever imagined that he was anything less?
He was... He was a study in contradictions. Because he could be so uncompromising, and then when she called him on it he often apologized. Unless he didn’t. Unless he stood firm because he simply couldn’t see what she was saying.
But for all that he often did that first, then he would normally try. Try to understand where she was coming from, try to see where she was coming from. And now he was saying he was committed to trying to care for her in the way that she could receive it.
Change, for him, was harder than it was for most and she knew that. She’d felt like he hadn’t cared for her, and now here he was rearranging his carefully curated life for her.
She had known few people who listened quite that well. Who cared so much about doing the right thing.
She decided that she needed to get some fresh air. She got dressed, and left the scene of her indignity, going down to the Roman streets and letting herself blend into the crowd.
She had immediately loved that about Rome. The anonymity of it.
The way that she felt like she could blend, and more than that, the way that she felt like she could be anything she wanted to be.
She had been so trapped in Indiana. On that same street, in that same house.
Her life hadn’t been small because she lived in a small town, her life had been small because she had been crushed in her parents’ fists.
She knew a shiver of fear as she tried to imagine living life with Luca. Yes. There was a scenario wherein she could see herself being crushed.
But she didn’t have to be. She could keep talking to him. Especially if he kept listening.
She walked into a couple of clothing stores and looked at the offerings. She loved all the beautiful clothes in the city. But unfortunately, considering that she was about to change and expand in several different ways, there really was no point in buying fashion.
She thought wistfully for a moment about what could’ve been. That life in Milan. At the fashion house, where she would undoubtedly be getting free clothing as part of her job.
All she could muster up was wistfulness. There was no sadness. There was no regret.
She hadn’t been as happy doing that as she had thought she might be. And really, the day she had taken the pregnancy test, everything changed.
She hadn’t realized all the ways it had changed yet, but it had.
She was different.
Her future looked different.
Maybe, if she was going to be living in Milan a single unencumbered girl without a baby on the way, that job would’ve been perfect.
You would’ve had to have never met Luca.
She sighed heavily.
Yes. She would’ve had to have not met Luca. Because meeting him had changed her life. Forget sleeping with him.
There was something about him. Something that had grabbed hold of her and refused to let go the first moment they had met.
He was just so singularly him.
And on paper, all the things he was should be mainly annoying.
She walked out of the boutique, and continued down the street. And then, through one of the reflective windows, she spotted a little red car.
It was a toy store. There were teddy bears and a large, magical-looking tree positioned in the window. A little village. And that red car.
It called to her. Because it spoke of Luca.
Yes. He could be infuriating. Yes, on paper, he was a disaster of a boss, and not much better as a man.
But he was also a boy once. A boy who had loved cars. Until his mother had died and all he had been able to care about was how to keep someone else from experiencing that kind of pain.
His whole life had been consumed in that pain. And he had let go of that thing that he loved most. In order to give himself over to his mission.
She found herself walking into the toy store without thinking. Because she wanted to see to him. The way that she had as his assistant, but something else, something deeper.
She asked to see the car, and turned it over in her hands. Yes. She needed to get this for him. Her chest felt tight as she paid, and had the car put in a little box, and gift wrapped.
It occurred to her then, as she walked out of the store with the car in a jaunty yellow bag, that she did know how to care for him.
She had been doing it for five years. All those things that people were so quick to call ridiculous, she recognized were integral to him.
Like when she had gotten angry at the flight attendant for not understanding why he needed his notebooks.
They mattered to her. As they mattered to him.
They weren’t inconveniences. And they weren’t him being particular. Not really. It was what he needed. Nobody else was him. So why did other people get to make proclamations about what he should change, what was important, and what was an incidental?
Yes, there was a place for them to compromise. Of course there was. Because she didn’t need to be cared for in a way that worked for her. She had lived with parents who didn’t care for her at all. But that wasn’t Luca. And so asking him to meet her in the middle didn’t seem outrageous. But it also meant seeing him as he was.
But she had never had any trouble with that.
He could be frustrating, certainly. And she felt then, as she walked down the lovely, sunny street, that it was fair to be frustrated even by things he couldn’t easily change. Because when you lived with somebody that was the state of things.
But she didn’t feel anymore like there was Luca, a typical man, and all of the little quirks that made him into something more of a project.
They were all him. They didn’t separate.
And so caring about those things was caring about him.
And she wanted him to have the car.
Because she mourned for the lighter things that he had cared about once, that he couldn’t afford to care about when his life became something heavy. When she got back to the penthouse, he wasn’t there. She decided that she was going to cook for him since he had done so much of that for her over the past week.
He liked to cook. It was something that she had always found interesting about him. Because most single men didn’t seem to enjoy that quite so much. And a man of his status could certainly afford somebody to do it for him.
But of course he didn’t really like a surplus of strangers in his home. Because everything needed to be where he wanted it. And that seemed quintessentially him.
She decided to make pasta with olive oil, tomatoes and some Parmesan. Simple, but she had found since moving to Rome that simple was her preference. When the ingredients were so spectacular, there was nothing not to like about simple.
She hummed as she put the food together, as she made a salad.
And by the time he walked through the door, she had everything ready, with her gift for him at the center of the table.
His eyes met hers, and he smiled. It was brilliant.
She could count on one hand how many times she had seen him smile in an unguarded fashion, and every single one of those times prior to this it had been in connection to a medical discovery.
This was the first time that smile had ever been directed at her.
Oh, dear.
She really liked him. A lot.
But imagine loving him.
Only a foolish idiot would love him.
Really.
She swallowed hard. “I made dinner.”
“I can see that.”
“I got you a present. But we should eat first.”
“I want to open my present,” he said, looking suddenly like a petulant child, and her heart squeezed. Because she wondered if he had ever been able to afford to be a petulant child.
“No,” she said in her best stern matron voice. “You have to eat first.”
He growled. But sat down. He dished his plate, and she was walking by him to go do the same, when he grabbed her around the waist and set her down on his knee. “I’d like to share with you.”
“Share with me?”
He pressed his fingertips to her jaw and turned her head. Then he kissed her. Long and deep. “Yes. I would like to share with you.”
He swirled his fork around the pasta, and brought it up to her mouth. She opened without thinking, and took a bite.
Then he did the same, taking a bite for himself. It thrilled her. And she wasn’t even quite sure why. Perhaps because this meticulous man with such a routine was being playful with her. Was giving her things that she was entirely certain he had never given to anybody else before.
It felt... It felt like a revelation.
And it made her tremble.
Because it felt dangerous.
Oh, so dangerous.
“I should get my own plate,” she said, wiggling away from him.
“I don’t like it when you’re demanding.”
“Well, that’s too bad. Because on Wednesdays, I feel I might be very demanding.”
“Wednesdays?”
He looked like he was considering whether or not he should make a note in his calendar. Polly will be demanding. Recurring event.
“Or Thursdays. I’m unknowable.”
“You are not.”
“I’m not?” She sat down at the table, her heart pounding a little bit harder than it needed to be.
“No. You are very knowable, Polly. You like summer and sunsets, and cake. You keep chocolate in your purse. Half the movies you watch make you cry.”
“Those first few things are not unique, and also how do you know that about the movies?”
“I’ve overheard you telling a great many of your coworkers about a movie you have seen over the weekend, and about half the time you say that it made you cry. You are very soft, but at the same time you are very strong. I do know you.”
“Oh.”
“Tell me. About your parents.”
“I did.”
“You gave me a general idea for why they were a problem. And I want to know. Specifically. My father did not want me to be the person that I was. He wanted me to be the person he wanted me to be. And that I think is a terrible thing for a father. My mother loved me exactly as I was, and even then losing her, she helped me find myself. That is what a good parent does. Even when they aren’t there, the love that they gave you does its good work. And so I want to know. What did your parents do that is so terrible that you left Indiana—”
“A lot of people leave Indiana.”
“What did they do that was so terrible that it makes you not want to return home? I assume you don’t wish them to even know you’re having a child.”
“I can try to explain it to you,” she said. “But I’m afraid you’ll just...” Suddenly, awfully, she found herself getting weepy. It was the pregnancy hormones. And him. Maybe just somebody else asking about her life. About her. “You can’t just put me on the spot like this, Luca. I have perfected my mask.”
“You haven’t. I had the right of you from the moment you first walked in here. I knew that you were not half so sophisticated as you pretended to be. I knew that you were overawed to be in a company that size. I knew that it wasn’t the blasé thing that you were trying to pretend that it was.”
“Well. You are insightful.”
Her chest felt tight.
“Tell me,” he said.
“I have told people. I told the guidance counselor at my school when I was in high school, and he just said it was normal to have conflict with your parents.” She blinked back tears. “It’s so hard to explain. Because it’s like I was responsible. For being an emotional barometer. I had to read the situation around me and react accordingly. And if I didn’t, then I was going to have to deal with the consequences. Because it wasn’t so straightforward as my father walking around acting angry. He would seem fine. And in fact, he would bait me into conversations that would end with him screaming at me. Because he wanted a fight. And so he would manipulate me until he got one. And my mother... She wanted me to be obedient. Biddable. And the way you accomplish that is by making sure that someone doesn’t have a sense of themselves. Of their worth. She was an expert at making me question myself. If I would tell her about something that happened at school she would ask me if I was sure that that’s what happened. Somebody hurt my feelings she would say... Maybe that isn’t how it went. Maybe you were the one in the wrong. Before I would leave for school she would say, did you think that looked good?” She shook her head. “It was just such a perfect storm. But they didn’t beat me. They didn’t starve me. They just made me feel like everything around me was unstable. Like I had to walk on my tiptoes to avoid causing an avalanche. That was all.”
But it had been so heavy. And carrying it all this time had been a weight she hadn’t known was still resting on her shoulders.
“That would have been my undoing. I already question everything that I do, and often have to question my interactions with people. If somebody sought to undermine me in that way, it would’ve broken me.”
“You’re the smartest man in the world.”
“That wouldn’t have made me immune to the sort of gaslighting you’re talking about experiencing.” She loved how he didn’t protest the label. “It is incredibly damaging. When you feel as if you cannot trust your own perception.”
Her heart twisted. “You feel like that a lot, don’t you?”
“Yes. And so I take refuge in the things that I can know. The things that I can learn and memorize. Because when it comes to those things, I am vastly superior to the people around me.”
He was gently teasing. Except he also meant it.
“You are. You definitely are.”
“I’m sorry. Do you... Do you feel as if I’m unpredictable? I know that sometimes the things that I want don’t make sense to the people around me, and that must feel unpredictable.”
“It did at first. But eventually I learned exactly what you wanted. You’re actually very good at saying what you want. Nobody has to guess. It isn’t a game that you’re playing. I find that extraordinarily comforting. Given the way that I grew up. Given the way that my parents excelled at making their moods into a guessing game that I was forced to participate in. And... I’m trying to figure out how to say this. But the things that you need, the details. The details that you had me in charge of that you say you don’t want to be bothered with, when in fact they are so important because if they aren’t dealt with...”
“Nothing works for me.”
“Exactly. They are not separate to you. They are part of you. And they are not a burden.”
“Thank you. Though I will be working at changing how I regulate those things.”
“Alternatively, you’re a billionaire, and you could hire about six people to see to those things.”
“Yes. I can. But the problem is... I became very dependent on you. And when you left, I thought that everything felt wrong because I needed you there to manage me. To manage all of the...the peculiarities. But it was more than that, and I couldn’t see it. Also I... I suppose I cannot depend quite so much on one person for that sort of thing.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that.” She moved toward him. “Nothing wrong with wanting to be more self-sufficient. But as far as I’m aware, that is part of having a partner. You figure out how to do things for each other. How to help each other. How to serve each other.” She went to the center of the table and took hold of her gift bag. “Here. Open this.”
He looked at the bag, and then up at her. “All right.”
He took hold of the bag, and she watched, her breath frozen in her lungs as he began to pull the paper away, as he reached inside and took out the little red car.
His face was blank. She couldn’t read it. She had no idea if he was happy, or if he was upset. If she had crossed some kind of line.
“Do you... Do you like it?”
He looked up at her, something fearsome in the depths of his gaze. “You know, I have never liked opening presents in front of people.”
“Why not?”
“Because I know my reaction is not what people are looking for.”
“I’m not upset by your reaction. I just want to know if you like it.”
He smiled then. Slowly.
“Of course I do. It is...incredibly thoughtful. I don’t think anyone has known me since my mother. But you do. You listened to me. You... You’re right. That is what our partnership can be.”
It still somehow felt like not quite what she was reaching for, but she didn’t want to define the ache inside of herself.
She didn’t want to have anything to do with it.
Because it was too much. All of this.
The intensity of the feelings that had held her in their grip since...
Since she had first met him.
It really would be a terrible thing to love him.
But she wasn’t sure if she had the resources left to fight against it. Not anymore.
She stood, her heart thundering hard. Then she walked over to where he sat, and put her hand on his chest. “Luca.”
He reached up, and pulled her head down, kissing her. Consuming her. And when they pulled away, there was something like wonder in his eyes. “I really love this gift that you gave me. But I don’t lose everything when I look at it. Only when I look at you.”
It meant something to him to say that. To feel that. She might not know entirely what, but she could hold close that it did.
She kissed him, holding his face in her hands as she did. Cradling him. Because he was precious.
Oh, no.
She was familiar with lust, protectiveness.
But this was something different.
This was something more.
He was such a brilliant man. Such a beautiful, brilliant man. And really, what other man on the face of the earth would she rather have as the father of her baby?
He was strong and determined. He... He loved. With so much of himself. His mother’s death had taken that love and turned it into something he was trying to give the world. Everything he did was care.
Of course he would be the most wonderful father.
“You are amazing,” she whispered against his mouth. “And I’m so sorry that I doubted what manner of father you would be. There is no other man I would rather have as the father of my child.”
He growled then. And he lifted her up onto his lap, onto the dining chair. Her thighs were on either side of his waist, and she could feel his growing arousal there between her legs.
They kissed, and he held her close. Tight. Like she was the one who was precious.
No one had ever treated her that way. But he did. Imperfectly, perhaps, but she wasn’t perfect with him either.
She was sometimes petty, and often selfish. She possessed far too great an ability to take the things he did and make herself feel persecuted because of them when there were moments she just had to accept his behavior wasn’t about her, and she didn’t need to make it about her.
It was easy for her to think that because some of the things he did were different than ways other men behaved, that he was somehow the project, but the truth was, she didn’t know how to blend her life with another person’s. She didn’t know how to see grandly beyond her own perspective.
She was no less work. And perhaps she was more, because he had spent his life taking fearless inventory of himself, because he had been forced to. Because the people around him had always been harsh and uncompromising in their appraisal of him. Because people had treated him as if he didn’t have feelings, which meant the way that their approach to him was often bracing.
Yes, she had been badly treated. By people who had wanted to treat her badly. Her parents had been difficult. They had been undeniably cruel in many ways. They had done nothing under the guise of care, and it seemed to her that often throughout Luca’s life people had said horrendous things to him under the guise of helping him. Under the guise of forcing him to behave in a way that made them more comfortable. Not in a way that might make him more comfortable.
She committed herself then and there to being different. To handling him with greater care.
She kissed him to show him that.
And he kissed her back, physically demonstrating to her that she mattered too.
They could do this. They could make this partnership. They could have this life.
She felt a renewed sense of purpose. A sense of joy.
Luca wasn’t her job.
He was her choice.
And she wanted to show him that.
She moved from his lap, and took his hand. “Come,” she said, smiling.
“I’m not a dog,” he said. “You can’t give me commands.”
“I think you’ll find I can if you want to follow them,” she said.
And he did, because he went with her into his bedroom.
She moved to him, beginning to unbutton his shirt, revealing the hard planes of his chest. The glorious acres of muscle that his clothes spent all day hiding—a real tragedy in her opinion.
She divested him of his shirt, kissing the hollow of his throat, his chest.
“I think you’ll find yourself much happier if you take orders from me.”
And that was how she found herself lifted up off the ground and deposited to the center of his bed. She watched with hungry eyes as he took off the rest of his clothes, and then moved to the bed, a glorious predator in his natural habitat.
There was nothing uncertain about him here.
Of course, there was nothing uncertain about him in most areas of his life. It was only that the last bit of time had thrown him into something he had never dealt with before.
And she was witnessing firsthand how difficult that could be for him.
But this... Oh, no, in this he was a master. And that was clear.
He moved his hands over her clothed body, slowly. Achingly so. She felt like she was going to jump out of her skin.
She was alive with need. And it went somewhere beyond simple desire. Not that desire had ever been simple with him.
It had been bound up in restraint. The restraint of knowing she couldn’t act on it because she was his assistant. And knowing that even once she had she had to keep parts of herself back to avoid getting hurt.
What if she didn’t.
What if, for the first time in her whole life, she was honest with another person.
She was honest with herself.
What if she gave everything?
Absolutely everything.
What would happen then?
And she felt all the resistance inside herself beginning to fall away.
She felt as if a light shone down upon her.
Radiant. Honest.
She felt as if she was seeing herself for the very first time.
And she wanted him to see her too.
He kissed her neck, and undid the buttons on her dress, slowly peeling the thin fabric away from her body.
He took off her bra, kissed his way down her stomach to the center of her thighs. He fastened his mouth to her over the lace panties that she wore, and she gripped him tightly.
He seemed to delight in the act of pleasuring her. Tasting her.
And she surrendered to it. He stripped her naked, his tongue sending her over the edge, his clever finger driving her mad.
And with each stroke there between her thighs, she felt her resistance fall away yet more.
Not a physical resistance. There had never been any physical resistance to him at all. But the emotional resistance.
It would be such a terrible thing to love him.
She did love him. She had. She had told herself that as a warning that came far too late.
Alarm bells that went off after the disaster had already occurred. But why was it a disaster?
She had learned to arm herself, protect herself, because caring about people who didn’t care for you had been the hallmark of her life, and she had hated it. She had run from it.
But she couldn’t let her parents define what she was capable of feeling forever.
She couldn’t allow that to define her. To decide how happy she got to be.
Because it was all just fear. Fear that held her captive. Fear that manipulated her.
It was all it was.
She was allowing herself to be manipulated yet still. She didn’t want it. Not anymore. She wanted to be herself.
She wanted to feel herself.
She wanted to feel him.
And when he traveled back up her body to claim her mouth in a searing kiss, it was everything. The taste of her own desire on his lips, the evidence of how much he cared about that. Of how much she was able to surrender when she was in his arms.
This was honest. It was raw, it was real. It was everything. That she wanted so badly for the two of them to be everything.
She wanted to find out everything she could be. Everything she could have.
And she felt closer to that than she ever had in her life.
When he thrust inside of her, it was like the sun had come out from behind the clouds. Blinding, brilliant and clear. And when he began to move, building a symphony of pleasure from deep within her, she surrendered.
It was so beautiful it was almost painful. It was so brilliant, she could barely look directly at it.
It was everything. So was he. So was she.
They were everything. And it didn’t scare her.
Because Luca had never taken her feelings and used them against her. Because he had never sought to twist or manipulate what she felt.
He probably didn’t even know he could. Because he probably didn’t realize how much she cared.
They both suffered from the same thing. They had both been in a desert when it came to love.
She didn’t want to be. Not anymore.
She kissed him, and he growled, lowering his head and biting her neck, making her gasp with pleasure.
She exulted in him. In his power, in his strength.
In the fact that there was safety in it.
Because he would never use it against her. He never had.
She could trust him. It was like a wave broke over her, warm and excruciating all at once. She could trust him not to manipulate her. He was safe.
When had another person ever felt safe?
Not ever.
He would never use his power against her.
Not the power of his mind, not his heart, not his body. He was exacting, and he was demanding, but there was always him right at the center of it.
And he was a very good man. That was what it came down to. Everything else they could learn to navigate. But he was good.
She had never known what it was like to love somebody who was good.
That realization broke her open, and when her orgasm struck her like a wave, it broke something inside of her. Then she began to weep. She clung to his shoulders, as she cried out his name.
Because she was all in on this. All in on him.
It was everything. So was he.
They were everything.
She clung to him. And then she whispered in his ear. “I love you.”