Chapter 14
He took his time getting to the bar, stopping several times to make conversation with well-wishers. By the time he got back to Grace, she was standing alone, frozen like a statue.
He was immediately concerned. “Are you okay?”
She didn’t respond. She didn’t even look at him.
Matteo took her hand and pulled her toward a door, not knowing where it went, intent on getting her out of this room.
They entered a large library, shelves high with books.
He turned to her. “What happened?”
For a moment, Grace’s face remained a mask devoid of emotion, then her mouth turned down hard at the corners. “He came back.”
“Who?”
She shook her head quickly like she couldn’t bring herself to say the name, and suddenly he knew.
“The baby’s father,” he said.
She nodded and took in a loud sobbing breath.
“Where is he?”
“He isn’t here at the party. He’s back in town. Lilliana told me.” Her pain was so raw and so close to the surface, he couldn’t help but wonder what had happened in her relationship with this man.
He longed to comfort her. He opened his arms, and to his surprise, she fell against his chest. “Shh. It’s okay,” he whispered, his hand gently rubbing her naked back.
“I’m so stupid,” she said, pushing away from him.
“I actually thought something must’ve happened to him.
Can you believe that? I thought he’d been hurt.
I stayed there for months, waiting to hear anything from him or to find out what happened.
I called hospitals. I even called his family, but he was here the whole time. ”
She spun on her heel and started pacing. “That son of a bitch. He left me and he came back here without even saying good-bye and he went on with his life like nothing ever happened. Like we never happened.”
“Did he know you were pregnant?”
“No. I was waiting for the right moment to tell him.” She stopped in front of a tabletop display of glass sailboats, picked one up, and threw it against a far wall. It shattered with a loud sobbing sound.
“Nice shot.”
“I thought he loved me.” She picked up another boat. “I’m such an idiot. I thought we’d be a family.” She hurled it through the air. This crash had a higher pitch.
Matteo wondered what that glass boat collection was worth. “It’s not your fault this guy was an asshole.”
“I want to hurt him.” She picked up another boat, tossing it up a few inches and catching it in her hand before winding up for the pitch. “I want to slap that weasel in the face for every time I cried myself to sleep thinking he was dead.” The third ship hit the far wall and burst into pieces.
Grace put her hands on her hips, her chest heaving. “Fucking shithead.”
Matteo’s eyes were wide.
She was magnificent, with her fancy white dress and her everyman vocabulary, not to mention one hell of a shot with a glass boat. She didn’t need the sympathy he’d been feeling for her. She needed a bull’s-eye and a gun.
He shook his head to clear it.
She was straightening her dress and pulling herself together. “This complicates everything. I was three months along before I realized I was pregnant. He’ll know the baby isn’t yours.”
“Not if you say otherwise. More than one man’s been surprised to learn the baby they thought was theirs was really fathered by someone else.”
She shook her head. “He’ll take one look in my eyes and know I’m lying.”
“There are other ways to convince him.”
“Like what? Kissing? Sorry, but I don’t think the scene on the top of the stairs would do the trick. I feel like such a fraud, like everyone must see right through this charade.”
Hadn’t he just been thinking the same thing?
But he suddenly knew he could do better, his anger with the father of her child making him want to up the ante, to do anything that was necessary to help her.
“Trust me, Grace. When I meet your lover, that man will have no doubt in his mind who Nico really belongs to.”