Chapter One #2
The room, as a result, was extremely untidy—not that she was a tidy person even on usual days. Piles of books, camera equipment, and baby bits made the room shrink to almost half. Her temporary wardrobe on a portable wheeled rack—mostly black tights and loose, colorful sweaters—took up one wall.
Boxes and boxes of baby things that she had been collecting for months—gently used clothes, toys, blankets—took up all the floor space.
And then there was her knitting stuff, because it was the only way she had been able to calm her mind in the last few months, given that she couldn’t even have a glass of wine.
More importantly, she had been nesting, preparing to be a mother as well as she could on her own. The realization sent a warm feeling down her spine, washing away the little flicker of embarrassment.
This was her haven, her home, where she was in control, and she felt safe.
After months of fertility shots, Pia’s emotional outbursts, and the mountain of lies they had been sitting on, and then the car accident and the news of her pregnancy, she had needed to be alone.
While she had wholeheartedly agreed to be the surrogate for Pia, her stepsister didn’t make things easy for anyone.
Had needed to find her center again after a horrible few months. Had needed respite from her mother’s opinionated commentary and her stepdad John’s grief. This sunny room had given her a sense of control back after months of being near Pia for the IVF treatments.
“I can see that you’ve been busy preparing for what’s ahead.”
For just a moment, she’d forgotten Mr. DiCarlo’s presence. Something the man wouldn’t be used to, she thought, mouth twitching.
She turned around, just in time to catch the myriad of emotions crossing his face as he peeked at the boxes. Neither did she miss the thin thread of reluctant admiration in his tone.
Leaning against the opposite wall, she managed to check him out in turn. She refused to feel even a flicker of shame about this, too.
Twenty-six, pregnant, and apparently—thanks to one of the twisting side effects of her pregnancy—unbelievably horny. But even if she were none of those things, she could still appreciate, especially as an artist, the sheer sensual appeal of a man like Renzo DiCarlo.
Interestingly, he was the less classically handsome DiCarlo brother.
Santo had been like a marble bust with sharp cheekbones, a straight nose and thick lips.
She’d just had her heart broken by someone when she met him for the first time as an art professor in one of the summer courses she’d been attending in Italy.
It hadn’t taken her long to realize that his perfectly boring good looks did nothing for her, though.
And soon after, Santo had turned Pia’s head.
Santo and Renzo’s younger brother, Massimo, had boyish good looks with twinkling eyes and a surly temperament.
But this man’s appeal was something Mimi had come to appreciate only as she’d gotten older. As she’d begun to understand her own sexuality.
Renzo DiCarlo was made of imperfections—a bump in the middle of his nose, a scar through his eyebrow, a strange little dimple near his upper lip that was like a permanent indent.
As if an absent-minded sculptor, a woman surely, had gotten lost in the beauty of what she’d been creating and left a little thumbprint in his flesh.
Then there were his deep-set gray eyes and the constant dissatisfied expression that he wore. As if nothing in the world was up to his standard.
He should have been unremarkable—he had flaws enough for that—but he was more than the sum of his individual features. He had an appeal that blazed hotter than Santo’s boringly perfect features ever could.
It was the air of authority and confidence he carried.
And something about that air of “I can deal with anything the world throws at me” had always turned Mimi on.
Even when she hadn’t understood why her stepsister’s new brother-in-law, who looked at them as if they were little better than garden pests, made her belly tighten and her core dampen.
She was a woman who liked to be competent in her own life, and who took matters into her own hands. Nor did she understand to this day why his confidence made her knees weak.
Maybe it was the novelty of a tall, dark, Italian billionaire being in her sphere at all.
Maybe because she’d never known her own father.
Her stepdad, John, like Santo, never asserted himself.
Or maybe it was the age-old instinct of wanting the smartest, sexiest, strongest man around to satisfy that deep-rooted survival instinct.
Renzo DiCarlo was all of those things.
She’d stopped trying to make sense of it ages ago. It wasn’t as if anything could happen between them. Then there was the fact that, within minutes of interacting with him, like now, the attraction took a back seat. The man possessed an uncanny knack for riling her up.
So she simply stood there and admired the breadth of his shoulders and how the white dress shirt neatly hugged his tapered waist, and when he went to his haunches to open the flap on the boxes of baby stuff that were everywhere, the sleek hardness of his thighs.
The air inside the room was filled with his bergamot and citrus scent.
When he finished his scrutiny and turned his attention to her, it felt like a highly charged laser beam had honed in on her.
Every inch of her skin came alight at his thorough, thoughtful perusal.
His gaze lingered over the dark circles under her eyes—thanks to being unable to sleep well with her belly—the stress lines around her mouth that she saw deepen in the mirror every morning, the uneven flutter of her pulse at her neck, and lower.
Although mercifully, his gaze didn’t linger there long.
He leaned against the wall next to the door, mirroring her stance. But while fresh tension suffused her, he looked casual with his foot propped on the wall behind him, hands tucked into the pockets of his trousers.
“Enough posturing, Mr. DiCarlo. Let’s discuss why you are here.”
Another rise of the damned brow, another challenge.
Mimi sighed. “I’m tired and in no mood to play the host to you.”
“Let’s sit down then.”
“Shouldn’t take that long,” she said stubbornly, even though her lower back was killing her.
Anger flashed in his eyes, but when he spoke, his voice was smooth. “I’m more than happy to skip all the dramatics and jump to the Q and A session if you promise to give me truthful answers.”
She bristled at his condescending tone. “I have no interest in lying to you.”
“Except the giant lie of omission that we’re both evading.”
“I won’t insult you by offering pathetic excuses. I’d do the same thing again.”
“Which is exactly what?”
“Hide the fact that the last round of IVF worked and that I’m pregnant. With…their child.” Her throat prickled, but she pushed on. “Retreat from everyone I know. Escape to this quiet village. All of it.”
Something glittered in his gaze. “Am I to understand that even your parents are unaware of this…development?”
“Yes. They flew to Australia right after Santo and Pia’s wake for Mom’s latest movie shoot.”
“And may I inquire why this secrecy was necessary?”
Mimi stared at him, pleasantly surprised by the genuine curiosity in his question. She felt infinitely better knowing that she could at least read him clearly. “It was a lot toward the end. My stepsister wasn’t…” She hesitated, grief and guilt scraping their claws through her.
The grief she understood. As contentious and problematic as their relationship had been, she had loved Pia.
And the loss was going to change her. Had already changed her in irrevocable ways.
But the guilt wasn’t healthy or good for the baby, her ob-gyn had told her over and over.
That Pia was gone while Mimi was alive and healthy with the child she desperately craved…
it hung over her like a dark cloud whatever she tried.
“Ms. Shah?” Suddenly, Mr. DiCarlo was standing close, his large hand clutching her elbow. “You’ve turned alarmingly pale.”
Mimi pulled away, the sudden strangely familiar scent of him filling her nostrils. She could feel herself swaying on the balls of her feet, eager to fall into his strong arms, eager to let someone else carry the weight of her burdens for one glorious moment.
“I’m fine,” she said, swallowing.
With a muttered curse, he pulled back and dragged the straight-backed chair from her desk. It thumped against the bare wooden floor as he placed it in front of her. “I won’t think less of you if you sit down.”
“I don’t give a damn what you think about me.”
“Davvero? Then why are you being so goddamned stubborn? You’re heavily pregnant and weaving where you stand, and I’m supposed to think you’re better than Pia?”
The intense frustration that colored his words, and the mention of her stepsister, sliced a little fracture in Mimi’s prickly defenses. The moment she sat down, the twinges in her lower back eased, and a rough breath whistled out from between her lips.
A different kind of discomfort, something close to shame, danced in her chest. He was right. And she hated that she’d let him provoke her into acting like an immature child. When he squatted to look into her downturned face, alarm skittered through her.
The last thing she expected of Renzo DiCarlo was that he would kneel in front of anyone, much less her.
Don’t let it go to your head. It’s only because you’re carrying the DiCarlo child, the sensible voice she trusted whispered.
“That’s a miracle right in front of my eyes,” she said, trying hard to dispel the mounting tension at his nearness.
“What is?”
“I didn’t think the massive size of your ego would allow your knees to bend like that.”
For just a fiery moment, something like sheer admiration flickered in his eyes. “I would advise you take that as a warning rather than a miracle, Ms. Shah. Trying times ahead and all that.”