Chapter Two
Mimi’s knees, it seemed, were very much capable of giving out.
Mr. DiCarlo’s strength and scent surrounded her as she was directed to the bed. Her breath played hide-and-seek with her lungs as his words began to sink in.
“Head between your knees,” he barked like a general giving orders to his soldiers.
Mimi followed the commanding voice instinctively and bent her spine, as much as her belly would allow. Oxygen returned to her in large gulps, and she breathed it in like a gasping fish.
Although it was the warm weight of his large hands on her knees and the solid shelf of his shoulder that her forehead was resting on that became her anchor.
Two more seconds and I’ll pull away, she told herself. It didn’t slip her near-hysterical mind that she was finding respite in the same man who was causing her stress.
Renzo DiCarlo in her life, playing such a big role, chipping away at her armor, endangering her resolve to never depend on anyone.
It couldn’t be the truth. He was lying for some twisted reason of his own. He couldn’t be the father of her child, could he?
However hard she tried, she couldn’t avoid the truth. Not even to stave off the moment’s panic.
Renzo DiCarlo was the father of her baby.
Her baby.
Our baby, a voice said in her head, in his infuriating tone and accent. Great, now he was inside her head too.
Mimi jerked up and away from him, crawling back on the bed in a very ungainly manner until her back met the metal headboard. Looking anywhere but at him, she counted her breaths like they were teaching her in the birthing class, willing her heart rate to subside.
A glass of water appeared in her vision. She took it, gulped the entire thing down and returned it to him, hands still shaking.
“I’m sorry that I upset you,” he said, sitting down by her legs. That his remorse was genuine didn’t stem her confusion. Neither did that delicious scent of his.
Far too close, she wanted to scream. He was being attentive because of her condition. Not because he cared about her. God, she needed to get that tattooed on the back of her hand as a reminder to stay sane over the following months.
“Any possibility that you’re in full-scale delulu-land because you’ve lost your brother?” she said in a small voice. Still not looking at him. “Grief does the strangest things to us.”
“Believe me, Ms. Shah, if I could forget the rainy afternoon where I had to…into a cup, I would.” Even his self-deprecating scoff stole through her veins like some kind of magic spell.
“I checked every record at the fertility clinic. Santo told me his sperm count was too low to be of use. He found out after the first failed attempt at IVF. He begged me to keep it between ourselves, as their marriage was already shaky. I complied because I saw how much he wanted it to work for him and Pia. As usual, there was no length he wouldn’t go to to give Pia what she wanted. ”
“And nothing you wouldn’t do for your brother?”
“Santo would have been a good father. He told me Pia wouldn’t even consider adoption. So yes, I agreed.” Another sigh escaped him.
Mimi had the ridiculous thought that she was using up all of Renzo DiCarlo’s sighs, a lifetime’s quota of them.
“I’m assuming you were railroaded into a similar agreement,” he said.
“She didn’t…railroad me.” Tears prickled behind her eyelids, and Mimi fought them back.
“She cried and yelled and complained about her body being ruined by the fertility shots and how it was still failing her.” Another thought struck her.
“It was cruel of Santo to let her think the fault lay with her.”
Mr. DiCarlo didn’t jump to his brother’s defense, and she liked him for it. A lot. “She begged me to help. Like you said, she wasn’t an easy person to love, but I saw how the failed IVF attempts wrecked her. Anyway, I said yes to the extraction too.”
“Ah, emotional manipulation was the best weapon in Pia’s arsenal.”
Mimi didn’t deny it, even as a hot protest rose to her lips by habit.
She had a feeling her state-sponsored therapist would love Renzo DiCarlo.
He got her to break the pattern her therapist had been urging her to break for months now.
She would not revise her complex history with Pia in her head because of the overwhelming guilt she felt.
Sighing, she looked up.
This close, the appeal of the man was a one-two punch. He was so large, so solid, so rawly masculine that she felt like she would drown in him. “Can you please give me room? I feel like I can’t breathe.”
Concern etched into his face, he moved down the bed, ending on a pile of washed underwear she hadn’t put away yet. The sight of her maternity bras and loose granny panties made mortification rise through her in a swell.
Cursing, she grabbed them from him and shoved them behind her back.
“Are you embarrassed, Ms. Shah?” he said in a curious voice. As if he was testing something out between them.
“Annoyed by your interrogation is more like it,” she said, sounding like a prickly cactus.
He didn’t rise to the bait. If anything, his expression turned more serious. “I understand why you hid for all these months. But whatever anonymity you had until now will come to an end. It’s a miracle the media hasn’t found you out.”
“Why the hell would the media care about me?”
“You’re carrying a DiCarlo baby. Sooner or later, the press will find out.”
“How?” she demanded.
“Because I will feature in its life, one way or the other. And because I will claim it as such.” His words rang with resolve.
“It’s not a negligible thing. Now the whole world is going to wonder why you hid, and why I didn’t welcome you and this baby into our family wholeheartedly all these months.
Santo and Pia’s marriage was a performative circus that dragged us all into the spotlight.
Now this is like throwing fresh meat to hungry hyenas. ”
“First of all, the baby isn’t here yet. Second of all, you’re a freaking billionaire. What the hell do you care what the media says about you or your family? Aren’t you all supposed be egocentric kings of your own little fiefdoms?”
“I care what our name stands for, since I built it up from scandal and ruin.” Mr. DiCarlo grinned as if to take away the gravity from that.
Unfortunately for Mimi, it increased his appeal a thousand times.
“Are you quite this colorful in your language with everyone, or do I bring out this particular talent?”
“It’s you,” she said, refusing to hold back. “I’m a sensible, caring woman with everyone else in the world.”
“How special that makes me feel,” he said dryly.
Mimi’s mouth twitched despite everything.
It was a rare sight to see Renzo DiCarlo so thoroughly put-upon, after all. When he looked at her, that tiny flicker morphed into full-blown laughter that made her chest ache and her ribs spasm painfully.
“Ouch,” she said, palming her belly as the baby went into high gear and kicked.
His hands reached for her belly instinctively, and he froze so fully that it was like a watching a pouncing predator come to a deathly stillness. “Is that…” he cleared his throat, his eyes intense on hers “…the baby kicking? Is it safe? Do you need—”
“Yes, it’s kicking. I laughed and must have jostled it too much,” Mimi said, pulling her hands back so their fingertips didn’t touch. “It’s very normal. If anything, I’d be surprised if the kicking didn’t happen once every hour at least.”
Hawkeyed as he was, he didn’t miss her pulling away. But his large palms stayed on her belly, covering so much more ground than hers could.
A strange intimacy wove around them, and Mimi fought it with every ragged breath. Attraction to him because of some age-old instinct was one thing. But being bound to him in any way because of the baby—her entire rational being revolted against the very idea.
She wanted to tell him to remove his hands, but the words refused to form. Something about the look in his eyes forbade them.
Now she felt stupid for retreating. It felt as if she had ceded ground. Which was ridiculous because this was a baby, not a battlefield.
And moreover, Renzo DiCarlo wasn’t interested in being a father any more than he was interested in tying himself to her in any way.
She needed to remember that.
It was like bubbles popping. Or like the flutter of tiny, fragile wings under his large, callused hands. Until it was a stronger tap that made his own breath punch out of his lungs.
Renzo stilled, stunned, eager to feel more of the tumbling, zapping feeling. It was unlike anything he had ever experienced. Awe filled him as the baby seemed to subside even as he waited, with a thundering heart.
Suddenly, the complete scope of what was happening in his life shone in technicolor. This was a child kicking its tiny feet or legs against its mama’s belly, making itself known.
With his brother gone, this was fully his child now.
His child…
An innocent, pure life that he was going to be responsible for, unlike the foolish, privileged, spoiled members of his family. No, that was two more lives he was responsible for now. And the second was pure and innocent too, in ways he hadn’t been exposed to in a long while.
She’d been hidden by the very large shadow that her stepsister cast, and with his vision blurred by what Rosa, the girl he had loved, had done so long ago, he hadn’t seen what kind of woman Mimi Shah was. And it unsettled him, as if his radar wasn’t in top shape.
He looked up and met the mutinous brown gaze and nearly burst out laughing.
A strange reaction to the most bizarre encounter of his life, but there it was. He had braced himself for anger, fury, frustration that he was going to be yoked to a woman he couldn’t tolerate, that he was going to be forced into a role he didn’t want…
Anything but this sheer wonder at what they had created. Convoluted though their route had been.