Chapter Two #2
“Can you please move your hands away? It’s possible you have some rights to this child, but I’m not… I don’t think we should, that is…”
He removed his hands immediately, bemused by her unusual floundering. “That is?”
“We’re practically strangers.”
“We’ve known each other for nearly six years, Ms. Shah.”
And in those years, she had always pricked his curiosity, even with Pia’s drama front and center. Now he brought all those little nuggets he had stored away into the spotlight.
She was a promising documentary maker. Even Pia had sung her praises.
She supported herself without asking for handouts from her parents.
Which was a quality he immensely respected, given all his siblings expected to be kept in luxury for the rest of their lives through his hard work.
She was self-composed, and didn’t date, at all.
And Pia, being Pia, had used Mimi’s dating history to persuade her to be their surrogate. Santo had felt discomfited enough by the fact that he had mentioned it to Renzo.
She was as allergic to being the center of attention as he was. For some twisted reason, he had expected her, and her parents, to talk sense into Pia, to control her irrational stunts and her extravagant demands, to make her behave.
Which was nothing but stupid. He knew firsthand how hard it was to save someone who didn’t want to save themselves, who believed their privilege afforded them anything they wanted. Like his father. And his sister and Massimo. And Santo, to a certain extent.
Now he pushed the intense dislike of Pia he had used as a shield against Mimi all these years aside and let the reality of their situation settle into his gut.
He was attracted to this firecracker of a woman with her bright, big eyes, sharp features and unusual but slow-dawning beauty.
It was an attraction all the more dangerous and potent than any instant lust because it had snuck under his skin and stayed there, building in pitch all these years.
He even liked her blunt wit and her refreshingly honest personality.
“Is there a boyfriend on the scene, Ms. Shah?” he said, making his tone as snarky and pointed as possible to provoke her. Better to clarify everything with her up front. “What does he say to your becoming a surrogate first, and now a single mother?”
“There isn’t one,” she said with a vehemence he thoroughly enjoyed. “And if even there was one, I wouldn’t let a man dictate what I can or can’t do for my sister.”
He grinned, things falling into place.
Sì, he would have considered marriage at some point.
He was only thirty-five, though, and that prospect had been relegated to the far-off future.
Maybe to when he was past forty and wanted a family, when he slowed down with his luxury resort empire and his fast life.
Maybe because he would have—with his genes—turned into a self-centered, indulgent old man fixated on his legacy and how far and how fast he could spread his dwindling sperm.
Instead, here was this ready-made family being offered to him on a platter.
If he could wrap his head around the idea of having this fierce, sensible, ultra-competent woman as his wife.
She was prickly, and not the sophisticated, soft society wife he had vaguely imagined when he had allowed himself to go there and would probably not agree to any proposition he made in a hundred years, just to spite him.
But she was also loyal and eminently practical, and her competence aroused him more than any other woman’s ever had.
Mimi Shah was perfectly tailored to be his wife and the mother of his child.
A concept he would have laughed at months ago, when Pia and Santo had been alive and well. But now…everything had changed. His entire world was upside down, and he had to adapt to it quickly. The child, unlike him and his siblings, would have a happy, secure childhood with two sensible parents.
A sudden thrill shot through him as the mere fragment of the idea consolidated into a plan in his gut in mere moments.
Her soft gasp pulled him into the present, away from his schemes. And this time, when he looked at her, he looked past her belly, if such a thing were possible.
Large brown eyes with amber flecks studied him with a discerning expression.
Her silky brown hair with its golden highlights was falling away from its untidy bun on top of her head.
Long lashes cast crescent shadows onto too sharp cheekbones.
And then there was her mouth, small and lushly made and a lovely dusky pink.
Desire came at Renzo, soft and slow and sneaky at first, then fisting his stomach tight, flushing his insides with sudden heat.
Ms. Shah pulled back, eyes widening. “I don’t trust the look in your eyes.” Fingers gripping the quilt, she pulled it over her belly, as if the worn-out fabric could somehow protect her from his wicked intentions. “Whatever you’re thinking, the answer’s a big fat no.”
Renzo laughed again. Thrice in the matter of an hour. It had to be some sort of record. Cristo, but the woman was sharp as a dagger, and he would have to keep his senses alert just to keep up with her.
The sheer thrill of the future unrolling in his mind made his spine tingle. At least he would never be bored with her and their life together.
“It’s interesting that you read me so well, Ms. Shah. And I must say it’s mutual.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think there’s more than all the very fair reasons you’ve quoted for hiding this pregnancy for so long. Especially from me.”
She shook her head, although it was half-hearted.
“You knew how big Santo and I are on family, given our father is a scoundrel who thinks nothing of shaming our mother. You knew that I wouldn’t let a DiCarlo child be born out of wedlock.
You knew I couldn’t let a child of my blood be termed a bastard by the media.
You knew, and you just didn’t want to face that reality.
” He raised his palms. “Not that I’m blaming you. ”
Chin tucked down, dwarfed by the quilt, she suddenly looked small and young and innocent. “If we forget whose egg and whose sperm went into the making of this baby, I would be its aunt.”
“Even if it had been Santo’s, with him gone, you know I would have insisted on a wedding. Deep down, you knew that. Seems you know me better than you think you do.”
For a pregnant woman who had been through so much loss in recent months, she didn’t buckle down and take the easy route. Even though exhaustion drew dark smudges under her eyes.
Tenderness and a fierce protectiveness danced in Renzo’s stomach, provoking each other to something even more potent.
She squared her shoulders, chest rising and falling under her brown sweater.
“You don’t like me, and I don’t like you.
We’ve had first-row seats to an epic disaster of a marriage between people who confessed everlasting love to each other.
I know you’re as allergic to love as I am.
There’s nothing to gain by going down this path, Renzo. ”
His name on her lips felt like an invocation, an invitation to something new and rich.
He swallowed the thick coating that desire left in his throat as his overactive mind supplied images of her breathing out his name in better scenarios.
“It would work precisely because we are not Pia and Santo. Neither of us wants false promises of undying love and devotion, turning this into a daytime soap opera. Neither of us wants anything to do with love.”
She didn’t deny his claim, even to blindly win the argument.
His admiration for her integrity increased a hundredfold.
Then, suddenly, her eyes brightened. “You’re well-known for your bachelor status, your fast life, your ‘inability to commit to a woman for longer than a month,’” she said, quoting a tabloid article about him.
“And how would you know that?” he said silkily.
Color returned to her cheeks. “It was the one thing about you that made Pia happy. That you weren’t going to bring her competition into the family for a long time. If ever.”
“Circumstances change. Bachelor billionaires are toppled every day,” he said, wanting to make her laugh.
Her mouth remained pursed. “You can’t force me to marry you.”
“No, but I can’t leave you unprotected either. And I don’t mean just physically from the press. Every aspect of your life will be investigated and magnified. To the point of interrupting your work and affecting future career prospects if you choose to live separately with this baby.”
“Now you’re using scare tactics.”
“I’m not a complete bastard, Mimi,” he said, frustration in his tone.
“I don’t see why the media would be so interested in me and this baby.
I’m a nobody. I kept my deadbeat father’s name instead of taking my mom’s just so I don’t get caught up in her minor celebrity.
Even when John asked me to take his last name, I refused.
Being connected to Pia, who wanted to be a model as a teen, would have brought me attention too. ”
“Imagine at how this pregnancy looks to the outside world,” he said, a thread of impatience in his words.
“Unless you want to expose the whole sordid truth of how Pia and Santo asked us for our contributions while actively lying to each other, it will come out that this baby’s mine.
Then the speculation will start. About who you are and how you managed to trap me into domesticity.
I’m known to be very circumspect with my affairs and my precious billion-dollar sperm. ”
She laughed. It made her lips curve wide, her eyes sparkle and her nostrils flare and turned her, in one blink, into a stunning, breathtaking beauty. The ridiculous thought that he had won a prize drifted through his head.