Chapter Seven #2
“And you wonder why I insisted on marrying you?” he quipped. The sheer longing in her voice as she talked about Luca knowing love was…unmistakable. “You’re already a fierce mother to him.”
This time, the smile he wanted didn’t bloom. Nodding, she pulled back, her gaze skating everywhere but at him. And Renzo wondered where he had made a misstep in the last minute. “As for you being a wreck, it won’t get better unless you rest properly.”
“Wait, I forgot to ask.” She released his shirt and looked up. “What happened at your meeting? Why are you back so soon?”
“It got rescheduled,” he lied automatically.
“Lucky for me.” Her teasing only tightened the tension in his body. When he tried to pull his arm away, her clasp firmed.
“I need a shower, bella.”
Pulling herself up with her grip on his arm—which of course made her grimace—she leaned close, tucked her face in his chest and took a deep breath. “You smell fine to me. More than fine, in fact. You smell great. Always do.”
He shook his head, a short huff of exasperation escaping him. “Mimi…”
“Stay with me, Renzo.” Then, pushing the wild strands of hair out of her face, she patted the space beside her on the bed.
“I was being stubborn and foolish earlier. I don’t want to be alone in this cavernous apartment.
No, that’s not specific enough.” Her brown eyes shimmered with resolve.
“I want to go to sleep with your arms around me.”
When he simply stared at her, her shoulders rounded in defeat. “You want me to beg? Is that it?”
“Of course not,” he said, moving up on the bed.
If he lay down on the bed with her, he wasn’t sure he could hide his need from her.
His body would betray him with one press of her slender curves against him.
And he loathed the idea of coming on to her when she was in such a fragile state, when she was asking him for companionship and comfort.
He loathed how out of control he was near her. And this would not do. Not if he wanted a successful, amiable marriage. He couldn’t be at the mercy of his desires. Not now, not ever.
When she was ready for their relationship to move on to the next step, that was different. But as her husband, he could not deny her what she sought from him now.
“I have a few hours of work to get through.” He pressed a finger to her lips when she’d have protested. “But I’ll stay here until you fall asleep. Then shower and work, sì?”
“Grazie, Renzo,” she whispered.
Averting his gaze from hers, he scooted up the bed and pulled her into his side.
Her palm came to rest on his abdomen, and it took everything he had to not fidget, to not scoop her completely into his arms. To not slide into the bed fully and spoon her from head to toe until she was engulfed in him.
Dio mio, he wasn’t even fond of cuddling, had never even tried it. But already, he liked holding her this way, even without satisfaction for his body’s torment.
He set his other hand to stroke her forehead. Soon her breathing deepened.
Tilting his head back against the headboard, he closed his eyes, running through all the work and family stuff piling up for him.
All the bullet points on his list evaded him, though. For he had never known the sweet contentment that filled him with Mimi’s hands tightly wrapped around his.
It shouldn’t have been so easy to settle into a rhythm over the next month, but they did. In just three days, Luca would be two months old. And each day, he was getting stronger and that much closer to coming home to them.
Four weeks since Mimi had moved to the penthouse, and it might as well have been four decades for how easily she and Renzo seemed to slot into each other’s lives with minimal adjustments.
Or maybe she shouldn’t be surprised, Mimi thought, given Renzo turned out to be the most accommodating man on the planet.
Contrary to all that she’d feared about sharing a space with him and his overbearing personality, the man went out of his way to make sure her every need was attended to, before even she realized she had it.
For someone who had looked after herself most of her life, it was…disconcerting to be such a focal point of someone else’s attention. Not that she was very different from an important project, and Renzo was managing her with his usual ruthless expertise.
It bothered her more with each passing day. She didn’t know what she wanted—and how she hated not knowing herself—but the very polite, very rational shape their relationship had taken grated on her, day and night. As did the increasingly static nature of her day.
Each morning, a hot breakfast—optimized for her maximum well-being—would be waiting for her the exact moment she came into the kitchen, after a shower and a round of stretches with her coach.
The latter was honestly a luxury she wished she could afford the rest of her life. She didn’t care so much about losing her mommy pooch, as she’d taken to calling it, but she loved how light and less sore her body felt after the stretches.
Dressed in a designer suit, jet-black hair slicked back, Renzo would be chugging some disgusting protein shake. He never left for work without greeting her in the morning. Usually, she pushed her breakfast around the plate, trying to think of something witty or funny to say.
Then they went to the clinic together, where he asked the specialist for updates on Luca and then translated every word to her with the patience of a saint. He then kissed her on the cheek before leaving for work, the exact same place every day.
As if X marked the spot. As if the world might cave in if he deviated or lingered a second too long.
Then somewhere around noon, she drifted to the guest suite reserved specifically for her at the clinic, ate lunch half-heartedly, napped as if she’d run a full marathon, then went to see Luca and hold him for a little while.
Just as the sun began to set, the chauffeur brought her home. She showered, stretched, ate dinner, caught up on her favorite murder mysteries on TV and then went to bed. And somehow, every night, Renzo showed up right as she struggled to fall asleep.
He uncuffed his shirt sleeves, undid his tie, and crawled into bed with her, but never held her fully. As if someone had stuck a huge rod in his back that stopped him from bending it.
Some nights, he looked haggard and disheveled, like last night. Other nights, he would be brimming with energy, having secured some deal or achieved a milestone, and Mimi would fall asleep to the gravelly tone of his voice.
As if he had crafted her very own lullaby with that deep, chocolate-melting voice.
That he kept his promise to her soothed some neglected part of her soul, but it was limited to his one hand in her hair and his hard, corded form next to her if she needed it.
Just last night, she had nuzzled her face into the outside of his thigh, after a particularly nasty nightmare about Luca.
Of course, he had pulled her up into his arms, whispered words she didn’t understand in that musical lilt, pressed soft kisses to her forehead until she calmed down and drifted back to sleep.
It was as if he had turned into her personal sleeping drug, and she was already addicted to him. Mimi’s cheeks heated. The hard clench of his sleek thigh muscle as she nearly tried to climb him was imprinted on her forever.
These were her thoughts as she stepped into the spacious breakfast nook another same, slow morning.
The nook was her favorite space in the massive penthouse.
From her perch on the leather seat, she could see the canals’ shimmering waters reflecting the pastel facades of historic buildings.
Gondolas glided by, their rhythmic strokes a quiet counterpoint to the distant toll of church bells and beyond, the horizon opened to the sparkling expanse of the Adriatic Sea.
The history lover in her was dying to explore all the corners of the city.
It struck her, as if she were walking out of a mist, that she was free to explore.
While it soothed some elemental part of her to be at the clinic all hours, to be close to Luca in case he needed her, she was also slowly going mad.
It was the reason her sleep was so fitful, for she simply drifted from one day to the next.
She’d always worked, even when she’d been finishing her bachelor’s in filmmaking.
Wary of spending a minute more than necessary at her parents’ house, caught amid Pia’s or her mom’s drama, she had filled her days with work, studies and friends.
If nothing else, she’d pack up her camera equipment any given weekend and wander around new cities and towns, shooting everyday places and people. She had to do that now.
If she hoped to remain sane over the next few weeks, it was important to retain and nurture those parts of herself.
God, she adored her son with a breathless wonder that would never dim, but she needed to look after her own well-being too.
Much as it was nice to be coddled by Renzo, that wasn’t his job.
“I want to explore the city. Can you find me a map?” she blurted out, refusing to overthink it. She had to start something today, to break the rigid monotony stretching endlessly ahead of her.
Across the marble-topped table with its vase of rust-colored chrysanthemums and golden sunflowers, Renzo, in his stark black suit, looked stark and uncompromising. And all the more beautiful for it. And her libido, a sneaky, snaky thing, uncoiled and took notice.
He straightened in the leather seat, a line forming between his brows.
It was one of those little details about him that seemed to elevate the man from merely good-looking to something otherworldly. Like that misplaced little dimple near his upper lip and the little scar that bifurcated his left eyebrow just so.
A host of imperfections crafting him into a perfectly stunning man.