Chapter Eight #3
“Thank you,” he said. He looked like he was about to say something else, when his phone rang and he grabbed it quickly. His brow creased as he answered. “Yes?”
He spoke in German, quickly and decisively, and she had no idea what he was saying. There was a placating edge to his tone.
When he hung up, he looked like a haunted man. “I am going to have to fly to Vienna to see my mother.”
“Oh. Is she…unwell?”
“She often is. I told you, there’ve been mental health issues. Ongoing for years. I am going to have to tell her about our engagement, she is already in a bad place.”
“Would it help if I went?”
He considered that for a moment. “I… I don’t know.”
“What if I went with you,” she said, looking to offer an olive branch that was in a similar vein to the one that he had extended to her. If there was one thing that was true about them both, it was that they both loved their mothers. Very much. They both could relate to each other in that way.
“You can come with me if you like. I will…evaluate the situation and see if I want your intervention.”
She nodded. “That’s fair.”
It felt strange, to come to an agreement with him.
While the touch of his body still echoed inside of her.
While all the lingering memories of every poisonous and terrible thing they had ever said to each other hung between them.
While the knowledge that she was pregnant with his baby settled over her.
He packed everything up, and they walked out of the boardroom. She felt disoriented now, getting to the elevator. A wave of sadness washed over her as it began to descend. “I miss your dad,” she said.
“So do I,” he returned.
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. Shock weighing heavy at the center of her stomach. “I didn’t think that you…”
“You didn’t think that I love my father?”
“You were angry at him. Most of the time.”
“Yes. I was. He distanced himself from me.”
“You distance yourself from him,” she said. “You were so angry after the divorce and—”
“Yes. I was a teenager when it happened.”
That realization rocked her. Because of course he was.
He was a child. He reacted like a child.
Most of the interactions that she had had with him that been toxic and soul searing and affecting had been when he was an angry teenage boy.
She had also been a teenager, so she hadn’t handled any of it all that well.
But the stunning, jarring revelation that any strained relationship that had remained had probably been due in large part to Giuseppe letting a teenage boy’s reaction to something dictate the whole rest of his relationship with his son was… It was painful.
“I think he believed that you hated him,” she said. She felt honor bound to defend her stepfather.
“I’m sure he did. You were also completely uncritical of him, and I imagine that was a much more satisfying relationship.”
“That isn’t the only reason that he cared about me.”
Romeo frowned. “Of course not. Of course it’s not the only reason he cared about you, but you can see that it would be more rewarding to have a relationship with a child that thinks you’re a superhero, versus a relationship with one who sees you as a man who could do nothing right.
And for that, I carry fault. I am sorry my father and I did not get to mend that. ”
Of course, they hadn’t been entirely estranged; she knew that. They had still seen each other at holidays, and he had often been there just to visit. But you could feel the strain in the relationship, and of course Romeo’s relationship with Heather’s mother had never been easy.
And now both of them were gone, which meant that all that was left was regret over what might’ve been. What could have potentially been if things had been different. If he had handled things differently. If his father had.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Of course you were a teenager. Of course that should’ve been handled differently.”
“Family is complicated,” he said.
Particularly theirs.
“Well, the hope is that we make ours a little less complicated.”
“We’re stepsiblings getting married and having a baby. I don’t think there’s anything less complicated about that.”
“You don’t already have a wife.” She said that dryly, but she wondered if he’d be offended. Judging by the hollow laugh he gave in response, he wasn’t.
“There is that.”
They didn’t continue the conversation until they got on his private plane. Which was of course the most luxurious aircraft she’d ever been on. But that was what he did.
“This is extraordinary. Did you design it?”
“I had a hand in it,” he said.
“More than just a nepo baby.”
“Thank you,” he said, pouring himself a glass of Scotch. She was instantly envious that she could not do the same.
“Somehow I don’t feel like you’re actually thanking me.”
“Maybe I am. Maybe you need to start taking what I say at face value.”
“Maybe,” she said.
“Here we are, almost getting along.”
“Almost.”
“I’m going to take you to my favorite hotel in Vienna, and I will leave you there while I speak to my mother. I need to tell her that you’re having a baby. I need to tell her that we’re getting married. I will have to get my read on the situation.”
“I can’t apologize to you for our parents having an affair.”
He looked at her, his expression intense, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “I never expected you to.”
“You blamed me for it, at least in part. Somewhere, deep inside of yourself, you did.”
“I suppose. You were emblematic of what had changed. And again, I was a teenage boy. I don’t…”
“You were,” she said. “But later you were a grown man who continued to hate me.”
“I did decide that you had tried to trap me when you were in my bed all those years ago.”
“Is that really why you hated me?”
He took a long sip of his Scotch. He rested his arms on the soft leather chair he was sitting in, his legs wide.
It was an obscenely masculine posture, and she regretted that she found it so attractive.
She regretted that she found him so attractive.
But then, that was the story of her life.
Rage at Romeo, fantasize about Romeo, repeat. Forever.
“I was angry at myself. For wanting you. It’s like I always knew that the consequences would be heavy. Here we are.”
Was that true? Had there always been this between them? The potential for this life-altering event, had it always been somewhat inevitable?
“I hated you because you were mean to me,” she said, looking out the window as the plane reached its soaring altitude.
“Now, I don’t believe that. I was mean to you, but you felt something else too.”
“Do you know why I was a virgin?”
“No. Because I don’t know anything about you, not functionally.”
“It’s because you messed my sexuality up.
I’m convinced of it. I trained myself to want this disdainful, awful man, who promised pain as much as he did pleasure, and I have never been able to figure out how to want someone else.
Someone who’s nice to me. Someone who wants my company.
I want you. And that is a truly disturbing fact.
I met you too soon. You shaped my sexuality, and I think you might’ve broken it. ”
She felt exposed by that, but then she’d given herself to him on a table, so what was exposing at this point?
He smiled. Slowly. “Feels good, though. Doesn’t it?”
She laughed. “Yes. It does. That’s how I got myself pregnant. Why are you being a a pain when I can’t drink?”
“I am very sorry.”
“Somehow I don’t think so.”
The two of them decided to do work for the rest of the flight, and didn’t carry on a conversation, and when they arrived at the hotel in Vienna, she was delighted by how glorious it was.
Heather had gotten used to luxury. It was part of being an Accardi.
But that didn’t mean she didn’t find it delightful in about a hundred different ways whenever she got to experience it.
The old, historic building with its palatial interior was a sight to behold.
And the penthouse room that they were in had fabulously Baroque furnishings.
It was all over-the-top and utterly ostentatious, and she adored it.
She walked into one of the bedrooms, and her breath was taken away by the sight of the blue canopy bed. “This place is fantastic.”
“I’m glad you enjoy it,” he said. “And now I have to go. I am sending a dress for you to wear to dinner tonight.”
“When did you decide that?”
“During the plane ride. Tonight we will go out. Since we’re doing things out of order. I thought we might want to go on our first date.”