Chapter 4 #2
“But just the idea of who you are…” Her throat shifted and he realized how close to the surface her emotions were. How close to breaking point. Something like guilt flared in his gut but he ignored it. He had to protect himself, and that meant keeping a hard heart, particularly now.
“I’m twenty-six and I have nothing, Raf.
I’m starting over in life. I’m working a dead-end job because it’s all I could find, and it happened to be around the corner from my cousin’s flat, that I’m living in rent free while I try to get my shit together.
I’m pretty much at rock bottom, and you’re—very much not. ”
He listened to her summation with a gnawing sense of concern, and something he disliked and actively fought against; protectiveness.
A feeling that he wanted to protect her, to reassure her and remind her that she was smart and beautiful, that there was something impressive about her, even if everything she’d just said was factually true.
He’d only spent one night with Elodie, but if he were honest, he’d admit he’d thought of her often since.
Instead, he stuck to the facts, at least inwardly disputing her statement that he wasn’t at rock bottom.
The truth was, he’d been scraping along it for years now, living every day as though he didn’t care if it was his last. Getting drunk, having sex.
Even in work, he’d been reckless. True, his gambles had paid off—he’d chased down risky investments, and they’d triumphed, but he’d done it with a carelessness that came from where he was in life, and nothing else.
In that, they were the same—both at rock bottom.
He didn’t admit it to her, though. His grief and anger were his own to carry, his own to marinade in.
Sharing them with Elodie felt like a cop out.
As though it might somehow lessen their power over him, and he was not prepared to do that.
His suffering was a constant protection against ever being stupid enough to care again.
“What did you mean, anyway?”
He fixed her with a level stare, his gaze scanning her face.
“About the appointments.”
Her brow furrowed in a way that made his fingers ache to reach out and smooth it. “What was your plan, Elodie?”
She bit into her lower lip.
“You’ve just described a situation that is far from ideal, yet you told me you didn’t want anything from me. So, what was your plan? How exactly did you think you were going to do this?”
She flinched, and he regretted the harshness of his question. But Elodie wasn’t the only one whose life was spiralling completely out of control. This pregnancy was a bombshell he couldn’t have foreseen.
“I was going to go home,” she murmured.
Something tightened in his gut at the idea of the future she’d planned for their baby—a future in which he had no part. His own flesh and blood, being raised in the English countryside—not fucking likely.
“And then what?”
She lifted an unsteady hand to her cheek and smudged her skin there, so he realized a tear had slid from the corner of her eye. “I don’t know, okay? I thought I’d stay with my parents a while, until I could work everything out.”
He angled his face away from her for a moment, needing time to absorb that.
Guilt was a throbbing sensation taking over his whole body.
Guilt, because their baby had turned everything in her life on its head.
Guilt, because her life was already off course, and he’d knocked it into another dimension.
Not carelessly, though. He’d used protection, and she’d been on the pill.
This had been a true accident, something neither of them could have foreseen as a consequence of that night.
“That will not be necessary.”
He turned to face her, pinning her with his gaze. “From this moment on, you are mine to care for, mine to protect.”
The words reverberated through the car with the force of his determination. There was only one way forward; he could see that clearly now.
“I…don’t need protection.”
He felt the throbbing in the base of his jaw as he bit back a stinging rejoinder.
“You cannot forget what being a Santoro means.”
She shivered visibly. He wasn’t, he supposed, the only one who needed time to grapple with this. It wasn’t fair to expect her to see their situation and come to the same conclusion he had.
“I already told you; I don’t want anything from you.” She let out a small sound, a soft sob. “Or maybe a little help, with some things, like the cot, or pusher, or whatever.”
It was so absurd he laughed. He couldn’t help it.
“A pusher?” He shook his head, reaching out before he could stop himself and placing a hand over her thigh.
It was an action designed only to draw her attention to his face, to reach through to her, but the second his fingertips connected with the fabric of her skirt, his whole body seemed to burst with an explosion of desire.
He forced himself to talk through it, but his voice was gruff. “Elodie, as you point out, my family’s wealth is extreme, but so is my own. My fortune is not something you can ignore.”
She shook her head. “I’m not ignoring it. I’m just…not interested in it.”
Admiration shifted inside of him, but he repressed it quickly.
“You were not at my home long enough to notice the security measures,” he said, slowly.
“My whole house is protected in ways you cannot imagine. This car is heavily armored. My drivers are all ex-military. The children in our family have bodyguards carefully and discreetly monitoring them. You must understand the risks you now face.”
Her obvious reaction showed how completely out of left field that idea was.
“That’s ridiculous,” she said.
He half-way agreed. While they did take precautions to protect themselves, it felt unlikely they were ever necessary. But how could he live with himself if anything were to happen to his child, because he’d failed to act?
Or to Elodie, for that matter. While she was little more than a one-night stand to him, all of this was happening because of him. He had a moral obligation to keep her safe, too.
“Is it? Is that a gamble you’re willing to take?”
She opened her mouth to speak and then clamped it shut again. A moment later, she said softly, “That’s not fair.”
“I know.”
“I mean, it’s not fair of you to put that on me. If you need to hire like a bodyguard or whatever, then do it.”
“No.”
She frowned.
“That’s not enough. It’s more than a bodyguard. It’s your environment. The car you drive, the house you live in, the doctors you see.”
“You’re planning to control my life from here until what? When our child is eighteen perhaps?”
She was going on the defensive because she was afraid; he could see that clearly.
His car turned left, into the garage of his home, the engine cutting. A moment later, the driver was at her door, but Elodie stayed where she was, staring ahead. “I want to go home.”
“You just told me you don’t have a home.”
“I—that’s not what I said.”
“You’re subletting from your cousin.”
“So?”
“And that you’re planning to move in with your parents.”
“Can you stop repeating me back to me?”
“Come inside, Elodie. There’s way too much to discuss, and you know it.”
Her jaw dropped, but to his surprise—and appreciation—she did step wordlessly from the car, her body moving with lithe grace and beauty.
He stifled a groan as he followed, moving quickly to fall into step at her side, through the corridor and into the entrance foyer of his place.
The last time they’d come in from the garage had been the night they’d made love.
He remembered the way her fingertips had tentatively traced his tattoo, her eyes mesmerized as they studied the illustration and words.
“Okay, well, you have me here. What do you want to discuss?”
“Of principle importance, at this point, is deciding where we’ll live.”
He heard it. He knew how jarring the statement was, but so what?
It wasn’t his job to pretend this wasn’t happening.
One of Raf’s strengths was his ability to make a snap decision, to follow his gut.
And right now, every bone in his body was telling him that he couldn’t and wouldn’t be physically separated from his baby.
For now, that included Elodie. Who could say what would happen when the baby was born?
They had time to figure that out, to work out how to co-parent.
He knew only that the same instincts that had driven him to propose to Marcia were driving him now.
Though marriage was the last thing he wanted—he knew it wasn’t the only way to protect their baby, and Elodie.
“What?” She was blinking so fast he genuinely worried her eyelids might flutter away. “You can’t be serious.”
“Do I seem like someone who jokes?”
She shook her head, a little divot forming between her brows.
“But…I’m not moving in here. It’s not remotely sensible for a kid.
I mean, look at this place,” she gestured to the room they were standing in.
Her point was well taken. His home was like a high-end art gallery, something that had never mattered, until now.
“I’m not necessarily talking about you moving here.”
“You just said—,”
“I have a place in Italy. It’s bigger, more sprawling. There’s plenty of space, privacy, and it’s very secure. In my opinion, that’s where we should raise our baby.”