Chapter 16
ELODIE WOULD HAVE GIVEN just about anything to have a few moments alone, to calm her rioting nerves, before having to see her parents.
But no sooner had the car drawn to a stop and Raul stepped out from behind the wheel than her parents were at the front door, moving onto the path that was lined with lavender bushes on either side, grim expressions on their faces.
Expressions of acceptance and disappointment.
“Just—don’t mention marriage to them, please,” she implored, her heart wobbling in her chest. It felt as though he’d sliced through her with a blade, over and over.
Offering marriage had shown her what she’d been coming to terms with for days, if not longer.
His suggestion had been like the bursting of the sun, from behind clouds, and then, his pragmatic explanation was like the opening of the heavens, in a torrential downpour.
It had hurt. His reasons were so unemotional, so devoid of feeling, when Elodie was overflowing with them.
His nostrils flared. “What do you take me for?”
Everything was wrong. This was nothing like they’d been on the yacht, where she’d felt so completely in lockstep with him, as though they had been designed to speak each other’s language fluently.
“Just—thank you.”
He nodded once, eyes boring into hers. “But Elodie?”
Her heart twisted.
“This conversation is on pause—not finished.”
While Elodie clearly felt nervous about telling her parents, Raf, from the outside, could see what she perhaps couldn’t: her parents loved her more than anything.
More than their conservative values, more than their attachment to her ex—which was obvious from the fact photographs of Elodie and a man he knew must have been Aaron—still cluttered most surfaces of the house.
It was obviously not their ideal situation, and yet they very clearly just wanted her to be happy.
Their hospitality was very different to the Santoros’, but it was no less thoughtful.
Genevieve Finch had baked a selection of little pastries, and made egg and cress sandwiches, which she’d arranged on a delicate silver platter.
There was tea—which Raf hated but drank regardless—and very polite, civil conversation, as they gingerly tried to get to know the man who had gotten their daughter pregnant during a one-night stand.
And despite knowing he’d been careful, that she’d been on contraception, he felt like a complete failure for not being able to protect her better.
For having done something—even unintentionally—that had completely re-shaped the direction of her life.
When Elodie excused herself to the restroom, eventually, he abandoned all pretence at the polite, English conversation and got right to the point.
“I intend to make sure your daughter has everything she wants in life,” he said, as soon as they were alone.
Frank Finch sat up a little straighter, his eyes narrowing. “What does that mean?”
“She’ll never want for anything. She can pursue whatever she wants, professionally, or not. It’s her choice. I’ll make sure that this baby doesn’t mean she loses options…”
Frank looked at Genevieve, both frowning. “Mr Santoro—,”
“Raf,” he corrected Elodie’s mother.
“I’m sure you know Elodie well enough,” she said, with a frown that showed she knew no such thing. “To know she’d never accept money from you. Our daughter is not mercenary.”
He wasn’t stupid enough to think the painful twisting in his chest was anything other than right in the middle of his heart.
“I wasn’t suggesting that,” he said, lifting a hand in the air. “Though of course, I will make sure she is taken care of on that front, too.”
“I don’t think she’d like that,” Genevieve said, shaking her head, then smiling softly, with obvious affection. “Ellie’s always been an independent one.”
“That’s true,” Frank added his voice. “Even as a little girl, she had to do things her way.”
Raf found his own mouth twitching with something like amusement. Elodie had gone head to head with him from the beginning, known her own mind. Right back on that very first night, she’d stood her ground. Her inner strength was not something he expected to change, nor that he wanted to challenge.
“I have an obligation,” he said, with a small shrug of his shoulders.
Frank and Genevieve exchanged another glance.
“To contribute to the baby’s upbringing, perhaps,” Genevieve said.
“I’m sure Elodie will welcome that, within reason.
But it wouldn’t matter if you were the King of England, or someone from the streets, I don’t think it would change a single thing for Elodie. She won’t want your money.”
He knew that to be the case. She had never once acted as though she was impressed by his wealth, and the trappings that came with it. Though they’d enjoyed the yacht, he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, they would have had just as much fun in a tiny hotel room.
“What do you think she does want?” Raf asked, judging himself for asking that of her parents, when he should have just asked her.
Marriage was clearly not it, but what then?
“We can’t speak for her,” Genevieve said, and Raf knew then how much he liked these people.
They were every bit as decent and ethical as Elodie.
Apples didn’t fall far from trees. He’d spent the last two years living up to his father’s reputation and Elodie…
well, Elodie deserved someone a hell of a lot better than him.
I don’t want to marry anyone unless it’s the deepest, most real love there is.
He closed his eyes against that fierce rejection, and a moment later, Elodie was in the room. They stayed only another ten minutes, before Elodie started to make noises about leaving.
“Oh, darling,” Genevieve said, her face showing an apologetic grimace. “I’m not sure if there’s time today, but Aaron has been asking about you. I know he’d like to see you, if possible.”
Everything inside of Raf clenched up, as he waited for her response.
“I’d like that,” Elodie murmured, from his left. He didn’t look at her. He didn’t trust himself to be able to, without showing what he was feeling—and he didn’t halfway understand that. “But we won’t have time today.”
Raf stood then, his body running hot and cold.
He wasn’t sure how he got through the next few minutes, but the second they were back in his car, he let out a breath he hadn’t even realised he’d been holding.
Suddenly, he missed his old life. He missed the ease and clarity of being a complete loner.
Of doing whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted.
He missed knowing there was no one he cared about, no one else he had to think of.
Because when he thought of Elodie, he had the strangest feeling that his body was being clamped in a vice; he wanted, desperately, to be free of it.
It was very strange being back in his Mayfair home, after all that had happened. Last time they were here, she’d told him she was pregnant. Now? So much had shifted between them, and yet, it felt almost like a dream. As though the time they’d shared in Tuscany had happened to two other people.
Perhaps it was their conversation in his car, his strange and hurtful marriage proposal, but Elodie just needed some space away from him. To think and breathe.
No sooner had they returned to his place, than she said, “I think I’ll go for a walk.”
He’d nodded. “If you give me five minutes, I’ll come with you.”
“No,” she rejected quickly, tried to smile to tamp down on the harshness of her word. She needed to clear her head, and that was impossible with Raf shadowing her. “I think I’d rather be alone.”
His brow furrowed. “I’ll have Raul come—,”
“No,” she said, again. “I want to be alone.”
“Elodie, you know it’s not safe.”
“Come on, Raf. That’s not true. No one outside of your family and mine knows about the baby. I’m not going to be bundled off the street.”
His lips compressed in a grim line, but he nodded once. “Keep your phone on you.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not a child.”
“Elodie—,”
“Okay, fine,” she said, because she couldn’t bear to stand toe to toe with him, arguing about something so inconsequential.
“I’ll be back soon.” She turned on her heel and left, quickly, closing her eyes as soon as she stepped out of his front door, needing a moment to orient herself to this life she’d found herself living.
Mayfair was one of her favourite areas of London, though she’d only ever come into this part of town for a specific purpose.
So it was, despite the turmoil of the afternoon, a balm to her soul to walk the streets, admiring the old, Georgian houses, the big, plane trees, the fenced off private gardens.
She walked for a long time, in the late afternoon heat, dovetailing through side alleys rather than getting too close to the hustle and bustle of Oxford Street, before her phone began to ring.
She knew it would be Raf even without looking at the screen. Whatever else there might have been between them, his original statement that the baby made her ‘his responsibility’ was shown, time and time again, to be something he believed.
“I won’t be much longer,” she said, curtly, though she couldn’t even articulate why she was so annoyed at him.
Getting married because she was pregnant wasn’t a terrible idea.
Lots of people might choose that path—she knew it would be her parents’ preference.
And before she’d gotten to know Raf so well, she might have even considered some kind of on-paper arrangement, to streamline things for their child. But now?