Chapter Five #2
‘Not everyone’s in the dark. I’m four months’ pregnant. It’s not something I can keep to myself for ever. It’s just that no one knows who the father of my baby is.’
Rocco tilted his head to the side and looked at her in silence for a few seconds.
He would have to tread carefully. Perhaps, for the first time in a life in which he was accustomed to having all orders obeyed and all needs immediately met, Rocco was discovering what it felt like to run headlong into an immovable roadblock.
The very thing that had beguiled him—her lack of awe of what he could bring to the table financially—was now the very thing that stood in the way of the most logical conclusion to this situation.
She’d been positively insulted at the insinuation that she might be impressed by his wealth.
She couldn’t be swayed by any amount of money and, whatever they’d shared, her opinion of him now couldn’t be lower.
She barely liked him. She had spun him the story about the fate of the staff as a way of measuring his worth just to see whether she should even bother to tell him about the pregnancy.
If he’d shut down the conversation without discussion, he uneasily suspected she would have withheld the news about the pregnancy, judging him to be the sort of guy a kid is better off without.
Maybe in due course, when their child had become old enough to be curious, she might have done something about that.
He’d never considered fatherhood with any immediacy but, now that it had been thrust upon him, he was very clear on what he wanted.
Doing the honourable thing was top of the list. He had been raised to value duty, after all, to value the virtue of responsibility.
Right now, he was skating on thin ice when it came to achieving his goal.
He couldn’t fault her hostility. She had been open and trusting with him, had confided in him and, in return, she had been repaid with what she would see as colossal betrayal.
Rocco knew that if he were to suggest the honourable thing—marriage for the sake of their baby—she would recoil in horror.
As she’d told him, he was the last person she would ever again want to be involved with.
But he was going to marry her. That was a given. He was going to give his flesh and blood the legacy he or she deserved, the legacy that was their natural birthright.
He told her the name of the hotel where he was staying, and watched the way she lowered her eyes. What would she be thinking? That this five star hotel was the last place she would have associated with the man she’d thought he was? The guy she’d trusted?
Rocco thought of the houses, the cars, his mansion in London…of the exalted background he had so carefully hidden from her.
It was what it was and he was going to get what he wanted. He wasn’t used to playing the long game but choices seemed thin on the ground at the moment.
‘It must have been scary for you, Ella,’ he murmured now, pausing by the door to look down at her with genuine sympathy. ‘No, don’t say anything. We can talk about all of this when we’re at the hotel. I’ll give you time to tell the boss that you won’t be in today.’
‘For a couple of hours, at any rate.’
‘Let’s not put a timeline on the discussion we’re going to have to have. You…you don’t look pregnant.’
‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘Can you try to stop attacking me? That’s not what I meant. I believe you. I wasn’t as careful with protection as I should have been so, trust me, I not only believe you but I take full responsibility for…this situation.’
‘I’m not blameless.’ She looked at him mutinously, then lowered her eyes again. ‘It’s nearly four months,’ she said. ‘From everything I’ve read, you don’t really show with a first pregnancy until later on.’
Rocco glanced at his watch. ‘Let’s say I meet you at twelve? Gives you quite some time here to do whatever urgent things you might have to do…’
‘That would be dealing with the winding up of the store.’
‘And we can have some lunch.’
‘I…’
‘Please don’t tell me that you’re not hungry because I’ve offered to buy lunch for you. You need to eat—you’re pregnant. That much I do know without having read anything on the subject. Are you? Eating properly?’
‘Of course I am. I’m more than capable of looking after myself.’ She hesitated, then said in a semi-resentful rush, ‘I’ve been for a scan and everything is fine with the baby.’
‘Do you know…what we’re having?’
Ella stared at him.
She could feel a slow burn inside her, something different from the anger, hurt and resentment.
Over the months she had become accustomed to this being her baby, her situation, her responsibility.
But now she saw that letting him in would unlock all sorts of other things.
She would be opening the door to his presence in her life in ways that wouldn’t be politely respectful if she decided she didn’t want him to be there.
He had a stake in what was going on inside her body and that scared her because she knew that she had feelings for him.
At least, for the man she’d thought she’d known. But Jose was Rocco and Rocco… For all the accusations she had thrown at him, he wasn’t walking away, wasn’t raging at her, wasn’t blaming her for what had happened and wasn’t telling her that he’d ruined his life even though he might think it.
‘I don’t want to know.’
‘Right, I’ll see you in a couple of hours, Ella.’ He paused. ‘And I should tell you that I won’t be impressed if you decide to bail on me because you want to give me space to process. Or any other reason, for that matter.’
‘Whether you’re impressed by anything I do or don’t do isn’t my concern.’
‘Listen to me. We’re in this together, so you will have to be civil at some point. I can’t keep explaining why I did what I did on an endless loop.’
‘I know that. Can you get that it hurt when I found out that you’d lied?
My ex lied to me because he wanted my flatmate, not me.
Do you get that it felt like a very similar road I was walking down?
And then you show up here, telling me that you’re actually the guy who’s bought the store…
Do you get that it all feels a little bloody overwhelming? ’
‘Ella…’
‘Forget it.’
She made to turn away and felt his hand circle her wrist, tugging her slightly towards him.
‘It matters,’ Rocco said gruffly. ‘Believe it or not, I’m not that guy. I don’t lie. Ever. What I did… Yes, I wasn’t straight with you, but I really never meant to get involved and, once I had, I couldn’t then tell you what was going on. I’m sorry.’
‘Okay.’ Ella pulled back but her heart was hammering and she could feel herself weakening at the sincerity in his voice and the gravity of his expression.
She wasn’t going to weaken. He might be sincere but, even so, he could never be her type: a billionaire who could have his pick of women, who lived life in the fast lane, who had basically dallied with her for a bit of fun because of a passing attraction.
Besides, whatever he said about being unable to be honest with her, he could have been. Everyone in life had a choice.
‘Is it? Okay?’
‘It’s okay insofar as you’re right,’ Ella said coolly.
‘We need to be civil with one another. Basically, what we had was more or less a one-night stand between two people who aren’t compatible, who come from completely different worlds.
I’ll try to forget the past and just think about what happens next in this scenario. ’
‘We weren’t that incompatible.’
‘We were good in bed,’ Ella said flatly. ‘So, sure, in that sense we weren’t incompatible, but I don’t go for rich, powerful guys who go through life knowing that they can do exactly what they want.’
‘Right. This rich guy will see you at midday.’
On the Tannoy system, Christmas music burst into life, tinny and joyful, and Rocco involuntarily grimaced.
‘It’s at least the season for goodwill,’ he said.
He waited a couple of seconds, got nothing by way of response, then he spun round, half-turned to give her a small salute and was gone, closing the door to the boardroom quietly behind him.
Ella stared at the closed door until the tangle of emotions racing through her began to settle.
Over the months, she’d been lulled into believing that she was going to have to make the best of her circumstances.
She would be a single parent, would struggle to make ends meet but would have the love and support of her dad and her friends.
She was grateful for living in a small, close-knit community.
Now, walking into that boardroom, seeing the man who had haunted her waking moments and her deepest dreams, sitting there…
Even thinking about it made her shiver with a sense of unreality.
She’d fainted. Something she’d never done before in her life.
The shock… In a single instant, the life she’d come to terms with had been turned on its head.
She did a few things that couldn’t wait, made some lame excuses to her colleagues, Vera and her boss and then, at exactly a quarter to twelve, she got a cab to the city centre.
The season of goodwill was in full swing outside the department store.
The Christmas lights were on and the store fronts were bursting with giant bows and bunches of poppy-red holly.
Outside Maccie’s, the local butcher, a blow-up Santa bobbed, along with three reindeer.
Over the past few days, the snow had been obliging when it came to creating just the right atmosphere and it was lightly falling now, as though dusting everything with icing sugar.