Chapter Seven
‘Have you forgiven me?’
Leaning against the doorframe, Rocco looked at Ella as the front door was pulled open and she shuffled her way out into the cold.
‘More to the point, don’t I get a cup of coffee?’
‘I thought it best that we get the tree-buying done and dusted. Dad’s out inspecting some fences…and forgive you for what?’
Ella had been up since six. She’d made her dad his usual pot of coffee and inwardly winced when he’d said, in his usual direct, vaguely sheepish way, ‘Liked the man.’
‘He’s…er…’ She’d struggled to find the right words to talk about friendship and reliability whilst avoiding the thorny issue of what happened next. ‘A nice guy.’
‘Guess that’s why you fell in love with him.’ Her father had looked at her in silence, his flask of coffee in one hand.
‘About that, Dad…’
‘Good men are hard to find. The man seems a good one to me.’
So much for her down-to-earth father having no time for a richer-than-rich billionaire, Ella had thought.
Instead, she had realised uncomfortably, he had managed to do the one thing she was finding so difficult to do—he had accepted Rocco Mancini for the man he was instead of judging him because he was attached to a big bank balance.
The truth was that Rocco’s parting shot had given her food for thought. He was prepared to go the extra mile. Buying a Christmas tree might be a small thing but what it represented was much bigger—a willingness to put himself out because the situation demanded it, as he’d said.
He’d asked her to marry him. She’d immediately seen that as unacceptable, because it clashed with the dreams and hopes she’d had for herself of being in a relationship where she was treasured and loved.
She had made it all about her, but there was a baby inside her that they shared and, tough though it was to admit it, wasn’t her immediate refusal of that marriage offer tied up with the fact that he didn’t love her the way she knew, deep down, she loved him?
That was the sobering thought that had kept her awake for a lot of the night.
She could rant and rave about Rocco not being the man she had given her heart to—and for sure, when she had first set eyes on him, the sophisticated billionaire with the cool, self-assured attitude hadn’t matched the easy-going charmer she remembered—but now…
The qualities she’d fallen for were still there.
‘Penny for them.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Your thoughts. You’re a million miles away.’
‘Sorry.’ She shut the door firmly behind her, pushed it to make sure it was properly closed and then half-ran against the persisting snow to the black Range Rover.
‘Forgive you for what?’ was the first thing she asked as soon as Rocco was in the car, starting the engine.
‘For not obeying orders yesterday.’
Ella sighed. ‘You got along with my dad when I didn’t think you would. I thought I could control the situation but maybe that was just wishful thinking. Everything’s a muddle, and I thought it would be slightly less complicated if we kept a dividing line between you and my dad.’
She sat back and watched the dull, grey winter landscape go by as he manoeuvred the car away from the house and into the narrow lanes, taking it very, very slowly. She didn’t expect him to reach out and give her hand a reassuring squeeze.
She slid her glance sideways to see that he was staring ahead, focusing on the road. When he returned his hand to the steering wheel, her heart thumped, and she still wanted those warm fingers to be clasped with hers, steady and reassuring, smoothing away all the turmoil in her head.
‘He likes you,’ she added.
‘And that’s not a good thing?’
‘I suppose it’s…okay.’
Rocco burst out laughing and when he cast a dark glance in her direction, she blushed, taken back to the times they’d had when laughter had been in plentiful supply.
‘Just okay? Think about it, Ella, isn’t it a good thing that your father has been reassured that I’m the sort of guy who isn’t going to disappear in the face of the responsibilities that have come his way?’
‘You honestly didn’t have to pass the test with so many flying colours.’
‘I’ve never been a guy to do things by half-measures.’
‘You’ve met my dad now. What happens when I meet your parents, Rocco? What are they going to make of this situation? Or will you keep them in the dark from it?’
‘Keep them in the dark? That would be impossible.’
‘How are they going to react to the fact that we won’t be getting married, when they married because it made sense?’
Rocco’s mouth thinned. How would his parents react?
He already knew how, because he had already had that conversation.
There had been no point delaying the inevitable, but it wasn’t a conversation he had looked forward to, and it had gone as expected: a cold reception followed by an icy reminder of his uncle and what had happened when he had found himself trapped by a gold-digger.
‘And that was without the complication of a child!’ his mother had said in one of the few truly explosive reactions Rocco had ever heard.
Their cold fury had fired up a possessiveness inside him towards Ella which he had known was there without knowing just how powerful it was. Nothing about her could ever be described as greedy for money. Everything she said and did only confirmed that.
He felt her eyes on him and, for a split second, his heart opened up and warmed at feelings that lazily swirled inside him, defying logic.
Logic said he wasn’t built for the highs and lows of love.
Logic said that his uncle had been the benchmark of how a loss of control could ruin lives.
Logic told him that to marry and yet keep a distance was the way the marriage would work and, better than that, would thrive.
He wouldn’t pretend emotions that would never be there, and so she would never be disappointed because she couldn’t access them.
But she would be satisfied on every other front.
‘I guess they would have expected you to get married to someone from the same social standing as you?’
‘I’m sure that’s exactly what they expected, but in life things don’t always go according to plan.’
‘They’ll be bitterly disappointed that not only will you not be marrying the right type of girl but that that wrong type of girl is pregnant with your baby.’
‘My parents’ opinion belongs to them,’ Rocco said, voice cooling as he thought about his parents. ‘I hope I can change it but, if I can’t, then I won’t let it affect me or how I behave in this situation.’
‘Really?’
‘I don’t have the same relationship you have with your father,’ Rocco said quietly. ‘I’ve looked at the interaction between the two of you. There’s no hiding the deep love that’s there, and I’m guessing your entire family unit was like this?’
‘It was,’ Ella agreed with a smile in her voice. ‘Conor may have been as wild as anything sometimes, and Mum may have been dogged with health issues, but there was so much love there. When you say you don’t have the same relationship…’
‘I think I may have given some hints on that particular topic when we…were together.’
‘Maybe.’
‘The details may have been omitted but all the necessary bits were there.’
‘I know you told me that you don’t like Christmas. You can fill in the gaps now. It’s not as though we aren’t on a long journey together, for better or for worse.’
In the silence of the car, Ella found that she was intensely curious to hear more about him. The black and white picture was fading and in its place was the colour of a rounded, three-dimensional man.
‘Fill in the gaps… I suppose you could say that Christmas in my family’s palatial house wasn’t all you might think it was cracked up to be.’
‘No festive tree?’
‘Several. All huge and all decorated by an outside company who always did an excellent job when it came to making them worthy of a magazine cover. There was never a time when we ever went out to physically buy a Christmas tree.’
‘Even when you were a kid?’
‘Never. Nor was there ever any excited opening of presents on Christmas morning. I always had one present given to me at breakfast on Christmas day, and I was allowed to open it once the dishes had been removed by staff. It was always expensive, and elaborate, and as soon as I opened my gift it was expected that I would go upstairs to play with it so that my parents could get on with the rest of the day.’
‘What was the rest of their day?’
‘There was always a lavish buffet luncheon open to the usual great and good. Sometimes, they would bring their kids over and I would have company.’
‘Am I allowed to feel sorry for you?’
Lulled into the ease of conversation which she remembered from when they were lovers, Ella settled into something that felt familiar and exciting at the same time.
‘If that makes you happy. Does it?’
‘I can’t imagine what that must have been like.
’ Would he compare the experience he was going to have putting up a tree for her father to his experiences as a child?
Would that serve to underline the differences between them?
He said that he would never let his parents influence how he dealt with this sudden bombshell dropped into his well-ordered life, but could the kid who had grown up in a mansion be completely immune to his past experience?
He talked of marriage, but could he sidestep prejudices that must have been in place from birth really to accept someone like her? Or was she being judgemental, allowing her own personal fears to cloud the issue?
She wondered why those thoughts were playing in her mind at all when she’d decided not to marry him, when everything he said now confirmed why they could never be suited.
But there was enough doubt about that decision forming in the back of her mind to keep the thoughts churning as the car pulled into the packed car park that serviced the garden centre.