Chapter Sixteen #2
Senora Delgado waved this away. “I do not mean it as it sounds. Agustin is better than his father. Probably.”
Probably.
Mara blinked in surprise, but then Senora Delgado’s gaze moved away from Agustin and Julia to Mara. The woman smiled. Kindly. At least, Mara really thought she was trying to be kind.
“My late husband got married and had children because it was expected of him. He did not pass that expectation onto his sons, so I assumed Agustin would leave himself free to entertain his personal interests in whatever ways he saw fit.” She sighed again. “Perhaps he will be faithful.”
The nausea that had been manageable until now suddenly had more force.
They hadn’t discussed faithfulness. Mara had been so concerned with actual abandonment she hadn’t fully thought about…betrayal. That he might stay in a marriage she’d deemed name only and sleep with other women.
Mara had to close her eyes against the pitch and roll of her stomach. Not that it would be a betrayal. He could sleep with whomever he wanted, and if she wanted to retch at the thought, that was only the interminable morning sickness that seemed to plague her.
But the children… If Agustin was at all worried about gossip—and there would already be snide things said about Mara and Agustin no matter what he thought he could control—what might a public affair do?
At every turn, she wondered how she’d gone from taking every step in her life exactly right to this.
She looked back at Agustin, bouncing a baby as he talked on the phone. There in his suit, looking every inch the CEO and every inch a father.
She was not surprised in the least that he could succeed at both. That he would find a way. He was too smart, too responsible, too determined.
So was she. It was why they had been a good business partnership.
But there was nothing business about the way her heart ached painfully. The way chemistry had overridden reason. These were matters of the heart. Complications.
She couldn’t count on anything when it came to the heart.
When they landed, they were all ushered into a car to be taken to Agustin’s estate outside the city. A car seat was already in the car, installed correctly and everything. Agustin insisted on being the one to strap Julia in since Mara was looking “pale.”
Perhaps she was pale, but it wasn’t from the morning sickness.
It was from the realization that she wanted this life she’d fallen into.
Wanted it beyond reason. And no amount of contracts could stop her heart from yearning for something real.
Even knowing it would be crushed. She would be crushed.
And then what would become of her children?
When they arrived at Agustin’s estate, there was a flurry of activity. Julia was asleep, so Claudia, the nanny, took her up to a waiting crib. Senora Delgado also wanted a rest.
Before Mara could beg off to do some work, Agustin took her by the arm.
“Come, I will show you everything.”
She’d been in this house—every room of it—for various purposes, so she did not know what she was to be shown, but she allowed him to lead her through the house.
It had once been all austere blacks and whites and harsh lines and edges, but there was something…different about it today. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it. New art? Perhaps different furniture and drapes?
He showed her the dining room, where a high chair was now in the corner, waiting to be used.
A sitting room that had been turned into…
a playroom, perhaps? But it wasn’t that straightforward.
There was a baby swing, a low bookcase with baby books arranged in it, baby toys in a corner, but there were also comfortable couches, a rocking chair and a built-in bookcase full of options for reading that had nothing to do with babies.
It was a family room.
Mara had to blink back tears and was glad she wasn’t expected to speak. She wouldn’t have been able to do it past the lump in her throat.
He led her upstairs. “I have rearranged the bedrooms,” he told her.
“I am now at the end of the hall, with Julia next to me. You will be across from Julia. The room across from mine that is next to yours will be for the new baby when he or she arrives. Claudia will stay next to Julia on the other side, should we need her help at night. I’ll let you work out a preferred schedule with her, unless you’d prefer I do it. ”
“No,” Mara managed to croak. “I will do it.” She had to handle something in all this whirl of him doing everything. Organizing a schedule with the nanny had to be top of her list.
He opened the door to what would now be her bedroom. “I have taken the liberty of having your things moved. There is some furniture from your apartment and such that you will need to decide what you want done with, but all your necessities are in here now.”
The room was the size of her entire apartment—and she had a pretty nice apartment these days. The big picture window had a welcoming window seat that was like a dream come true. The walls were a foggy gray, the drapes and linens a misty green. It felt…calming and beautiful.
“As you settle, you may make any design changes you wish, of course.”
She couldn’t dream of changing anything, honestly, and that left her feeling even more useless, even more panicked.
But he just kept leading her around, across the hall and into Julia’s room.
It was a world of pinks and purples. Butterflies and rainbows. Everything was neat and tidy, and Julia slept soundly in a beautiful crib, a video baby monitor on the changing table next to the crib.
“We can change anything you do not like before she is old enough to voice her own preferences,” Agustin said in a low whisper so as not to wake Julia. “And then we will allow her to choose her own, but I wanted her to come home to, well, home.”
“You did…all of this,” she said in wonder. A mix of awe and panic. A mix of amazement and terror. He’d done all this on his own, and it was touching and beautiful.
And meant he needed her not at all.
“Well, as much as I would like to take all the credit, obviously I had others accomplish the actual doing. But I did ensure what needed to be done was done.”
Mara knew she should not be feeling what she felt, because it was a mix of confusing things. Overwhelmed wonder at the fact he had even known what to ask his staff to do. Hurt and worried that she had not been the staff member to enact all this.
What would happen if he realized he didn’t need her? Her value was in everything she did for him, and he was already finding other people to do it.
“Do you plan on having affairs?” she blurted, not at all sure where that had come from.
His head snapped back. “I beg your pardon?”
“Your mother. She said your father had affairs. And we did not discuss… I have no claim on you. I want no claim on you.” She assured herself this was true. “I simply want to discuss the gossip implications of such a thing happening.”
Agustin’s expression shuttered. He led her back out of Julia’s room and back into the one that was for her. Once inside, he released her and closed the door. Then he regarded her, and she could not read the emotions in his dark eyes.
Not with her own roiling around her stomach like a new form of morning sickness.
“My father did have affairs,” he said coolly. “And there were some, when we were old enough to understand such things, who used this information to torture Felipe.”
Mara’s heart ached.
“I would not do such a thing to our children.” He said it like a vow.
She should take it like one, but the panic… She did not know what to do with this clawing feeling that everything she had built was crumbling away. All her power, all her use, all her foundations were just sand underneath her feet. “Because you won’t have affairs, or because you will be discreet?”
His eyes narrowed, arms crossed over his chest. “What exactly as you asking me, Mara?”
She swallowed. What was she asking him? What did it matter? He could promise her here and now to never have an affair and break that promise by tonight.
“Nothing,” she determined aloud. “I am tired and out of sorts. You have done so much without me, and I am not used to being so…” Unneeded. Unwanted. Unnecessary.
Which was silly, of course. She had been used to all those things once.
“I should like a rest, I think.”
He eyed her, as if he understood too well what was going on with her. Which was not the case and impossible.
“Take as long as you need,” Agustin said. “I will go attend to some things.”