Chapter Four #2
After fifteen minutes of predictable questions, a blood pressure check and a finger poke to test her blood sugar, she was pronounced pregnant with moderate morning sickness. Moderate.
She was still fuming about that when Luca’s real reason for the medical check became apparent.
“Will you agree to a blood draw for a paternity test?” the doctor asked.
She sent Luca a filthy look.
He loomed on the far side of the lounge, feet spaced wide, arms folded, expression impassive. Determined.
“You just said you’re thirteen weeks pregnant,” he pointed out. “The night of the party was—”
“It’s pregnancy math,” she cut in. “They count from the first day of your last period.”
He shot a look to the doctor, who shrug-nodded. “It’s true. Conception is most likely fourteen days later.”
Luca’s mouth twisted in dismay as he added up that Giselle’s party was ten weeks and five days ago, right in the sweet spot.
“It’s so men can be suspicious and dip out on their responsibility,” Jade said in a tone of false pleasantry. “And so they can tell women we’re bad at math.”
“It’s just the way it’s done,” the doctor said mildly as he tied off her upper arm and swabbed her inner elbow.
As soon as he had his vial, she left Luca swabbing his cheek and went to the kitchen where she helped herself to a banana.
There was a jar of what looked like homemade minestrone in the fridge with a label that told her it was fresh.
She gave it a sniff, then dumped it into a saucepan and set it to warm.
Luca came in as it began to simmer. “He said we should know by morning.”
“I already know.” She found a loaf of fresh bread and cut a few slices off it.
Her phone pinged. She glanced at it. She had messaged her mother that she was here with Luca and would call when she had something to say, but she was ignoring work emails and Giselle’s texts.
She sighed as she saw that her father’s assistant wanted her to call him. She turned the phone face down.
“Why are you doing this?” she demanded of Luca. “Why do you care if it’s yours or not?”
“What kind of question is that? If I’ve made a child, I’ll take responsibility for it.”
“So do that. Set up a bank account or whatever you think ‘responsibility’ is.” She air-quoted the word. “I’m not stopping you. You don’t have to destroy my life in the process.”
“Destroy your life?” he repeated. “That’s a bit dramatic, isn’t it?”
She paused in setting place mats on the island. “In six months, I have to stop working, push a watermelon out my nether regions, hopefully not die in the process, then look after another human being for twenty years. I’m so scared, I can barely keep food down. But okay. I’m being dramatic.”
“If—”
She narrowed her eyes.
“When I say that I will take responsibility for my child, I mean exactly what you’re talking about. Feeding and clothing and getting up in the night. I will provide a home and everything else required to ensure my child’s good health and best future. For twenty years and beyond.”
“Okay, one-upper.” Her blood slithered in her veins as another thought occurred. “What exactly do you mean, though? Are you planning to try taking this baby from me?” Her hand went to the straining waistband of her trousers.
“No.” He scowled. “That’s hardly in the baby’s best interest, is it?”
“Then how would that even work?” She set out bowls and split the soup between them. “You’ll move here to London and I hand off my baby to you every other night? That is not in the baby’s best interest.” She absolutely would not do that.
“You’ll live with me in Milan.” His tone said, Obviously.
“Why? Do you even want to be a father?” She set the bowls and offered him a spoon.
His eye twitched.
“I didn’t think so.” She left his spoon beside his bowl and walked around to sit on one of the stools. “Take the off-ramp I’m giving you. You don’t believe it’s yours anyway.”
“Is it?” he asked in a gritty voice.
“I guess we’ll find out in the morning.”
“Don’t play games, Jade.” He pushed aside the other stool so he stood a little too close to her, all of him wearing a cloak of tension. “It’s too important. I want the test so I know. But right now, I have no choice but to take your word for it.”
“Have you heard me at all today? I don’t have the bandwidth for games.
Right now, my entire focus is ensuring Mum and I have our basic needs met.
You have damaged my plans on that front.
” Was that undramatic enough for him? “I still don’t understand why.
Tomorrow you will learn that yes, you are actually the father of my baby. So what? Why do you care?”
“I still don’t understand the question.” He backed off, hitching the other stool into place, but not touching his soup as he sat sideways, facing her.
“We’ve known each other for all of ten minutes,” she reminded him. “You disappeared right after conceiving this baby. You’re not happy it exists.”
“I was called away,” he reiterated with tested patience. “And being shocked and unhappy that you wanted to give my baby another man’s name is not the same thing as not wanting the baby.”
“Okay. So you’re saying you want it? For what? That’s what I don’t understand.”
“You said you want your mother to hold your baby,” he reminded her. “I want my grandmother to hold mine.”
“Great. As soon as we can travel, I will visit her and she can hold the baby.”
His expression tightened. “Why are you being so obstructive?”
He was going to make her drag her self-worth through the muck to make him understand, wasn’t he?
“My father never wanted me, Luca,” she spelled out.
“The only reason he bothered to support my mother and me was because his sister made him do it. He resents my existence every single minute of the day. I won’t subject my child to that.
So is that what you’re doing? Taking ‘responsibility’ because you think your grandmother expects you to? ”
“Quit doing this.” He copied her air quotes. “I am not using the word ironically. I take accountability for my actions. That’s why I’m here. ‘Destroying’ your life.” His fingers curled again.
She rolled her eyes and went back to eating her soup.
He picked up his spoon and swiveled to face his bowl.
They ate in silence until her phone pinged. Her father’s assistant had resorted to calling. She knew better than to ignore him, but did, plonking the phone face down again.
“Is your aunt no longer alive?” Luca asked. “Why isn’t she helping you manage things with your father?”
“She passed away.” She dropped her last bite of crust into her bowl and picked it up with her spoon.
“She was a justice of the High Court. Mum worked for her. That’s how Mum met His Lordship.
When my aunt learned he’d got Mum pregnant, she offered to adopt me.
I think about that sometimes.” She stole a moment to muse on it again.
“I wonder how he might have treated me if I’d been his niece instead of his by-blow. ”
“That term sounds derogatory.”
“I’ve been called worse.” She definitely had.
“In any case, Mum didn’t want to give me up so my aunt insisted he support us.
She died when I was about to start at Oxford.
She left me a little nest egg, but left most of her money to a charity that funds legal aid for those who can’t afford it.
I think my father thought he was finally rid of me, but Mum was starting to have trouble walking. I asked him for help.”
She often thought about that, too. How her life would look if she hadn’t put herself into his debt.
“He had one of his properties retrofitted for Mum and hired Kandili and supported me while I got my degree, all on the condition that I work where he put me, which was for Giselle. He doesn’t do anything out of duty to the child he made, or love for me, or even compassion for Mum’s situation.
It’s so he can hold Giselle’s father in his debt. ”
“That’s why it doesn’t make sense to you that I would want my baby?” He watched her closely. “It doesn’t compute that I could want my child for the same reason you do?”
“Have you always planned to have children?”
“Not exactly.” Guarded tension arrived to shutter his expression.
It was her turn to pivot on the stool and study him.
He abruptly stood and moved to the window that looked onto the back garden. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, shoulders so stiff he appeared to be holding up the weight of the world.
“You might as well know that I thought I was about to become a father five years ago.”
The soup in her belly curdled. She swiveled her stool even more so she could watch him as she asked, “What happened?”
His shoulders twitched as though he was trying to shrug it off, but his tone was too deliberately flat for her to believe he was unmoved.
“I’d been seeing a woman, Trieste, for more than a year.
We were living together, but my work is very demanding.
She felt neglected and moved out. We saw each other once more.
” He glanced over his shoulder, mouth pulling with irony, telling her that “saw” meant “slept together.” “A few weeks later, she told me she was pregnant so I proposed.”
He’d been engaged? In love?
She swallowed back the burn that climbed behind her sternum into her throat.
“I believe that she believed the baby was mine,” he said to the window.
“She wasn’t someone who would lie about something like that.
But things were off. I could tell she was upset about something.
She finally admitted that she’d been with her ex while we’d been separated.
It was a few days after our goodbye. She was defensive when I asked for a paternity test, thought I was being unnecessarily suspicious. ”
Jade curled a fist, realizing where his mistrust was coming from, but she didn’t like that the brunt of it was falling on her.
“We fought over it for weeks.” He was still speaking to the back garden, not her. “She wound up telling her ex. He wanted clarity, too, but she didn’t want to take the test. She was afraid of the answer.”