Chapter Seven #3
Approving hoots broke into her ears. Luca lifted his head and she fluttered her eyes open to find her hand curled into his lapel and her weight pressed onto her toes.
She dropped onto her heels and surreptitiously ran the tip of her ring finger at the edge of her lips, hoping to catch any smudges of lipstick, not that anyone would notice against the ferocity of the blush that was blistering her face.
Thankfully, Paolo called up the next prize winner, allowing her and Luca to slip away.
“Go to bed if you want to. I’ll join you later,” Luca said as he walked into the closet, peeling his tuxedo jacket as he went.
Jade bit back a sigh. She hadn’t known what to say in the car and his silence had left her convinced he was angry and resented the expense of the earrings.
She stole another look at them, wistful. She would love to wear them, even though she would be fearful the entire time that she might lose one. Now, however, she would always feel this discord when she looked at them.
Why had he gone to such trouble to secure them? Purely to make people believe they were in love? Because he seemed as embarrassed by that presumption as she’d been. Then he’d kissed her so intimately, it had thrust her back to that night in Kent.
“There’s an exchange card if you’d rather something else.” Luca came out of the closet in joggers and a T-shirt. “Or we can put them in another silent auction. I’m constantly asked for donations.”
“No, I—” She snapped the lid closed and clutched the box to her chest, thrust into that space where she was never allowed to have nice things.
“I don’t want to fight with you, Luca. That’s all my life has been.
Fighting and fighting.” Fighting for the right to call her mother, fighting to hold on to the homework someone wanted to throw into a puddle, fighting to hold up her head against vicious gossip. “I’m so tired of it.”
She set aside the earrings and gripped her elbows, frowning in recollection.
“I was trying to avoid a fight that night,” she continued.
“That’s why I locked myself in with you and then you came on to me and I thought, why can’t I have one thing for me?
One minute of not fighting myself?” She rubbed her brow.
“It really is fine that you only wanted a hookup that night. But then this happened.” She waved at her middle.
“Now you’re completely taking over my life and you think that earrings and pretty clothes make up for it?
I know there’s a catch, Luca. I know that. ”
“You don’t have to have sex with me just because I bought you some earrings.”
“I want to have sex with you!” The words burst out of her, too loud and originating from such a visceral, hungry place it was embarrassing.
Her temper had hold of her tongue, though.
More angry confessions burst out of her.
“I want you to erase all of this with orgasms that knock me off the bed.” She waved a wild hand.
“But what will I have afterward? Nothing. Not even myself. Everything I have and everything I am will belong to you. I don’t know how to let that happen. ”
His own arms were folded, feet spaced apart as though braced for confrontation. His cheeks were hollow, his slitted gaze flickering as he took in all that she’d revealed.
“Don’t confuse me with your father, Jade.
He was born into his wealth and thinks he’s entitled to it.
This didn’t come easily to me.” He jerked his head to indicate the sumptuous room with its silk drapes and parquet floor and contemporary art on the walls.
“Nonna and I lost our home after my family died and moved into a one-bedroom flat. I slept on the kitchen floor for two years. We survived on my grandmother’s small pension and whatever I could earn after school in an economically depressed neighborhood.
I’m not buying you with all of these things.
I’m sharing the wealth I’ve accumulated with the mother of my child.
Which gives me pause,” he admitted frankly.
“I fought too hard for it to let it go without reservations. The baby is the catch, though. For both of us. Everything I am and everything I have belongs to that coffee bean inside you, the one who doesn’t even know what sort of havoc he or she is creating in both our lives. ”
“More of a plum, if the books are correct,” she mumbled with a brush of her hand over the bump, then picked up her head. “But you’re right. I’m judging you by the way my father behaves. Maybe that’s not fair, but it’s all I know.”
“Can we come to one agreement tonight? I never want your father in our bedroom, not even in conversation. What happens between the two of us, in here, is between us. No one else, especially him.”
She wasn’t sure which one of them was being naive, thinking there was any part of her life that couldn’t be overshadowed and crushed under her father’s heel, but she found herself nodding agreement, yearning for a space that was carved out purely for them.
“Bene. Now if you’re serious about those orgasms, come here.”