Chapter Six #2
Rocco took a step forwards, his stance wide, as if guarding his space like she was some risk. His jaw clenched and hard.
‘I’m asking you to leave. Now. Should you return, I’ll call the police.’
The police …at least Lily had no doubts as to where he stood.
It was as if her heart simply shrivelled in her chest. She’d hoped at least, for a bit of civility.
Her stomach churned, the permanent gnawing sensation amplifying, a sick feeling creeping up to the base of her throat.
She pressed her thumb hard into her forearm, supposedly an acupressure spot to help with nausea.
It didn’t seem to be working. Maybe she could simply throw her letter at him and run?
Not a chance. She’d spent money. She’d come here. She had to tell him in person, no matter how he reacted.
‘I—I don’t know how to say this.’ Lily looked up at him, praying not to completely humiliate herself. Knowing that she was probably going to. ‘I’m pregnant.’
Rocco couldn’t comprehend what she’d just said.
It was as if everything stilled—the breeze dropped.
Birdsong simply died. Lily, this stranger, stood there like a creature caught in a spotlight, staring at him with wide blue eyes and pale skin.
Paler than he remembered from their night together, when she lay splayed open to him on cotton sheets, her hair like spilled hot chocolate on the pillow.
Muse.
No. Liar. Grifter. Any number of words. Not muse.
Though when Carmella told him a Lily was at the door …farfallina …for one millisecond a scorching spike of something like excitement, lust, had surged through him before he’d shut it down.
‘Impossible,’ he said. ‘We used protection.’
‘Did we, though? All of the time? I lost track …’
He didn’t want to remember that night, but to his shame, he hadn’t been able to forget.
It had been a fevered fantasy. Sex and sleep.
More sex. Something about it almost hypnotic.
Reaching for each other in that twilight state between consciousness and slumber.
Waking in each other’s arms, kissing, finding himself inside her and he’d no idea how they’d gotten there.
Not even sure sometimes whether the sex was real or a dream.
He’d lost count of how many times he’d come.
How many times she had. It was all just caresses, sighs and cries of ecstasy.
Slick kisses and slicker bodies twined together.
She was drugging. Addictive. When morning broke they’d clung together, made love a final time and then parted.
The rest of his time in Venice was like the worst of hangovers.
Not because of any alcohol, but because of her.
Lily’s effect on him. It had been the perfect way to forget and then reality had rushed in again.
The truth of his life, the estrangement from his parents.
The brother he’d made an enemy of when he hadn’t known who he was.
But, pregnant? Impossible.
‘It’s a convenient story,’ he said, trying to inject a chill in his voice when he was slowly being overcome by a distracting, phantom heat. He hated that she still affected him this way. Made him weak with wanting. He’d been there, done that once. Learned his lesson.
Never again.
‘That doesn’t mean it’s not the truth,’ Lily said. ‘I had no idea who you were, then I read a magazine for work and you were in it.’
He knew that article. It had been in the works well before his family imploded.
Before his world had collapsed, before Silvestri Furniture had lost the Tessitore deal.
The whole piece was meant as succession planning.
To showcase him as the future of the family company.
Highlight some of his own designs. His interest as a patron of the arts although names of the artists he supported and his own interest in sculpture were secrets he maintained. Right now, he kept any number of them.
Rocco gritted his teeth. ‘How did you find out about this property?’
It was only fairly recently purchased. He’d needed to move away from Milan.
His family, the memories that plagued him.
Rome was a place he’d always loved. The stars had aligned when this villa had come on the market.
It even had the perfect space attached to the garage area for a studio where he could do his sculpting, which he’d been working on late into each night since his return from Venice.
Some might have called it an obsession. His friends, the influence of a muse.
Never. This woman had no hold over him.
‘I asked someone to find you,’ she said, her teeth raking her pink lower lip. Soft, yielding flesh he’d kissed into the early hours of the morning till her lips were the colour of cherries. A beautiful shade on her.
These unbidden memories needed to stop. He knew nothing of Lily Rutherford, or whatever she’d called herself, although he knew women like her. He was a wealthy man. That wasn’t boasting; it was simply fact. Many women would like to get their greedy little claws into his money.
What more perfect way than to claim pregnancy?
Disappointment crashed over him. He was besieged by liars, and Lily was simply another. Like Carla. His parents. He’d give anything not to be surrounded by people for whom truth was an optional extra.
‘That would have cost money. Though given I’m such an eligible candidate, why wouldn’t you come here to see me?’
‘What are you trying to say?’ Lily’s gaze narrowed, her voice sharpened.
Yet the memories of Venice still crashed over him like a storm surge breaking on the shore. Ones where he kidded himself to believe she was different. Allowed himself to be consumed by pleasure and fantasies of having something more, even for just one night.
Now this.
‘There’s no evidence the child is mine,’ he bit out. ‘It was a hook-up. A one-night stand. I am a wealthy man. That would have been clear from anything you’d read about me. You arrive on my doorstep, claiming you’re pregnant. Let’s put two and two together. What number do you get?’
Lily reached out and gripped the portico’s column, her fingers blanching as she did. ‘I know how to add up but the only answer I’m getting to this equation is that you’re a pompous jerk.’
A surge of heat rushed through him. Not pleasurable, but hot and angry. ‘I’m a what? Don’t think these kinds of things haven’t been tried on me before. It’s an old story for men like me. How do I know you’re really pregnant? That this isn’t some ruse?’
Lily seemed to pull herself up, grow taller even though she was still slight and small when compared to him.
‘What would be the point of coming here if it wasn’t true?
Though admittedly I didn’t think I’d have to bring the stick I peed on as evidence.
I’m here. I’ve told you. My job’s done.’ She looked over her shoulder at the gate, clearly wanting to leave.
Escape and scuttle back from where she came no doubt, now she’d learned he wasn’t an easy mark.
‘Not even willing to prove to me you’re pregnant? What a lack of commitment,’ he sneered. ‘How easily you’ve shown up your lies.’
Lily made as if to leave then swayed. Turning from pale, to a terrible shade of grey. Was she going to fall? Surely it was an act but her colour … Rocco stepped up to her, but Lily held up her hand to stop him.
‘Enough. I don’t need to prove anything to—’
Her hand flew to her mouth. She seemed to hunch forwards, heave and then a hot acrid spray of vomit splattered onto his shoes. She looked up at him, eyes wide, almost afraid, then they rolled back and she simply crumpled before him.
All he could do was catch her dead weight in his arms.