Chapter Eight #2
He wanted his child close, and that meant he had to keep Lily closer.
It came to him like a bolt from the heavens, clear and bright as the summer’s sun.
Whilst he’d abandoned any idea of it years before, right now, he’d run out of options.
It would take a little planning and setting the scene, but there was only one logical solution.
Marry the mother.
Lily strolled down the street towards the rear of Rocco’s home.
After her confrontation with him the other morning she’d decided to stay in her room, that he wasn’t worth her time.
She’d told Carmella she wasn’t feeling herself and spent the day reading a book.
Sleeping. But Lily had had enough of seclusion, even though it hadn’t been a hardship.
The space was more like a suite. All elegant neutrals, able to fit a lounge where she could relax.
And she loved the ensuite bathroom with its heavenly shower that sprinkled down like rainfall.
She even had a little balcony from her room overlooking the garden below.
Then there were the wonderful snacks and meals to tempt her, delivered to her door. Zero hardship. At. All.
But she refused to hide away forever. She had nothing to be ashamed of.
Rocco Silvestri could judge her all he liked.
It said far more about him than it did her.
Anyhow, she was used to it by now. Her ex.
Her parents. Her brother. Even friends. They all thought they knew how to run her life better than she did.
Each one of them could go jump in the proverbial lake.
Where had doing what everyone else wanted ever gotten her? She wasn’t going to dwell on it, so she’d checked the internet deciding to leave her self-imposed exile and bought a ticket for the Baths of Caracalla. Rocco had ruins right at his back door, and when in Rome …she guessed she’d explore.
They were everything she’d wanted, and in many ways a place to forget and lose herself in history.
The tall, crumbling walls around her, magnificent mosaic floors.
Evidence of lives lived. It reminded Lily that she was a tiny cog in a large wheel.
Some people might have found that realisation a daunting one, being too bound up in their own self-importance.
She found it grounding, a healthy reminder that life was short and there were some things more important than you were.
She was carrying Exhibit A inside of her.
Lily took a sip from her water bottle. She hadn’t really done any research on the Baths, simply wanting to get out of the house, and they’d been quite large.
Now the sun was getting higher in the sky.
She swiped at some perspiration beading on her upper lip.
Her whole temperature out of kilter with the pregnancy, though it made sense given she was really baking a baby inside of her.
They didn’t call it a ‘bun in the oven’ for nothing.
Still, she was looking forward to the cool relief of Rocco’s back garden.
Taking a seat under the magnificent pine in its quieter reaches. Resting there for a while.
Not much further to walk. She looked up to the back fence of his picturesque property as a figure walked out the back gate onto the footpath ahead.
Rocco.
A flight of butterflies took off in her belly, her heart beating a similar excited rhythm.
The man had been a total arse to her and yet her body couldn’t help its reaction because he was fine in his casual trousers and linen shirt, looking elegantly rumpled and impossibly stylish all rolled into one.
Whereas she felt hot and sweaty and in need of that rainfall shower in her room.
Though, what was he doing at the back gate? Had he noticed her missing? The thought surprised her. He seemed to treat her presence almost like an imposition, and for that reason she shouldn’t have stayed, except that something about being in the house settled her morning sickness. Damn him.
‘Lily.’
The sound of his deep, deliciously accented voice sent a shiver running down her spine despite herself.
She wanted to hate him for his judgement of her, but it was hard to remember all that with his thick dark hair she wanted to run her hands through again, gleaming in the sunlight.
His skin, a permanent shade of healthy tan.
The bulk and heft of him, glowering there in front of her, which should have made him scary, but instead, left her at risk of dissolving into a puddle of desire in front of him.
‘Rocco.’
As she got up close to him myriad emotions flickered across his face, like watching a film reel of his feelings. A deep frown, then hardening gaze, before that tough veneer melted and his eyes flicked heavenward for a fraction, his shoulders lifting and falling like he’d taken a deep breath.
‘Where have you been?’ His voice carried a sharp edge to it. Had he been …worried about her? A petty side to Lily she didn’t know she had wasn’t unhappy about that.
She waved her hand behind her. ‘Exploring. Seemed a waste to have a heritage site right at your backyard and not go and see it.’
‘I could have taken you, had you asked.’
‘What fun that sounds. History with a hefty dose of judgement.’
Rocco’s jaw clenched, like he was trying to hold back from saying what he really wanted. That was a change. He’d been painfully clear about his thoughts over the past few days and she appreciated the restraint, all whilst wanting to poke the bear a bit too.
‘Don’t leave again without letting someone know where you’re going.’
Lily moved past him to get back through the gate into the cool under the trees.
Her arm brushed against his, the sensation zinging through her like she’d touched a live wire.
She kept walking to reach the garden seat with Rocco following close behind, the sense of him like a trickle of cool rain running down her spine.