Chapter 3 #3
“So what do you suggest, Elodie? I don’t have a magical button that can wind back time, unfortunately. So?”
She thought quickly, as she’d been renowned for in her ‘other’ life.
Before her parents had died unexpectedly and she’d lived and breathed for her high-flying corporate job.
At twenty three she’d held a senior-management position in the successful, publically listed company, because of her no-nonsense approach to work and her ability to distil any situation down and remain result-orientated.
She brought those analytical powers to the fore now.
“You want to be a part of his life,” she murmured. “And you want that to be a considerable part, given what you’ve missed.”
He didn’t react.
“I think you know that taking me out of the equation isn’t right for Jack.”
She was gratified to see agreement shape his features. The man she’d spent the night with three years ago was in there, buried deep beneath his resentment. And it was a resentment she could understand. Damn it, she would never have wished him to find out like this!
“Which means there’s really only one option.”
He continued to stare at her.
She drew in a breath, stilling her nerves in that moment, before speaking words she was certain she’d come to regret. “We find a way to raise him together.”
Fiero shook his head. “Impossibile.”
“It can’t be impossible,” she responded tautly. “You’re angry with me, fine. But we’re his parents, and we owe it to him to find a way to do this. I’m willing to make concessions, to meet you in the middle. I can move to Italy, Jack and I can find a place near your home –,”
“No.” His eyes were loaded with grim determination. “My son is living with me.”
The edge of the world seemed very close, and just over that edge, there was a pit of despair she was close to tumbling into. “He’s too young. He needs his mother.”
“He has a nanny,” Fiero shrugged.
Elodie had never hit anyone in her life, but she threw herself across the room now and pushed at his chest, hard, and when he didn’t so much as flinch, she pushed him again.
And then her hands, shaped into small fists, were raining down on him, and tears were streaming down her cheeks. The pit of despair had claimed her.
“Don’t you dare say you can replace me with a nanny!” She threw the words at him. “I’m his mother and I am going to raise him. I will fight you, I will fight you with everything I have.”
He grabbed her hands, holding them against his chest, his nostrils flaring as he looked down at her. “You would lose.”
“No! I have money, I could hire a great lawyer –,”
“And I will hire ten for every one of yours, and I will drown them in paperwork, and I will win, Elodie, because that’s what I do. And meanwhile, our son will grow up to read stories about how his mother wanted to take him away from his own father—,”
“He’ll grow up to see how much I loved him and wanted him.”
Fiero kept her hands pressed to his chest, his eyes locked to hers. “You will not be able to fight me and win.”
“I have to. I can’t let him go. And he can’t live without me.”
“But he could live without me?”
She gasped, his words so filled with grief, and damn it, she felt a twist of sympathy for him even then, when he was threatening to take Jack from her.
He had missed so much, and he’d learned of his son’s existence in the most painful of ways.
Fiero was living some kind of nightmare, trying to make sense of it as he went along, and his reactions were proof of that. Knee jerk and rash.
“I made a mistake.”
“Christo, si, you made a mistake. And now you’re asking me to forgive and forget.”
She swept her eyes shut, knowing what a monumental task that would be for him. “For Jack.”
“Yes, for Jack.” He ground his teeth together, and she was conscious, out of nowhere, of how close they were to one another. His long fingers were curled around her wrists, and every time he sucked in a breath his chest moved forward to brush against her nipples.
The last thing she’d expected to feel for this man ever again, and especially in that moment, was desire, but there it was, turning her blood to lava and her knees to jelly.
Something in the air around them shifted, changing so that she was conscious of him in a way that was all-consuming and definitely not one-sided.
She saw the way his eyes changed, his pupils flexing, his lids lowering; she saw his lips part and felt his warm breath fan her temples and her own lips mirrored his, separating and pushing a soft breath from her lungs.
“You should have told me about him.” And despite the anger he’d thrown at her, the fury, the threats, her stomach looped because she felt what was at the root of everything he’d said and done: devastation.
He was devastated.
She sobbed, but he lifted a finger to her lips, and she gasped in surprise, the touch totally unexpected.
“Stop crying.”
She shook her head a little. “I can’t.”
His hands cupped her face then, holding her completely still, and her hands, now free, dropped to her side. “I will never forgive you for keeping my son away from me.”
His words were like acid and his touch was like silk. She couldn’t fathom how she felt.
“But it appears I cannot make the same decision you did. I will not push you out of his life.” Her heart turned over in her chest.
His thumb padded over her lower lip and her heart rabbited against her ribs for another reason now. Despite the seriousness of this conversation, she could barely concentrate.
“You and Jack will move into my house.” The words were devoid of emotion. “For six months, you will live with me, to see if we can do it your way – and raise him together.”
It was more than she’d expected. Different to what she’d hoped and yet it made a strange kind of sense. “We’ll live together?”
His eyes flashed. “For Jack’s sake, yes, but you and I will remember the truth, Elodie. We will know what we think and feel, no matter how much effort we go to for the happiness of our son.”
His head dropped a little lower, his eyes scanning hers. “You will know that when I smile, it means nothing. That my anger and hatred for your decisions are still inside of me, weighing down on me with the pressure of every single day of Jack’s life I have missed.”
Salty tears clogged her eyes.
“You will know, when we look at Jack and laugh, like normal parents, that it’s a lie.”
Her lips parted on a gasp, or perhaps the start of a plea, a desire to make him stop talking like this.
“And you will know that if I kiss you, Elodie, it is because of the same chemistry that drove us together that night, and nothing more. You will know that I will never like you as a person, that I will never forgive you for your decisions.”
She didn’t get a chance to speak. His lips claimed hers and she moaned, knees that had been jelly for long, aching minutes giving way so she would have collapsed to the ground if it weren’t for his arm clamped vice-like around her back, holding her to his body, binding them together.
And they were bound together. By their son, and by something else, something that lodged inside Elodie and refused to let go.