He angled his face away from her for a moment, needing time to absorb that. Guilt was a throbbing sensation taking over his whole body. Guilt, because their baby had turned everything in her life on its head. Guilt, because her life was already off course, and he’d knocked it into another dimension. Not carelessly, though. He’d used protection, and she’d been on the pill. This had been a true accident, something neither of them could have foreseen as a consequence of that night.
“That will not be necessary.”
He turned to face her, pinning her with his gaze. “From this moment on, you are mine to care for, mine to protect.”
The words reverberated through the car with the force of his determination. There was only one way forward; he could see that clearly now.
“I…don’t need protection.”
He felt the throbbing in the base of his jaw as he bit back a stinging rejoinder.
“You cannot forget what being a Santoro means.”
She shivered visibly. He wasn’t, he supposed, the only one who needed time to grapple with this. It wasn’t fair to expect her to see their situation and come to the same conclusion he had.
“I already told you; I don’t want anything from you.” She let out a small sound, a soft sob. “Or maybe a little help, with some things, like the cot, or pusher, or whatever.”
It was so absurd he laughed. He couldn’t help it. “A pusher?” He shook his head, reaching out before he could stop himself and placing a hand over her thigh. It was an action designed only to draw her attention to his face, to reach through to her, but the second his fingertips connected with the fabric of her skirt, his whole body seemed to burst with an explosion of desire.
He forced himself to talk through it, but his voice was gruff. “Elodie, as you point out, my family’s wealth is extreme, but so is my own. My fortune is not something you can ignore.”
She shook her head. “I’m not ignoring it. I’m just…not interested in it.”
Admiration shifted inside of him, but he repressed it quickly.
“You were not at my home long enough to notice the security measures,” he said, slowly. “My whole house is protected in ways you cannot imagine. This car is heavily armored. My drivers are all ex-military. The children in our family have bodyguards carefully and discreetly monitoring them. You must understand the risks you now face.”
Her obvious reaction showed how completely out of left field that idea was.
“That’s ridiculous,” she said.
He half-way agreed. While they did take precautions to protect themselves, it felt unlikely they were ever necessary. But how could he live with himself if anything were to happen to his child, because he’d failed to act?
Or to Elodie, for that matter. While she was little more than a one-night stand to him, all of this was happening because of him. He had a moral obligation to keep her safe, too.
“Is it? Is that a gamble you’re willing to take?”
She opened her mouth to speak and then clamped it shut again. A moment later, she said softly, “That’s not fair.”
“I know.”
“I mean, it’s not fair of you to put that on me. If you need to hire like a bodyguard or whatever, then do it.”
“No.”
She frowned.
“That’s not enough. It’s more than a bodyguard. It’s your environment. The car you drive, the house you live in, the doctors you see.”
“You’re planning to control my life from here until what? When our child is eighteen perhaps?”
She was going on the defensive because she was afraid; he could see that clearly.
His car turned left, into the garage of his home, the engine cutting. A moment later, the driver was at her door, but Elodie stayed where she was, staring ahead. “I want to go home.”
“You just told me you don’t have a home.”
“I—that’s not what I said.”
