‘The paperwork comes first, I’m afraid.’
‘You could always just bring whatever it is I have to sign here and I’ll sign it.’ She shrugged. ‘We don’t need to get lawyers involved, do we? Didn’t we say it would all be a little less formal?’
‘We very much do. And besides, in my world, lawyers arealwaysinvolved.’ He looked at her as she continued eating and wondered whether he could detect a certain stiffening of her shoulders. ‘It’s not just about the pre-nup. It’s what happens with the child in the event of a break-up of any kind, from separation to divorce. Financial arrangements need to be put in place along with something that is legally binding on custody.’
‘Rocco, I just can’t think that far ahead! Our baby isn’t even born yet!’ But she couldn’t help but see the pattern of someone who left nothing to chance—except, as it turned out, contraception. Whether he liked it or not, control was something that could end up very slippery.
‘They’re just precautionary measures.’ Rocco flushed. ‘There’s no avoiding them.’
‘I’m happy to sign whatever you want me to sign if it’s to do with money, because I don’t care about the money. But I’m not signing away rights to my own child in the event that something happens somewhere along the line and we don’t end up together. I’m just not prepared to do that.’
Rocco paused. He lowered his eyes. ‘Like I said, it’s just a precaution. My background dictates certain measures be taken.’
‘Or else what? Is the world going to stop turning if you don’t take those measures?’
‘Hardly, but—’
‘I won’t do it, Rocco.’
Rocco sighed, flung both hands in the air and shot her a frustrated glance from under his lashes. ‘Why are you so stubborn?’
‘I just can’t plan every single detail, and besides, I have to stand up for myself, Rocco. Look around you—all this privilege and wealth. I can’t afford to let you dominate the narrative. I can’t afford to be overwhelmed by all of this.’
‘But we have to find a way past arguing about things that have already been accepted. We’re going to be married.’
‘That doesn’t mean that I don’t have to protect myself,’ Ella said evasively.
She was skating on thin ice. Yes, they were going to be married, and she wanted the marriage to work, and not just because it made sense. Lots of things in lifemade sensebut that didn’t mean that one was compelled to take those roads.
She wanted to hope a piece of his heart was willing to open up, and she knew that all it would take would be a chink, but to show how she felt now… How would he react? He thought he knew all the answers and, what he didn’t know, he could somehow predict and so control.
How would he react if he knew how she felt about him? Would the marriage proposal come off the table? Now that she had accepted it, she couldn’t face the thought of not being married to him. She’d come full circle. From bitterness and scepticism, he had managed to prove himself to her and, his having done that, she had let hope creep in. But hope and complete idiocy were two different things and she still had to have some safeguards in place.
‘What are you protecting yourself from?’
‘From landing up in a place where I don’t know the rules of the game and there’s no one to show them to me.’
‘Where do you think I’m going to be during all of this? Haven’t I proved to you that you can count on me?’
‘You don’t understand. It was easy for you to slide into my life, to charm my dad. But what I’m facing is completelydifferent. I mean, have you even told your parents about…about everything?’
‘I’m going to break the glad tidings to them later tonight,’ Rocco said, rising to his feet and doing a half-hearted job of tidying the table.
He could feel the sudden tension in his shoulders because this was a blatant lie. Or at least, a very creative way of dealing with the truth. But he decided, without analysing it too deeply, it would be better to give her the final reassurance she needed that she hadn’t been manoeuvred into a marriage she hadn’t originally wanted.
And he hadn’tmanoeuvred her, he told himself, without a shred of inner doubt. He’d just allowed her to see that he could be counted on. He’d allowed her to be persuaded by all the advantages she and their baby would have if she tied the knot with him.
If he’d presented the situation to his parents earlier as a fait accompli, then likewise he’d been smoothing the path for them. All told, it was the best way of handling everything, and he was accustomed to handling things in the most efficient way possible.
‘There’s dessert.’ He changed the subject as he fetched some bowls from the cupboard. When he turned round, he released a short sigh of relief, because her face had softened.
‘Sometimes I see life in black and white,’ he admitted. ‘A lot of people imagine that to be born into a life of privilege must be pretty amazing—holidays to far-flung places, the best of everything life has to offer—but in my case it was a rigid life without much scope for…moving too far outside the box. The very gilded box.’
‘And that’s why you felt so free when you didn’t have to be the person other people expected things from…when we met.’
‘We worked for one another, Ella. We just didn’t see this coming. All I’m doing is dealing with it in the only way I know how.’
‘Which doesn’t mean that I don’t have concerns. I mean…is there a timeline for going to see your parents? If they don’t know anything just yet, do they expect that you’ll be spending Christmas with them?’
