Chin tucked down, dwarfed by the quilt, she suddenly looked small and young and innocent. “If we forget whose egg and whose sperm went into the making of this baby, I would be its aunt.”
“Even if it had been Santo’s, with him gone, you know I would have insisted on a wedding. Deep down, you knew that. Seems you know me better than you think you do.”
For a pregnant woman who had been through so much loss in recent months, she didn’t buckle down and take the easy route. Even though exhaustion drew dark smudges under her eyes.
Tenderness and a fierce protectiveness danced in Renzo’s stomach, provoking each other to something even more potent.
She squared her shoulders, chest rising and falling under her brown sweater. “You don’t like me, and I don’t like you. We’ve had first-row seats to an epic disaster of a marriage between people who confessed everlasting love to each other. I know you’re as allergic to love as I am. There’s nothing to gain by going down this path, Renzo.”
His name on her lips felt like an invocation, an invitation to something new and rich. He swallowed the thick coating that desire left in his throat as his overactive mind supplied images of her breathing out his name in better scenarios. “It would work precisely because we are not Pia and Santo. Neither of us wants false promises of undying love and devotion, turning this into a daytime soap opera. Neither of us wants anything to do with love.”
She didn’t deny his claim, even to blindly win the argument. His admiration for her integrity increased a hundredfold. Then, suddenly, her eyes brightened. “You’re well-known for your bachelor status, your fast life, your ‘inability to commit to a woman for longer than a month,’” she said, quoting a tabloid article about him.
“And how would you know that?” he said silkily.
Color returned to her cheeks. “It was the one thing about you that made Pia happy. That you weren’t going to bring her competition into the family for a long time. If ever.”
“Circumstances change. Bachelor billionaires are toppled every day,” he said, wanting to make her laugh.
Her mouth remained pursed. “You can’t force me to marry you.”
“No, but I can’t leave you unprotected either. And I don’t mean just physically from the press. Every aspect of your life will be investigated and magnified. To the point of interrupting your work and affecting future career prospects if you choose to live separately with this baby.”
“Now you’re using scare tactics.”
“I’m not a complete bastard, Mimi,” he said, frustration in his tone.
“I don’t see why the media would be so interested in me and this baby. I’m a nobody. I kept my deadbeat father’s name instead of taking my mom’s just so I don’t get caught up in her minor celebrity. Even when John asked me to take his last name, I refused. Being connected to Pia, who wanted to be a model as a teen, would have brought me attention too.”
“Imagine at how this pregnancy looks to the outside world,” he said, a thread of impatience in his words. “Unless you want to expose the whole sordid truth of how Pia and Santo asked us for our contributions while actively lying to each other, it will come out that this baby’s mine. Then the speculation will start. About who you are and how you managed to trap me into domesticity. I’m known to be very circumspect with my affairs and my precious billion-dollar sperm.”
She laughed. It made her lips curve wide, her eyes sparkle and her nostrils flare and turned her, in one blink, into a stunning, breathtaking beauty. The ridiculous thought that he had won a prize drifted through his head.
Renzo stared, his stomach clawing with sudden sensual hunger. For all that tabloid media drew a larger-than-life caricature of his romantic exploits, he hadn’t rebuilt his family’s finances from near debt by playing fast and loose with his time. When he did manage to have sex in the middle of his busy schedule, it was with some nameless stranger who wanted to scratch the itch temporarily like him. Nothing more.
But this hunger was different, and he wanted to give in to it, just to know it better. He wanted to taste that laugh of hers and swallow it for his own.
“Well, if I had known it was your precious, billion-dollar sperm, I’d have made sure my eggs rejected it,” she said, sighing.
He smiled.
Her gaze stuck to his mouth, another soft gasp huffing out between her lips.Cristo, he was thirty-five years old. How had he not known the simple, soul-searing pleasure of being the object of this woman’s desire until now? Of course, he was a tall, good-looking Italian billionaire in his prime. Women did go gaga over him, but this was different.
This woman’s gaze was different.
It had everything to do with who he was with her rather than what he was in the outside world. Thrilling and addictive couldn’t begin to describe it. Especially for a man who’d learned the hard way that his last name was mostly a curse and only a minimal blessing at times.
“I want the best for this baby. Can I assume you do too?”
The thin thread of reluctant trust in her question made the desire clouding his head dissipate. He nodded.
“Can we also agree that being at each other’s throats in a marriage that neither of us wants would not be the best for the baby?”
“Do you plan to be at my throat day in, day out,bella?”
“In six years, we could hardly bear to be in the same room for more than five minutes, Renzo.”
“And how much of that was because of our drama-prone siblings? Do you actually remember us arguing about anything that wasn’t related to them?”
