He took her hands in his, and again, she had to fight the urge to jerk away like a scared kitten. He was doing it for the press. She could hear theclick-clickof cameras.
“Did you talk with your mother in the last week?”
Mimi pressed a hand to her brow. A slow dawning of what could have happened made her words stutter. “Yes. She…she surprised me with a video call. It was one of those times when she remembers that she’s my mother. I didn’t think before I picked up—I was tired. I forgot to hide my belly. I’d been preparing all week to tell her about it. But she saw it, and the whole thing exploded. In the end, I had to calm her down.”
Renzo’s fingers moved from her palms to her wrists, stroking and soothing her fluttering pulse. “What did you tell her?”
“Not much.” Mimi tried to think back to the call. “She went off on how I lied to her and didn’t think of how this would affect her. Wouldn’t let me get a word in… I think all I said was that you and I are dealing with it. That’s it.”
He looked up, her frustration mirrored in his gaze.
A groan escaped her as she suddenly realized how her very dramatic mother might have construed that sentence. “Oh God. What did she do?”
“It’s fine. I’m dealing with it, and it’s not your fault.”
“Please…just tell me. There’s a reason my mother and Pia got along so well. She’s always been under this impression that I have no good sense when it comes to men. And even at the best of times, her protectiveness of me is performative.”
“She issued a statement to some local tabloid that the DiCarlo men have a history of mistreating her daughters—starting with Santo, of course, and now me. I don’t know if she said it in those exact words, but the gist of her statement was that I got you pregnant and discarded you because that’s what my family does with women.”
The granite-tight set of his jaw said how much he abhorred being tarred with the same brush as his father. And Mimi knew, from all the gossip Pia had shared about Santo and his family, that Renzo was meticulous about keeping his love life and his business affairs utterly private. Only after he’d left had she realized how much her comment about him using his power to separate her from the child would have hurt him.
It had been a defense mechanism on her part, that claim. Because one-on-one, the attraction between them had been too much to handle. As had been his shocking marriage proposal. In her heart of hearts, she knew Renzo DiCarlo would never use his power to hurt her or anyone.
For God’s sake, the man was marrying her to stop being called the same names as his philandering father. Even though he owed her nothing, even though the media croaked regularly that he was a confirmed bachelor. “What a mess,” Mimi said, horrified by how her mother had, in the end, messed it up for her.
“Of course, someone here picked up her statement. I told you—they’re constantly looking to revive Pia and Santo’s tragic love story, as they’ve begun to call it. This smoke was exactly what they needed.”
Mimi closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. “Right. So you decided to do damage control by throwing a wedding in front of the basilica and inviting half of Venice.”
“I had to,” Renzo said in clipped tones. “I can’t have anyone thinking I discarded you. Honestly, this is not a bad idea. Now the entire world can think this is a regular conception and that I’m not ashamed of either you or this baby.” He regarded her curiously. “Isn’t this better than all the speculation about who you are and why I hid you away for so long?”
“No, this isn’t better. Nothing is worse than me standing here, seven months pregnant, walking toward you in front of all these people in a mockery of what a real wedding should be.”
His hands moved to her shoulders, and he pulled her close. “I called you last night. You didn’t take my calls. You just kept texting me that everything was fine and you would show up.”
“I was out with my friends, and then I came back early because I…” Mimi swallowed the small bite of the truth. If she told him that she’d been feeling uneasy all day yesterday and today, God knew what he’d do. “I was tired, and I’d had enough of your high-handed instructions. Honestly, I wanted one last quiet night before all this drama. Now it looks like my circus radar was justifiably going haywire.”
“It’s not as bad as you think. You have that glow about you, and your…” He stepped back as if to get a better view of her and laughed as he fully took in her black dress. “Ahhh… I get it now. Last little rebellion.”
Despite the twisting in her stomach, Mimi smiled. How was it that he was the one man who saw her inner motivations so clearly? And that the fact that he could see her always made her smile?
“If you care about how you’re perceived in all this, I can have the wedding attendant put you in a designer dress in two minutes, and then you don’t have to be embarrassed.”
“No. There’s no way I’m pandering to these guests who don’t even know me, the stupid media, or you. I’m getting married in this dress. Take it or leave it.”
If she thought she would darken his mood with her stubbornness, Mimi was proved wrong.
Renzo’s grin only deepened, and he gave her a short bow, as if she were a queen making the most solemn declaration for him to execute.
“There’s one more thing we need to discuss,” he murmured.
Groaning again, Mimi muttered, “Jesus, Renzo. At least take pity on the fact that I’m two months away from giving birth. What else is in store for me?”
“When I tried to get in touch with your mother, I got John instead. I told him of my plans, and he insisted on being here for you today.”
Her heart scuttled into her throat as Mimi searched the crowd for the tall, lean figure of her stepdad. That tight clutch of tears returned to her throat as if it had never left. “John’s here?”
Renzo nodded, his sweep of her features intense. His knuckles danced over her wrist in soothing strokes, as if he knew the mention of her stepdad would push her that much closer to the edge. “I told him that it was up to you whether you want to see him here today. I know you haven’t seen him since the wake, and I understand how hard this might be for you.”
