So she brought him home, aided by Renzo’s mother, his brother, and an army of nurses and nannies that Renzo had already hired.
He had married her precisely because she was no-nonsense, capable and didn’t believe in love. He had shown her immense kindness and comfort and even passion precisely because he expected her to not turn into this…lovesick, maudlin creature.
And really, what was even the guarantee that all these strange new feelings wouldn’t set her up for more heartache? More rejection? And God, she had had enough to last a lifetime at her mom’s hands.
So she would not change herself one bit, she told herself, burying her face into her son’s belly. She would not let this love she felt for her husband make a fool out of her.
If her tears leaked out and she had to change Luca’s onesie, she pretended like they were tears of happiness at his coming home.
Renzo crept into his bedroom on soft feet, moonlight his only aid in the dark room. He felt like a thief sneaking into someone else’s house under the cover of night.
Frustration and anger at himself coiled like twin ropes inside him, driving the breath out of him. He saw only now that it was the intensity of his feelings for Mimi that had driven him away, causing him to miss his son being discharged from the hospital. He had been gone for two days, and it felt like two eternities.
His heart scuttled into his throat like a crab on sand as he reached the foot of the large bed.
A soft night-light had been left on his side of the bed, casting an ethereal glow. The sight that greeted him made his heart fall back into his chest with a thud.
Luca was fast asleep, cocooned tightly in a blue blanket, tiny fisted hands thrown above him as if in a cheer. Wisps of jet-black hair fluttered beneath a woolen cap, the jut of his straight nose prominent in his chubby face.
Next to Luca, with the tips of her fingers grazing his belly, as if she couldn’t bear to not touch him, was his wife. Lying on her side, with her head tucked on her folded arm. It struck Renzo that she was just as pure of heart as their son.
Two innocent, bright-as-sun lives that had come into his orbit by sheer chance. Taunting him with the fact that he hadn’t even known he would want this in his life.
Leaning over, he brushed a wavy lock of hair from her face, wishing she would wake. And set those perceptive eyes on him, maybe challenge him as to why he had fled like that. Even help him figure out this confused tangle of emotions within him.
Because hehadrun away, like a coward.
After using her all night, after slaking his desire on her still-recovering body over and over.
Cristo, he hadn’t expected to lose himself in her like that. Hadn’t expected to find both his salvation and his destruction in her soft smiles, in her hard kisses and her willing, warm body.
But then, he shouldn’t have been surprised that Mimi would be as giving and passionate in bed as she was anywhere else. Her passion had been a demanding sword and a comforting embrace all at once. He had been so out of control, so needy that he had even woken her up at dawn, demanding she give him her mouth.
But he refused to regret it. She would hate him if he regretted it because she had met him as an equal. Then he had woken up in the morning, tangled in her arms.
Bright sunlight had streamed into the room, lighting up the dark shadows under her eyes and all the marks he had left on her neck and chest. He had realized then what had disturbed him so about seeing Rosa the previous night.
His real trajectory in life had begun with her rejecting a future with him, rejecting his love.
It had become his identity—to be the provider of all things for the people around him. If he hadn’t stepped up all those years ago and fixed their crumbling finances, none of them would live in the easy luxury they did now.
But in the long slog he’d put in for years, in his refusal to stop even a day for his own rest or recreation, he had become only that—a man who fixed things for others. A man whose only value lay in his wealth, in his power and reach. A man who didn’t want or understand deeper connections.
He was surrounded by people who needed things from him. His beautiful, bright, brave wife had stood out in sharp contrast at that damned party for one very particular reason. A reason that stole the ground from under his feet.
What was it that Mimi needed from him? What could he give her that she would willingly bind herself to him forever?
It had been arrogant of him to assume that he would simply keep her. Because now, he wanted her to want this life with him.
If their frenzied night of lovemaking had clarified one thing, it was that he was falling for her and this little family they were building. And that he didn’t have anything to offer to make her stay.
She had been reluctant about marrying him, had only given in because he’d forced her into understanding the reality of carrying his son. He hadn’t exaggerated.
She and Luca did need his protection. But soon, the media’s interest in them would fade, and the year would be up.
The prospect of letting her go, of learning that there was nothing he could give her to bind her to him when that day dawned…nearly brought him to his knees.
So he had gone away, using the problems with the ski resort as the perfect excuse. To think and strategize and plan, though he was realizing that there was no blueprint for this. All he could do was stall and arrest the complete descent.
