Guess Marco needed a change too.
CHAPTER 20
CHRISTINA
Eight weeks since Violet was born, and Christina had finally worked up the courage to leave the cottage for something other than a pediatrician appointment or a walk around the lake.
The morning air was crisp when she stepped out of her car, carrying the first real hint of fall. She pulled her cardigan tighter and adjusted Violet’s carrier on her arm, making sure the light blanket covered her daughter’s legs.
“We can do this,” she murmured. “It’s just groceries. In and out.”
Spilled Milk’s doors whooshed open, releasing the smell of fresh coffee and something baking—Mary’s apple cider donuts, probably, the ones she made every fall. Christina’s stomach growled. She couldn’t remember whether she’d eaten breakfast or not.
The store was quiet this early on a Tuesday morning, just the soft hum of the refrigerator cases and the distant sound of someone stocking shelves in the back. She grabbed a basket and headed for the dairy section, keeping her head down.
Bertha stood near the produce section in her early-fall tutu—burnt orange with gold ribbon trim—methodically working her way through a few local apples that had fallen on the floor. The goat lifted her head as Christina passed, fixing her with that unsettling stare before returning to her snack.
The milk she needed was in the back. She navigated past the cheese display, past the yogurt, past?—
She stopped.
The magazine rack stood at the end of the aisle, stuffed with glossy covers promising fall fashion secrets and celebrity gossip and recipes for the perfect Thanksgiving turkey. Christina usually walked past without looking. She’d trained herself not to look, not since she’d discovered who the father of her child actually was.
But today her eyes caught on a flash of familiar dark hair, a face she’d tried and failed miserably to forget, and her feet stopped moving before her brain could tell them to keep going.
Marco Castellano on the cover of Celebrity Weekly, his arm around a woman so beautiful she hardly looked real. The supermodel—Christina vaguely recognized her from perfume ads—wore a dress that was made of sheer lace, her hand resting possessively on Marco’s chest. They were at some party, some gala, somewhere with crystal chandeliers and champagne towers.
The headline screamed in hot pink letters: MARCO’S NEW LOVE? Fashion Heir And Model Can’t Keep His Hands Off Stunning Supermodel!
Christina’s chest tightened. She told herself it didn’t matter. It wasn’t like she had any claim on him, she hadn’t even told him her name. Some stupid part of her had wondered, had imagined—what? That he thought about her? That their night together had meant something to him too?
“You’re the first real thing I’ve touched in years,” he’d said in Miami, his hands cupping her face, his green eyes dark with something that had felt like honesty. She rolled her eyes. He probably said that to every woman he went out with.
The supermodel’s smile was perfect. Her teeth were perfect. She looked at Marco as if he were the only person in the room, and he looked at the camera with that devastating smile Christina remembered all too well.
Violet made a small sound from the carrier—not quite a cry, more like a chirp of awareness. Christina looked down automatically, the way she’d been doing a hundred times a day since the hospital, and found her daughter’s eyes open and fixed on her face.
Those eyes.
Still blue-gray, the way all babies’ eyes were supposed to be. But there was something around the edges now, something Christina had started noticing in the past week. A warmth creeping in from the outer ring that had nothing to do with the Singleton side of the family.
Christina’s throat closed. Every time she looked at Violet, she saw pieces of herself—the shape of her nose, the curve of her chin. But she also saw pieces of him. The set of her eyebrows. The particular tilt of her head when something caught her attention. And now, maybe, the beginning of those distinctive eyes.
She couldn’t keep this secret forever. She’d known that from the beginning, but knowing it and feeling the weight of it were two different things.
“Christina! Oh my goodness, look at her!”
She flinched. Mary had appeared from the stockroom, her Spilled Milk apron slightly askew, her face bright with delight.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.” Mary was already peering into the carrier, making soft cooing sounds. “She’s gotten so big! What is she now, eight weeks?”
“Almost.” Christina forced a smile, shifting her body to angle the carrier away from the magazine rack. She couldn’t look at Marco’s face and her daughter’s face at the same time. She couldn’t.
“She’s beautiful. Those eyes!” Mary leaned closer, examining Violet with the clinical interest of a woman who’d raised four children of her own. “My grandmother always said you could tell what color they’d end up by looking at the ring around the iris. Looks like she might go green. Or maybe hazel? Hard to tell at this age.”
Christina’s stomach dropped.
“They could still change,” she managed. “My mom’s side has blue eyes.”
