“It’s almost as if you don’t trust me.”
“I don’t. You spent years making my life miserable, Romeo. You deliberately hurt me from the moment that I first came into your life, and you can blame the fact that our parents had an affair. That hurt your mother, but you were mean to me from the moment that we met. Nothing more than a snob. The thing that you now realize you have to protect your child from is you.”
Her words lanced him through the heart.
“You grew up without a father,” he said. “And your pain is that of a stepchild. I understand that. My pain comes from growing up in a war zone. And having to deal with the consequences of the fallout when that war zone exploded. I have just come from talking my mother down off a ledge, quite literally. She is mentally fragile. And I am the only one that bears the burden of caring for her. If you marry me, then you will assume part of that burden.”
He didn’t know why he said that. Maybe because he wanted her to feel the weight of it. He knew that he could trust no one but himself with his mother’s care.
No one knew the extent of it, but she’d begged him to never tell. Why give Giuseppe the satisfaction of knowing he’d hurt his ex-wife’s mental health this way? Why tell anyone when it was something he could bear alone?
“I… I’m sorry. Though I doubt that your mother wants anything to do with me.”
“She won’t have a choice. You’re going to be my wife. The mother of my child.”
The words tasted acidic on his tongue. How could this be happening?
They both stood there, with unspoken truths pulsing between them. He could ask her to terminate. He could say that he didn’t want anything to do with her and the child. Neither thing was a real option in his mind. He had lost his father. And this was a link to him in some ways. It was carrying on what had been ended.
Perhaps if his father hadn’t only recently died he would make a different decision. He wouldn’t feel so compelled to do this. But he did now. He did now.
“We will have our lawyers draw up paperwork for the marriage. Detailed prenuptial agreements, and conduct requirements.”
“Oh, that sounds lovely.”
“You and I both know that we can’t be trusted.”
She blinked. “No. I don’t suppose we can be.”
“Obviously now the sale of the estate will not go forward,” he said.
She bit her lower lip.
“What?” he asked.
“I moved back to New York for my job. I don’t see myself living here.”
“We will split the time between the two, but this place is now the legacy of our child.”
“Now that there’s a baby we’re not burning it to the ground anymore?”
He chuckled. “We lost that privilege.”
“I don’t understand any of this. It’s like no matter how hard I try to get away from you there is a rope that keeps pulling me back.”
“It might be a tripwire,” he said.
They were silent for a long moment. “I didn’t do this on purpose. The idea that I could’ve planned it… It’s ridiculous.”
The vulnerability in her words stopped him. Shamed him. He did tend to see her as a character. A viper spitting venom. A creature, rather than a whole human being. But here she was now, a woman pregnant with his baby. She was not simply…
He had built her up in his mind. His enemy, for all intents and purposes.
“What was the purpose of you coming into my room all those years ago?” It had always astonished him that she had done that.
“To seduce you,” she said. “Only when I got there did I realize that I was in over my head.”
“You wanted to seduce me? Even then?”
