“I realize I gave you a reason not to trust me. It was wrong of me not to tell you for seven months about the pregnancy. But do you really think I would lie about the baby’s paternity?”
He closed his eyes. “I don’t. But a baby does not change me as a person. It does not take away thirty-one years of carefully guarding whom I trust.”This is who I am.It was meant as a warning.
And yet she didn’t take it as one because she smiled, so beautifully and inexplicably. “Alessandro Carandini…changing? Impossible.”
It was the first time she had smiled at him since the papers were signed, and he found himself reveling in it.
“It does sound quite improbable, doesn’t it?” he mused.
She shook her head slowly, but her smile grew, and suddenly everything felt lighter. Alessandro tipped his head back and looked at the stars that glowed in the night sky. What would it be like to hold on to this lightness, to share it with Ann-Sophie? And though he knew he was entering dangerous territory, right now, he wanted for this to be possible. Real.
That was the stuff of dreams. But the two of them were inextricably tied to reality, which he had to focus on.
So he turned to her and gave her his most charming smile. “I would like us to attend an event in a few days in Rome. It will be the official introduction of you as my wife.”
She blinked, as if she hadn’t considered this angle of being the husband of Alessandro Carandini and the mother of a Carandini heir. “What do I have to do?”
“Just be yourself.”
Ann-Sophie gave a charming little snort of laughter. “Why am I getting the feeling it won’t be that simple?”
Chapter Eight
“I’M GETTING MARRIED.”
“Married?” Ann-Sophie’s mother’s voice flickered in and out on the other end of the line. Margarita Svensson was in Ethiopia, reporting on coffee beans that still grew wild in the mountain jungle and the farmers that harvested them. Gorgeous location, thought-provoking discussions, but tenuous mobile service at best.
“Yes.Married.” Ann-Sophie emphasized the word.
“To whom?”
“The father of the baby.” It was a testament to her state of mind for the first seven months of this pregnancy that her mother needed to ask.
“I thought you hadn’t spoken with him because he was an—” The connection broke off, but her mother’s message was not lost.
“He was. But things feel different now.” This reasoning sounded weaker when she spoke it aloud, but itdidfeel different.
“Are you sure that you want to marry him?”
She stared down at the enormous diamond ring he’d slipped on her finger with a seriousness that she hadn’t expected.From my grandmother, he had said, his eyes guarded.
This was not a marriage built on love, she had reminded herself.
But still, the answer rang inside of her: She wanted to marry Alessandro. She didn’t need it, but she wanted it. The problem was that she couldn’t stop hoping the marriage would be anchored in something more, no matter how many times Alessandro implied it would be about creating a family. And having a lot of sex, if the past few days were any indication. She was definitely not going to get into this with her mother, so instead she said, “I think this is the best choice for the baby. I want the baby to grow up around both of us.”
“You didn’t answer my question.” But then her mother gave a laugh. “You’ve always been such an independent child. Who am I to tell you how to live your life?”
The words warmed her. The last thing Ann-Sophie wanted was for her mother to feel like she had been a burden. When her mother had taught her to differentiate between want and need, it had allowed Ann-Sophie to be the kind of child that left her mother free to have some of the kind of life she had before Ann-Sophie came along. It was the least she could do for her mother.
“When is the wedding?”
“In a week,” she said. Then, in the silence, she quickly added, “It will just be a short ceremony. No party. Really, a small thing. You don’t need to come.”
There was another pause on the line, and then her mother said, “Okay. Well, please send me pictures.”
“I will,” she said. “I love you.”
“I love you more than you can imagine.” The words came through like patchwork, and Ann-Sophie clung to them after the line died. She lay back on the bed she now shared with Alessandro, telling herself that her mother shouldn’t come all the way from Ethiopia just for a wedding that was for the baby, not a fairy tale about love. Even if Alessandro did resemble a fairy-tale prince with anactual castle.
