“Is he a boy, do you think?” He joined her on the couch. “Or a girl? Vito or Bruna?”
Akemi snorted again. He was teasing her with two names that she had already vetoed during their long back-and-forth texts about possibilities.
“Neither,” she said.
“Lucia,” he suggested. That was one of their maybes.
“Lilo Kalama,” she volleyed.
“Giovanni Lazzeri,” he countered.
“Definitely not.”
“Giovanni is an excellent name.”
“It’s too Italian.”
“He is half Italian.”
“So the name should be half Italian too,” she countered. “Only half.”
“Perhaps when we see our baby, the name will come to us.”
“Our baby,” she echoed.
Even with the child in question rolling onto her bladder ten times a day, the prospect of a baby still didn’t quite feel real. She looked into Lorenzo’s eyes.
“How are we going to do this, Ren?”
“One stage at a time,” he said in his slow, careful English. His command of the language had improved so much since he first arrived in Pualena. “What is best for a newborn is not best for a child. Parenting evolves. We will get to know our child as a person, and we will figure things out as we go.”
“I sure hope so.”
“Speaking of children…” He glanced at his watch. “I’m picking Rory up from school today.”
“Aren’t you exhausted?”
“Yes,” he admitted, “but I want to see her.”
“Okay.”
“Would you like to come?”
“No, that’s okay.” Running into Rory and her mother in Tuscany had been awkward enough; she wasn’t going to horn in on Lorenzo’s time with his daughter. Not yet, anyway.
“Then I will see you later.” He stood and then paused, like he wasn’t sure how to say goodbye. Their baby had taken over her body, and the easy familiarity that they had shared just a few months before felt like a distant memory now.
“Help me up, would you? I feel like a beached whale.”
He hauled her up off of the sofa, and she gave him an awkward one-armed hug, keeping her enormous belly out to one side.
Then she stood by the front window and watched him walk out through the drizzling rain to find his daughter.
Would he show the same dedication to their child?
Or would their baby always come second to hisprincipessa?
26
