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He nearly laughed. He had been pretending that marrying Carlotta rather than Sophia changed nothing. And had been managing quite well. But now there was this … complication.
This was a difference that would be hard to ignore.
The massive doors to the palace opened and he ushered them in to the cavernous entryway. All glossy marble with a domed ceiling depicting intricate scenes of men and angels. Not to his taste at all. He’d never felt at home here. There was a reason he’d spent his young adult years in France and Spain, a reason he had his own penthouse in Barcelona still, even though his time avoiding Santa Christobel was over.
But now that his father was in the hospital, now that running the country was up to him, he’d had no choice but to come back. Even though it made him feel like he’d crawled into someone else’s skin. Ill-fitting. Uncomfortable. Nearly unbearable.
Now, another role he wasn’t made for. Husband. Father.
“There is no … no room prepared for Luca,” he said, careful not to look down at the top of the boy’s dark head.
“What?” she asked, finely arched brows locking together.
He gritted his teeth against rising annoyance. “Had you told me there would be a need …”
“You didn’t know?” She shot a look to Luca, then back to him, her eyes round with shock. “How did you not know?”
Luca was watching both of them, confusion in his eyes. That was something he remembered well about being a child. That lack of control. Knowing that your fate was in the hands of the adults around you. How little sense it made sometimes.
His stomach tightened, and he looked down at the boy again. “Luca, perhaps you would like to come out to the garden?”
The garden. Such as it was. It was a massive, sprawling green field in comparison to most lawns. But it was likely to keep a child busy. At least, he thought it would.
Luca nodded. “I like to play outside. Do you have a slide?”
Rodriguez looked at Carlotta, then back at Luca, a strange sensation—nerves?—making it hard to breathe. “No. No slides. But we could put one in.” Put one in? Like they were staying?
Of course they were staying. He’d signed a new marriage contract with King Eduardo before leaving Santina. But he hadn’t known about the child. About Luca. He’d known that he and Carlotta would have an heir … but an heir was … It sounded very detached. Unreal. The little boy with serious green eyes was real.
Too real.
“You don’t have to put a slide in,” said Carlotta. “Well, not today. Eventually I guess it might … Luca, let’s go outside.” She held out her hand and Luca wrapped his small fingers around hers. She looked at Rodriguez and he nodded, leading her through the entryway and down the main corridor that led out to the back terrace.
They stepped outside into the warm evening, the heat of the day long past, the setting sun casting electric orange stripes over the vivid green lawn.
“There isn’t a pond or anything is there?” she asked, eyeing the fenced-in area.
“No. It’s safe for him. This part here is just grass.”
“Go, run,” she said.
Luca smiled at Carlotta and trotted off the terrace, and Carlotta watched him, a soft expression on her face.
“The plane ride was long,” she said. “He really needed to get out and move.”
“I can imagine.” He’d learned not to fidget from a very early age. It had stayed with him into adulthood. Sometimes, even now, if he was in a meeting and he found himself fidgeting, he could still imagine that the sharp crack of a ruler on his shins might come next.
“How did you not know?” she asked.
“About Luca? How was I supposed to know?”
“It was … The press, they … He’s the only illegitimate Santina. The headlines were not kind.”
“I don’t read tabloids.”
“You don’t?”
“No.”
“Not even when they’re talking about you?”
“Especially not then,” he said.
“How do you… I mean, how can you not? I had to … I had to know what they were saying.” She looked away from him, her eyes on Luca, who was now turning circles in the middle of the large expanse of grass. “I suppose, looking back, it wasn’t the healthiest thing for a hormonal, pregnant woman to do. But I just felt like I needed to know.”
“I don’t care what they’re saying. Anyway, what they write about me is simply a rundown of my weekend’s events. If I want a recap, I’ll look at the pictures I took.”
She turned her head sharply, her eyes wide. “Pictures?”
“Oh, so you’ve read about me then,” he said.
“I said I read tabloids. Anyway, who hasn’t read about you?”
“Probably a few priests who are trying to deny the existence of evil in the world, but we aren’t supposed to be talking about me right now. I didn’t know you had a son.”
“Does it change anything?”
Did it? He’d never planned on being very involved with his wife and children. He just … he couldn’t think of a single thing he could add to their lives. They would serve their purpose, likely better without his interference. He knew nothing about family. The only thing he knew about children was what not to do with them.
That was something, he supposed.
“I don’t know that it does,” he said. “Is his father in the picture?”
“Luca doesn’t have a father.” Carlotta felt her cheeks get hot as Rodriguez fixed her with a hard stare. “Well … obviously he has a father,” she said. “But he doesn’t have an involved father.”
“Messy breakup?” he asked.
It suddenly seemed a bit harder to breathe. “You could say that.” It would be an understatement, but she wasn’t in the mood to elaborate.
“So I’m not going to get tangled up in any sort of custody thing?”
“Absolutely not. Is that your only concern?”
“I don’t see anything else that should concern me.”
“You don’t see how having a son concerns you?”
His eyebrows locked together. “He’s not my son.”
Carlotta’s heart twisted tight. It was a fair enough statement. Luca wasn’t Rodriguez’s son. And they’d been at his home for all of fifteen minutes. He wasn’t being cruel. Still, it felt a little cruel. “No, I know. But he is a child, and if you’re going to be my husband he will be your stepson, and that means some of the responsibility …”
“He has a nanny?”
“Yes. She had to stay behind for a couple of days but …”
“In that case, I see my responsibility will be limited.”
Anger burned in her, threatening to swallow her whole. “And will it be the same for your children? Because if not, you and I have no more to say to each other. Luca is my son. He’s my world and if you—”
“Yes. It will be the same for our child. I don’t intend to have any more than is required.”
“If we have a girl?”
“Then we will have to have more, I suppose.”
“I don’t … I don’t even know how to have this discussion with you,” she said, panic clawing at her stomach. How could she stand here talking children with this stranger? Was she really going to marry this man?
Yes. Because the other option was going back to her father, standing in that spot in his office and telling him, yet again, how badly she’d failed the Santina family. She couldn’t do it. The guilt would consume her. She lived with enough guilt. No sense in adding to it.
But one thing she had to be sure of. For Luca. And if Rodriguez couldn’t handle it, she would walk away, no matter how disappointed her father was. No matter how much compound interest in guilt it earned her.
“Will you adopt him?”
Rodriguez stiffened, his posture totally rigid. “What?”
“Will you adopt Luca? Give him your name. The same name I will have. The same name his halfbrother or -sister will have. Will you make him a part of this family? Because if not, I’ll walk away now.”
A muscle in Rodriguez’s jaw twitched. “I cannot name him as my heir.”
“I don’t expect you to. But I cannot have him be alone in that way.” Just the thought of it made her throat ache, made it get unbearably tight. “I need him to know that he has a father. That he isn’t the only one who isn’t a part of a family.”
“Having a father can be vastly overrated,” Rodriguez said, his voice rough.
“Give him your name. Your protection. And I will marry you. Be your wife in every sense. But you have to make my son yours, as much as your other children.”
She watched as his Adam’s apple bobbed, his eyes fixed on Luca. “Then I will adopt him after the marriage. All of this can be simple enough. We marry, we produce an heir. We lead separate lives.”
“Why?”
He looked past her, at Luca, who was now lying on his back looking at the sky. Then he looked back at her. “Because I’m not after a perfect, happy family. I want to do what is right by my country. What is necessary.”
“The way that disrupts your life the least?”
“And yours, Carlotta. You can keep living as you please here. You’ll have very little obligation to me. This marriage will be like a job you can clock in and out of. On for public appearances, off when it’s done.”
“So, I get lovers too, then?”
He shrugged. “What’s good for the goose.”
“Just not while we’re—”
“Mommy!”
She turned sharply and saw Luca, standing right at the edge of the terrace. He had a way of darting from place to place with no warning, her son. It had never really been a problem before.
“Yes, Luca?”
“I’m bored.”
“And tired I’ll bet,” she said.
“No.” He shook his head for emphasis, the serious expression on his face reminding her of her brother Alessandro. She was so thankful that he seemed to have none of his father in him.
“Yeah, I don’t believe that, figlio mio, but nice try,” she said, running her fingers through his dark hair, ruffling it.
“There is a room next to yours,” Rodriguez said, his manner suddenly awkward. Luca did seem to make him nervous and she wasn’t really sure why. “He can stay in there.”
“Good. If we could have his things brought in, that would be great.”
Rodriguez nodded curtly. “After he’s in bed, perhaps you and I can have dinner.”
Carlotta wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She liked having Luca as a buffer. It was much more comfortable.
Ironic that you feel the need for a buffer since you’re planning on having a baby with the man. No buffers then.
That thought had her hot all over. Well, not so much the pregnancy and childbirth aspect of it. She’d hated being pregnant. Every moment of it. It had all been sickness and sadness. A little bit of denial. Only when Luca was placed in her arms had everything truly come together. And from that moment, she’d been lost. Everything that had come before it—the pain, physical and emotional—had paled in comparison to the love that had flooded through her when she’d seen her son for the first time.
She’d already done it once without a man in the picture.
“Great. We can talk more then,” she said, wondering if any amount of talking would ever make the situation seem normal.
After spending a couple of hours getting Luca settled and conked out in his new room, Carlotta went back to her room and selected a nice dress from her collection of, admittedly, out-of-date clothing.
Clothes just didn’t matter when you hardly ever went anywhere and certainly never went on dates. As Queen of Santa Christobel she would need new clothing….
Oh. Madre di dio. She was going to be the Queen of Santa Christobel. She had sort of been stuck on being Rodriguez’s wife. On what it would mean to marry him and share his bed, and have his baby, and uproot her son from his home in Italy. She hadn’t even gotten to the queen bit.
She tugged the dress off the hanger and sat on the bed in nothing but her bra and panties, the plush, silken comforter billowing around her, enveloping her. She clutched the rust-colored dress to her chest and breathed in deeply, trying to stop the room from spinning.
This was not her life.
And what is? Self-imposed exile in Italy? Living it up, aren’t you, Carlotta?
She had known she’d have to get back into the swing of things eventually. Start living life beyond the four walls of her home. She hadn’t really intended on doing it in such a grand way.
Life had seemed … still, for the past five years. No, not still. Because Luca always changed. Every day there was something new and exciting for him, and she lived it, loved it. Loved him. But for her … there had been nothing. It had been like being wrapped in a cocoon. Now she was torn from it, and she doubted she’d had any grand transformation.
She didn’t know if she was ready for this. And she didn’t really have anyone to talk to. Normally she would call Sophia but since she was currently shacked up with Ash in India and Carlotta was now engaged to the man she’d been intended to marry …
