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RENZO DID NOT have the patience to deal with Esther and her pique right at the moment. His world felt like it had been completely turned on end. He was not having one child, but two. He could hardly sort through that.
He had opted to carry on with his plan, as though there had been no surprises at the doctor’s today. He had continued on with his plan to propose to her at one of the more high-profile restaurants in Rome, where they would be sure to have their picture taken, so they could be splashed out on the tabloids. The same tabloids that had covered his incredibly public divorce from Ashley just recently.
It had been calculated. Very specifically. To set the stage so the people would believe this relationship was real. So that they would believe this pregnancy had come about in a natural way.
What he had not counted on was the kiss. Or more specifically, how it had affected him. Yes, he had known that Esther was beautiful. He had also known that he was not immune to that beauty. When he had watched Tierra dress her just the other day, he had been captivated by the smooth curve of her waist, her hip, the way that black lace underwear had barely covered her shapely rear.
But that big attraction still hadn’t prepared him for what had transpired in the restaurant. She was unpracticed. Much less experienced than he had even imagined, judging by that kiss. She had barely moved.
But somehow, she had lit him on fire inside. He had tasted every female delicacy the world had to offer. Had delighted himself in feminine company after his first heartbreak. Seeing no reason he could not satisfy his body since he was bound and determined never to involve his heart again.
But she had broken through that jaded wall that surrounded him. She had done something to him. And now, she was yelling at him.
“I could not warn you, cara,” he said. “That would have spoiled the surprise.”
“I didn’t like the surprise,” she said.
“Still, I needed you to look surprised. You are aware that most women do not know when they’re going to be proposed to, are you not?”
She sniffed audibly. “Maybe I’m not.”
“I think you are. I needed it to look real.”
“Is that why you...pawed at me afterward?”
“That’s a very elegant way to describe what transpired between us. Though I do believe, you did some pawing of your own.”
She huffed. “I did not. Like I said, you surprised me. I feel as though you could have warned me. About all of it. And you would not have lost the element of surprise. I could have acted.”
“Sadly, you’re a terrible actress. I hate to be insulting, but it’s true. You have no artifice.” As he said it, he realized how very true it was.
“You were trying to control me,” she said, her tone hard, the anger behind it indicative of a deeper wound. One that had existed long before he’d arrived in her life.
“That wasn’t it,” he said, although he imagined it was semantics at this point. “You have no... You’re very soft. You seem to have no way of protecting yourself from any of this at all. You sit in sunbeams with bowls of cereal. And I do not know what to do with you. I do not know what you might do next. I do not like it.”
She breathed in deeply, and if a breath could be called triumphant, then this one certainly was. “Good. I don’t live my life to please people anymore. I am my own person.”
“Yes. So you’ve said.”
“It’s the truth. I know that I told you my parents were difficult. But you have no idea.”
“Well, you have met my parents. Assume I have some idea of difficult parents.”
She snorted. “Trust me. Your parents seemed delightful to me.”
“Your frame of reference is off.”
“Undoubtedly.” He began to pace the length of the room, all of the unquenched fire and unspent energy inside him threatening to boil over. “You must remember that you are not in charge here. This thing that we’re doing is important only to me. Therefore, I will direct all actions. If I decided that this was the best way to go about confirming our engagement for the public, then you must accept that my way is law.”
“You keep saying this is only important to you. But that isn’t the case. I care. You may not understand it—I don’t even understand it. But it matters. I’m linked to it. Physically. I know that these babies aren’t mine, but it’s all jumbled up. Biology and ownership, what it means... I don’t know. I just know that I don’t feel like a womb for rent. I feel like a person, a person who is going through something big and terrifying. A person who is carrying a baby. Babies, even. There is no divorcing my emotions from it. There is no detaching myself, not completely.”
He regarded her closely. “Have you changed your mind about leaving?” She would. He would make sure of it. But if she was leaning toward a change of heart now, that would make his job all the easier.
Her reaction to that kiss would seal things completely.
“No,” she said, her tone muted. She looked away, biting that lush lower lip that he had tasted less than an hour ago. “I can’t. I have too much to do. I know that... I know that. But stop telling me that what I want doesn’t matter. That what I feel isn’t like what you feel.”
“But,” he said, unable to let that comment slide, even if he should for the sake of harmony. For the sake of manipulation. “It is the truth. I’m going to be a father to these babies. To these children. I’m going to be the one who raises them. I know what that entails. It is going to require sacrifice. Change.” Until he spoke those words he had not realized that he intended to change it all. Somewhere in the back of his mind he had imagined that he would throw the raising of these children over to nannies. But now, he realized that was not the case.
He thought of his daughter. The daughter whose name he could barely stand to think, even after all these years. The daughter he sometimes saw across the room, through crowds of people, growing from a child into a young woman. Without him. Without ever knowing.
The idea of being a distant father again, even if his children were in the nursery and he was downstairs seeing to his routine while they were cared for by others, was too much.
“My life will change.” He reiterated that, as much for himself as for her.
“I have a feeling mine will, too.”
“Yes. Because of all the money that I will pay you.”
“No,” she said, her tone fierce now. “Because I was naive. Because I was foolish to think that I could do this and feel nothing. That I could do this and simply walk away with a check at the end. This experience is never going to go away. I... I’m going to be changed,” she said, sounding sad now, broken. “I thought that everything would be fine because I was committed to having this life or I didn’t have ties and strings and any of those things that I was trying to avoid. But that’s not true. Everything has consequences.” She laughed. “I think I pushed that out of my mind. Because it was something that my father used to talk about. Consequences for actions. How everything you do will come back to you. How distressing to find out that not everything my parents taught me is wrong.”
“That is usually the case,” he said, her words hitting him in an uncomfortable place yet again. “Tragic though it may seem, no matter how difficult the situation, no matter how unreasonable your parents can be at times, they are often not entirely incorrect.”
She shook her head. “I’m going to bed.”
She turned away from him, and he reached out, grabbing hold of her arm and stopping her from going. “Remember,” he said, not quite sure what he was going to say. For a moment, he just stood there holding on to her, not certain of why he had prevented her from leaving. “Remember that we have to go to New York in two weeks. If you thought tonight was public, then what you encounter there will surprise you. If you need any kind of preparation in advance, I suggest you speak to me about it. Otherwise, I will assume that you know what you’re getting yourself into and I will expect you to behave accordingly.”
He released his hold on her. He knew he was being an ass, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to correct the behavior. Why should he?
Seduction, perhaps?
He gritted his teeth. Yes, that might have been the better path. To kiss her again, to soften her fears while he claimed that soft mouth of hers. And yet, he found he needed more distance from that initial kiss than another. More than he would like to admit.
“I think I can figure it out,” she said, her tone soft.
“See that you do.”
There were only a couple of weeks left until he would present her to the world as his fiancée. And at that point—his father was correct—it needed to be permanent. But Esther was hungry for experience. To see the world, to see all that life had to offer. And if there was anything that he possessed, it was access to what she craved.
He could give her glamour. He could give her excitement. He could—quite literally—show her the world.
And there was one more thing. Yet another that she would get from no other man, not in the way that he could give it. Passion. The two of them were combustible, there was no denying that after the kiss they had shared tonight. It was not a common kind of chemistry. He was a connoisseur of such things, and he should know.
Yes. New York would be the perfect place to spring his trap.
He would take her to the finest hotel, show her the finest art, take her to unsurpassed restaurants. And then when he took her back to that plush hotel and laid her on that big bed... He would make her his.
* * *
In the weeks since their engagement, they had settled into an odd sort of routine. They ate meals together—and she had none of them on the floor—and they shared polite conversation where he never once tried to kiss her.
He was interesting, and that was perplexing, because she found herself seeking him out in the evenings just so she could talk to him.
Then there were the books. Every day after work he brought her a new one. Small, hardbound travel guides. Paperback novels. Extremely strange history books that focused on odd subjects such as uniforms for different armies and the types of women’s clothing through the ages.
She’d asked him why, and he’d responded that it was so she could learn all the things she didn’t know. Just as she’d said she wanted to.
It made her feel...soft. She wasn’t sure she wanted that. She also wanted things to stay the same. In this strange, quiet lull where she felt like they were poised on the brink of something.
She liked being on the brink. It felt safe. Nothing too big, or too outside her experience.
Of course, it had to end. And she got her big shove over the brink when he came home from his office one day and swept her and all of her clothing up in a whirlwind of commands, packed her into his car and then summarily unpacked her on his private plane.
A private plane. Now, that she had not managed to imagine with any kind of accuracy. The horrors of traveling economy over the Atlantic had been something she hadn’t quite anticipated, but on the opposite end of the spectrum.
The long flight to New York seemed to pass quickly with her enveloped in the butter-soft leather of the recliner in the living area of Renzo’s plane. There was food that bore absolutely no resemblance to the meal she had been served on her crossing from the United States, and all manner of fresh juice and sparkling water.
Then, there was some kind of light, sweet cream cake that she could have eaten her weight in if she hadn’t been stopped by the landing preparation.
Renzo had spent the entire flight buried in work. That was neither completely surprising nor unwelcome. At least, it shouldn’t have been unwelcome. Except she had craved conversation but had instead settled for reading the book he’d gotten her for the flight, which strangely felt like him talking to her in some way.
She didn’t know why she was being weird about it. They were connected by the babies she was carrying, and that was it. They didn’t need to form more of a personal connection than they already had. More than that, it was probably best if they didn’t.
She did her best not to think about that kiss. She did her best not to think of it as she was ushered off the plane and into another limousine. She did her best not to think of it as they made their way down the freeway, the famous Manhattan skyline coming into view.
That helped take her focus off Renzo and the strange ache in her chest.
New York. She had never been to New York. She had hoped to make it there someday, but her first inclination had been to get as far away from her parents as she possibly could, and that had meant taking a little sojourn around Europe.
But this was amazing. The kind of amazing that she hadn’t imagined she would experience in her lifetime. At least, not when you combined it with the flight over. In some ways it was a relief to see that Renzo was making good on his promise. To show her a part of the world that she couldn’t have seen without him. The way that people with money lived. The way that they traveled, the sorts of sights and foods that they saw and ate.
In another way, it was disquieting.
Because it was just another way Renzo might have changed her. What if she got used to this? What if she missed it? She didn’t want that.
She shook that thought off immediately as the city drew closer.
This was what mattered. The experience. Not the lushness of the car. But where she was. She wasn’t going to change in that regard. Not that much. She had been sort of distressed when she had realized fully that her parents might have had some points when they’d lectured her about consequences.
And what she had already known was that the way they had instilled the lack of materialism in her really had mattered. It really had made a difference. And it made it a lot easier for her to pick up and travel around. While a lot of her various roommates in the different hostels had been dismayed by conditions, she had been grateful for a space of her own.
Independence was the luxury. She would remember that.
She and Renzo completed the ride down into Manhattan in silence. She remained silent all through their arrival at the hotel. It was incredible, with broad stone steps leading up to the entry. The lobby was tiled in a caramel-color stone, shot through with veins of deeper gold. It wasn’t a large room. In fact, the hotel itself had a small, exclusive quality to it. But it was made to feel even more special as a result.
As though only a handful of people could ever hope to experience it.
The room, however, that had been reserved for herself and Renzo was not small. It took up the entire top of the building, bedrooms on one end and a large common living area in the center. The windows looked out over Central Park, and she stood there transfixed, gazing at the green square surrounded by all of the man-made grit and gray.
“This is amazing,” she said, turning back to face him, her throat constricting when she saw him.
He was standing there, deft fingers loosening the knot on his black tie. He pulled it through his shirt collar, then undid the top button. And she found herself more transfixed by the view before her than by the one that was now behind her.
The city. She was supposed to be focusing on the city. On the hotel. On the fact that it was a new experience. She was not supposed to be obsessing on the man before her. She was not supposed to be transfixed by the strong, bronzed column of his throat. By the wedge of golden skin he revealed when he undid that top button. And not just skin. Hair. Dark chest hair that was just barely visible and captured her imagination in a way that stunned her.
It was just very male. And she knew from experience that so was he. His kiss had been like that. Very like a man. So different to her. Conquering, hard. While she had softened, yielded.
No. She would not think about that. She wouldn’t think about yielding to him.
“What do you think of your first sight of New York?”
“Amazing,” she said, grateful that he was asking about the city and not about his chest. “Like I said. It’s big and busy like London, but different, too. The energy is different.”
He frowned slightly, tilting his head to the side. “The energy is different.” He nodded slowly. “I suppose that’s true. Though, I had never thought of it quite that way.”
“Well, you’ve never sat on the floor and eaten your cereal in a sunbeam either.”
“Correct.”
“Noticing energy is more the sort of thing someone who’d eat their cereal on the floor in a sunbeam would do.”
“I would imagine that’s true.”
“You’re too busy to notice things like that. The real estate development business is...busy, I guess.”
“Yes. Even during slow times in the economy, it’s comparably busy if you’ve already got a massive empire.”
“And you do,” she said.
“I would think that was obvious by now.”
“Yes. Pretty obvious.” She forced herself to turn away from him, forced herself to look back at the view again. “I find cities so very interesting. The anonymity of them. You can be surrounded by people and still be completely alone. Where I grew up, there were less people. By far there were less people. But it felt like you were never alone. And not just because I lived in the house with so many other people. But because every time you stepped outside you would meet somebody you knew. You could never just have a bad day.”
He lifted a shoulder. “I am rarely anonymous when I go out.”
She frowned. “I suppose you aren’t. I mean, I would never have known who you were. I’m not metropolitan enough.”
“You’re certainly working on it.”
She looked down at the outfit that had been chosen for her to travel in. Dark jeans and a white top. She supposed she looked much more metropolitan than she had only a few weeks ago. But it wasn’t her. And none of this belonged to her either.
“The appearance of it at least.” She regarded him more closely. “I suppose you can’t exactly have a public bad day either.”
He chuckled, the sound dark, rolling over her like a thick summer night. “Of course I can. I can do whatever I like, behave as badly as I like. I’m Renzo Valenti, and no one is going to lecture me on decorum.”
“Except maybe your mother.”
He laughed again. “Oh, yes, she most definitely would. But there is nothing my parents can do to me.” He looked past her, at the city visible through the large windows. “They gave me too much freedom for too long, and now I have too much power. All they can do is direct their disapproval at me with as much fervor as humanly possible. A pity for them, but rather a win for me, don’t you think?”
