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He got out of bed and walked over to the bar that was next to the door. He needed a drink, and then he could go back to sleep.
He flipped on the light and reached for a bottle of Scotch, pouring himself a generous amount, his hands shaking. As he lifted the glass to his lips, he replayed the dream in his mind. And suddenly the face of the child changed. It wasn’t him any longer, but a child with her mother’s defiant expression and wavy black hair.
He swore and slammed the glass down onto the bar top. There was no reason for him to take part in the life of the child Charity was carrying. The odds that she was truly pregnant were slim. The odds that she was carrying his child slimmer still. It was a tactic to use him. She was a con woman, just like her father, and he knew it.
Yes, she had been a virgin, he knew that, too. But perhaps she had not been. Perhaps it was all part of her elaborate ruse. He couldn’t be sure.
He should forget this. Forget she had ever come to see him. It would be easy for him to send a certain amount of money to her every month, money he would never even look at. She would be cared for, as would the baby, and he could go on as he always had.
Yet again, his mind was filled with large, sad brown eyes.
He looked down into the Scotch as though it betrayed him, then lifted the glass and hurled it at the wall, watching it shatter. It left a dark blot behind, a spray of liquid clearly visible, and shards of glass on the floor. He didn’t care.
And he shouldn’t care about Charity Wyatt and the baby she might or might not be carrying.
You would abandon your child? Is this what you have become?
He did not hear the questions in his own voice, but a voice from far in the past. His mother. Who had left luxury with his father to give birth to him. Who had, before that, sold all of her jewelry, all of her clothes. A mother who had worked nights at a factory, walking a dangerous route home in the early hours, alone.
His mother had given her all, until she had lost her life in pursuit of caring for him.
And he was going to leave his child with nothing more than an automatic deposit once a month.
He ignored the uncharacteristic guilt that wound itself around his lungs, making it difficult to breathe. He didn’t believe in guilt. It was useless. It accomplished nothing. He believed in action.
So take action.
What action could he take? Would he keep the child for himself? Take Charity as his wife? Make a family with the woman who had defrauded him out of a million dollars?
The woman who had tested his control and found it wanting?
Unacceptable.
All of it. He owed her nothing. He didn’t even owe her child support all things considered. He was still half convinced she had his money tucked away somewhere. A million dollars of his ferreted away into an account to use at her discretion.
In truth, he was being generous offering her anything.
Yes, he was generous.
He took another glass from the bar and poured himself more Scotch. He would not think of this again. He would place his assistant in charge of arranging Charity’s medical appointments. She would receive the best care available. Another token of his generosity.
He had made the right decision. And he would not question it again.
He downed to the rest of his Scotch and went back to bed.
* * *
Charity felt like hell. She had for the past two weeks. Everything she ate seemed to disagree with her, and she had no energy at all. She had missed so many shifts at the restaurant that her financial situation was getting dire.
But, the unavoidable fact was that nobody wanted a clammy, pale waitress serving them food.
And today was her first official doctor’s appointment that had been arranged at the clinic chosen by Rocco. It was a strange thing, going to a clinic that had been selected by the man who was so intent on keeping himself separate from all of this.
Well, she was willing to bet that Rocco himself hadn’t actually selected the clinic. More likely he had had his assistant do it. Which, actually sat a bit easier with her.
The place was certainly upscale, a far cry from the free clinic where she’d gone to get her blood work done in the early stages of the pregnancy. Instead of plastic chairs, cracked tile floors and water-stained ceilings there was plush carpet, a comfortable seating area designed to look more like the living room of a nice home and chilled bottles of water offered upon entry.
It was amazing what could be achieved with a little bit of money. Or a lot of money, in this case. She could almost see why her father was so driven to join the elite class and enjoy the fruits of their labor.
Of course, Charity had discovered that it wasn’t really worth the risk. Too little too late, however.
“Ms. Wyatt?” A woman poked her head through one of the doors that partitioned the waiting area off from the patient rooms.
Charity picked up her water bottle and stood, following the woman back to a scale, where her weight was taken, then to a restroom, where a sample was taken. And from there, to one of the little rooms that had a white gown neatly folded on a chair and a large cushioned exam table at the center.
“The doctor will be in to see you shortly. Remove your clothes, and put the gown on,” the woman said.
Charity nodded, feeling slightly numb again. The baby stuff was all fine in theory, but when things got real like this she started to retreat inside herself again.
She went through the motions, removing her clothing, putting the thin nondescript gown on. She sat on the table, her hands folded in her lap, unease pooling in her stomach.
There was a knock on the door. “Come in,” she said.
A smiling woman in a lab coat walked through the door, and Charity smiled back. And then a man followed her, dressed in a perfectly fitted black suit, his black hair combed off his forehead, his dark eyes glittering with some sort of intense emotion she could not readily identify. One she didn’t want to identify. Any more than she wanted to identify the man himself.
Rocco was here. And she felt as though she had been punched.
“Well, now that the father is here, I suppose we’re ready to begin,” the doctor said.
“Such a surprise,” Charity said, her hackles rising. “Rocco,” she said, his first name strange on her lips, “I didn’t expect you.”
“I would imagine not. I didn’t expect me. And yet, here I am.” He didn’t sound very happy about it.
She smoothed the gown down, ensuring that it covered as much of her legs as possible. “I don’t really see how it’s possible for you to surprise yourself.”
She was shocked, but she was doing her best not to let him see it. She promised herself she wouldn’t give him any more of who she was. He didn’t deserve it. A mark never did. And he had already had enough of her.
“We live in strange and interesting times,” he said, taking a seat in one of the chairs that sat opposite the exam table.
The doctor looked from her to Rocco, and back to her.
“Everything is fine,” Rocco said, not bothering to look at Charity. “Just a little spat.”
Charity snorted. “Yes, a lover’s quarrel.” What a joke. She and Rocco could hardly be called lovers. They’d had sex. At its most base level. Love hadn’t come into it. Like hadn’t even been involved. He had used her. Humiliated her.
“So what is it that we are waiting for?” Rocco said, looking around as though he was expecting something grand, as though she was going to deliver the baby here and now.
The doctor blinked, then turned to the computer, entering a password, and bringing up Charity’s chart. “Well, Charity, your weight looks good. And everything was normal with the urine sample.”
Ridiculous, considering Rocco had seen her naked, but the mention of fluids made Charity’s cheeks heat. “Well, that’s good to know.”
“And, now we’re just going to try and see if we can hear a heartbeat. If we can’t get it on the Doppler, it could just be because it’s so early. So there’s no need to be concerned. But it is nice to try and establish viability this way if we can.”
Rocco was staring at her, hard. Maybe this was what he was here for. The chance to hear the heartbeat. To see if she was telling the truth. Though, she would have thought that he might send a lackey to ascertain this sort of information. She could just picture his secretary sitting here, waiting to report back. She would find that less disconcerting.
The doctor stood and put on a pair of rubber gloves. “Could you lie down please?”
Charity shot a look over to Rocco. “Please come and stand up by my shoulders.”
“You did not conceive the baby on your own,” he said, his tone laconic. “We both know I’ve seen it before.”
Even the doctor blinked at him in shock. “You will have to forgive him,” Charity said. “He was raised by wolves. They did a terrible job.”
Rocco shrugged, a rather wolfish smile crossing his features. “The founder of Rome was also raised by wolves. I consider myself in good company.”
Charity rolled her eyes. “Oh, great Caesar, come and stand up by my shoulders.”
She was surprised when he complied. But maybe he was just tired of the delay. He moved up to the head of the exam table, and she lay down. The doctor retrieved a sheet from beneath the cabinet and laid it over Charity’s lap.
The doctor adjusted the gown, then squirted some warm gel onto Charity’s stomach. She took a small wand and placed it over the gel, sliding it around, a strange, watery sound filling the room. She moved it lower, and lower still. And suddenly a pulsing sound rose up over the baseline noise.
“That’s it,” the doctor said, her tone bright. “That’s the baby’s heartbeat.”
Charity looked up at Rocco, then immediately wished she hadn’t. She didn’t care what his reaction was. At least, she shouldn’t care. But truly, she had imagined he would have no reaction at all, and that was clearly not the case.
His face had turned to stone, as hard and immobile as a statue.
He was truly beautiful, and it was an inconvenient moment to think of it. But he was the father of her baby and that realization made her study his features that much more closely. The golden tone to his skin, the hard, angular lines of his cheekbones, his jaw. The sensual curve of his mouth.
Her child would be half of him. Would he have the same sulky expression? Dark straight hair like his father? Or a riot of black curls like her?
Rocco’s frown deepened. “It does not sound like a heartbeat,” he said, the mocking edge smoothed from his voice. He sounded...strange. Uncertain.
“It does to me,” the doctor said, clearly not at all intimidated by Rocco.
There was an odd light in Rocco’s dark eyes, something she couldn’t put a name to. “It’s very fast,” he said, and if Charity wasn’t so cynical about him, she might have thought she heard concern in his voice.
“Normal,” the doctor said. “Strong, and absolutely nothing to worry about.” She directed her focus to Charity.
“She is pregnant,” Rocco said, not a question.
The doctor’s brows shot up again. “Absolutely.”
A deep groove formed between his dark brows. “I see,” he said, his tone stoic now. “And I hear.”
For a while, no one spoke at all. There was only the sound of the baby’s heartbeat, and on the monitor, a wavy line that moved with each beat. A band that seemed to stretch between Rocco and herself, tightening a bond between them she hadn’t realized was there.
Charity wished it would go away.
“Do you have any questions for me?” the doctor asked, breaking into Charity’s internal monologue.
Charity shook her head, suddenly unable to say anything. Unable to think at all.
“Then I’ll see you in four weeks for your next appointment. Everything seems right on schedule. Nothing to worry about.” Charity could think of about fifty things to worry about without even trying.
The doctor removed the wand from her stomach and wiped away the gel with the sheet that was over her lap. “I’ll leave you to get dressed.”
And then she left, leaving Charity and Rocco alone.
“Would you go please?”
“Why?” Rocco asked, sitting back down in the chair he had been in before. Any softening, any humanity she thought she might have glimpsed a moment ago was gone now.
“I need to get dressed.”
He put his hands behind his head and leaned back. “You’re being so charmingly modest. We both know you possess quite a bit more boldness.”
“Fine. If you’re looking for a show, enjoy.” She stood from the exam table, letting the sheet fall to the floor. The gown covered her until she turned her back on him, and she knew she was revealing everything to him then. She untied the top of the gown and let it fall completely. Then she set about getting dressed.
She was too angry to be embarrassed. She didn’t care if he looked. He was right, he had already seen her. He had touched her. He was the reason things were like this.
Once all of her clothing was on, she turned to face him. He was staring at her, dark eyes glittering. “I should’ve charged admission for that,” she said.
“I found the ingénue much more charming. Perhaps you could revert back?”
“Oh, I think you and I both know that I can’t play the ingénue now. I seem to have lost my innocence somewhere.”
A half smile curved his lips. “And so you have. Though, I’m starting to think that virginity is not necessarily innocence.”
She shrugged. “I won’t argue with you there.”
“Is this an admission of guilt?”
“Certainly not. I’m only saying my innocence is unconnected to whether or not I’ve slept with a man.”
“You really were a virgin, weren’t you?”
She lifted her chin, staring him down. “Is it important?”
He looked back at her, and for a moment she thought she saw something in his dark gaze, something that looked strikingly like guilt. But then it was gone, replaced with the smooth, impenetrable expression she’d come to expect from him. “Not particularly. If I had a conscience, I suppose it might be a little dented by the realization. Happy for both of us I don’t. Though, it might bear weight on how convinced I am that this is my child,” he said, directing his gaze at her stomach.
“It is your child. There was no one else before you, and no one else after you.” She watched his expression carefully for more clues. And was disappointed. So she pushed harder. “Makes it difficult for you to vilify me, doesn’t it?”
“You might find this strange,” he said, his tone hard. “But I’m not here to vilify you.”
“Well, you certainly aren’t here to shower me with flowers and compliments. So why are you here?”
“I’ve changed my mind.”
