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Seven. Six. Five.
He might have brought her here, but he did not control her.
Four. Three. Two.
All of the vulnerability he had made her feel back in the hotel room was over now. She was impervious to it. Impervious to him.
One.
She stepped off the bottom stair and looked up. Rocco was there, his dark eyes clashing with hers, his hand extended toward her.
She sucked in a sharp breath, her heart hammering hard, her stomach twisting.
“So pleased you could join me,” he said, appraising her slowly. “I knew that color would suit you.”
“You can’t imagine how relieved I am that you approve of my appearance. I was deeply concerned.”
“Come now, must everything be a fight?” He kept his hand extended. “Take my hand.”
“No thank you, I can walk just fine. Probably better without you leading me off a cliff. Oh, look. I suppose everything does have to be a fight.”
He arched a brow and lowered his hand. “Dinner is back this way on the terrace. And while it does overlook a cliff, I have no desire to walk you off it.”
“You expect me to trust you? I don’t trust anyone,” she said, following him through the expensive living area, her shoes loud on the marble floor.
“I see. And why is it that you don’t trust anyone? Because I find that a curious stance for someone like yourself. I could understand a victim of yours no longer trusting people.”
“I don’t have victims,” she said, her tone crisp. “They’re called marks.”
“Admitting something?”
“No,” she said, looking away, her heart beating a bit faster, “I’m not.”
“You will not convince me of your innocence. You might as well drop the denial.”
She rolled her eyes. “So I should give you a full, signed confession?”
“You could start by simply answering my question.”
“Why don’t I trust people? Because I see what happens when you trust people. My father is a con man. He always has been. The quality time I remember with my dad consisted of running scams that required playing on people’s sympathy for children. Not exactly a weekend at the ballpark. Why would I trust people?”
He pushed open the double doors that led outside to an expansive terrace that overlooked the ocean. He turned to face her, his lean figure backlit by the sun. “You shouldn’t trust people. At least not in my experience. Certainly don’t trust me.”
She followed him outside, to a table that was set for two. There was a Mediterranean platter including olives and various other Italian delights, a basket of bread, a glass of wine for him and water for her.
“Oh, I don’t trust you.”
He pulled her chair out and indicated that he wanted her to sit. “Good. I don’t need you to trust me. I simply need you to stay with me. Sit.”
She kept her eyes on his and she obeyed his command, deciding that in this instance, it wouldn’t do any good to push against him. “What do you mean you want to keep me?”
“I have done some thinking. I want to be in my child’s life. And I want you to be in the child’s life. You see, I was denied both my parents at a very early age. I cannot knowingly do the same to my own flesh and blood.”
“Well, I...I feel the same way. At least as far as I’m concerned.” It was the truth. Growing up without a mother, it had never been an option for her to give her child up. Knowing that her mother had left her with a con artist for a father and never bothered to contact her again, had caused Charity pain all of her life. Doing the same to her own child was unthinkable.
“Then it is decided. Shall we set a wedding date?”
“I am not marrying you.”
He waved a hand. “Marriage is not necessary. I’m flexible on that score. But I do think we should share a household, don’t you? It would only be jarring for the child to bounce back and forth between your tiny apartment and one of my homes.”
“Are you suggesting we live together?”
“If you refuse to marry me, cohabitation works just as well.”
“But...I don’t understand. You can’t possibly want a relationship with me.”
“Of course I don’t.” He tossed the words out casually, no venom in his tone at all. “I don’t care about you at all. Except in the context of what you mean to our baby. Even if we were to marry we would continue to conduct our lives separately.”
“I don’t want to marry you.”
“I did not say I wanted to marry you,” he said, taking a seat across from her. “Only that I feel it is an option.”
She studied him hard. “You believe me. About the baby?”
“Yes.”
“And you want the baby. You want to be a father.”
“I am going to be a father. That means I...have to be one,” he said, sounding slightly less confident than he typically did.
“Why did you change your mind?”
“I lived in Rome when I was a boy.” He leaned back in his chair and picked up his glass of wine, swirling the liquid inside slowly. “We lived in a very poor neighborhood. I never knew my father. I woke up one morning and the house was empty. Everything had been taken. And there were strangers there. My mother was gone. And I kept asking them where she was, but no one would answer me. I found out later that she was killed on her way home from work. I assume the landlord took all of our possessions and left me alone. But I don’t know the details, and things like that are always difficult to sort through. Childhood memories. The recollections of a five-year-old are not always clear. But I know what it means to be alone. I know what it is like to feel lost.” There was a faraway look in his dark eyes, a deep well that she could not see the bottom of. So different to the flatness that was usually there. “I do not wish that for our child. I wish for them to have a full house. I wish for them to have both of us. If he wakes in the middle of the night I do not want him to be alone.”
Her chest tightened to the point of discomfort. She looked down at her plate, picked up an olive and rolled it in between her thumb and forefinger. Emotions made her uncomfortable. Especially the emotions of other people. In her experience connecting was dangerous. Empathy was dangerous. It had made it impossible to do what her father asked growing up. Because if she started to think too deeply about what other people would feel when they discovered they had been cheated, she had to contend with her conscience.
And if ever she connected with people, it only dissolved once the con ended and she had to run.
It was why she could never engage herself. Why she had to play a character wholly and completely, so that she was wrapped in it, so the real her was protected.
But she found that she was not protected now. She was not distant. Because it was too easy to picture a lonely boy in an empty house. Because she had felt that, too.
“Some nights,” she said, questioning the words even as she spoke them, “my father would go to events, and he could not bring me with him. He would tell me to lock the doors, not open them for anyone. We had a password. So when he came home in the early hours of the morning, he would say it, and I would know not to be afraid. But sometimes he didn’t come home. And I would be by myself all night. Normally I would sleep through it, but sometimes I would wake up, go get a glass of water, something like that. And the house was so empty. It’s a very scary feeling late at night.” She met his gaze. “I don’t want that for our child, either. I want what you want.”
Her stomach twisted hard. She didn’t really want to deal with him, because he frightened her. Because he had used her. Because he had scraped away the layers of rock she kept between herself and the world, made her vulnerable to him. Exposed her to him. She could not forget that.
“He will have it,” Rocco said, a certainty in his voice that she found oddly comforting. “It is a terrifying thing as a child. Being alone in that way. I am...sorry that you were alone. I know that feeling. It is... I avoid it at all costs now.”
She swallowed hard, an unexpected wave of emotion washing over her. “Thank you.”
Then, as though he had not just softened for her, he straightened, his eyes unreadable again. “Then it is settled. We are staying here for the foreseeable future.”
“Why?” Her heart was pounding fast, fluttering in her chest like a panicked bird.
“Because I don’t trust you. I do not trust that you will not find a way to make off with my money and my baby. Your word has limited value to me.”
His words cut close to the bone, because there was so much truth to them. Because initially she had intended to take his money and go. Because she was a liar, and she had proven herself to be. And she could not even find a shred of righteous indignation to throw back at him. “I am being honest with you,” she said. It was all she could say.
He looked at her, his gaze hard. “I cannot read you, and I find that disturbing. Are you a practiced con woman? Are you an innocent virgin? Are you a tough girl from the wrong side of the tracks forced into criminal activity because of your circumstances and your upbringing? I don’t know. Because I have seen you play all those roles. And you play them all very well.”
“Maybe I’m all of them.” She reached down and put her fingers on her water glass, turning it in a circle. “And what about you? Who are you? A lonely boy without a mother? The wicked predator who blackmailed me into bed?”
“I am definitely the second. I decided long ago to move past where I began. Feeling guilty doesn’t benefit you, Charity. You make decisions—you must own them.”
“So, you don’t think I should feel guilty about the money my father took and the part I played in it?”
He took a sip of his wine. “If I were you? I wouldn’t feel guilty in the least. However, I am not you. I am me, and I had to ensure that you paid for what you did.”
“With sex.”
“I already told you,” he said, his eyes meeting hers. “That was not part of the plan.”
“And I already told you I don’t trust people. I’m not sure why you think I should take you at your word.”
“Because I have no reason to lie to you. Not on that score.”
Charity laughed and took a piece of bread from the basket at the center of the table. “Who is going to teach our child morals? It seems that you and I both lack them.”
How was she supposed to teach a child right and wrong? How was she supposed to enforce consequences for wrong behavior when she’d spent so much of her life dodging consequences.
When she’d been a thief for so long.
For the first time she wondered if she deserved to go to prison. She didn’t want to. But she was guilty of all she was accused of.
She clenched her hands into fists, a sick feeling settling in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t go to jail. Then her child wouldn’t have a mother.
She could be better, though. Something was changing in her. For the first time she didn’t just know that stealing from him was wrong. She felt it.
Rocco frowned. “We should get a nanny.”
Charity was about to disagree, but then realized he was probably right. She didn’t know the first thing about babies, after all. Someone was going to have to show her how to change a diaper.
“We...we probably should.”
“We will worry about that a little bit later. For now, I suggest we get used to dealing with each other.”
“Do we have to?” she asked, picking up her glass of water. “We could always just ignore each other.”
“I would much rather sleep with you again.”
She sputtered. “What?”
“Why not? We are attracted to one another. And you will be here indefinitely. It could benefit us both.”
“Yeah. No.” She picked up another piece of bread and ate it. “I spend most days feeling a lot like I just licked the underside of a shoe. So I can honestly tell you that sex is the furthest thing from my mind. In fact, I’m a little bit angry at sex. I blame sex.”
He shrugged, looking completely unconcerned by her refusal. “Fair enough.”
She was slightly wounded that he didn’t press. Which was ridiculous. She should not be wounded. She should be thrilled. Or something. She didn’t want to sleep with him again. He hated her. He had only brought her here because she was having his baby.
Come to that, she wasn’t that fond of him.
Yes, in that hotel suite, in the heat of the moment, with a veil of fantasy drawn around them that had begun with that note and that lingerie, something had caught fire between them. But here, with the brine from the ocean playing havoc with her sensitive stomach, the cool breeze blowing across her skin, raising goose bumps on her arms, things felt all too real.
Still, the rejection stung a little bit, even if she didn’t know why. Some sort of previously unknown feminine sexual pride that had been uncovered by their indiscretion.
Just another bit of evidence to prove that sleeping with him in the first place was incredibly stupid.
“So that’s it then?”
“Did you think I was going to pine after you?” He looked her over, his dark eyes conveying a kind of dismissiveness that cut deep. “I’m used to much more experienced women, cara mia, and while your innocence had a certain charm I prefer a partner who understands the way a man’s body works.”
Heat assaulted her cheeks. “You were the one who propositioned me.”
“Because it made sense. I’m not a man prepared to go without sex. I’m hardly going to be celibate, so the decision is yours. Either I sleep with you or I will find someone else.”
A ball of rage lodged itself in her chest. She couldn’t quite work out why. She had refused him, so, by that logic, he should be free to share his body with whoever he wanted. But she didn’t feel that he should be. His body belonged to her. At least, that was what it felt like. He was the only man she had ever touched like that. The only man who had ever been inside her. How could that not feel significant to him? It didn’t seem fair.
But she would not show him her feelings. She would not reveal herself. “Do what you want. I’m not bothered. Just don’t touch me.”
“I always do what I want. But your gesture of offering permission was cute.” He stood, picking up his glass of wine and swallowing the rest of the contents before setting it back on the table. “And on that note, I believe I will go out and do what I please. Have a good evening.”
He turned and walked off the terrace, leaving her sitting there. Alone.
She picked up another piece of bread and bit into it with no small amount of ferocity. She didn’t care what he went to do. She did not own him. She did not own his body, in spite of her earlier thoughts on the subject.
She didn’t want to go out. She wanted to sit here. And eat. Go to bed early.
Master of the Manor aside, the house was beautiful, and she should just enjoy being here. The money her father had stolen would never gain him admittance into a place like this. To a man like Rocco a million dollars was a drop in an endless sea.
So, she would sit here and enjoy the fact that, although her father had abandoned her and left her to take the fall, she was the one sitting in a villa in Italy.
With a man who had blackmailed her into bed. And had got her pregnant. And was headed out to undoubtedly have sex with another woman.
So, except for all those things, she would sit here and enjoy the fact that she was in an Italian villa. She would ignore the other things. For as long as she could.
CHAPTER SIX (#ue77fbab4-6d04-5b9e-b503-4af7f9d06650)
