Maybe he wouldn’t care if he did.
“It was for me,” she said, and her voice was too rough. Too dark. Too much emotion in it. “It always was for me, even at the end.”
She didn’t know what might happen then. What Giancarlo might say. Do. She felt spread open and hung out in all the open space around them, as if she was stretched across some tightrope high in the sky, subject to the whims of any passing wind—
His hand reached out and covered hers and he squeezed. Once.
And then he pulled on his clothes and he got to his feet and he never mentioned it again.
* * *
Giancarlo watched her sleep, and he did not require the chorus of angry voices inside of him to remind him that this was a bad idea.
He didn’t know what had woken him, only that he’d come alert in a rush and had turned to make sure she was still there beside him—the way he’d done for years after the photographs hit. He’d lost count long ago of the number of times he’d dreamed it all away, dreamed she’d never betrayed him, dreamed that things had been different. He’d grown uncomfortably well used to lying there in his empty bed, glaring at the ceiling and wishing her ill even as he’d wanted her back, wherever she was.
But this time, she was right here. She was curled up beside him and sound asleep, so that she didn’t even murmur when he stretched out on his side, his front to her back, and held her there. The way he knew he wouldn’t do if she was awake, lest it give her too many ideas...
So much for your revenge plot, he chided himself, but it all seemed so absurd when she was lying beside him, her features taking on an angelic cast in the faint light that poured in from the skylight above them, the stars themselves lighting her with that special glow.
He found himself tracing the line of her cheek with his finger, the memories of ten years ago so strong he could almost have sworn that no time had passed. That the pictures and the separation had been the bad dream. Because he might be wary of her, but every day it seemed that was only because he thought he should be, not because he truly was. And every day it seemed to make less and less sense.
She had been so young.
He didn’t know how he’d forgotten that. How he’d failed to factor it in. When he’d been twenty he’d been a bona fide idiot, making an ass of himself at Stanford and enjoying every minute of it. He certainly hadn’t been performing for a living, running from this audition to that gig with no guarantee he’d ever make his rent or make some money or even get cast. When Violet had been twenty years old she’d been famously divorcing the much, much older producer who had married her and made her when she’d been only seventeen. No one had called her a mercenary bitch, at least, not to her face. She’d been lauded for her powerful choices and the control she’d taken over her career.
Maybe that was why he’d spent a decade this furious with Paige. Because he loved his mother, he truly did, but he’d wanted something else for himself. He’d wanted a girl who wouldn’t think of herself first, second, last and always. He’d wanted a girl who would put him first. Had he known Paige wouldn’t stick with dancing? Had he assumed she would gravitate toward the life she had here in Tuscany, which was more or less arranged around pleasing him?
He’d told her he wanted a partner, but nothing he’d done supported that. Back in Malibu, he’d been jealous of the time she spent practicing and really anything else that took her away from him. This time around he was jealous of her devotion to his own mother. Did he want a partner? Or did he want her to treat him like a partner while he did whatever he liked?
Giancarlo didn’t much care for the answers that came to him then, in the quiet night, the woman he couldn’t seem to get over lying so sweetly beside him. All he knew was that he was tired of fighting this, of holding her at arm’s length when he wanted her close. He was tired of the walls he put up. He hated himself more every time he hurt her—
We all must practice what we preach if we are to achieve anything in this life, his father had told him a long time ago as they’d walked the land together, plotting out the placement of vineyards the older man hadn’t lived to see to completion. The trouble is we’re all much better at the preaching and not so good at the listening, even to ourselves.
It had to stop. He had to stop. There was no point demanding her trust if he refused to give his own.
He shifted beside her, pulling her close and burying his face in the sweet heat of her neck.
It was time to admit what he’d known for years. She was the only woman he’d ever loved, no matter what she called herself. No matter what she’d done when she was little more than a kid. And he’d never stopped loving her.
“Come sei bella,” he whispered into the dark. How beautiful you are. And, “Mi manchi.” I miss you. And then, “I love you,” in English, though he knew she couldn’t hear him.
Giancarlo understood then, in the soft darkness, Paige snuggled close in his arms as if she’d been there all along, that he always had. He always would.
He just needed to tell her when she could hear him.
* * *
Paige woke up the next morning in her usual rush when the morning light danced over her face from the skylights above. Giancarlo was next to her, his big body wrapped around her, and she thought, this is my favorite day.
She thought that every day, lately. No matter what that voice in her head had to say about it.
And she continued to think it until her stomach went funny in a sudden, hideous lurch, and she had to pull away from him and race for the toilet.
“I must have eaten something strange,” she said when she came out of the bathroom to find him frowning with concern, sitting on the side of his bed. She grimaced. “Your mother insisted we eat those weird sausages in Cinque Terre yesterday. One must not have agreed with me.”
But Violet wasn’t affected. “I have a stomach of steel, my dear girl,” she proclaimed when Paige called her to check in, “which is handy when one is living off craft service carts for weeks at a time in all the corners of the earth.” And it happened again the next morning. And then the morning after that.
And on the fourth morning, when Paige ran for the bathroom, Giancarlo came in after her and placed a package on the floor beside her as she knelt there, pale and sick and wishing for death. It took her a long moment to calm the wild, lurching beat of her heart. To force back the dizziness as that awful feeling in her stomach retreated again. To feel well enough to focus on what he’d put there in front of her.
Only to feel even more light-headed when she did.
It was a pregnancy test.
“Use it,” Giancarlo said, his voice so clipped and stern she didn’t dare look up at him to see if his expression matched. She didn’t think her stomach could take it. She knew her heart couldn’t. “Bring me the result. Then we’ll talk.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
PAIGE CLIMBED SHAKILY to her feet after his footsteps retreated. She rinsed her mouth out with a scoop of water from the sink and then she followed the directions on the package. She waited the requisite amount of time—she timed it on her phone, to the second—and when the alarm chirped at her she let herself look.
And just like that, everything was forever altered. But all she could do was stare at the little stick with its unmistakable plus sign and wish she wasn’t naked.
That didn’t merely say things about her character, she thought dimly. It said far more dire things about the kind of mother she’d be to the tiny little life that was somehow there inside her—
That was when it hit her. It was a tidal wave of raw feeling, impossible to categorize or separate or do anything but survive as it all tore through her. Terror. Joy. Panic. How could she be someone’s mother when all she’d ever known of mothering was Arleen? How could she be someone’s mother?
She was holding on to the si
nk in a death grip when it passed, tears in her eyes and her knees weak beneath her. It was hard to breathe, but Paige made herself do it. In, then out. Deep. Measured.
Then she remembered Giancarlo was waiting for her, and worse, what he’d said before he’d gone downstairs. And Paige understood then. That this was her worst fear come to life, literally.
That this was the other shoe she’d spent all this time knowing would drop.
She dressed before she went downstairs, glad she’d worn something more substantial than a silly dress the night before. That meant she could truly wrap herself up in her clothes as if they would offer her protection from whatever was about to come. She pulled her hair back into a tight knot at the nape of her neck and she took longer than she should have, and she only went to find him when she understood that dragging this out was going to make it worse. Was making it worse.
This will be fine, she told herself as she walked down the wide, smooth stairs, aware that she was delivering herself to her own execution. But there was, despite everything, that teeny tiny sliver of hope deep inside of her that maybe, just maybe, she’d be wrong about this. That he’d surprise her.
We’re both adults. These things happen...
Giancarlo waited for her in the open doors that led out to the loggia—which, she supposed with the faintest hint of the hysteria she fought to keep away for fear it might swamp her, was appropriate, given where this baby had likely been conceived. He didn’t turn when she came up behind him, he merely held out his hand.
Demonstrating how little he trusted her, she realized, when she finally understood what he was doing and what he expected her to put in his palm. Not her hand, for comfort. The pregnancy test. For proof.
Because he expected tricks and lies from her, even now. Even about this.
She felt something topple over inside of her, some foundation or other, but she couldn’t concentrate on that now. There was only Giancarlo, scowling down at the slender stick in his hand before he bit out a curse and flung it aside.
A thousand smart responses to that moved through her, but she was still shaky from that immense emotional slap that had walloped her upstairs, and she kept them all to herself. He stood there, every muscle tight, even his jaw a hard, granite accusation, and he didn’t look at her for a long time.
When he did, it was worse.
Paige waited for him to speak, even as something inside her protested that no, she did not deserve his anger here. That she hadn’t done this alone. But she shoved that down, too.
“I thought you were on the pill.”
She blinked at the ferocity in his tone. The bite.
“No, you didn’t. You used condoms after the first night. Why would you do that if you thought I was on the pill?” He stared at her, and the truth of that rolled over her. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe through it. Then she could, and it hurt. It more than hurt. Another foundation turned to dust in an instant. “Oh.”
“Tell me,” he said in that vicious, cruel way she hadn’t heard in almost a month now, so long she’d forgotten how awful it was, how deeply it clawed into her, “what possible reason you could have for sleeping with a man without protection?”
“You did the same thing.” But her tongue felt too thick and her head buzzed and she’d known this would happen. Maybe not this. Maybe not a pregnancy. But that look on his face. She’d always known she’d see that again. She hadn’t understood, until now, how very much she’d wanted to be wrong. “You were right there with me.”
“I thought you were on the pill.”
She felt helpless. Terrified. Sick. “Why?”
He swore again, not in Italian this time, and she flinched. “What kind of question is that? Because you were before.”
“That was different.” She was too shaken to think about what she was saying, so she told him the truth without any varnishing. “My mother was terrified I’d end up pregnant at sixteen and forced to raise the baby, like she was with me, so she had me on the pill from the moment I hit puberty.”
“And you stopped?” He sounded furious and disbelieving, and Paige didn’t understand. How could he think she’d planned this? How could she have, even if she’d wanted to? You knew he didn’t use anything that first night. Why didn’t you say something? But she knew. She hadn’t wanted him to stop. She’d wanted him more than anything. “Why the hell would you do something like that?”
“I told you.”
Paige was whispering, and she’d backed up so her spine was against the far side of the open doorway as if the house might keep her from collapsing to the floor, but Giancarlo hadn’t moved at all. He didn’t have to move. His black fury took up all the air. It blocked out the sun.
This is what you deserve, her mother’s voice said in her head, filled with a sick glee. This is what happens to little whores like you, Nicola. You end up like me.
“You’re the only man I’ve slept with the past ten years,” she told him, bald and unflinching. He let out a sound she couldn’t interpret and so she kept going, because she was certain she could explain this to him so he would understand. He had to understand. They were going to be parents whether he liked it or not. “You’re the only man I’ve ever slept with, Giancarlo.”
“Do not try to sell me that nonsense, not now,” he barked at her, as if the words were welling up from somewhere deep inside of him. “I didn’t believe the story that you were a virgin then, not even when I thought I could trust you. I’ll hand it to you, though. You really do remember all the tortured details of the lies you spin.”
“What are you talking about?” Paige shook her head, trying to keep her panic at bay, trying to keep the tears from her voice, and not really succeeding at either. “Who lies about being a virgin at twenty?”
“I can’t believe I fell for this twice,” he spat, his gaze a molten fury of dark gold, his mouth grim. “I can’t believe I walked straight into this. Let me guess. You’ve never given motherhood a moment’s thought, but today, as you gazed upon the test that confirmed your pregnancy, something stirred within you that you’d never felt before.” His laugh felt like acid. “Is that about right?”
“Why are you talking to me like I planned this?” she cried. “No one forced you to have sex with me! And no one forced you to do it without a condom!”
“You’re good,” he said, still in that horrible way that curled inside of her, oily and thick. “I’ll give you that. I never saw this coming. I thought I was being too hard on you. I was falling in love with you all over again, but in the end, you’re just like her. You always have been. I’m such an idiot.”
“For all you know I have no intention of keeping it,” she threw at him, desperate to make him look at her like a person again, not like a scam with two legs. Exactly the way he had ten years ago, when he’d waved that magazine in the air outside her apartment and she’d almost wished he’d thrown it at her—because that would be better, she’d thought then, and less violent than that look on his face in that moment before he’d turned and walked away.
But the look of contempt he gave her now was not an improvement.
And his words finally penetrated. I was falling in love with you.
“Am I to understand that this is your threat?” he asked in that low, lethal way of his that made her shudder. That made that hollow thing inside of her grow wide and grow teeth. That made it perfectly clear any love he might have felt for her was very much past tense. “I applaud you, Nicola,” and that name was worse than acid. If he’d hauled off and hit her, he couldn’t have hurt her more. “Most women would dance around the issue. But you, as ever, go right to the heart of it.”
“I’m not threatening you,” she said wildly, only realizing when her cheeks felt cool in the breeze that tears were running down her face. “This wasn’t planned. I don’t know why you insist on thinking the worst of
me—”
“Stop.” It was a command, harsh and cold. “I’m not doing this with you again. I’m not pretending it matters what you say. You’ll do what you like, Nicola. You always do. And like a cockroach I have no doubt you’ll survive whatever happens and come back even stronger. Violet’s protégé in more ways than I realized.”
“Why would I force a child on you?” she demanded. “Why?”
“Perhaps you thought your payday last time wasn’t enough,” he bit out. “Perhaps you want to make certain you really will make it into Violet’s will. Perhaps you’re looking forward to selling as many tabloid stories as you can. It wouldn’t take much effort to position yourself as one of those celebrities for no apparent reason, not with Violet’s grandchild in your clutches. To say nothing of the Alessi estate. You must know by now I’d never keep my heritage from my own child.” He was nearly white with fury. “Which are only a few of the reasons I never wanted one.”
“Giancarlo—”
But he straightened, his expression changed, and it was as if he disappeared, right there in front of her. As if the man she knew was simply...gone.
“If you decide to have the baby, inform my lawyers,” he told her with a hideous finality that shuddered through her like an earthquake. There was none of that bright gold fury in his eyes any longer when he looked at her. There was only emptiness. A dark, cold nothing that made everything inside her twist into blackness. “I will pay whatever child support you deem necessary, and I will pay more if you honor my wish for privacy and keep my name to yourself. But I don’t expect that’s in your nature, is it? How can you leverage my privacy to your best advantage?”
“Please,” she said, pleading with him now, unable to stop the sobs that poured out of her, worse, perhaps, because she’d always known this was coming. But not today. Not like this. She still wasn’t ready. “You can’t—”
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