by Lia Lee
A child...
Tucker had entered this venture as he had entered many things in his life. He figured out what he wanted, and he tore after it, putting in the work and preparation to make sure that it would be his. He knew that the child that was produced would be his alone, but there was the sheer physical reality that it would be half Luna as well.
The billionaire knew that they were meant to be trying for a boy, so why couldn't he get the idea of a little girl out of his head? Would a girl that they made together be headstrong or dreamy? Would she have her mother's fire? Would she choose business or the arts? Tucker knew that there was something going on when he thought about teaching a little girl with Luna's vivid deep red hair to ride a bike instead of concentrating on the meeting he was in.
"Yes, could you repeat that? Thank you..."
That night, however, he noticed for the first time that Luna looked a little wan at dinner. There was a pallor to her face that he didn't like, but when he asked about it, she only smiled, waving him off.
"Doctor Schmitt simply says that I need to eat a few more dark green veggies," she said with a smile. She had been going to the doctor every two weeks to monitor things and to keep track of any progress that was being made. "A little more exercise and a little more attention to my diet, and I'll be right as rain."
Tucker bit back the demand that she get another opinion. He had had his staff choose Dr. Schmitt themselves, and they would never give him someone who was anything less than the best. Why was he getting so very particular now? It didn't make any sense.
"It probably isn't all that good for you to spend all of your days bent over that work bench," he started, and a bit of lightning flashed through her green eyes. It occurred to him idly that she would look good in emeralds, between her vivid green eyes and that shocking fall of red hair.
"If you think for a second that I am going step back from my work..."
Tucker held up his hands, laughing a little bit.
"I wouldn't dare," he promised her. "All I'm asking is that perhaps you take it back a little. It's not good for anyone to work ten hours a day every day of the week, and I have an idea that that's what you would do if I allowed it."
"If you allowed it?"
"Simply a figure of speech. But really, why don't you go out and see the city a little? The number for the driver should be programmed into your phone by now. Go see a little bit of the city, it truly is beautiful. There's an exhibit on Murano glass somewhere downtown. Perhaps you can make a day of it."
"Will you come with me?" Luna asked, and there was something so wistful about her voice that it made something in him sting.
"I'm sorry, I can't," he said with a slightly regretful smile. "I took a lunch today that lasted nearly four hours, and I'll need to work tomorrow to make up for it." Someday, he would learn that Europeans loved to linger over lunch and drag it out. Until then, he would simply have to deal with being impatient and late on nearly everything the next day.
"Oh," she said, and then she nodded. "I think I will go see that Murano exhibit."
She paused, biting her lip, and when she spoke next, her words were measured and careful.
"If I asked you, if tonight we could... perhaps, postpone things?"
"Of course," Tucker said gallantly. "You want to be rested for your excursion tomorrow. I understand. Get some sleep tonight. I hope you have a good time."
The smile she gave him was remarkably faint, but it was real. Tucker watched as Luna rose from the table and went to her own room. He was struck again by the urge to follow her, to tell her that he had changed his mind and that he would like nothing better than to go with her to the museum tomorrow. There was nothing truly vital that he could not push off, and the idea of spending the day wandering Florence together, their Florence, soothed something inside him.
Then he remembered that this was only going to work if he maintained those strong boundaries between them, and with a feeling that was startlingly desolate, Tucker pulled up his work again.
***
Luna's face felt hot, and when she touched it, her cheeks were fire against her icy fingers.
Four hours? Who the hell took four hours at lunch?
The truth was that she knew, and the answer made her feel hollow inside.
She supposed that it had been naïve of her to think that Tucker was working all the time that they spent apart. After all, they were together for a mere handful of hours per day. There was plenty of time for him to work and then to do as he liked, and apparently, what he liked was four hour lunches.
Luna's fevered brain conjured up image after image of who Tucker might have been having lunch was. She imagined a lean and athletic brunette or a tall and dignified blonde, worldly women, sophisticated women who didn't come to the table with bits of solder in their clothing. She imagined those women laughing with Tucker, and Tucker, handsome, brilliant, and charming, enchanting them in turn.
I suppose it's a mercy that he never brings them back here, she thought, a red-hot coal in the base of her stomach. Though as much as I stay in my studio, would I ever know?
She felt sick, because if Tucker wanted another woman in the flat without telling her, that was certainly something he could accomplish.
Safe in her studio, Luna shut her eyes tight, pressing her flat palms over them. After a timeless space, she finally straightened up, sure that she wasn't going to cry. She had nothing against crying in general, but she was very much afraid that if she started to cry, there was a chance that she might not stop for hours.
She inspected her face in the small decorative mirror hanging on the wall. Her eyes looked far too bright and there were bright red patches high on her cheeks, but otherwise, she looked calm. It was almost shocking how calm she looked, like a marble statue of some martyred saint.
"All right," she said. "All right."
Deep inside, Luna knew that she had signed up for this. Tucker had made her position painfully clear to her, and now she had to deal with it. He had fulfilled his end of the bargain, and the sooner she fulfilled hers, the sooner she could get away from all of this.
The thought of leaving Tucker felt like enormous steel claws raking across her soul, but the idea of him with other women, touching them and kissing them the way he did her, was equally bad.
There was no going backwards. There was no way to escape the trap she had willingly walked into.
Luna knew that she was trapped, and now, she simply had to make the best of it.
Chapter Twelve
Luna spent a quiet night in the studio. Though her hands itched to work, she kept herself on the chaise. Perhaps Tucker was right about some things. It surely couldn't be healthy to bounce from work to Tucker and back again. She had always been someone who was extremely independent.
"I am not going to let a relationship dictate this much of my life," she exclaimed to the darkness. It sounded pretty good, at least.
She had seen what happened to other artists who gave too much of themselves to their lovers, seen how it could take them away from the thing that sustained them and gave them that special spark. She had never seen if they regretted it; those people usually disappeared from her life sooner rather than later.
All right then, tomorrow, I'll get out a little bit. Murano glass is so beautiful, after all.
She rose in the morning to fetch the pastries that by now had become a staple, but she found that Tucker had left even earlier. The flat echoed with silence, and she was not sorry to get out of it. It was especially important after she remembered Tucker's four-hour lunch yesterday. There was a small, non-zero chance that if she had stayed in the apartment stewing over that information, she might have gone slightly mad.
Instead, she dressed herself in one of the gorgeous pale green dresses that had been sent to her, and after a moment, decided against the driver. Luna knew very much how her life hinged on Tucker at the moment, but surely there was nothing wrong about ignoring it for a short while? Using his drive
r, a friendly man of Turkish descent with a truly formidable moustache, would have been fine, but that would have been a link back to everything that she was trying to avoid.
Instead she called for a taxi service that would take her to the museum in question, and suddenly she was in another world, one that was not dictated by Tucker. There was a thrill to it, but even as she walked in awe among the art of another time, she couldn't help but miss him. There was one stained glass panel in particular that made her pause. Murano glass was justifiably famous for its blues and crimsons and greens, but this panel was done in glass tinted brown and gold. The result was a piece that looked unbelievably luxe and gorgeously decadent.
Luna spent a few minutes looking at the piece and trying to find a shard of glass that matched Tucker's extraordinary eyes, and finally, she had to shake her head with a slight laugh at her own foolishness.
"I love him," she said softly to herself, and the tears that came to her eyes were puzzling. It would have made sense if they were entirely sad or frustrated or grieving tears. After all, there was nothing pleasant about loving someone who did not love you back after all.
However, Luna's artist soul felt as if everything had snapped into place, as if everything now made sense in a way that it hadn't before. With the lens of love, it all came together.
A part of Luna had never thought that she would fall in love. That it had happened with a man who was so different from her was nearly funny, but when she thought about it, she would not have traded this for the world.
"I love him, I love him," she whispered, wrapping her arms around herself. She felt as if she might curl up on the floor next to all of this beauty and simply die of the strength of her emotions.
"Oh, honey, are you all right?"
Luna looked up at the concerned voice, noting only belatedly that she understood it. The entire day, she had been walking in a babble of Italian, and now being addressed in English felt like being hit with a bucket full of cold water.
"I... I am," she stammered, and she turned to face a concerned older couple. At first she wondered if they were tourists, but there was something comfortable about them, something that made her think that they were no strangers to the city.
"You looked a little peaked," said the woman, small and tidy in demure brown suit.
"You should sit down," said the tall and gaunt man who was obviously her husband. "Here, there's a bench here."
Luna protested a little, but in the end, the couple was right. A few minutes on a cool stone bench with a concerned couple from Wisconsin fretting over her proved to be exactly what she needed, and she grinned up at them.
'Thank you so much," she said with a laugh. "I think hearing English did me a lot of good, too. I didn't expect to hear it from anyone today..."
"Of course, dear," said the woman, who seemed to be the more talkative of the two. "I'm Cherry Lawson, and this is my husband Jim Lawson."
"Pleasure," Jack said laconically, and Luna grinned even wider. She had met plenty of couples just like these two, and somehow, halfway around the world, she felt at home.
"I'm happy to meet the both of you," she said. "What brings you to Florence?"
The two of them gave her wide grins of their own and answered her in unison.
"Bats!"
Luna blinked, and for a moment, all of her woes were forgotten as Jim and Cherry told her all about their project of studying a particular species of bat that had been living in the area even longer than the proud Florentines. They showed her pictures on their phones, as proud as they would have been of grandchildren, and when Luna expressed interest, they looked as if their day had been made.
"The glass is beautiful, but it's just us killing time until this evening," said Cherry. "There's a nearby cave where they come out, and it's amazing. We've been studying bats together for more than forty years, and every evening departure and morning return is unique. You should come with us! We're getting a light dinner at a restaurant we both adore, and then it’s off to the countryside."
Luna wondered if she should have some compunctions about going off into the Italian countryside with an older couple who seemed slightly insane (she refused to say batty), but she gave in to it with a shrug. She had wanted to be more independent, and maybe this was how it started. The old her wouldn't have hesitated for a moment to plunge into this new adventure.
"Hold on, just a minute," she said, and she reached for her phone. When she dialed Tucker, she wondered what he might say, and then it became a moot point because she only reached his voice mail.
"Hi, um, this is Luna. I'm going to be a little late tonight, it looks like I'm chasing bats with Cherry and Jim Lawson," she said. It was on the tip of her tongue to say I love you, but somehow she bit it back.
"I'll see you when I see you, I guess," she finished, and then she hung up.
He probably won't even notice that I'm gone, she thought with a sigh, and she turned to the excited couple.
"Well, I'm all yours," she said, and fell into step with them.
***
Eight hours later, she was cackling in the back of Jim and Cherry's Peugeot, hanging on to Cherry in the back seat as if they were old friends.
"You're too much, you are both too much," she exclaimed. "I honestly cannot believe that you actually climbed down into the cave."
"Only a little way, dear," said Cherry, though there was something very smug about her grin. "That's nothing, why, Jim descended nearly a mile into a cavern in Brazil just so we could verify the size of this colony we were trying to document."
"It was important," said Jim stolidly. "They were going to bulldoze the site, wreck the environment, without thinking of what a lack of bats would do."
After spending this much time with the Lawsons, Luna could appreciate how very bad losing a large colony of bats could be for a local environment, and she gasped accordingly.
"You should have come into the cavern with us, dear," said Cherry with a bright sparkle in her eyes. "You really don't know yourself until you've been caving, surrounded by rock, never sure what's going to happen..."
"No, thank you," Luna retorted. "I'll stay on the ground, thank you very much..."
From the driver's seat, Jim hummed thoughtfully.
"It's important to take risks though," he said. "Though of course, you should always choose the ones that you take. It should always be your choice."
Cherry laughed, suddenly sounding much younger.
"He said something very much like that when he proposed," she said fondly, and Luna felt a deep pang go through her even as she smiled.
Jim and Cherry Lawson were going back to a tiny subletted apartment in a rather poorer area of the city. They talked about getting to their study sites on burro, on buses crowded far past the point of claustrophobia and sometimes even on foot.
Despite their enthusiasm, she didn't envy their lives studying bats, but their happiness... that was something that she wanted fiercely and with a kind of hunger that startled her.
She threw her arms around Cherry in an enormous hug.
"Thank you," she said. "Thank you so much for today.
"Well, of course, dear," said Cherry, a little puzzled.
All too soon, it was time to drop her off, and she waved to them cheerfully before heading up to the penthouse.
Glancing at her phone, she was startled to see how very late it already was.
I hope Tucker didn't stay up worrying about me, she thought, and then she dismissed it.
She was just opening the door, thinking that surely he was asleep or perhaps even still out, when she felt a vise-like force grip her around the wrist, yanking her into the dim apartment before slamming the door behind her. Luna opened her mouth to scream, but then she realized that it was only Tucker, though Tucker looking far more furious than she had ever seen him look before.
This is Tucker, he's not going to do anything to me, he's not going to hurt me, she thought, but then he glared down at her, a mad light in
his eye.
"Just where the hell have you been?"
Chapter Thirteen
It was probably the dumbest decision that she could have made, but Luna couldn't prevent herself from laughing at his statement.
"Are you kidding me?" she blurted out. "I'm not seventeen, you don't get to give me a curfew as if you were..."
"When I pay for every part of your life and you have a goddamn job to do? You bet your cute little ass I do. Now where the hell were you?"
"I was out chasing bats," she snapped, and she could tell from the look on his face that he was sincerely not sure whether she was joking or not. All right, in all fairness that was a little hard to believe, but she didn't have a lot of sympathy for Tucker right this moment.
"What?"
"I met a nice old couple from Wisconsin, they're studying bats. Jim and Cherry Lawson, if you don't believe me. Look them up, they've written like a bazillion papers together or something like that."
He at least didn't do as she said, but instead, Tucker shook his head and started to drag her towards the bedroom. Luna gasped in alarm and tried to drag her feet, but she might as well have been pushing against a brick wall for all the good that it did for her.
"What the heck are you doing?" she exclaimed. "You can't think that we're going to... to..."
"It's either that or I lock you in your bedroom and make sure that you really understand what it means to get in at a decent hour..."
His words were so stunning that Luna was shocked silent until she was in the bedroom with him, and then with a cry of fury, she shook him off. He watched her with glittering eyes to see if she was going to run, but she had never felt less like running in her entire life.
"You sure are one to talk about decency," she snarled. "You and your...your four-hour lunches!"
He scowled at her, and it was a scowl that had had investment bankers and crown princes looking around nervously. It had absolutely no effect on her right then, however, except to make her just a little angrier.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about you ignoring me," she ranted, too pent up and furious to keep any of it to herself. "I'm talking about you keeping me here like some kind of bird in a cage while you go see... whoever you want in Florence! I'm talking about how it feels to know that I'm second best at best to all of the women that you are spending your time with.... that you wouldn't be with me at all if... if we weren't..."