Caroselli's Accidental Heir

by Michelle Celmer

  Tony didn’t try to change her mind. He obviously knew a lost cause when he saw one. Or maybe he didn’t love her as much as he thought. Lucy couldn’t help feeling that she had just done him a favor, though she doubted he would see it that way. He would probably never forgive her.

  Alice tried to hand the ring to him, but he shook his head.

  “Keep it,” he said. “Think of it as my way of saying I’m sorry.”

  Considering the size of the rock, that had to be at least a five-figure apology. As consolation prizes went, Alice could have done a lot worse.

  Alice palmed the ring, accepting her defeat with the utmost grace, and Lucy actually felt sorry for her. “I’ll go get my things.”

  A woman in the front row whom Lucy recognized from pictures as Tony’s mom, shot to her feet. Which, even in three-inch heels barely brought her to shoulder height with her ex-future-daughter-in-law.

  “Alice, let me help you,” she said, slipping an arm around hers and leading her from the room, shooting Lucy a look that said, Just wait until I get my hands on you. Despite being in her sixties, and no larger than Lucy—sans the baby weight, of course—if she was anything like her son she would be a formidable adversary. And after what Lucy had done today, she couldn’t imagine they would ever be anything but enemies.

  One more stupid act to regret. Her relationship with her child’s grandmother forever scarred before it even began. In Lucy’s world this sort of thing happened all the time, but the Carosellis were cultured and sophisticated, and she knew now, way out of her league. How could she have ever believed that she and Tony could have a future together? Her mom was right. Men like him didn’t marry women like her.

  The instant Alice was out of sight the silence dissolved into whispers and murmurs. Lucy couldn’t hear what any one person was saying, but she had a pretty good imagination.

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

  A man she recognized as Tony’s father stepped over to speak to him, taking Tony by the arm. Physically, two men couldn’t have looked more different. Tony was long and lean and fit, while his dad was shorter and stocky. Other than their noses—which most of the Caroselli family seemed to share—they didn’t look a thing alike.

  After a few brief, but sharply spoken words, the elder Caroselli left in the direction his wife had gone, but not before he shot Lucy a look that seemed to say, I’ll deal with you later.

  Lucy felt so horrible already, nothing he could say or do could make matters worse than they already were.

  Tony walked over to where she stood, his expression unreadable. But he looked so good her heart ached. She longed to wrap her arms around him and hold on for dear life.

  You can’t have him.

  There was a point early in the relationship when his emotional unavailability had been his most appealing quality. She had stupidly believed that because she had never let herself fall in love, she was immune to the experience. And by the time she had figured out what was happening to her, it was too late. She loved him.

  But on the very slim chance that he planned to pull her into his arms and profess his undying love for her, now would be the time.

  He curled his fingers around her arm instead, and said in a tight voice, “Let’s go.”

  She hesitated. “Go where?”

  “Anywhere but here,” he mumbled, glancing over at the guests who were now huddled in small groups and watching the action with brazen curiosity. Hadn’t he told her a million times how nosy his family were, how he wished everyone would mind their own business? Could she have picked a worse place to do this?

  Tony’s grip was so firm, all Lucy could do was try to keep up with his much longer stride as he half walked/half dragged her to his car out front. But he was touching her, so she didn’t even care. How pathetic was that?

  He opened the passenger door for her, then he got in the driver’s seat, but instead of starting the engine, he just sat there. She waited for the explosion. For Tony to accuse her of ruining his life. Then out of the blue, for no reason at all, he started to laugh.

  * * *

  Lucy was looking at him like he was nuts and she was probably right. Like some divine intervention, she had appeared just as he was about to make the absolute worst mistake of his entire life. And all he could think when he turned and saw her standing there was Thank God I don’t have to do this.

  “Are you all right?” Lucy asked him, looking as if she was seriously concerned for his mental health. And he couldn’t blame her. Since she left he’d made nothing but misguided—and at times irrational—decisions. Like offering Alice a deal after only a month of dating. They didn’t love each other, but she wanted a baby, and he needed a male heir. With a thirty-million-dollar inheritance riding on it, who could blame him for compromising? But he could see now what a mistake it would have been. Hell, he’d known it thirty seconds after he proposed.

  All along, he’d kept reminding himself that the marriage need last only long enough to produce a male child. Then he and Alice would go their separate ways. But as the Wedding March had started to play, and he saw Alice walking toward him, he realized that not only did he not love her, he didn’t really like her all that much, and even if they had to tolerate each other for only a year, that was a year too long. And if they did have a child, divorced or not, he would be shackled to her for the rest of his life.

  Crisis averted thanks to Lucy. How was it that she always showed up when he needed her? She just seemed to know. And damn, had he needed her today. She was his voice of reason when he acted like a dumbass. And lately, especially since she had left, he’d risen to the level of king of the dumbasses.

  Marry a stranger? What the hell had he been thinking?

  He nodded toward her stomach. “Is this the reason you left?”

  She bit her lip and nodded.

  “I don’t get it. Why didn’t you just talk to me?”

  She avoided his gaze, wringing her hands in her lap. “I’ll be the first to admit that I handled this whole situation badly. I have no excuse for my behavior. And I’m not here because I want or need anything from you. And I definitely didn’t come here to break up your wedding. That was just bad timing.”

  He thought it was pretty good timing, actually. “So why are you here? Why come back now?”

  “I heard that you were getting married and I thought you should know about the baby before you did. But I had no idea you were getting married today. I was told it was an engagement party.”

  Which would explain her look of horrified shock when she realized what she had walked into. “Told by whom?”

  “Does it really matter? I swear I didn’t mean to cause any trouble. I just wanted to talk to you.”

  Lucy never went looking for trouble—hell, she didn’t have a hurtful or vindictive bone in her body—yet somehow trouble always managed to find her. And though he had every right to be angry with her, furious even, she looked so remorseful, so beside herself, he just couldn’t work up the steam. In fact, his first instinct when he’d seen her standing there, her jaw hanging open in surprise, had been to pull her into his arms and hold her. “So, talk to me. Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?”

  “I know I should have,” Lucy said, idly fiddling with the zipper on her jacket, avoiding his gaze. “I just...I didn’t want to be that girl.”

  “What girl?”

  “I didn’t want you to think that I’d gotten myself knocked up on purpose, so you would feel obligated to take care of me. I’m not even sure how this happened. We were always so careful. At least, I thought we were.”

  Tony had learned a long time ago that in life there were no guarantees. All they could do now was make the best of a complicated situation. Getting rid of Alice was a decent start.

  “First off, let’s get one thing straight,” he told her.
“I do not, nor would I ever suspect you of doing anything so deceitful. I know you better than that. You just don’t have it in you. And I’m sure you believed you were doing the right thing by leaving, but it was wrong to keep this from me.”

  “I know. I didn’t think it through. I don’t blame you for being angry.”

  “I’m not angry. I’m...disappointed.”

  She bit her lip and tears welled in her eyes, but she held them back. “I know. I screwed up. And I’m so sorry. I feel so bad for your fiancée.”

  “Alice will be okay.” Tony had tried to convince himself that everyone was wrong about her, when deep down his gut was telling him that she would be a terrible wife, and an even worse parent. She was materialistic and demanding, and far too self-absorbed. She had a single favorite topic: Alice. She would go on for hours about the fashion industry and her fame as a runway model, and though he’d tried to feign interest, he often found himself tuning her out.

  She had good qualities, too. She was attractive, if not a bit exotic-looking, had a decent sense of humor, and the sex had been okay, but they never really connected. Not the way he and Lucy had. From the first kiss, he knew Lucy was special. And she was adamant that she wasn’t looking to settle down.

  He was sure the right man for Alice was out there. It just wasn’t him. They had a total lack of common interests. She liked the theater while he preferred a good shoot-’em-up action flick—the more action the better. She was a cat person and he was allergic. She was a vegan, he was a meat-and-potatoes man. She listened to New Age hippie music and he jammed on Classic Rock. The louder the better.

  Two people couldn’t have been less compatible.

  “Do you love her?” Lucy asked him.

  He barely knew her. “Our relationship is...was complex.”

  He would like to believe that he would have stopped things before they went too far. Like when the priest asked if there was anyone who opposed the marriage. Or had he been hoping his family would do it for him? They had yet to warm to Alice, if that was even possible, and were vehemently against the marriage. Even Nonno, who had been trying to marry him off for years, and had gone so far as to bribe him with a thirty-million-dollar inheritance, refused to attend the wedding in protest.

  “You should have trusted me,” he told Lucy. “You should have told me the truth, and we could have worked something out.”

  “Like I said, I screwed up. I made a mistake. But I’m here now and I want to make things right.”

  Did she? Or would he come home one day a year or so from now and find her gone again?

  Two

  Tony had so many questions, and so many things he wanted to say to Lucy, he didn’t know where to begin. It had been a shock to stop by her place all those months ago and be told by her roommate that Lucy had moved back to Florida with her mom. Lucy was such a private person, half the time he had no idea what had been going on in her head. Only now, sitting here beside her, did he appreciate how much he’d missed her, how much he had depended on their friendship. Since she’d left, he’d had no one to talk to. He’d long ago been labeled the strong silent type by his family. Serious, super-focused and private, but there was so much more to him that he didn’t let people see. With her he could let down his guard and be himself. She was the only one who really got him.

  Maybe that’s why her leaving had been such a hard-hitting blow. It had been unsettling. He’d spent the better part of that last thirty years avoiding emotional entanglements.

  Someone rapped on his window and Tony nearly jumped out of his skin. It was his cousin Nick. Christ. Couldn’t he have ten minutes without someone in his family accosting him. He was guessing that Christine and Elana, his younger sisters, weren’t far behind.

  Tony rolled his window down. “What?”

  Nick leaned down so he could see them both, resting his arms in the open window, looking first at Tony then Lucy. “Everything okay out here?”

  “Lucy, you remember my cousin Nick,” Tony said.

  “Hi, Lucy,” Nick said, shooting her a megawatt smile. “Let me be the first to congratulate you both.”

  Tony recognized the twinkle of curiosity in Nick’s eye, and knew exactly what he was thinking. He was wondering if Tony was still going to take advantage of Nonno’s offer. Both Nick and Rob had forfeited their cut of the thirty million to save their relationships with their wives. But Tony had no marriage to save. Although to get the money he would have to marry Lucy. Nonno’s game, Nonno’s rules. But, if he could talk Lucy into marrying him, which in itself could be difficult, it wouldn’t be a real marriage. She didn’t want that.

  “My wife is pregnant, too,” Nick told Lucy. “We’re due September twenty-first.”

  “Early June,” Lucy said, and Tony could see Nick doing the math in his head. The slight tilt of his head and peak of his brow said he had come to the same conclusion as Tony—Lucy had known about the baby for quite some time before she left for Florida.

  “I thought this was going to be a boring wedding,” Nick said with a grin. “But this was even better than my sister’s wedding, when my dad got into a fistfight with my mom’s date.”

  A distinction Tony would be happy to forget.

  “Is Alice all right?” he asked Nick, noting the pained look on Lucy’s face. She really did seem to feel bad for Alice.

  “She’s still upstairs with your mom. Carrie is going to drive her back to the condo. She sent me out here to tell you to be gone before they leave.”

  Carrie was their cousin Rob’s wife, and Alice’s best friend. She had introduced Tony to Alice, a move she was probably regretting about now.

  Alice being the polar opposite of Lucy had appealed to him. At first. In the end, it only worked against them. He often found himself wishing that she was Lucy, or at least a lot more like her. Those were two months of his life he would be happy to forget. Or erase completely. If it were within his power to go back in time and change things, he would have followed Lucy to Florida and convinced her to come back where he could take care of her. Where they could be a family, even if it wasn’t in the traditional sense.

  Hindsight was indeed twenty/twenty.

  “Carrie also wants to know if Alice left any of her things at your place,” Nick said.

  “I don’t think so, but I’ll take a look around.” Alice had only been to his town house a couple of times. Which made the fact that he was going to marry her all the crazier. Come to think of it, he wasn’t even sure how old she was. He’d asked, but he’d gotten a vague nonanswer.

  Dude, what the hell were you thinking?

  “Do it soon,” Nick said. “She’s already talking about going back to New York in a couple of days.”

  “Permanently?”

  “Far as I know.”

  Tony hadn’t intended to drive her out of Illinois, but on the bright side, he wouldn’t have to see her again. He could live with that.

  The front door of Nonno’s house opened and people started to file out onto the porch. Thankfully Alice wasn’t among them. Nor were his sisters.

  Tony turned to Lucy. “Why don’t we go back to my place?”

  She nodded, looking anxiously toward the front door.

  “I’ll talk to you later,” he told Nick, who straightened up and made a “call me” gesture with his thumb and pinkie. The Carosellis were known for two things: chocolate and a propensity for gossip. To be honest, Tony’d had enough of both. He wanted out from under the microscope. He wanted the freedom to live his life however he wanted, both personally and professionally. To be who he wanted to be. Not what was best for the family, but what was best for him. It was what he’d wanted for a long time now. That thirty million dollars had been his ticket out. He could start over, build his own business. Be his own man.

  But at what cost?

 
Tony started the engine and pulled away from the curb.

  “That was...weird,” Lucy said and he glanced over at her. He had to fight the urge to reach over and take her hand. He just wanted to touch her. But now didn’t seem the time.

  “What was weird?”

  “After what I did, I figured your entire family would hate me.”

  It was much more likely that they would be planning to throw her a parade. His family hadn’t exactly warmed to Alice. As in, none of them. He was pretty sure Rob liked her only because she was his wife’s best friend. Just last night he overheard his sister Alana tell his mom that she thought Alice was a bloodsucking she-devil. “Let’s not worry about my family,” he told Lucy. “This has nothing to do with them. We need to talk about the baby. And about us.”

  “You’re right.”

  He was glad she thought so, since he was winging it. He had never been in a situation like this. Nor did he know anyone who had. The true scope of how his life was about to change hadn’t really sunk in yet, so he was still in a minor state of shock. Over what was to come, but also over what he had almost done today. Thankfully Lucy had been here to save him from himself.

  “How has your pregnancy been going? You and the baby are both healthy?”

  “I feel great, the baby is active and kicking just like he should be.”

  His heart skipped a beat. “He?”

  She flattened her palms against her belly and the ghost of a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Or she. I just have this strong feeling it’s a boy.”

  That would be awfully convenient. “Where is your suitcase?”

  “I didn’t bring one. I wasn’t planning on staying long. In fact...” She pulled her cell phone out of her jacket pocket and checked the display. “I have to get back to the airport soon. So we don’t have a huge amount of time.”