by Annie O'Neil
She was forced to swallow the bitterest of pills. The Leon she’d thought she knew was a fiction. A man she’d let herself fall deeper and deeper in love with the longer they were apart. This moment was proof that she didn’t know the real Leon at all.
Somewhere along the way she’d rewritten their New York internships into a fantasy of burgeoning love, when what it had actually been was two headstrong, horny, trainee surgeons having a brilliant time competing and bettering themselves at work and releasing their pent-up tensions in bed. And that had been that.
They’d both had provisional job offers in other countries well before their internships were over. Neither had ever offered to move to the other’s country. Oh, she’d dropped a hint or two, but Leon had never picked them up. Deliberately ignored them, maybe. As he was ignoring the fact she’d just told him she was pregnant with their child.
She’d been a fool to think the chemistry they’d shared had been love. More of a fool to believe that one more night of lovemaking would lay it all to rest.
In a daze, she went through the motions. Smiling. Shaking hands. Laughing as the staff congratulated Lizzy on her halting Italian.
She wouldn’t dare admit that she’d spent her first couple of years back in Sydney studying all the medical lingo she’d thought she might need when Leon rang her, admitted he’d made a mistake and invited her to move to Italy. The call had never come. And, not wanting to shame herself by begging for just a morsel of attention, as her mother had so often done, Lizzy had done her best to step away from her dreams of being reunited. She’d put them away in a cupboard, shuttered her mind to the fantasy of a bright, sexy, surgical future together, and let her Italian become dusty and lacking in fluidity with disuse.
Mercifully, despite the discord she could feel buzzing between her and Leon, the staff made her feel welcome, and she knew working here would be more pleasure than pain. If she didn’t board a plane back to Sydney tonight...
When they’d finished the tour and found themselves alone again, Leon looked at her as he might any visiting doctor. Politely.
He held up his phone. ‘I’ll just let my team know I’ll be out while I drop you.’
Wow. It looked as if they really weren’t going to talk about it.
Wait.
He was going to drive her to her hotel?
Her brain reeled to make the necessary connections and came up short. The exhaustion she’d held at bay with nervous energy suddenly swept into place. Her limbs felt leaden and her clear, pre-prepared thoughts were fogged with fatigue. Sitting in a close space with Leon Cassanetti, her version of kryptonite, when she felt so vulnerable was definitely a bad idea. She didn’t have the right kind of energy to do this. Not on her terms anyway.
‘A taxi will be fine,’ she spluttered. ‘You don’t have to—’
‘Yes.’ Leon cut her protest short. ‘I do have to. You’re a guest here. At my hospital. In my city. And,’ he added, finally taking ownership of the child she had convinced herself he was preparing to deny, ‘there is no chance I’m having the mother of my child wandering round Rome unescorted.’
A niggle of discomfort cinched round her heart. From one angle, his choice of words might be seen as protective. Kind and thoughtful—just as she remembered him. They were the words of a man who was going to step up. Accept the shared responsibilities of the child neither of them had expected. From another it was bordering on controlling. A childhood of living with someone who valued strength over compromise meant she didn’t respond well to being controlled with alpha power. She wasn’t sure she liked the way the conversation was going.
‘C’mon, Lizzy.’ He beckoned for her to follow him. ‘Let’s go.’
Instinct overrode the calm, controlled, adult way in which she’d hoped to handle this. Defensively, she hitched her tote up onto her shoulder. ‘It’s not the fifties, Leon. I think we can agree you’ve already done enough to “help”, thank you very much.’
When she saw her words lance through his eyes, she regretted her sharp tone. She was floundering as much as he must be. She’d walloped him with a reality he had never wanted. She might not want to marry the man because...bleurgh, feelings...but she respected him professionally at least. And you didn’t treat people you respected as if they were the enemy.
She tried again. ‘Honestly, Leon. I’m fine. We can meet later, if you like, but I’m okay to find the hotel on my own.’
‘Lizzy—’ He caught hold of her hand, preventing her from leaving.
She tugged it free. What the hell? Her father had never hit her mother, but this was one of his standard moves. Holding her in place until he felt he’d been heard. She took back the respect thing. Respect had to be earned, and this sort of behaviour was not the way to start cashing in.
‘Back off—all right?’
He held up his hands, but the energy emanating from him kept her caught in its snare.
‘You have just told me you’re pregnant with my child. Our child.’
He swept his fingers through his hair, and her body lived the sensation as if she’d done it herself.
‘You’ve had time to digest this. Don’t you think I deserve some time, too?’ He took a steadying breath, then continued. ‘My response might be clumsier than you’d like, but pushing me away isn’t going to help either of us. Or the child.’
It was a fair point. Not that it stopped her heart from hammering against her ribcage or muted the fight-or-flight response her body was incapable of shaking off.
She forced herself to look at him—really look at this man who’d just been told he was going to father a child—and tried to see things from his perspective. What she saw made her heart stop and then do precisely what she’d willed it not to. Crack open far enough to allow the compassion she’d hoped to keep at bay pour in.
He looked every bit as scared and braced for battle and—yes—as strangely hopeful as she’d felt when she’d first taken the test.
Which, of course, added a ream of complications to what she’d hoped would be a black and white situation. She would tell him. He would say Best of luck, mate—or whatever the Italian equivalent of ‘mate’ was. Certainly not patatina, as he’d used to jokingly call her: his little potato. And then off she’d pop, back to Australia, to get on with the rest of her life, raising a child who would, one day, inevitably want to meet the man its mother had made love to as if her life depended upon it.
That was how intense it had been. Her need to get him in and out of her system during that one unexpected night.
As far as plans backfiring went, this was shaping up to be a doozy.
She forced herself to meet his gaze directly. ‘Let’s get a move on, shall we?’
CHAPTER FOUR
SIDE BY SIDE, Leon guided Lizzy through the busy hospital corridors, hoping she couldn’t see his frown periodically quirking into a smile.
Same old Lizzy. Fiery. Fierce. As combative as ever when it came to good old-fashioned chivalry. As if an offer to open a door would lead to a life of indentured servitude.
The last thing in the world Leon wanted to do was trap Lizzy in ‘a patriarchal system designed to subvert women for the sole purpose of big-upping male egos.’ Her words. Not his. Something, he suspected, to do with her father—a leading cardiologist who, suffice it to say, wasn’t known for his bedside manner.
They’d never really talked about their pasts, but he presumed if her relationship with her father had been warm, she definitely would have pulled him and his experience into conversation much more frequently than never.
He’d messed up big-time by grabbing her wrist, but he’d meant it when he’d said he would look after her. Her surprise announcement had tapped into the instinctive part of him that didn’t just want to be protective—it had to be.
A child.
He, Leon Cassanetti—sworn bachelor and slave to his professional calling, a ma
n who brought new life into the world for other people—already knew in his heart that he was going to cross that thick line he’d drawn in the sand between himself and the rest of the world. So much for the years he’d spent ensuring he was the kind of clear-eyed physician who kept his perspective purely scientific.
Emotions were things his patients dealt with. Men and women who, for reasons he’d thought he’d never understand, had decided to risk the foundations of their emotional stability by bringing a child into the world.
His arrival had signalled the beginning of the end for his own parents. What was it signalling for him and Lizzy?
To stop his thoughts reeling too far out of control, he forced himself to focus on the immediate pragmatics of their situation. He rang ahead to Reception, where she’d stored her luggage, to have it follow them in a taxi, and cleared his calendar for the rest of the day, all the while trying to push his mother’s well-worn edict out of his mind: Keep everyone at arm’s length and all will be well.
He glanced down at Lizzy as they made their way silently to the underground car park where he kept his scooter. There were light shadows under her eyes. She had just flown halfway around the world, but now that he looked at her—really looked—he saw that tell-tale glow about her. The one that assured him, without needing scientific proof, that she was carrying a child. There was an added lustre to her harvest-coloured hair, an extra wattage in the flares of connection they shared each time their eyes met.
He stopped abruptly, the memory of a colleague’s experience bringing an unwelcome rush of adrenaline. ‘I can’t drive you there.’
She looked up at him, confused. The crinkle he’d used to run his thumb along to smooth away her worries formed between her brows. He shook off the instinct to do the same again.
‘I brought my scooter,’ he explained.
She shrugged in a way that suggested he was being ridiculous. ‘Do you have an extra helmet?’
He did. And they had spares at the hospital’s concierge desk. But—no.
‘A car would be safer.’
‘I’m not made of delicate crystal, Leon.’
‘You are carrying our child.’
She crossed her arms and fixed him with a humourless smile. ‘Interesting. Is this what you tell all your patients? That they should ride in crash-proof vehicles, wrapped in cotton wool, until they’ve delivered?’
She fixed him with a look suggesting that he had lost some brain cells between here and the antenatal unit. There was very possibly some truth to that. He was wading into something so unfamiliar to him he had no idea if he’d sink or swim.
She continued in her usual brisk, almost casually amused way. ‘You know as well as I do that women have been getting on with their lives whilst pregnant for thousands of years. I’m guessing countless pregnant women right here in Rome have ridden scooters to and from their hotels with—’
She stopped herself, her upper teeth snagging her lower lip. Second thoughts, maybe? Or, more likely, feeling the enormity of what was happening now that they were together, absorbing the reality that in six months they would be having a child together.
As if on cue a young couple walked by, the woman carrying a newborn, cooing and whispering loving phrases of nonsense, the euphoria of having brought a life into the world blurring everything else.
Lizzy’s eyes followed them, then clouded with a rush of emotion he couldn’t put his finger on.
‘Are you all right, cara?’
She didn’t meet his eyes. ‘Fine. C’mon. Let’s go.’
They finished the walk to his scooter in silence.
Was this how the next few months would be? Each shared activity a small tug of war? One of them gaining a handhold here, the other the next, until at last their hands touched in the centre or, more likely, one fell down?
When he handed her his spare helmet, their fingers brushing as they made the exchange, he saw the tiniest hint of fragility fissure through the facade of the strongest woman he’d ever met. She caught him looking and once again looked away.
He frowned. This wasn’t how he wanted things to go. He didn’t want her to take his every suggestion as a power-play. He respected her. He cared for her. He might not have imagined a proper relationship or having a family with her, but that wasn’t their reality any more. They’d have to figure it out. Together.
After he’d secured her helmet and climbed on, signalling Lizzy to climb on behind him, a suspicion rose. He knew exactly why she’d abruptly balked at the thought of a scooter ride. She was going to have to put her arms around him. Rest her hands on his hips at the very least.
When she climbed onto the seat behind him he felt the thrill of connection for a nanosecond. Then she pulled back, trying to keep a few centimetres of space between them. He revved the scooter and took off. Her hands instantly swooped round his waist.
He did his best not to respond to her touch...not to lean into those hot licks of response as her breasts brushed along his back. But it proved impossible as, with turn after turn, her fingers wove more tightly around his waist as if they’d done this a thousand times. To the point where he allowed himself a careless thought... What if this was their reality? Riding to and from work together...her hands round his waist...her breasts pressing into his back.
His hand instinctively slipped to her leg at some traffic lights, giving her thigh a light rub that spoke to all the feelings he felt for her but wasn’t equipped to put a voice to. He hadn’t been given the classic Italian gift for florid speech. The ability so many men had to call a woman amore or cara. Loved one. Dearest. Those words meant something pure and deep-seeded. Words that should only be spoken if the speaker had the emotional foundation to back them up. It was why he’d never called a woman amore, not even when he’d met Lizzy, opting instead for the more comical patatina.
‘This doesn’t look like a hotel.’ Lizzy pointed up to the stone-and-marble-faced building he’d stopped in front of.
‘No. It’s my apartment building.’
Lizzy gave him the kind of double take he would’ve given himself if he’d been looking in a mirror. He was fiercely protective of his own space. Even in New York, where prices were insane and sharing a flat would’ve made so much sense—particularly for two people who spent the bulk of their spare time together—they’d each kept their own small studios, using the on-call rooms at the hospital more often than either of those.
He allowed himself a snapshot memory of their naked bodies tangled together, bedclothes heaven knew where, wishing fervently that dawn would never come.
‘I thought I was staying at a hotel.’ Her voice was guarded.
‘This makes more sense.’
‘To whom, exactly?’
‘The both of us. Per favore. I have a guest room, so you’ll have your own space. If it’s too strange I’ll take you to the hotel, but we have a lot to discuss.’
‘That doesn’t mean I have to stay with you to discuss it.’
No. But it did mean more hoops to jump through, and one thing neither of them had was excess time.
‘Lizzy. Please. I want you to stay with me.’
For ever?
He didn’t miss the sceptical narrowing of her eyes as, wordlessly, she climbed off the scooter.
‘This isn’t the largest of lifts, is it?’ she crabbed as the two of them got into the small, wrought-iron-gated elevator built some seventy-odd years back. It moved so slowly he sometimes wondered if it was run by mice on a treadmill.
He looked down at the space between them, suddenly vividly aware that in six months’ time it wouldn’t be empty. It would be filled with the round, beautifully weighted orb of Lizzy’s belly. Her hands might be resting on it to feel a kick or a squirm. Or his hands...
He stopped the daydream when his fingers twitched at the urge to massage oil into her back and belly to ease the strain h
er pregnancy might be taking on her. To hold their baby in his arms the moment it was born, then carry it to her so she, too, could embrace the tiny, beautiful child they’d created.
An unwelcome alternative arose. In six months’ time Lizzy might be back in Sydney.
‘How’s your mother?’ Lizzy asked, clearly uncomfortable in the silence. ‘Is she still in Rome?’
‘I’m afraid she passed away recently.’
All the fractiousness crackling between them disappeared. ‘Oh, Leon. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know or I would’ve—’
He waved away her apologies. ‘Honestly. It’s fine.’
It wasn’t. It had knocked him for six. But in ways he hadn’t expected. Ways that had given him mad ideas like inviting Lizzy Beckley to Rome. Into his home.
It was surprising to realise that what pained him was wondering what would’ve happened if he hadn’t rung Lizzy. Would she have told him she was pregnant? The thought stuck like the poisoned tip of a blackthorn in his conscience. Of all the things he’d allowed Lizzy to know about him on a personal front, two things rose to the fore: he didn’t want children and he didn’t want a relationship.
Two long-held beliefs that had done a complete one-eighty in the space of an hour. Heaven knew what the next hour had in store—let alone the next six months.
‘I always thought you became a maternal foetal medicine specialist because of her,’ Lizzy said softly.
It was a leading question and they both knew it. Leon had never spoken about his mother to Lizzy. Talking about her was opening a can of worms and looking into a past that he would happily keep closed for ever.
He shook his head, but wondered if perhaps there was some truth to it. If a mother wasn’t well, the child or children she was carrying would suffer. His mother has suffered enormous mental anguish. Relationship PTSD. The trauma and hurt had gone that deep. As such, Leon had not been immune either.
‘Was she still living here in Rome?’ Lizzy asked.
He gave a soft smile, grateful for the topic-change. ‘Yes. I don’t think anything could have pulled her away from here.’