by Tina Beckett
Kind of like his time in the US had been. One big bump in the road, followed by a wave of smaller ones that still set him back on his ass at odd moments. But he thought it was getting better. His mind dwelt on her less. Or maybe it was just that he kept himself so busy that he didn’t have time to think about her.
Kind of like he was doing now?
“Porca miseria!”
A second or two after the words left his mouth, there was a knock on the door to his office. Great. He hadn’t mean to swear quite that loudly.
“Yes?”
Lorenzo appeared in the doorway, holding a baby.
Shock stilled his thoughts. “Everything okay?”
“Someone is here to see you.”
It was obviously not the baby, so he raised his brows in question.
“She said she worked with you in Atlanta.”
A section of his heart jolted before settling back into rhythm. He’d worked with a lot of people at Atlanta Central.
“Does this person have a name?”
“I’d probably better let her tell you herself.” Lorenzo switched to English.
This time the jolt was stronger. Lasted longer. Surely it wasn’t... But the look on his friend’s face told him all he needed to know.
He hadn’t dated since he’d returned to Italy and didn’t see himself doing so anytime in the near future. And those plans to revisit his decision to leave Atlanta permanently? Put off over and over until it was far too late to do anything about it.
He hadn’t been able to stomach going back to his hospital in Rome either. His parents and two sisters lived there, and he hadn’t felt like answering a million questions. Oh, there’d still been the worried texts and phone calls about why he’d suddenly returned to Italy, but since they hadn’t been able to see his face, he was pretty sure he’d put their fears to rest. As far as they knew, he’d simply decided to practice in his own country. A short tenable statement. One he’d stuck to no matter how hard it was to force those words past his lips.
He ignored the churning in his stomach. “Okay, where is she?”
Instead of answering, Lorenzo pushed the door farther open and came into the room, revealing the woman who’d driven him out of the States and back to Italy.
Hell!
Chaotic memories gathered around, all of them pointing at the figure in front of them. He swallowed hard in an effort to push them back.
“Elyse? What are you doing here?” There was a slight accusation in his tone that he couldn’t suppress. A defense mechanism, another way to hold back the wall of emotion.
Dio. He’d fallen for this woman, once upon a time, and then she’d gone and stabbed him in the back in the worst possible way. Better to let her know up front that he hadn’t forgotten.
But why was she in Italy?
When she didn’t answer, Lorenzo turned and handed her the baby. Shock flared up his spine. He looked from one to the other as a sudden horrible thought came to him. Did the two of them know each other? Was that why she’d made sure he was fired?
No. Of course not. Lorenzo had never been out of Italy as far as he knew. There was no way the two of them could have met.
“I’ll go so you can talk.” Lorenzo glanced at Elyse. “It was very nice meeting you.”
“Thank you. You as well.”
Then he backed out of the room and closed the door behind him with a quiet click.
Something in Luca’s brain had frozen in place, the gears all stuck for several long seconds. His ass was also still firmly in his chair, something his mother would have frowned about.
But the memories were still doing their work, each one stabbing his heart and sticking there, like darts on a dartboard.
She ventured closer to the desk. “Luca?”
Somehow he dislodged his tongue, making a careful sidestep around the biggest question in his head while he puzzled through it. “How’s your mother?”
He glanced at the baby. Elyse didn’t have any siblings, so that wasn’t a niece she was holding. Had she adopted a child after he’d left?
“She’s still hanging in there. The Parkinson’s progression has remained slower than average.”
They’d tried an experimental treatment a few years back that had helped tremendously, even if it hadn’t rolled back the clock.
“Good.” Of course she hadn’t traveled all this way just to report on her mother’s condition. That left one question: Why was Elyse Tenner standing in the middle of his office, holding a baby? He nodded toward the seat in front of the desk. “Would you like a coffee?”
She sank into one of the chairs with what looked like relief. “I would love one, thank you.”
“When did you arrive?” He got up and measured grounds into his coffee press and turned on the kettle to heat the water. The mindless task gave his fuzzy brain time to work through a few of the more obvious items: yes, she was really here, and he was pretty sure she wouldn’t be if he’d simply left his toothbrush at her place. So it had to be something important. Important enough to travel across the ocean to see him.
His eyes went to the baby again before rejecting the thought outright. She would have told him before now.
“My flight arrived this morning.”
“You have a hotel?”
And if she didn’t? There was always his place. His thoughts ventured into dangerous territory.
Not happening, Luca.
He carried the pot with its water and coffee to the desk and set it down before retrieving two cups off the sideboard.
“Yes, I stopped at the hotel first, before coming here.”
He poured the coffees and reached into the small fridge beside his desk, hiding his disappointment by concentrating on the mundane task before him. She’d always taken her coffee like he did, with a splash of milk. He added some to both, stirring a time or two before pushing one across toward her.
He studied her face. It was pale and drawn, her cheekbones a little more pronounced than they’d been a year earlier. “So what brings you to Italy?”
There was a marked hesitation before she answered. “You, actually. I need to tell you something.”
That jolt he’d experienced earlier turned into an earthquake, pushing all other thoughts from his head except for the one staring him in the face.
“You do?”
“Yes.” Elyse slowly turned the baby to face him. “This is Annalisa.” Her eyes closed, and her throat moved a time or two before she went on. “She’s your—she’s our daughter, Luca.”
* * *
A hundred emotions marched across that gorgeous face over the course of the next few seconds, ranging from confusion to shock before finally settling on anger. His hands came together, fingers twining tightly, the knuckles going white. “My what?”
The words were dangerously soft.
He’d heard what she’d said. He just didn’t believe it. And Elyse wondered for the thousandth time if it wouldn’t have been better just to leave well enough alone. To raise Anna on her own and let Luca stay in the dark about his part in her existence. But she owned it to Annalisa and, if she was honest, to Luca himself, to own up to the circumstances behind their daughter’s birth. If he rejected her claim outright, then at least she’d tried.
She probably should have tracked him down during her pregnancy, but it had been a difficult time. She’d been so caught up in grief over his leaving that she hadn’t realized she was pregnant until she’d missed her third period. A test had revealed the worst. And she knew exactly when it had happened. That day in her office. The day he’d left the States forever.
She had been going to call and tell him, but each time she’d picked up the phone, she’d gotten cold feet, afraid that hearing his voice would undo any tiny bits of healing that had taken place. She’d kept telling herself she’d do it tomorrow. Ex
cept a month of tomorrows had gone by, and then things had suddenly started to go wrong with her pregnancy. She’d been placed on bed rest. Her parents had come to the house to help her. Her mom had been a trouper, despite her own medical issues.
Elyse wasn’t even sure the baby would survive at that point, so she’d elected to keep the news to herself in case the worse happened.
And now she couldn’t...would never be able to...
Annalisa was the only chance she would ever have to do this right. She swallowed back her fear.
“It’s true, Luca. She’s yours. I thought you should know.” She settled the baby against her shoulder once again.
He swore. At least she thought it was a swear word, from his tone of voice.
God, she’d been right. He didn’t want Anna.
She’d been wrong to come. Wrong to tell him.
“You kept this from me? All this time? You come waltzing into my office with Lorenzo, who is holding a baby that I think is his niece?” He drew an audible breath. “Only he hands the baby to you. And now you tell me she’s mine?”
Her chin went up in confusion. “It isn’t like it was easy. You left, and you had no intention of coming back, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“And didn’t you insist more than once that you didn’t want children?”
That had him sitting back in his chair, his eyes going to Anna. “I did, but that was—”
“I didn’t think you’d even want to know.”
“You didn’t think I’d... Mio Dio. Well, you were wrong. And my statement about kids, if I remember right, included the phrase ‘not right now.’ The word ‘never’ was not mentioned. Ever.”
How was she supposed to know that? There were men who would be just as happy to never father a child and who wouldn’t want to know even if they did.
But as she’d taken that choice away from him, he had every right to be angry with her.
“I’m sorry. Things were tenuous at the time.” She didn’t go into the particulars of the precarious pregnancy or the fact that she would never give birth to another child. Anna might be his concern, but the other stuff? Not so much, since they were no longer a couple.
And that fact hurt more than it should have, especially after all this time.
“Tenuous.” His brows drew together. “Tenuous? You let a colleague of mine hold my child before I get a chance to, and that’s all you can say?”
Yep, she was right. He was mad. Livid, even, and she couldn’t blame him. She held Anna close against the tirade.
He noticed it, and his eyes closed. “Dammit, I’m sorry.”
The sudden ache in her chest made her reach out and touch the edge of his desk with fingers that trembled.
“No, I’m sorry, Luca. It just never seemed like the right time and I couldn’t... I didn’t want to tell you over the phone.” She didn’t want to admit how afraid she’d been to hear his voice. And after Annalisa’s birth she’d had a recovery period that most new mothers didn’t have to worry about. It had delayed any travel plans she might have made. So here they were. In the present.
“When?”
She withdrew her hand. What was he asking? When Anna was born? When she was conceived? That was the kicker. They’d had sex in the aftermath of the announced downsizing, when there had been anger on both sides. Their coming together had been volatile and passionate. But the erotic coupling had solved nothing and only after her missed periods had she remembered that they hadn’t used protection.
In the end, the layoffs that she’d hoped would save their relationship—by removing the work dynamics that had bothered her so much—had done the opposite. She hadn’t wanted anyone to think she played favorites, and Luca had never asked for special treatment.
But memories of a former boyfriend’s behavior had loitered in the background, ready to pounce, warning her of what had happened in the past. Of what could happen again if she weren’t careful. Kyle had also been a colleague. He had asked—and expected—her to make allowances for things at work, most of them small and unimportant. But with each instance she’d gotten more and more uncomfortable with the relationship. Just as she’d been ready to break things off, he’d asked her to overlook a mistake he’d made with a patient. She hadn’t, and he’d been fired.
She told herself she’d never put herself in that position ever again. Except then Luca had come along and all those warnings had been in vain.
Remembering his question, she decided on the simplest answer possible. If he wanted to do the math, he could. “Anna is four months old.”
“Four months.” He placed his hands flat on the desk. “I want to spend time with her. Did you come by yourself?”
He didn’t ask if she was sure Anna was his. A lump formed in her throat.
“And I want you to spend time with her. That’s part of why I came. No, I didn’t come alone. Peggy came with me. You remember my aunt?” If her mom had been well enough, Elyse would have asked her to come, but since she couldn’t, this was the next best thing. She’d needed the moral support or she might have backed out entirely.
As many times as Luca had asked her out, she might have held firm to her resolve that there would be no more work relationships after Kyle. Until the day Luca had come out of one of the surgical suites after monitoring a patient’s brain waves, white-faced, a grim look of defeat on his face. It had done her in. She’d walked over to him, laid a hand on his arm and asked him out.
He’d said yes. The rest was history. A history peppered with moments of beauty and the sting of pain.
But the way he made love...
The realization that her eyes were tracking over his broad shoulders made her bite her lip and force herself to look away.
God! The attraction was still there—still very real. Even if the fairy tale had crashed to dust around her feet.
But from that rubble had come her baby girl. She would go through every bit of that pain all over again if she was the end result.
“After all this time, why come at all? You could have let things be. Never told me at all,” Luca pressed.
The very things she’d told herself as she’d booked her flight.
“It was the right thing to do.” Her hand went to Anna’s head, rocking her subconsciously, still shielding her.
He looked at the baby for a second and walked over to the window, staring out, hands thrust in his pockets, shoulders hunched. “La cosa giusta? The right thing would have been to tell me long before she was born.”
“Would it have changed things?”
He swung back around to face her. “I don’t know. I wasn’t given that choice, was I?”
“No.” Maybe she needed to tell him at least a little of the circumstances. “When I said things were tenuous, I meant it. The doctors weren’t sure Anna was going to make it for a while. And I didn’t see any reason to say anything if...”
All the color drained out of his face, and he walked back to the desk. “Dio. What happened? Is she okay?”
She rushed to put his mind at ease. “She’s fine. Now. I had placenta previa. It didn’t resolve and there were a couple of incidents of bleeding, heavy enough to cause worry.” And in the end it had been life-threatening to both of them when it had ruptured. “I wasn’t going to do anything that might put her at even more risk.”
“And telling me would have done that?” He dragged a hand through his hair.
“I was talking more about physical stress but, yes. Inside I think I was afraid of jinxing the pregnancy. As if telling you might cause everything to fall apart, and I’d lose her. I didn’t see any reason for us both to grieve if she didn’t survive.”
Not that she’d been sure he would. Because she’d convinced herself that he’d be horrified to have fathered a child in the first place.
“And after she was born? W
hy wait four months?”
She wasn’t quite ready to share more than she already had.
“Does it really matter? I’m here now.”
He crouched in front of her and touched the baby’s arm with his index finger. “I can hardly believe she’s mine.”
“She is.” She wasn’t sure if he was questioning Anna’s parentage, but either way she understood. Here came a woman who shows up over a year after they break up, claiming he’d fathered her child. “We can do a paternity test, if you want.”
“No, I know she’s mine.” He looked up into her face. “Can I see her?”
She realized Anna was sound asleep, but the baby was still facing away from him.
A tiny flutter of relief mixed with fear went through her midsection. While she hadn’t thought Luca would reject his own daughter outright once he knew she existed, she hadn’t been sure what his actual reaction would be.
She carefully turned the baby, cradling her in her arms so that he could see her tiny face. A muscle worked in his jaw and he stroked her hair. “How long are you here?”
“I have a little time left of my medical leave. I want you to get to know her. But...” she hesitated “...I want to have some ground rules in place. Come to an agreement first.”
His fingers stilled. “The only agreement we need is that we have a child.” There was a hard edge to his voice that told her he wasn’t going to let her call all the shots here. And she wasn’t trying to.
“I know that, Luca. I’m hoping we can—”
“A daughter. My daughter.” The anger had melted away and in his voice was a sense of awe. “Annalisa.”
A dangerous prickling behind her eyes made her sit up, teeth coming together in a way that forced it back.
“Yes.”
His head came up. “I have a few ground rules of my own. First we are going to figure out our schedules and come up with a plan.”
His fingers flipped pages on his phone for a moment, probably looking at his caseload. “I have some free time right now, in fact. So I can drive you back to your hotel, and then we’ll sit down and talk about any concerns you might have. But I want to make one thing perfectly clear. I will be a part of my daughter’s life. No matter how much you might dislike me personally.”