by Jane Porter
“We’ll deal with it when we have to. Hopefully it won’t be for quite some time.”
CHAPTER SIX
CHARLOTTE WOKE SEVERAL times in the night, not feeling well. Her lower back ached. Her lower belly felt heavy and tight. She’d leave bed and walk a bit, and then stretch and eventually she’d fall back asleep.
But the heaviness in her lower back was far worse this morning, and the tightness in her lower belly had become a perplexing cramp. The cramping sensation had become strong, and regular, far too regular. She’d read about Braxton Hicks contractions and wondered if this was what she was experiencing. She even looked them up online, but these didn’t quite meet the description. No, hers felt strong, and the dull pain was intensifying to the point she couldn’t walk easily anymore.
Something wasn’t right.
The cramping was frightening, and the pain was becoming excruciating.
Charlotte had left her cell phone unplugged during the night after researching contractions, and now it was dead, the battery dying in the night.
Limping to the door, she prayed she’d spot one of the staff nearby. Fortunately, one of the maids was walking down the hall with a stack of freshly laundered towels.
“I need Brando,” Charlotte said in Italian, panting and wincing as another sharp contraction hit. “Tell him something’s wrong. I think the baby is coming.”
“You must lie down,” the maid answered. “Let me help you to bed, and then I’ll send for help.”
Brando was there at her side in less than five minutes. He was wearing jeans, work boots and a thin knit shirt, indicating that he’d been out in the fields again this morning. He leaned over her, his gaze searching hers. “What’s happening?”
“Strong contractions. It doesn’t feel right.”
“You think the baby is coming?”
“I don’t know, but I’m scared. It’s too soon.”
He reached for her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “I’ve sent for my pilot. He should be here soon. He’ll get us to the hospital quickly.”
“What if there’s something wrong? What if the baby—?”
He gave her hand another warm, firm squeeze. “We’re only thinking positive thoughts, cara. Be positive, be strong.”
Brando stayed with her until the pilot texted that he was on premises and the helicopter was ready. There was a small hospital in the valley that served the local population, but Brando was taking no chances. They were going to go to Florence where there were specialists and a neonatal unit, just in case one was needed.
The moment the pilot indicated they were good to go, Brando scooped Charlotte into his arms and carried her downstairs to the helipad, feeling her contractions as they hit, and soothing her when she expressed pain, and then fear and alarm. “It is all good, all fine,” he said, looking into her eyes, letting her see his calm, and confidence.
“Can the baby survive at six months? I think so, but I’m not sure.”
“This baby is fierce, and strong, it wanted to be conceived, so yes, I think this baby can survive. Absolutely.”
She smiled even as she blinked back tears. “It is a stubborn little thing.”
“Maybe because its mother is stubborn, too.”
She smiled a little bigger, the smile still wobbly, but he found it hopelessly endearing. “And you’re not?”
“I’m the most reasonable, rational man you’ll ever meet.”
“You forgot arrogant. As long as the baby’s okay—” She broke off, eyes filling with tears.
“The baby will be fine. And you will be fine.”
“And if something goes wrong?”
“If there are complications, you will know you are being seen by the best doctors, at one of the best hospitals in Europe, and I will be with you every step of the way. Have faith. Trust me.”
“I’m trying.” She gripped his hand tightly, desperately, as she searched his face. After a moment, she added brokenly, “I want this baby.”
“I do, too.”
The helicopter had them arrive in Florence in less than twenty minutes, and they were greeted immediately by a medical team.
As he’d promised, Brando stayed by Charlotte’s side during the examination. He held his breath as the obstetrician checked her, and then performed an ultrasound. Thankfully, the baby’s heartbeat was steady, and the baby looked fine.
Brando stared at the screen, taking in every detail. He hadn’t seen many ultrasounds before, but unless his eyes were deceiving him, that was most definitely a boy baby.
His chest tightened and his throat ached with overwhelming emotion.
Charlotte was pregnant with his son.
“He’s really okay?” Brando asked quietly.
Charlotte looked from the doctor to Brando and back to the physician. “It’s a boy?”
The doctor nodded. “Yes, and your son looks good. He is fine. But you, Charlotte, are in preterm labor. We’re going to try to stop labor, as the best place for your son is right where he is now, safe inside his mother.”
“Can you stop the labor?” she asked.
The doctor didn’t even hesitate. “Because you sought out treatment immediately, I think we have a good shot at it.”
It was a long day, but by midafternoon the contractions had stopped, and finally pain free, Charlotte fell asleep, worn out from the worry and fear. Brando stood by her bed in her private room on the hospital’s maternity ward, watching her sleep.
Her color was better than it had been this morning. Her long blond hair spilled across her pillow, her lips slightly parted in sleep.
The tension was gone from her face, and he felt as if he could breathe properly for the first time all day.
He’d been scared, truly scared, and he’d prayed not just for the baby, but for Charlotte, who seemed so determined to be an island and do everything, and manage everything, on her own. He’d seen her panic, and felt her fear, and for the first time, he saw a crack in that perfect, flawless mask of hers. She might not want anyone else to know, but she felt vulnerable, as well as alone, which perplexed him, as she came from a big family and yet it was a family she didn’t seem to embrace.
His phone vibrated with incoming messages and he drew his phone from his pocket, scanned the texts and then checked his emails, and seeing nothing that required immediate attention, he pulled a chair closer to the side of the bed and sat down.
When he told her he would be there, with her, he’d meant it.
Charlotte and his son might be out of danger, but there was nowhere Brando wanted to be but here, with her. With them. His family.
His family, he silently repeated, mulling the words over, awed by the implication. He was going to have a son.
Warmth filled him and his chest felt tight with inarticulate emotion. Pride, hope, wonder.
Growing up in a close, overly involved family had made him at times resent the family ties, and then during his early twenties, he’d had a falling-out with his family, particularly his father, whom Brando viewed as overbearing and interfering.
It didn’t help that Brando did not feel wanted, or needed, by the family, and questioned why every family member was expected to go to work for the Ricci-Baldi company. He already had two older brothers and a sister working in the business, and they were content. Why was he needed? He wasn’t. And the work he was being offered was menial at best. He found every aspect of working for the family to be boring and mindless—tasks anyone could handle. After a year of miserably working for the family, he realized he could go do this same pointless brainless work somewhere else and be paid a hell of a lot better than what he was earning working for his family.
He spoke to his father about his boredom, and his father dismissed Brando’s concerns, stating that everyone was expected to prove themselves, and that as the youngest, he couldn’t expect to ever
be in a leadership position, not when Enzo and Marcello were already working their way up through management.
His father’s answer didn’t sit well with Brando, and in an act of utter rebellion, he returned the call from a modeling agency in Milan, and said he’d be open to meeting with the agency if they were still interested in him. During his teenage years, Brando had been approached several times about modeling, but he knew it wasn’t something that would be viewed favorably in his family, so he’d turned the opportunities down. But now, in need of work, he went on his first go-see, booked the job and proceeded to book almost every other go-see he was sent out on.
Brando’s father did exactly as expected—Brando was cut off from the family financially, but Brando wasn’t upset. He was relieved. For the first time in his life, he was standing completely on his own and being successful. In six months, he made more money than he had in the previous two years, and by the time he turned twenty-five he was making so much money he needed to find investment opportunities, reluctant to leave that much cash sitting in the bank. He bought stocks, and purchased real estate, and when those proved to be good investments, he became a venture capitalist for two small technology start-ups, turning his hundreds of thousands into millions when one of the start-ups went public and became big.
At twenty-six he bought his first small winery. Within two years he’d bought another, and it was at this time his father came to him and asked if he’d come back to the family and work with them since Brando seemed to have a golden touch. Brando was still trying to decide if he would when his father died, and if Brando had one regret it was that his father died before Brando returned to the family, going to work in Florence with his brothers and sister, refocusing the Ricci brands and giving new life to the Ricci wines.
His mother used to say that she was sure Brando’s father knew, but maybe it wasn’t important that his father knew. Maybe what was important was that those living knew Brando would never shirk his responsibilities, or his familial duty, again.
Family came first, always.
Charlotte woke to the sound of murmured voices and, opening her eyes, discovered Brando at the foot of her bed in discussion with her doctor.
Brando was the one to notice she’d awoken and he immediately approached the bed, a question in his silver gaze. “How do you feel?”
“Better,” she said, grateful the contractions had stopped, and there was no more pain. “What time is it?”
“Close to seven. Your doctor was just doing a final check on you before going home for the night.”
She glanced over at the doctor as he approached her side. “Thank you for all your help today.”
“My pleasure. I’m just glad you could get here quickly. Everything looks good right now,” he answered, adding, “You’ll be in excellent hands here tonight, and the staff knows I’m on call should you need anything.”
Brando walked the doctor out before returning. “Are you hungry? You haven’t had breakfast or lunch.”
“I am starting to get hungry.”
“Good, my personal chef is on the way now with dinner. When he heard we were back in town, he said there was no way we could eat hospital food. He’s been cooking all afternoon, and I see you looking worried, but there’s no reason for that. I’ve cleared the menu with the doctor, and the doctor said soup, pasta and a little bit of meat would help keep up your strength.”
“You’ve thought of everything.”
“I don’t want you to stress. You’re to relax, and eat dinner, and sleep well tonight, and tomorrow we’ll see what the doctor says. Hopefully you won’t have to stay here too long.”
It was only then that Charlotte remembered her flight. “I missed it. My flight to London.”
“Thank goodness you weren’t in-flight. I don’t think today’s outcome would have been the same if you were on the plane.”
“No, I don’t think so, either.” She slowly exhaled, trying to ease the tension in her chest. “I came close to going into labor.”
“Cara, you were in labor. The doctors were able to administer medicine to stop it. But another thirty minutes... I don’t know the outcome. We might have had our son with us tonight.”
“I’m only twenty-three weeks along. I don’t think the odds would be very good for him.”
“I learned today that half of the babies born between twenty-three and twenty-four weeks survive delivery and have a shot at life outside the neonatal ICU.”
“But that doesn’t include all the complications premature babies have, does it?”
“No.” His expression sobered, and he reached out to smooth hair back from her brow, his touch unexpectedly tender. “Which is why you need to rest and relax and give our son as much time as possible.”
She watched the door after he walked out, apparently to make a call, or whatever it was he’d said, feeling raw and shaken. Not just from today’s early labor scare, but from his kindness, and his strength, and his calm in the middle of a storm. She always tried to be calm during dramas, but she always felt like a fraud, not truly calm, not truly collected. It was an image she projected, aware that the world preferred strength, and people were drawn to success, but sometimes being strong and successful was isolating.
Sometimes being the one who had it together and needed nothing from anyone meant you had very little support from others.
Perhaps if she’d learned to ask for help, or was comfortable demanding attention, she might feel less alone. Perhaps if she was better at trusting people, she might have had proper relationships... Maybe she’d even be romantically involved with someone.
Instead she admired interesting men from afar, careful to never get too involved, careful to never risk her heart.
At least, until she gave in to her impulse and spent a night with Brando, and that night changed everything—and she wasn’t referencing the pregnancy, but her hopes, and dreams.
She cared for Brando...a lot.
She also knew it was incredibly unrealistic to think he might have genuine feelings for her. He’d proposed because he was old-fashioned, and in his mind it was the morally right thing to do. She knew he would marry her, too, for the very same reasons. But he didn’t love her, and she doubted he could be faithful, but she couldn’t marry someone who didn’t want her, not truly want her.
Brando returned to the room just then, entering with a man in a sharp suit, and the only indication that he might be Brando’s chef was that he carried a large hamper in one hand, and an oversize insulated carrier in the other. The chef went to work spreading a small cloth over her table and laying out dishes, and Charlotte keep her attention fixed on the chef so that she didn’t look at Brando even though she was incredibly aware of him, and that he was watching her.
No one had ever watched her the way he watched her.
No one had ever paid her as much attention or listened to her when she asked for space. He’d even let her go last winter when she wanted that, too.
Charlotte had met many powerful men, and a few handsome, powerful men, but she’d never met anyone who respected her desires the way Brando did. He could have tried to steamroll over her, but instead he appealed to her intellect and reason, and for that, she was grateful.
The chef was then gone as quickly as he’d arrived. Brando served her and then himself, and they ate the delicate seafood risotto, and while Brando had some of the main course of meat, Charlotte was satisfied.
She watched him as he cleared the dinner dishes, filling the basket before refreshing her water from the large bottle of sparkling water the chef had brought with him. “Thank you,” she said, a lump in her throat because honestly, she couldn’t remember the last time someone had done so much for her, never mind waiting on her hand and foot.
“My pleasure,” he answered. “You do remember there is dessert. Mousse al cioccolato. Your favorite.”
Choco
late mousse. It was her favorite, and he’d remembered.
They’d had chocolate mousse the night she’d stayed over, and she’d straddled him in bed, feeding him spoonfuls, before deciding it was far too good to share. She blushed, heat rushing through her. “Was this just a lucky coincidence, or did you ask him to make it?”
“I asked him.”
Charlotte was dangerously close to tears. She clutched the covers in her hands, holding them tightly. “I’m overwhelmed.”
“By mousse?”
“No, by you, today.” She felt the hard thudding of her heart, and the strange prickly emotion in her chest, emotion that seemed to zigzag all the way through her. She hadn’t been a virgin when she met Brando, and yet he made her feel naive, untutored, inexperienced in the ways of the world. He made her want to believe that better things existed, and that people could be good, and patient, and kind.
Today Brando also made her aware of just how much she needed him, even if she didn’t want to admit it.
She didn’t know what would have happened if she hadn’t been with him when the contractions began. She didn’t know how she would have managed without him today. He’d handled everything, and he’d been so incredibly focused, and calm, and strong. He’d said he wouldn’t let anything happen to her, and he’d meant it. He’d been incredibly proactive, as well as protective. It was rather humbling to realize how good it felt to let someone else take charge. To let someone else be strong.
“Have I thanked you for today?” she said. “I don’t know how I—”
“You have thanked me,” he interrupted quietly. “But you don’t have to thank me. I wanted to be here. There is nowhere else I’d rather be.”
She gave a half nod. “I believe you.”
The corner of his mouth lifted a fraction. “Are we making progress, cara?”
“I don’t know if I’d call it progress, but you should know I appreciate everything, and am grateful, and our baby is grateful, too.” And for the first time, the words our baby felt right. They felt true. It was their baby and there would be no shutting Brando out, and no fighting over custody. How could she do that to him? He would be a wonderful father, and she couldn’t deny him the opportunity to be there every step of the way, or their son the security of a devoted father, either.