Caroselli's Accidental Heir

Shame on her for forgetting who she really was.

Tony shut the door behind them and when he touched her shoulder her heart stopped. But then she realized that he was only helping her with her jacket, which he tossed over the back of the sofa. His suit jacket landed on top of it, and his tie on top of that. “Would you like something to drink? I have juice and diet soda. Or I could make tea.”

“Just water,” she said. There were newspapers strewn across the coffee table and a blue silk tie draped over the back of the leather chair. Guy furniture. The apartment was full of it. Leather, metal and glass. Bare wood floors. She would have thought that something might have changed in the four months she’d been gone, but everything looked exactly the same. And she saw no evidence of a woman staying there.

“Sit down,” he said, gesturing to the sofa, more an order than a suggestion. He was working up to something, she could feel it. For every second he didn’t speak, her nerves wound tighter as her hopes for a civilized solution faded. Responding to her tension, the baby was doing circus acrobatics deep in her womb.

The galley-style kitchen was separated from the living space by a wall, but she could hear him rattling around in the fridge. He reappeared a second later with a bottled water for her and a beer for himself, and though she’d assumed he would sit in the chair opposite her, he sat down beside her on the sofa instead.

The urge to touch him, to scoot closer and lean into him—to knock him onto his back and climb all over him—was as strong as ever. She longed for him to take her into his arms and hold her, promise her that everything would be okay. Make love to her until the last four months no longer mattered.

All he said was, “I can’t let you leave again.”

She should have known he wouldn’t give up. He was the kind of man who was used to getting his way.

He would just have get unused to it.

“It’s not your decision to make.”

“The hell it isn’t,” he said, and his sharp tone startled her. He’d never so much as raised his voice in her presence, though at times she may have deserved it.

“Fatherhood doesn’t start after the baby is born,” he told her. “You robbed me of the opportunity to share the experience of your pregnancy with you.”

Just when she thought she couldn’t feel like a bigger jerk, he had to go and say that. And he was absolutely right. She had robbed him of all sorts of things. And robbed herself of sharing the experience with someone who actually gave a damn. Unlike her mom, who spent the first month and a half trying to convince her to “get rid of the problem.”

Lucy had also robbed herself of the most basic creature comforts. Her mom’s couch, where she had been sleeping the past four months, was miserably uncomfortable. She woke most mornings with either intense lower back pain or a severely kinked neck. Sometimes both. The idea of sleeping in a bed again, getting a peaceful night’s rest, was alluring. But what would it do to her heart?

She reminded herself yet again that this was not about what she wanted. Or couldn’t have. She needed to do what was best for the baby, and for now that meant taking care of herself. Tony could help her with that.

“Hypothetically, suppose I do agree to live here with you,” she said. “I would have to have my own room.”

“Or you could share mine.” His hand came to rest on her thigh. She didn’t have to see his face to know the expression he wore, and that it had the ability to melt her in seconds flat. Hadn’t she promised herself that she was through making irresponsible decisions?

Tempting as it might have been, for the sake of her own pride, she couldn’t go back to the way things used to be. At least in the past there had been some hope that someday things would change, that he could fall in love with her, but now she knew that would never happen. If she was going to stay here, in his apartment, they would have to establish some boundaries. Like, no fooling around.

She took his hand and set it on his own leg. “I think for the baby’s sake we should keep our relationship platonic. So things don’t get confusing.”

“You can’t blame a guy for trying,” he said, and this time she did look at him, which was monumentally stupid. Curse him and his captivating smile. His deep-set, bedroom eyes.

“You can have my room,” he told her. “I’ll sleep on the fold-out in my office.”

Before she could object, his cell phone started to ring. He pulled it out of his pants pocket and checked the screen, cursing under his breath. “It’s Nonno,” he said, rising from the sofa and heading toward the kitchen. “I have to take this.”

Lucy had never actually met Tony’s grandfather, but she’d heard so many stories about him, in a way she felt as if she already knew him. It occurred to her that she hadn’t seen him at the wedding. According to Tony, his grandfather—and before she passed away, his grandmother—had been present for every significant event in his life.

Why not his wedding?

The call barely lasted a minute before Tony hung up. “It was my mom,” he said, shoving the phone back into his pocket. “She’s at Nonno’s cleaning up. She wanted to make sure everything was okay. They want us to come by their house tomorrow to talk.”

The idea of facing his parents, especially so soon, left her weak with terror. It must have shown on her face because Tony said, “Don’t worry. I told her we had things to work through first, and I would let her know when it would be a good time for us to meet.”

How about never? Could they meet then?

If she’d had a crystal ball, and could have seen the way events would unfold, she never would have left Chicago in the first place. She would have handled the situation like an adult instead of a lovesick adolescent. So why delay the inevitable? All she could do is apologize and hope they would take pity on her.

“I’d like to get this over with sooner rather than later,” she told Tony.

“There’s no rush.”

“I’m responsible for this mess. I need to own up to it.”

“Don’t you think you’re being a little hard on yourself?”

Was she? “Imagine how you would feel if your son was getting married and some woman you’d never even met showed up claiming she was pregnant with his baby. Wouldn’t you want to know who she is? What she’s up to?”

“You’re talking like you’re in this alone. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase ‘It takes two to tango.’ I’m just as responsible.”

She doubted his family would see it that way. “We shouldn’t put this off.”

He shrugged and said, “If that’s what you want.”

It wasn’t about what she wanted. It was the right thing to do. “Is your grandfather okay?”

The question seemed to puzzle him. “Why do you ask?”

“I didn’t see him at the service today. I thought he might not be well.”

“He’s fine. Just stubborn.”

She wasn’t sure what that had to do with it, but before she could ask, Tony’s phone rang again. He pulled it out and checked the screen, muttered a curse, and rejected the call. He didn’t even have time to slide the phone back into his pocket before it began to ring again. Once again he rejected the call, and this time he switched his phone to silent, muttering under his breath as he turned to Lucy. “So, are you staying?”

“I should probably tell my mom that I won’t be needing a ride home from the airport, or the use of her couch,” Lucy said.

Tony frowned. “She made you sleep on the couch?”

“It was that or the floor.” Which frankly could not have been any less comfortable, though she shuddered to imagine the horrors residing in the fibers of the ancient, threadbare carpet. Her mom’s friends—if you could call them that—were a motley crew of drug addicts and alcoholics.

“She couldn’t take the couch and let her pregnant daughter use the bed?” Tony asked.

If he knew the kind of lifestyle her mom lead, he wouldn’t blame Lucy for not wanting to get anywhere near her mattress. Lord only knew what she might catch.

But he didn’t know much about her family, and she preferred to keep it that way. Tony knew that she and her mom hadn’t had much, but he had no idea how rotten Lucy’s childhood had been. The constant moving from one dumpy, cockroach-infested place to another. Sometimes going hungry for days because there was no money for food. The endless flow of men through her mom’s revolving bedroom door.

But that was all in the past. It had happened, now it was over, and Lucy had moved on.

When she and Tony talked, it was usually about him and his work, or his family. Everything she had ever told him about her life, from birth to the present, wouldn’t take more than a ten-minute conversation. He knew she didn’t see her father, but he didn’t know why. And all he knew of her mom was that she and Lucy had never gotten along.

He didn’t know that starting when Lucy was eight, her mom would leave her alone while she went out, and often wouldn’t return till morning. He didn’t know how many of her mom’s male “friends” had watched Lucy with a lascivious smile, said lewd and inappropriate things. Her mom used to say that it was Lucy’s own fault. That she was inviting the attention by putting out “signals.” And at the time, being a naive and gullible preteen, Lucy had believed her. She still wasn’t sure if on some fundamental, primitive level, she was destined to be like her mom. Maybe she was hardwired that way, and it was inevitable. Only time would tell.