Книга - Caroselli’s Accidental Heir

Caroselli's Accidental Heir
Michelle Celmer


Stop the wedding—she’s pregnant! When Lucy Bates caught herself falling too hard for Chicago businessman Tony Caroselli, she ran. How could she measure up to his wealthy family’s standards? But now she’s pregnant and back to tell the truth…only to see Tony marrying another woman before her very eyes! Lucy always had impeccable timing—especially interrupting a wedding Tony never wanted. And if she produces a male heir, Tony stands to inherit a fortune. Plus, the real payoff is having Lucy back where she belongs—with him. But when she finds out about his inheritance, will she feel like a pawn and run again?







Did she honestly believe he was just going to let her leave again while she was pregnant with his baby?

“You have your return ticket?” he asked, and she nodded. “Can I see it?”

Looking puzzled, she pulled a folded sheet of white paper from her purse belt, which was almost hidden under the swell of her belly. Lucy handed him the sheet of paper and he promptly ripped it in half.

“Okay,” she said. “That was very dramatic and all. But you do realize that I can just print another one.”

He crumpled the paper and tossed it into the backseat. “Call it a symbolic gesture.”

“I got that part. I'm just not sure what it symbolizes.”

“You're not going back to Florida.”

She blinked in surprise. “I'm not?”

“You're going to stay here in Chicago.”

“Where?”

“You're going to live with me. And as soon as we have time to arrange it, you're going to marry me.”

* * *

Caroselli's Accidental Heir is part of The Caroselli Inheritance trilogy: Ten million dollars to produce an heir. The clock is ticking.


Caroselli’s Accidental Heir

Michelle Celmer






www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


MICHELLE CELMER is a bestselling author of more than thirty books. When she's not writing, she likes to spend time with her husband, kids, grandchildren and a menagerie of animals.

Michelle loves to hear from readers. Visit her website, www.michellecelmer.com (http://www.michellecelmer.com), like her on Facebook or write her at PO Box 300, Clawson, MI 48017, USA.


To Beppie, whose friendship means the world to me.


Contents

Chapter One (#u0d85cc2d-7a85-5e76-874c-ca457625b0ea)

Chapter Two (#uebad6650-5b1a-5cb0-8899-e3a798797494)

Chapter Three (#u1bdb6337-1a71-5f8f-bd63-b8e78befa67b)

Chapter Four (#uf1d790cc-0629-5cc1-98e0-46f3bac166e9)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)


One

In twenty-three years, nine months and sixteen days, Lucy Bates had made her fair share of questionable choices. Due to her impulsive nature, her guileless curiosity—and an occasional lack of basic common sense—she’d found herself in more than a few...complicated situations. But her current predicament topped them all.

Note to self: The next time you have the bright idea to leave a man and move across country in the hopes that he’ll follow you, don’t bother.

Not only had Tony not followed her, he’d gone out and found someone new. After nearly a year of casually dating Lucy, and not a single mention of taking their relationship to the next level, he was marrying a virtual stranger.

Not only had he been dating this new woman a measly two months, she wasn’t pregnant with his baby.

Lucy was.

She was a stereotype.

The poor girl who fell for the rich guy and got knocked up. And though there was a whole lot more to it than that, she knew that was all anyone would see. Including Tony.

“This is it,” the cab driver announced as he pulled up to the house. Lucy peered out the window. Located in one of the oldest and most prestigious neighborhoods in Chicago, the Caroselli mansion put the neighboring homes to shame. It was old, and a little gaudy for her taste. But very grand.

The street was lined with luxury cars and SUVs, and children were playing in the park directly across the street. Tony once told her that his grandfather, the founder of Caroselli chocolate, liked to sit in his study, in his favorite chair, and watch the kids play. He said it reminded him of home. Home being Italy.

She handed the driver the last of her cash and climbed out of the cab. The sun was shining, but there was a chill in the air.

She’d blown her entire savings account on a roundtrip plane ticket from Florida to Chicago, paying the exorbitant Sunday rates, so from here on in she would have to rely on her credit card. If she maxed that out...well, she would think of something. She always did.

But it wasn’t just about her anymore. She needed to start thinking like a mother, putting the baby first.

She laid a hand on her swollen belly, felt the thump thump of itty bitty feet against her palm, never so confused, or terrified, or content in her whole life.

She promised herself right then that if she could just figure this mess out, she would never do another impulsive thing for as long as she lived.

And this time she meant it.

“You’ve got him right where you want him,” her mom had told her on the way to the airport that morning in her clunker of a car that always seemed to be one repair away from the junkyard. “Whatever he offers you to keep this quiet, you ask for double.”

And that was her mom in a nutshell.

“I’m not looking for hush money,” Lucy said. “I don’t want anything from him. I just think he should know about the baby before he gets married.”

“That’s what the phone is for.”

“I need to do this face-to-face.” She owed him that much after the way she’d behaved. He didn’t want Lucy, that much was obvious, but this was his baby, too. She had no right to keep this from him.

“By crashing his engagement party?”

“I am not crashing anything. I’m going to talk to him before the party.”

What she hadn’t counted on was her flight being two hours late, which gave her only about two hours to get to Tony then get back to the airport for her return flight. Now she had no choice but to talk to him at the party. But she had no intention of making a scene. With any luck, people would just assume that she was another guest. A friend of the bride perhaps.

All she needed was five minutes of his time, and then they could both get on with their lives. If he wanted to be a part of the baby’s life, that would be wonderful. If he tossed a dollar or two her way every so often to help with expenses, she would be eternally grateful. If he didn’t, if he wanted nothing to do with her and the baby, she would be disappointed, but she would understand. After all, hadn’t she been the one to insist that they keep it casual? No obligations, no expectations. How could she then turn around and expect him to take responsibility for a child he never wanted?

Nope, nothing suspicious about that.

“Even if he wasn’t engaged, baby or no baby, that man would never marry you,” her mom had told her. “Men like that only keep women like us around for one reason.”

A fact she loved to remind Lucy of every chance she got. And she was right. Lucy had told herself a million times that Tony was too good for her, that even if he did want to settle down someday, it would be with someone from his own side of the street. And that’s exactly what he’d done.

She and Tony were from two very different worlds, and she had been a fool to ever believe that he would follow her to Florida and beg her to come back, to hope that he would miss her. All she could do now was try to pick up the pieces of the mess she had created. Which meant shelving her pride and accepting his financial help if he offered it.

Well, she thought, the mansion looming ahead of her, it’s now or never.

Heart in her throat, and before she lost her nerve, Lucy rushed up to the front porch and knocked on the door. Her knees felt squishy and her heart was pounding, but after a minute or so no one answered, so she knocked again.

She waited, but still no answer.

She was already off to a rip-roaring start. Could the individual who sent her the email have been wrong about the date of the party? Or the time? Or even the location?

And what woman in her right mind would take the word of a typed letter from an anonymous “friend”?

This one would. And it was too late to turn back now.

She tried the knob and found it unlocked. Why not add breaking and entering to her list of transgressions?

She eased the front door open, peering inside. There was no one in sight, so she stepped in, snapping the door quietly closed behind her. The foyer and adjacent living room were elegantly decorated and showplace-perfect. And too quiet. Where the heck was everyone? Maybe it really was the wrong day, and the cars outside were for another house, and a different party.

She was about to turn around and slip back out the door when she heard faint music from the rear of the house. String instruments. Maybe a quartet? She couldn’t make out the melody.

Thinking she might actually have a chance to slip into the party unnoticed, she followed the sound of the music, passing a spectacular dining room decorated in deep hues of red and gold with a table long enough to accommodate a small army.

The music stopped abruptly and she turned. Across from the dining room was an enormous family room with a stone fireplace that kissed the peak of a cathedral ceiling. Rows of chairs lined either side of a silk runner....

Oh. My. God.

This was no engagement party. It was a wedding!

What struck her immediately was the normalcy of it all. The tradition. The handful of wedding guests perched on satin-covered folding chairs. The bride with her long, elegant neck and blade-like cheekbones. Her dress, an off-white shift, was as simple as it was stylish, while showing off a pair of legs so slender and long, they brought her nearly to eye level with Tony, who at six feet two inches was in no way lacking height.

Speaking of Tony...

Lucy’s heart lifted the instant she laid eyes on him, then slammed to the pit of her stomach. In a tailored suit, his jet-black hair combed back off his forehead, he looked as if he’d stepped off the cover of GQ, but in a mussed, I’m-too-sexy-for-my-shirt way. Very much the way he looked the first time she saw him in the bar where she’d worked. And until that very second she hadn’t realized just how much she had missed him. How much she needed him. Until he came along last year, she never needed anyone.

So what now? Should she slide into one of the empty seats and pretend to belong there, then talk to him after the service? Or should she turn and run back out the door and phone him later, as her mom had suggested.

“Lucy?” Tony said.

She blinked out of her stupor and realized Tony was looking right back at her. And so was the bride. In fact, everyone in the room had turned and all eyes were fixed on her.

Oh, boy.

She stood there frozen, wondering what she should do. She’d come here to talk to Tony, not crash his wedding mid-ceremony. But she was already here, and the wedding was already disrupted, and running and hiding wasn’t an option. Why not do what she came to do?

“I am so sorry,” she said, as if an apology would mean diddly-squat at this point. After this, if he ever spoke to her again, it would be a miracle. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Yet here you are,” Tony said, his tone flat. He once had told her that he admired her spunk, and the fact that she had the courage to speak her mind, to stand up for what she believed in, but she doubted this was what he’d had in mind. “What do you want?”

“I need to speak to you,” Lucy said. “Privately.”

“Now? If you hadn’t noticed, I’m getting married.”

Oh, she noticed.

The bride looked back and forth between the two of them, her face pale, as if she might faint. Or maybe she always looked that way. Come to think of it, she bore an uncanny resemblance to Morticia Adams. “Tony? Who is this?” she asked, her brow wrinkled in distaste as she looked down her nose at Lucy.

“No one of any consequence,” he said, and did that ever sting. On the bright side, he would be eating those words very soon. Though that would hardly help to improve her situation.

“It’s important,” she told him.

“Anything you have to say to me, you can say right here,” Tony told Lucy. “In front of my family.”

Not a good idea. “Tony—”

“Right here,” he insisted, pointing to the floor to make his point.

She recognized that rigid stance, the look of unwavering resolve. He wasn’t going to back down.

If that was really what he wanted...

Head held high, shoulders squared, she unzipped her jacket, exposing the basketball-sized bump under her snug-fitting T-shirt, cringing inwardly as a collective gasp cut through the silence, reverberating off the velvet-covered walls. She would never be able to forget that sound, or the look on everyone’s faces for the rest of her life. If Tony had been aiming to embarrass Lucy or humiliate her, it had backfired. The bride was the one who looked mortified.

“Is it yours?” she asked Tony, and he looked to Lucy questioningly. She shot him a look that said, What do you think?

He turned back to his fiancée and said, “Alice, I’m sorry, but I need a minute with my...with Lucy.”

“I suspect it will take considerably longer than a minute,” Alice said, her voice tight. She slipped the diamond engagement ring from a long, slender, claw-like finger and held it out to him. “And something tells me that I won’t be needing this any longer.”

“Alice—”

She stopped him. “When I agreed to marry you, a pregnant lover wasn’t part of the deal. Let’s just cut our losses, shall we? Keep it dignified.”

Was that all their marriage was to Alice? A deal? She looked humiliated, and seriously annoyed, but heartbroken? Not so much. And maybe her fingers weren’t so clawlike, Lucy thought as she watched Alice fiddling with the ring. Good thing, too, because she looked as if she’d like to gouge out Lucy’s eyes.

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.”

At first he thought she was joking. Did she honestly believe he was just going to let her leave again? While she was pregnant with his baby? He thought she knew him better than that. Of course, if she did, she wouldn’t have left in the first place.

They may not have planned this, but as long as she was carrying his child, she was his responsibility, so for the time being, she was more or less stuck with him. And if the baby really was a boy, he would make his daddy a very wealthy man. If Lucy would marry him, that is.

It sounded simple enough; the only problem was that Lucy was as relationship-phobic as him. Probably even more so. She had been the one to set the boundaries of their relationship, to insist that they keep it casual. Now he had to figure out a way to convince her that getting married was best for the baby.

“You have your ticket?” he asked, and she nodded. “Can I see it?”

Looking puzzled, she pulled a folded sheet of white paper from her fanny pack, which was almost hidden under the swell of her belly. In all the time he’d known her she’d kept her belongings in either a beat-up backpack that she’d picked up in the lost and found at work, or a fanny pack. He’d never seen her carry a conventional purse. There was very little about Lucy that he would call conventional. She marched to the beat of her own drum.

Lucy handed him the sheet of paper and he promptly ripped it in half.

“Oooookay,” she said. “That was very dramatic and all. But you do realize that I can just print another one.”

He crumpled the paper and tossed it into the backseat. “Call it a symbolic gesture.”

“I got that part. I’m just not sure what it symbolizes.”

“You’re not going back to Florida.”

She blinked in surprise. “I’m not?”

“You’re going to stay here in Chicago.”

“Where? My roommate moved to Ohio. Not to mention that I don’t have a job.”

“You’re going to live with me. And as soon as we have time to arrange it, you’re going to marry me.”

* * *

If that was Tony’s idea of a marriage proposal, no wonder he was still single.

How many times had she fantasized about him asking her to marry him? This particular scenario was not at all what she’d had in mind. Technically, he hadn’t even asked. He’d issued an order.

Could anything be less romantic?

“Why would I do that?” she asked, giving him the perfect opportunity to redeem himself.

“I know how against marriage you are,” he said, “and I understand how you feel, but I really believe this is what’s best for the baby.”

Wrong answer, dude.

Not only did he drop the ball, he smashed it flat. He didn’t even try to sugarcoat it. He would only be marrying her for the baby’s sake. So much for those sentiments of love she’d been hoping for. Why didn’t he just reach into her chest and rip out her still-beating heart?

Her mom would have jumped at the opportunity to have a rich and handsome guy take care of her, which is exactly why Lucy couldn’t allow it. Though she couldn’t deny it would be wildly entertaining to see her mom’s expression when she heard the news.

“That sounds like a really bad idea,” she told him, and the deep furrow between his brows said he disagreed.

“It’s not,” he said, as if he expected her to just take his word for it.

“If I marry you, it will confirm what everyone in that house was already thinking. That I got pregnant on purpose to trap you. That I’m looking for a meal ticket.” Just the way her mom had with Lucy’s father. What he had neglected to mention during their brief affair was that he was already married with a family. He had no interest in being a parent to his illegitimate daughter. He’d sent the obligatory monthly check, but when he died three years later, the gravy train—and any hope that he and Lucy might someday meet—died with him.

Lucy had three siblings she had never even spoken to, and whose lack of contact over the years said they had no interest in meeting their illegitimate half sister. She could only imagine what they must have thought of her. And her mother.

“I’ll make sure everyone knows that isn’t the case,” Tony said.

If only it were that simple. “That never works. People are going to believe what they want to believe, regardless of what you tell them.”

His deepening frown said he was getting frustrated with her. “Why does it even matter what my family thinks?”

It mattered to her. She loved Tony, and she wanted to be his wife, even knowing the rest of his family would probably never accept her. But not like this. Not because it was convenient. Or good for the baby. She wouldn’t be anyone’s consolation prize. “I can’t marry you.”

“Sure you can.”

“No. I really can’t.

“I want to take care of you.” He took her hand and held it tight. “You and the baby.”

She pulled her hand free. “Thanks, but I can take care of myself.”

“If you won’t marry me, would you agree to stay with me? At least until the baby is born?”

“I can’t.”

She could tell by his expression that he thought she was being stubborn, and maybe she was a little. But who could blame her? The dynamic was simple. She loved Tony, and he felt obligated. Living together would be painful enough. Marrying him would be downright torture. She could fool herself into believing that his feelings might change, but the reality was if he hadn’t fallen in love with her by now, odds were good he never would. To marry him, even if it was for the baby’s benefit, seemed sad and pathetic. She refused to play the victim.

Been there, done that, burned the T-shirt.

Maybe when they were alone at his place he would pull her into his arms and hold her tight, and tell her he was miserable and lonely after she left. Of course he would have a very logical, not to mention romantic, reason for not coming after her.

And maybe the Pope would convert.

Tony pulled down his street and found a spot close to his building. She’d been a little shocked the first time he brought her there. Everything about Tony screamed rich and classy. He drove a luxury import, drank the best scotch, owned a closet full of designer brand clothes, yet he lived in a nondescript apartment in an equally nondescript building, in what seemed to her to be one of the most boring streets in the entire city of Chicago. But as he had logically put it, why spend a lot of money on a place when he was hardly ever there?

Normally he would have held her hand as they walked into the building and got in the elevator. Often he even got frisky during the ride up, but this time he didn’t touch her. She was both relieved and disappointed.

After a history of nomadic tendencies, Lucy had learned to never attach deep personal feelings to places, but when Tony unlocked the door and she stepped inside his apartment, she got a lump in her throat. She had so many good memories of the time they’d spent here together. At some point in their relationship his place had begun to feel like a second home to her, and she had fooled herself into thinking he might actually want her there with him.

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.

She wondered what Tony would think of her if he knew the truth. If he knew the kind of background she came from, and the questionable origin of the baby’s genetics. What would his family think?

Tony handed her his phone, saying gently but firmly, “I won’t make you sleep on the couch. Make the call.”

It boiled down to what was best for the baby. So she made the call.


Three

Though he was technically on his honeymoon for the next seven days, Tony had some personal business to deal with, so the following morning he went first to the gym, then into the office. He knew full well that at some point during the course of the day he would be accosted by nearly every member of his family. After repeated calls and texts that had gone unanswered they had gotten the hint and stopped bugging him around ten o’clock p.m. last night. And started right back up this morning at eight. He loved his family. He knew that any one of them would be there for him in a pinch. They were just too damned nosy. An Italian trait, he was sure. Or maybe all big families were like that. Either way, he was tired of people being all up in his business, all the time.

He was going to have to deal with them eventually, and shy of calling a press conference, this was the easiest, not to mention quickest, way to deal with this. The alternative to work was staying home twiddling his thumbs until Lucy woke up. Yesterday, after they had a carryout Chinese dinner, she laid down to take a short rest, and had been sound asleep ever since. Over twelve hours when he left for the gym.

He still couldn’t fathom how Lucy’s mom could make her pregnant daughter sleep on the couch. He knew they didn’t get along well, but that was just cruel. If she didn’t want to give up her own bed, couldn’t she have at least sprung for an air mattress? He didn’t know much about the woman. Lucy’s family was an off-limits subject, but meeting her mom seemed inevitable now that he was about to be the father of her grandchild.

It still hadn’t completely sunk in that in three months he was going to be somebody’s parent. He and Lucy still had so much to talk about, so many decisions to make. He wasn’t even sure where to begin.

Tony’s secretary buzzed him. “Rob and Nick are here. They say it’s urgent.”

He sighed. And so it begins.

With a sigh of resignation, he looked at the time on his computer monitor. Nine-fifteen. That hadn’t taken long. “Send them in.”

Here we go—round one.

The door opened and his cousins stepped into his office. It was hard to believe that just six months ago they had all been childless bachelors. Now two of them were married and all three were expecting babies. And it was all because of Nonno.

“So,” Nick said, making himself comfortable in the chair opposite Tony’s desk. “Should I clear my calendar?”

“For what?”

“Your next wedding,” Rob said, standing behind Nick, his arms folded.

As if. “Don’t hold your breath.”

Nick looked surprised. “You’re not going to marry her? Mr. Responsibility? You always do the right thing.”

“As far along as she is, I figured you would have set a date by now,” Rob told him.

“I’m working on it.”

“Did you find out why she left?” Nick asked. “And why it took her so long to tell you about the baby?”

“And are you sure it’s yours?” Rob said.

“Yes, I’m sure that it’s mine. As for why she left, and why she came back when she did, that is between her and me.”

“I assume she’s claiming that it was an accident,” Rob said.

“It was an accident. Lucy wasn’t any more anxious than I was to settle down.”

Rob came back with, “Or so she says.”

“It’s the truth.”

“How can you be sure?” Nick asked. “Maybe this is some elaborate setup.”

Lucy didn’t have a devious bone in her body. “It’s not. She had every intention of going back to Florida last night. She didn’t even bring a change of clothes.”

“Maybe she was betting you would ask her to stay.”

“Ask? I practically had to beg her to stay in Chicago and move in with me. She flat-out refused to marry me.”

“You proposed?” Rob said.

Tony nodded. “I told her I thought it was best for the baby.”

Nick’s eyebrows rose. “And she said no? I can’t imagine why.”

“I know how it sounds, but Lucy made it very clear from the time we met that she doesn’t want anything exclusive. She’s incredibly independent, not to mention practical. Sentiments of love would only scare her farther away.”

“Is it a boy?” Rob asked.

“We don’t know yet.”

“If it is?” Nick said.

“Yes, I’m taking the money. Why wouldn’t I?” It was his ticket to freedom. It would benefit him, Lucy and the baby.

“How’s that going to happen if she won’t marry you?”

“You have to understand, it’s different for us. You guys are happily married to women you love. You gave up millions of dollars to prove that to them.”

“You don’t love Lucy?” Nick asked.

“What I feel is irrelevant. But I do know how Lucy feels, and she happens to be the one calling all the shots right now.”

“So you’re just going to live together?” Rob asked.

“For now. At least until the baby is born.”

“Then what?”

“She’s been back less than twenty-four hours. We haven’t planned that far ahead yet. We have time.”

“You think so?” Nick said.

“Yes, I do.”

“Terri is barely showing and she already has the kid on a waiting list for preschool.”

Preschool? “No way.”

“It’s not like it was when we were kids,” Rob said. “For any hope of getting a kid into a good college, you have to get them into a good private primary school first, and to do that they have to go to the right preschool.”

Tony wasn’t even sure if he would want to put his child in private school. As a kid, he would have given anything to go to public school, if for no other reason than to have a little privacy, and anonymity. Any childhood mishaps or embarrassments had been fodder for the entire family. Every time he tried to shirk the rules, it always got back to his parents somehow. He’d had no choice but to behave. Not that he would have been a delinquent otherwise, but being the second oldest cousin—Nick’s sister Jessica beating him out by a year and a half—he’d been held to a higher standard his entire life.

“They look up to you,” his dad used to tell him, and being the oldest of the three brothers, Antonio Sr. understood sacrifice. “It’s your responsibility to set a good example.”

That’s how it was in the Caroselli family. No sacrifice was too large. Working for Caroselli Chocolate hadn’t been Tony’s first choice as a career. It hadn’t been his second or third, either, but he fell in line, because that was what families did. Or so he used to think. He was getting tired of playing by their rules.

He was inching closer to forty every day. When did he get to start living his life the way he wanted to? When he was Nonno’s age?

“I think Lucy and I will just have to take this one day at a time,” he told his cousins. “Which would be much easier to do if everyone would just give us the time and the space we need to figure this out.”

“Everyone means well,” Nick said.

That didn’t change the fact that they were only making things more stressful.

“There’s another matter we came to talk to you about,” Rob said. “We have concerns about Rose.”

Rose Goldwyn, the daughter of Nonno’s secretary, had come to them last fall looking for a job. Because of her mother, Phyllis’s, twenty-plus years of dedicated service to Caroselli Chocolate, they’d felt obligated to hire her. Unfortunately, Rose was nothing like her mother. She did her job, but unlike Phyllis, who had been like a part of the Caroselli family until she retired, Rose didn’t fit in. There was something about her that just seemed a little...off. Lately Tony had come to realize that it was an opinion shared by a good majority of the family, and most of her coworkers.

“Megan pulled me aside yesterday,” Rob told him. Megan, Rob’s younger sister, had just bought her first home and brought Rose in as her roommate. “She said she’s a little creeped out by Rose’s recent behavior.”

“Recent behavior? She’s creeped me out since the day she was hired,” Nick said. He was one of those guys who got along with practically everyone. If he thought something was off about Rose, they would be wise to listen.

“Meg said that Rose seems unusually interested in the family,” Rob told them. “She asks a lot of questions about Nonno and Nonna.”

“What kind of questions?” Tony asked.

“What they were like, did they have a good marriage?”

That was odd. “What does she care about our grandparents’ marriage? How could that possibly be relevant to her?”

“It gets stranger. She asked if Meg had any old family movies.”

“I suppose this would be a good time to mention that Terri and I caught her coming from the direction of Nonno’s study on the day of our wedding,” Nick said. “Rose claimed she was looking for the bathroom and got lost, but then she scurried down the stairs without using the bathroom. I figured she was just nervous being at a family function for the first time. It can be a little overwhelming for an outsider. But Terri was convinced that she was lying.”

Rob muttered a curse. “A couple of months ago Carrie caught Rose red-handed trying to jimmy the lock on my dad’s office door.”

And they were just hearing about this now? “I would think you might have mentioned something as important as someone breaking into the CEO’s office,” Tony said.

“She claimed there was a paper in there that she needed, something my dad’s secretary left for her. She said she forgot to grab it before my dad left and locked his office. She was afraid she would get into trouble if she didn’t take care of it. Then out of the blue she got a call saying she didn’t need to do it after all.”

“Sounds like she always has an excuse.”

“Carrie said she looked guilty.”

“All the more reason to report it,” Nick said.

“I didn’t want to get Rose in trouble if she hadn’t done anything wrong. I meant to look into it, then we found out that Carrie was pregnant, and I totally forgot to follow through.”

“Understandable,” Nick said.

“No kidding,” Tony mumbled, and Rob chuckled.

“Do we even know for sure that Rose is Phyllis’s daughter?” Nick asked. “It’s not like we can ask Phyllis since she’s dead. Rose could be an impostor. She could be a spy going after company secrets. She could be an undercover reporter working on an exposé.”

“An exposé about chocolate?” Tony couldn’t think of anything less interesting. “Why? Or is there something else going on here that I don’t know about?”

“If there is, I don’t know about it, either,” Rob said. “I only know that Meg is worried. And that has me worried.”

“We could take it to our parents, tell them what we know,” Nick said.

“Why don’t we do a little digging first?” Rob said. “I don’t want to get her in trouble if her only crime is being a little odd.”

“It’s your call,” Tony told him.

“Give me a week or two,” Rob said.

Tony found himself hoping that Rob did discover some nefarious activity. With any luck it would take the focus off him for a while. At least until he figured out what to do. Lucy would marry him eventually, of that he was positive. It was just a matter of wearing her down and making her see reason.

* * *

The rich and salty scent of frying bacon woke Lucy from a deep sleep with a smile on her face. Tony almost always made her breakfast when she spent the night. Even if he only had time to toast bread or pour her a bowl of cereal before he left for work. He kept her favorite kind around for such occasions, which had been more frequent in the weeks before she left.

Until just now, Lucy had never stopped to consider what a nice gesture that was. In fact, he did an awful lot of nice things for her. She couldn’t help feeling that she’d taken him for granted.

She wouldn’t be making that mistake again.

She pried her lids open and looked at the clock. She blinked several times, sure that her eyes were playing tricks on her. It couldn’t possibly be 11:30 a.m. That would mean that she’d slept for almost eighteen hours.

On the bedside table her phone chirped, alerting her that she had new text message. She reached over and grabbed it.

Ugh.

There were half a dozen text messages. All from her mom.

Lucy had taken the coward’s way out last night. Instead of calling, she’d messaged her mom to say that she wouldn’t need a lift from the airport after all, and she’d be staying in Chicago a little longer than expected.

How long and with who? had been her mom’s immediate response.

As tempting as it was to throw her mom’s words back at her—wouldn’t marry a woman like me, my ass—that sort of thing always seemed to blow up in her face. After careful consideration, Lucy decided that it wouldn’t be worth the temporary feeling of satisfaction. The less her mom knew at this point, the better.

She texted back, A friend, not sure how long, no time to discuss it. If Lucy believed for a second her mom was concerned for her well-being, she would have answered. She knew better.

She rolled out of bed and looked around for her clothes, then remembered that Tony had offered to wash them for her. He must have forgotten to take them out of the dryer.

She grabbed his flannel robe from the back of the closet door where he’d always kept it. The scent of his soap and aftershave tickled her nose as she pulled it on over the white undershirt he’d given her to wear last night. While the shirt was so huge it hung to just above her knees, the robe didn’t quite make it all the way around her tummy.

With the baby doing aerobics on her bladder, her first stop was the bathroom. Tony used to keep a hot pink toothbrush for her in the vanity drawer, but he wouldn’t have kept it all this time. Would he?

She slid the drawer open, gasping softly when she saw it lying there next to a brand-new tube of her favorite toothpaste. How did he remember that? And why keep her toothbrush if he was planning to marry someone else?

One thing at a time, she reminded herself. She brushed her teeth and finger-combed her hair into place. She had always worn her hair on the short side, but her current style, a messy-ish pixie cut, was by far the easiest to maintain, and she knew Tony liked it that way. Her mom claimed it made Lucy look like an elf. The way Lucy looked at it, the less she had to fuss over herself, the more time she would have to fuss over the baby.

Knowing they had much to discuss, Lucy was ravaged by nerves as she walked to the kitchen. To Tony. But as she rounded the corner and saw who it was standing at the stove, she wished she would have stayed in bed. She froze in the kitchen doorway, wondering if she could sneak back to the bedroom, but Tony’s mom must have had eyes in the back of her head.

“Sleep well?” she asked Lucy, still facing away, using a fork to lift several crispy slices of bacon from the pan onto a paper towel. On the counter beside the stove sat a plate with golden French toast made from thick, crusty, Italian bread. Just like the kind Tony used to make her.

Her mouth started to water and her stomach howled for nourishment.

“Where is Tony?” Lucy asked her. And what the heck are you doing here making me breakfast?

“He was gone when I got here,” she said, patting away the extra grease from the bacon with an edge of the paper towel. In slip-on flats, she was just about the same height as Lucy, but that was where any similarity ended.

“When was that?” Lucy asked.

“Thirty minutes ago, give or take.” She put the bacon on the plate and turned to Lucy, giving her a quick once-over, one brow slightly raised. “I hope you’re hungry.”

She held the plate out and Lucy took it, so nervous her hands were trembling. If his mom noticed, she was kind enough not to point it out. She gestured to the table and said, “Sit down. Eat it while it’s hot.”

Obediently Lucy sat. It was like her worst nightmare come true. Coming face-to-face with the mother of the man whose baby she was carrying, and doing it not only alone, but in his T-shirt and robe. Could this get any worse?

“Maybe I should call Tony,” Lucy said, tugging the robe tighter around her belly.

“Why don’t you and I chat for a while?” his mom said, taking a seat across from Lucy. “I’d like to know a little bit about my future daughter-in-law.”

Oh, boy, this was going to fun to explain. “Maybe we should wait for Tony.”

She dismissed the idea with a flutter of perfectly manicured nails, her smile patient yet firm. “Tell me about yourself. How did you meet my son?”

“We met at the bar where I was working,” she said, leaving it at that.

When Tony’s mom realized that was all Lucy planned to tell her, she asked, “How long have you been seeing each other?”

“Mrs. Caroselli—”

“It’s Sarah. Or Mom. Whichever you’re more comfortable with.”

Mom? She was sure she wasn’t ready for that. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. Tony and I, we’re not...we were never anything but friends. I know this will be hard to believe, but I didn’t come here intending to break up the wedding. I didn’t even know it was a wedding. I had heard that he was getting married and knew I should tell him about the baby. I was planning to go right back to Florida after I talked to him.”

Looking amused, Sarah said, “And how did Tony feel about that?”

She shifted in her seat. She didn’t want to offend Sarah, or come off as a bitch. Or even worse, seem as if she was hiding something. But it didn’t seem right talking about this without Tony present. “Suffice it to say that we have a lot to work out.”

“In other words, mind my own business,” Sarah said, looking more amused than angry.

“Sarah, I can only imagine what you must think of me. What your entire family must think.”

“Lucy...can I call you Lucy?”

“O-of course. Absolutely.”

“Take my word for it, anyone who saw the look on your face when you stepped into the room yesterday knew you were just as stunned to see us as we were to see you. I would say, considering my son’s reaction when he saw you, and his demand that you announce your business to everyone, you two must have a very complicated relationship.”

She had no idea.

“You don’t have to answer that,” she said. “Not only is it not my business, all that really matters to me is that you stopped my son from marrying that horrible woman.”


Four

Horrible woman? Lucy blinked in surprise. “You didn’t like Alice?”

“No one did. To be honest, I don’t even know if Tony liked her all that much. Or she him.”

What? “Why would they get married if they didn’t like each other?”

“That’s what everyone has been trying to figure out. We all assumed that she was pregnant.”

Lucy’s breath caught in her throat, and her stomach did a violent flip-flop. It had never occurred to her that Alice could be pregnant, too. It would explain the rushed marriage. But what were the odds that he would knock up two different women accidentally within months of each other? And would Tony let Alice go back to New York knowing she was carrying his child?

“Could she be?” Lucy asked, terrified that Sarah might actually say yes.

“When I saw the way she was slamming back champagne yesterday before the service, I came right out and asked her. She is not.”

Thank God.

“I was relieved as well. She never struck me as the maternal type,” Sarah said. “Children seemed to make her uncomfortable.”

“Not everyone is cut out to be a parent,” Lucy told her. “Some people are too selfish.”

“Some are indeed,” Sarah agreed. “But not you. I can tell.”

Lucy laid a hand on her tummy and a content smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “This baby means everything to me.”

“Do you know if it’s a boy or girl?”





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