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All of the vulnerability he had made her feel back in the hotel room was over now. She was impervious to it. Impervious to him.
One.
She stepped off the bottom stair and looked up. Rocco was there, his dark eyes clashing with hers, his hand extended toward her.
She sucked in a sharp breath, her heart hammering hard, her stomach twisting.
“So pleased you could join me,” he said, appraising her slowly. “I knew that color would suit you.”
“You can’t imagine how relieved I am that you approve of my appearance. I was deeply concerned.”
“Come now, must everything be a fight?” He kept his hand extended. “Take my hand.”
“No thank you, I can walk just fine. Probably better without you leading me off a cliff. Oh, look. I suppose everything does have to be a fight.”
He arched a brow and lowered his hand. “Dinner is back this way on the terrace. And while it does overlook a cliff, I have no desire to walk you off it.”
“You expect me to trust you? I don’t trust anyone,” she said, following him through the expensive living area, her shoes loud on the marble floor.
“I see. And why is it that you don’t trust anyone? Because I find that a curious stance for someone like yourself. I could understand a victim of yours no longer trusting people.”
“I don’t have victims,” she said, her tone crisp. “They’re called marks.”
“Admitting something?”
“No,” she said, looking away, her heart beating a bit faster, “I’m not.”
“You will not convince me of your innocence. You might as well drop the denial.”
She rolled her eyes. “So I should give you a full, signed confession?”
“You could start by simply answering my question.”
“Why don’t I trust people? Because I see what happens when you trust people. My father is a con man. He always has been. The quality time I remember with my dad consisted of running scams that required playing on people’s sympathy for children. Not exactly a weekend at the ballpark. Why would I trust people?”
He pushed open the double doors that led outside to an expansive terrace that overlooked the ocean. He turned to face her, his lean figure backlit by the sun. “You shouldn’t trust people. At least not in my experience. Certainly don’t trust me.”
She followed him outside, to a table that was set for two. There was a Mediterranean platter including olives and various other Italian delights, a basket of bread, a glass of wine for him and water for her.
“Oh, I don’t trust you.”
He pulled her chair out and indicated that he wanted her to sit. “Good. I don’t need you to trust me. I simply need you to stay with me. Sit.”
She kept her eyes on his and she obeyed his command, deciding that in this instance, it wouldn’t do any good to push against him. “What do you mean you want to keep me?”
“I have done some thinking. I want to be in my child’s life. And I want you to be in the child’s life. You see, I was denied both my parents at a very early age. I cannot knowingly do the same to my own flesh and blood.”
“Well, I...I feel the same way. At least as far as I’m concerned.” It was the truth. Growing up without a mother, it had never been an option for her to give her child up. Knowing that her mother had left her with a con artist for a father and never bothered to contact her again, had caused Charity pain all of her life. Doing the same to her own child was unthinkable.
“Then it is decided. Shall we set a wedding date?”
“I am not marrying you.”
He waved a hand. “Marriage is not necessary. I’m flexible on that score. But I do think we should share a household, don’t you? It would only be jarring for the child to bounce back and forth between your tiny apartment and one of my homes.”
“Are you suggesting we live together?”
“If you refuse to marry me, cohabitation works just as well.”
“But...I don’t understand. You can’t possibly want a relationship with me.”
“Of course I don’t.” He tossed the words out casually, no venom in his tone at all. “I don’t care about you at all. Except in the context of what you mean to our baby. Even if we were to marry we would continue to conduct our lives separately.”
“I don’t want to marry you.”
“I did not say I wanted to marry you,” he said, taking a seat across from her. “Only that I feel it is an option.”
She studied him hard. “You believe me. About the baby?”
“Yes.”
“And you want the baby. You want to be a father.”
“I am going to be a father. That means I...have to be one,” he said, sounding slightly less confident than he typically did.
“Why did you change your mind?”
“I lived in Rome when I was a boy.” He leaned back in his chair and picked up his glass of wine, swirling the liquid inside slowly. “We lived in a very poor neighborhood. I never knew my father. I woke up one morning and the house was empty. Everything had been taken. And there were strangers there. My mother was gone. And I kept asking them where she was, but no one would answer me. I found out later that she was killed on her way home from work. I assume the landlord took all of our possessions and left me alone. But I don’t know the details, and things like that are always difficult to sort through. Childhood memories. The recollections of a five-year-old are not always clear. But I know what it means to be alone. I know what it is like to feel lost.” There was a faraway look in his dark eyes, a deep well that she could not see the bottom of. So different to the flatness that was usually there. “I do not wish that for our child. I wish for them to have a full house. I wish for them to have both of us. If he wakes in the middle of the night I do not want him to be alone.”
Her chest tightened to the point of discomfort. She looked down at her plate, picked up an olive and rolled it in between her thumb and forefinger. Emotions made her uncomfortable. Especially the emotions of other people. In her experience connecting was dangerous. Empathy was dangerous. It had made it impossible to do what her father asked growing up. Because if she started to think too deeply about what other people would feel when they discovered they had been cheated, she had to contend with her conscience.
And if ever she connected with people, it only dissolved once the con ended and she had to run.
It was why she could never engage herself. Why she had to play a character wholly and completely, so that she was wrapped in it, so the real her was protected.
But she found that she was not protected now. She was not distant. Because it was too easy to picture a lonely boy in an empty house. Because she had felt that, too.
“Some nights,” she said, questioning the words even as she spoke them, “my father would go to events, and he could not bring me with him. He would tell me to lock the doors, not open them for anyone. We had a password. So when he came home in the early hours of the morning, he would say it, and I would know not to be afraid. But sometimes he didn’t come home. And I would be by myself all night. Normally I would sleep through it, but sometimes I would wake up, go get a glass of water, something like that. And the house was so empty. It’s a very scary feeling late at night.” She met his gaze. “I don’t want that for our child, either. I want what you want.”
Her stomach twisted hard. She didn’t really want to deal with him, because he frightened her. Because he had used her. Because he had scraped away the layers of rock she kept between herself