He’d called her a dreamer and they’d shared a sparkling moment of rapport as she grinned cheekily at him. Her amusing remark had been a decent attempt at throwing people off the scent, but he couldn’t escape the fact that since New York, she’d been speaking her mind very frankly to him.
He watched her balance against the sofa to remove her shoes and felt like he was the one who needed to brace himself as his view of Lauren tilted and realigned. She was careful about showing her feelings because she was sensitive, not manipulative. She put ailing old ladies and the reputation of an unfaithful husband ahead of her own needs. She did what felt right, not what was easy. Telling him about the baby hadn’t been necessary. She could have left him to ride out the smudge on his reputation while rearing the baby alone. She had enough money—not his kind of money, but enough. She didn’t need him or any man.#p#????#e#
What if she’d chosen not to contact him? A frisson of fear took him in a delicate grip and squeezed.
“Do you mind if I go straight to bed?” Lauren covered a yawn then spoke from behind her hand when she noticed Paolo staring at her as though he’d never seen her before. “Is everything all right?”
“Your bag should be down here.” He shuddered slightly, as though pulling himself back from somewhere unpleasant.
Perhaps the day had been long for him, as well. He seemed pale and strained. In shock almost. Disturbed, Lauren chattered mindlessly as she followed him. “Dinners with my family are like a court proceeding. Growing up I always envied people like you. All I wanted was to be part of a family who loved each other like that.”
He pressed open a door. “Now you can have it,” he said with quiet but thunderous impact.
Lauren paused in the doorway, all but blind to the luxury of the guest suite and its decor of terra-cotta reds and mustard yellows. He had no idea how much she longed to be part of his family.
To hide her yearning, she wrinkled her nose and grinned at him with forced lightness. “Afraid the good looks, money and power aren’t enough? You’re throwing in your uncle’s stories and your mother’s ravioli? I never eat like that.” She patted her middle as she moved into the room. “Where do you put it?”
He didn’t say anything. She looked at him and his stare held a strange light that was nearly frightening in its intensity. She interpreted it as a demand for an answer.
“Don’t think I’m not tempted.” Lauren looked at fingers that knotted themselves together. “But saying yes makes everything real. I’ll put that off as long as I can. It’s been hard enough telling you and bearing your reaction.” She couldn’t help the edge of rebuke in her tone.
A flinch of compunction flashed across his face, leaving his brows knotted.
“I dread telling Mom,” Lauren admitted. “Anyone else would be tickled to finally have a grandchild, but all she’ll see is the timing. I should have been thinking about her that night in Charleston, you know, not myself,” she said with a rasp of sarcasm. “She’ll threaten to disown me.”
In Charleston. Paolo’s head went back as the words seemed to slap him. Lauren’s bitter heartache was so uncouched and real. Helpless protectiveness ran through him. He didn’t want to be the cause of a rift between her and her mother. He didn’t want their child to be. It struck him that never once over the past few days had he felt fear of his family’s reaction to her pregnancy.
Lauren didn’t have that sense of acceptance. All her little asides about her mother culminated in a picture that showed Paolo how much having this baby was costing her. Involving him made her situation infinitely more complicated, her troubles greater, not easier to bear.
Lauren had come to him for one reason only. He was the father of her baby and her personal ethics demanded she let him know that. Shame swamped him that he had rejected her word and resisted accepting his child for even one moment. At the same time, the reality of impending fatherhood suffused him in a mist of shocked numbness. He barely heard Lauren as she untied her scarf and continued speaking.
“When I found out I was pregnant, I actually considered telling her it was Ryan’s. Pretend I went to a fertility clinic. She’d still hate me though.”
“No,” Paolo blurted out, appalled. He never should have left her vulnerable and coping alone for three months, nursing such desperate thoughts. He should have been with her from Charleston on.
“No, she wouldn’t actually hate me,” she agreed with a nervous glance at him for his vehemence. “But she’d act like she did. I can tell you right now, we could marry in her living room and she’d refuse to come to the wedding. She won’t condone it.