She wanted to laugh, then. Laugh and cry and run up to hug him. The rest of the congregation fell away and no one existed in this cavernous church but the two of them as she came to a halt before him.
She was lucky, so lucky, to have him. Lucky to have passion and a devoted father for her child. It was all she truly needed.
It would have to be, because it was all they had.
* * *
Their special day was paved with rice and rose petals, but Angelo felt like the fraud he was.
His first dalliance with Pia had been just that, a pleasurable encounter that had been as pure as something that earthy and erotic could be. It had been free of ulterior motives, at least.
Then, when her pregnancy pulled them into a forced engagement, he hadn’t cared what sort of uproar his appearance in her life might cause. In fact, he had embraced making waves in her patrician pond.
He hadn’t cared because he hadn’t cared. Now he was realizing how much his presence in her life was costing her. The greater the stakes became, the more it bothered him. He sure as hell wouldn’t have allowed Darius anywhere near her if he could have avoided it.
He kept trying to forget that night even as moments from it flashed into his memory—the snubbing at the door, Darius’s punishing truth that Angelo would never be anything but the ill-begotten bastard he was.
Pia’s revelation that she was putting herself through this trial for him. Yes, their end goal was the best life for their child, but he could spirit her and their baby to America and skip all this nonsense if they had to. He’d been ready to quit Europe altogether that evening. He was neither beholden nor sentimentally attached to his birthplace. He lived on the island in the Med because the climate suited him.
Pia, antisocial science nerd that she was, had an inner badass, though. One who came to the fore when she decided she wanted something. She had kept him at the party until midnight when he would have happily left minutes after his confrontation with Darius. She had circulated with her hand tucked firmly into his, smoothing any lasting rough edges, cementing their position as a power couple well above whatever basement level of hell his brothers might have slithered back into.
Much as Angelo was loath to care about such a puerile victory, it meant something to him that Pia had refused to give up on getting it for him. He was still stunned. Moved.
But somehow, in the crashing of his old world into his new one, his shell of anger had been shaken, crumbling enough to expose the shame beneath. Shame that leaked into a bigger stain as he realized he was pulling an innocent—no, two innocents—into the mire of his origin story.
He had gone to bed that night convinced he should break things off with her. Of course, he’d made love to her the very next morning, before they were properly awake. Her soft, questing hands and receptive scent had got to him the way she always did.
Trying to leave after that would have been the height of callousness. He couldn’t bring himself to do it anyway. Every time he tried to set some boundaries between them, she did some small thing he found charming and disarming or revealed a hidden tidbit about herself that roused the protector in him. He kept wondering who would keep the vagaries of life from knocking her around if he wasn’t there to shield her?
He was becoming dependent on her in his own way, which was equally concerning. He liked her. She made him laugh and made him feel strong and necessary and powerful. She made him think and believe he was a better man than he was.
His palms were sweating as she walked down the aisle toward him, conscience heavy with the knowledge he was binding her to disgrace purely to feed this craving in him to have her by his side. Always.
The churn of cement in his gut didn’t stop until they were pronounced husband and wife. Even then, he had to wonder how long it would take such a brilliant mind to realize she’d made a terrible mistake.
CHAPTER TEN
GIVEN THEIR RUSHED SCHEDULE, they had held their wedding midweek, the day before Pia’s twelve-week scan. Her specialist appointment was the last thing on her calendar before she had two solid weeks of nothing to do, but she would have given up a kidney to stay in bed this morning.
“I should have canceled it,” Angelo said when she yawned again, s
hivering with the force of it. “Or moved it to a later time.”
“No.” She fought another yawn. “Let’s get this done and start our honeymoon. I’m looking forward to it.”
He left a beat of silence for her to hear her own words. “Again, I wanted to stay in bed.”
Now she was blushing, but she was pleased he was the teasing lover she saw so rarely these days. The car pulled into the underground entrance to the clinic and the interior of the car went into shadow. Seconds later Angelo slid out. He reached to help her, all humor gone from his expression as they hurried inside, hoping not to be spotted.
Speculation was rife that this was the reason for their rushed wedding, so she wasn’t sure why they bothered. Twenty minutes later, they were reassured everything was fine. They could make their announcement and end all this secrecy.
She barely heard, too awestruck by the grayscale image with the fluttering heartbeat. She felt her hand grasped and squeezed. She dragged her gaze away and saw Angelo’s eyes were damp as he fixated on the screen.
He met her gaze and his expression turned indescribably tender. He used his knuckle to brush away a tear on her cheek that she hadn’t realized had brimmed and spilled over.
“I don’t know why I’m so overcome,” she said with a crooked smile. “It’s biology. This is how reproduction happens.”
“You’re making us a little miracle.” He caressed her jaw and looked back at the screen.