by Kate Hewitt
‘Bedridden?’ Shocked alarm rippled through him. ‘Why?’
‘I had pre-eclampsia. Ella was born three weeks early by emergency Caesarean section as a result.’
And he’d had no idea about any of it. ‘You should have got in touch with me. I could have helped.’
‘You didn’t want to know,’ Maisie reminded him, but she sounded tired rather than angry about it. Guilt bit deep. He knew Maisie was right. It was his own fault for blanking Maisie when he should have listened to her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, his voice low.
She turned to him in surprise. ‘Wow, an apology. Something I didn’t realise you were capable of.’
Antonio stiffened. ‘I am certainly capable of apologising when needed—’
‘Do you apologise to all the people whose jobs you cut?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Is that what you think—?’
‘One newspaper nicknamed you “The Destroyer”.’
‘Like I said, I wouldn’t pay attention to tabloids.’
Maisie folded her arms across her chest. ‘Do you deny it?’
‘Now is not the time to talk about my business.’ He refused to explain himself or his actions. He certainly wasn’t going to justify them. ‘Why don’t you open the door?’
‘All right, but please be quiet. Ella is a very light sleeper.’
‘Fine.’
Maisie unlocked the door and stepped into the small living room. It was a shabby but homey room, with a couple of armchairs and a sofa. Baby toys were scattered across a throw rug on the floor. Her brother was sprawled asleep on the sofa and he started awake as they came in.
‘Maisie...’ His mouth dropped open as he took in Antonio standing behind his sister. ‘Who is this?’
‘It’s fine, Max.’ Maisie took a deep breath and dropped her bag and keys on a table by the door. ‘This is Antonio, Ella’s father.’
‘Ella’s—’
‘He’s leaving now.’
‘I want to see her first.’ His voice throbbed with urgency.
Maisie turned to him, fear in her eyes. ‘She’s asleep—’
‘I’ll be quiet. Don’t deny me this, Maisie. I haven’t even seen my own daughter yet.’ He paused, his gaze boring into hers. ‘Please.’
Pain flashed across Maisie’s face. Why was she so reluctant to let him into Ella’s life? What was she so afraid of? I know what kind of man you are. Antonio’s gut cramped at the memory. Maisie knew too much, and that was why she kept him at a distance. Yet he couldn’t let his own failures and weaknesses stand in the way of a relationship with his daughter. That much he knew—in his bones, and in his heart.
‘All right,’ Maisie said quietly, and she beckoned him down a narrow hall, pausing outside the door. ‘Please be quiet,’ she whispered.
‘I said I would.’
Maisie pushed the door open with her fingertips and then tiptoed in, Antonio following behind, holding his breath. The room was small, its limited space taken up by a double bed and a cot next to it. Antonio’s gaze took in the rumpled duvet on the bed and the feminine pyjamas crumpled on the floor, before he trained it on the tiny, perfect form in the cot.
He crept forward, his heart pounding hard as he looked down at his daughter. She lay on her back, one tiny fist flung up by her face, her wispy baby curls as dark as his own hair, sable lashes feathering her plump cheeks. If Antonio had had any notion to confirm his fatherhood with a paternity test, it evaporated in view of Ella. She was so very clearly his, from the dark hair to the tiny cleft in her chin. Her breath came out in a sigh, and Antonio’s heart clenched with love, painful but good. So good.
‘Ella.’ He whispered it, just to hear the name on his tongue. To claim ownership, or at least begin to. Gently he reached down and with one fingertip he stroked her soft, round cheek.
‘Antonio...’
‘She’s still asleep.’ He glanced at Maisie standing next to the cot, her hands clasped together as she chewed her lip. She looked uncertain and fearful but also emotional. The three of them were a family, whether they wanted to be or not. That much Antonio knew.
Slowly he backed away from the cot, and Maisie followed him out of the room. Back in the living room Max was standing by the tiny alcove kitchen, looking mutinous. Maisie just looked tired.
‘I’ll go now,’ Antonio said shortly. ‘But I’ll be back tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow—’
‘We have much to discuss, Maisie. You know that.’ She acknowledged this with a jerky nod of her head. ‘I’ll pick you and Ella up at ten in the morning,’ Antonio told her. ‘And then we’ll start making decisions.’ His tone was final and commanding, and Maisie flinched as she nodded again, her chin jutted out at a stubborn angle, but she didn’t disagree.
Antonio glanced at Max, who was glaring at him, and then back at Maisie. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he said. As he left he didn’t know whether it had been a threat or a promise, or which Maisie had taken it as.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MAISIE PLACED ELLA, just fed and content at least for a few minutes, on a soft pink blanket before hurrying around in a pointless attempt to tidy up the apartment’s tiny living space.
She’d barely slept last night, her mind racing from all the revelations, spinning in constant circles as she tried to second-guess what Antonio would want. How much he would demand. And how much she would be willing to give, although whether she’d have any choice was another matter.
Max had wanted answers from her, but she’d been too tired and overwhelmed to explain. Before he’d gone to work this morning, he’d insisted that she not make any rash decisions. ‘We can consult a lawyer, Maisie. This Antonio guy doesn’t have all the power.’
‘But he is Ella’s father, Max,’ Maisie said quietly. ‘I can’t deny him access to his daughter on moral grounds, never mind legal ones.’ Which left her with a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. Would Antonio really insist that he have Ella for half the year? It seemed inconceivable, and yet she knew he was ‘Ruthless Rossi’. The man was capable of anything, and he had destroyed lives without so much as a flicker of an eyelid. One article had detailed the five hundred jobs he’d ruthlessly cut when a company had hired him to manage a hostile takeover.
Ella started to stir and fuss just as the doorbell rang. Maisie straightened, sparing her flustered reflection a single glance in the mirror. Her face was flushed, her hair wilder than usual, and she had not one but two stains on the fresh sweater she’d put on that morning.
Grimacing, she went to the intercom and buzzed Antonio up. As soon as he entered the room she felt the need to take a step back, to draw a breath. He was so much. Had he always been this tall, looked this strong? He wore a navy-blue suit with a paler blue shirt and a cobalt tie that made his eyes look even bluer. Everything about him was sharp and magnetic and powerful.
He smelled of the woodsy aftershave Maisie remembered from a year ago, and just like that she was back in that darkened office, her body at his delicious mercy. That was the last thing she wanted to be thinking of now.
From her place on the blanket Ella let out a cry of protest at being ignored, and Maisie went to scoop her up, grateful for the distraction.
‘What’s wrong with her?’ Antonio asked as Ella continued to fuss.
‘Nothing’s wrong with her. She’s just a baby. That’s how they are.’
‘Hmm.’ Antonio surveyed her, Ella cradled against her chest. ‘I don’t know anything about babies, to be honest.’
‘I didn’t, either, before Ella,’ Maisie admitted with a wry laugh. ‘It’s been a steep learning curve.’
‘I’m sure.’ He thrust his hands in the pockets of his trousers, looking ill at ease and incongruous in her tiny, shabby apartment. Maisie stroked Ella’s downy hair, wondering what had driven Antonio to step up as a father. It seemed,
she had to admit, a little out of character.
‘So has it sunk in?’ she asked after a moment, once Ella had settled down. ‘That you’re a father?’
‘I don’t know if it will ever sink in properly.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘I suppose it should have crossed my mind, considering we didn’t use birth control.’
A blush stole over her cheeks at the blatant reminder of that one life-changing and emotional night. ‘I suppose we had other things on our minds.’
‘I assumed you were on the pill, but obviously that was not an assumption I should have made.’ He rubbed his jaw, clearly uncomfortable. ‘I’m just trying to explain why it didn’t cross my mind that you could have fallen pregnant.’
‘I don’t have an explanation,’ Maisie answered with a laugh, trying to lighten the mood. Already her body felt prickly and oversensitive, flashes of memory from that night going through her mind like streaks of lightning. She shifted Ella to her other shoulder. ‘Naivety, perhaps.’
Antonio frowned. ‘Naivety?’
Maisie’s blush deepened, and she considered bluffing it out, but then decided it didn’t matter any more. She wasn’t about to invent some imaginary string of lovers to save face. ‘I hadn’t had many, or any, experiences of one-night stands, or anything like that. Birth control had never been an issue.’
‘Why not?’
Was he really so dense that he couldn’t figure out what she was saying? Fine, then she would spell it out. ‘Because I was a virgin, Antonio.’
Antonio’s expression froze for a second, and then his brows snapped together, his eyes piercingly bright as they arrowed in on her. ‘A virgin?’ He sounded completely incredulous.
‘Yes.’ She laughed, shaking her head. ‘You sound surprised. I thought you might have realised, I suppose. Can’t men tell? I thought you’d have guessed at least, because I was so clumsy.’
‘You weren’t clumsy.’
‘I felt like it. I had no idea what I was doing.’ She turned away, embarrassed by how frank they were both being, as well as how many memories were rushing through her, a tangle of sensual images that made her pulse start to skyrocket. ‘Anyway, that’s why I didn’t think about birth control.’
Antonio was silent for a tense moment. ‘I didn’t realise you were a virgin,’ he said at last.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It does,’ he insisted in a low voice. ‘If I’d known...’
‘What?’ She tried for light and missed, but something kept her going. ‘You wouldn’t have touched me? You would have found a bed? Lit a couple of candles?’
‘I don’t know,’ Antonio admitted. ‘But it would have made a difference.’
‘It’s all in the past now, and we don’t need to discuss it or even think of it any more,’ Maisie said as firmly as she could. ‘What we need to think about is Ella, and what’s best for her.’
‘I agree. And what is best for her is surely to live with both of her parents.’
Maisie’s heart lurched at his implacable tone. ‘And how is that meant to happen?’
Ella had started to fuss again, and without even realising it Maisie began to do the jiggling and deep knee-bend routine that she’d discovered, through many fraught and sleepless nights, helped her daughter to settle.
‘What are you doing?’ Antonio asked, his eyebrows raised in incredulity.
He was looking at her as if she was mad, and Maisie supposed she did look a little strange, jiggling Ella about while she performed squats.
‘It helps her settle.’
‘How did you figure that one out?’
‘Trial and error.’
Antonio’s expression softened, surprising her. ‘It sounds like it’s been challenging.’
‘It has, but I wouldn’t change a thing. Not even for a second.’
‘I believe you.’ He glanced around the living room again, and then back to her. Maisie watched him warily, unsure what was coming. ‘Why don’t we go out? It’s a beautiful spring day. Does Ella have a pram?’
‘A stroller, yes. She likes being in it usually.’
‘All the better. We can talk as we walk. Is there a park near by?’
‘Fort Tryon Park isn’t too far away,’ Maisie suggested. ‘I sometimes take Ella there.’
‘Right, then, that’s what we’ll do.’ Antonio gave a decisive nod. ‘What can I do to help you get her ready?’
* * *
It felt entirely surreal and strange to be strolling down one of the neighbourhood’s wide avenues towards the leafy green park in the distance, Maisie next to him, Ella in her pram. Did the people glancing their way think they were a family? Were they?
It was so odd. For ten years, since his brother’s death, Antonio had kept himself solitary. Yes, he’d had flings and affairs, but no one had ever meant anything to him. No one had come close enough to know him. Until Maisie.
That night she’d slipped under his defences and it was what had made him pretend he didn’t know her. What had kept him tossing and turning last night, wondering how he could honour his responsibility to his daughter—which he intended to do utterly—and still keep Maisie at a safe distance. He needed to somehow find a way.
They strolled through the park, along winding paths and through verdant meadows and copses of trees, the sun shining high above them. Perched on a craggy outlook was a medieval-looking building Antonio had never seen before.
‘It’s part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,’ Maisie explained when he asked. ‘A reconstructed medieval monastery called the Cloisters.’
As they walked along, Ella kicked her chubby legs in the stroller as she blinked up at the sunshine.
‘She likes the movement, I think,’ Maisie said. ‘She always wants to be moving, whether it’s me jiggling her or in her stroller. She loves riding on the bus.’
‘Tell me about her,’ Antonio urged, the need to know more about his daughter nearly overwhelming. ‘Your pregnancy and her birth; everything.’
Maisie glanced at him in surprise. ‘I thought you wanted to talk about the future?’
‘First I want to know about the past.’
‘All right,’ she said slowly, and then she began to tell him all the things he’d missed, all the things he hadn’t even realised had been happening. Her debilitating morning sickness, which she tried to make light of, but which Antonio could tell had been horrible; the onset of pre-eclampsia in the third trimester.
‘My ankles swelled up like balloons,’ Maisie said with a grimace. ‘I felt awful. That’s when I left school.’
‘Do you miss it?’
She paused, pursing her lips in thought. ‘Honestly? Not as much as I thought I would. Not as much as I feel I should, and that makes me feel guilty.’
‘Why?’
She shrugged. ‘Because it was all I was working towards. Taking care of Max, making sure he got to go to college, keeping us afloat... The whole time going to Juilliard was what drove me. I’d finally get there one day, and then everything would make sense somehow. But it didn’t quite feel like that.’
‘What did it feel like?’
Maisie let out a little laugh. ‘You really want to know this?’
‘Yes,’ Antonio answered, the word surprisingly heartfelt. ‘Yes, I do.’
They were walking along a path high above the Hudson River, and Maisie glanced down at the water glinting and sparkling below, her forehead creased in thought. ‘It felt like instead of arriving at the top of the mountain, I was at the bottom. And this time there were lots of other climbers, elbowing each other out of the way.’ She sighed and shook her head. ‘The truth is, I’m just not cut out for that kind of competitive, cut-throat environment. Everyone else put performance first in their lives, and I’ve always put people first. I couldn’t make the change.’
‘Perhaps that doesn’
t have to be negative.’
‘It isn’t,’ Maisie declared with a spark of challenge. ‘Of course it isn’t. I made a choice willingly, deliberately. I’ll never regret taking care of Max, and I certainly don’t regret this little one.’ She gazed down at Ella, her face softening in love as she looked at her daughter. Ella’s eyelids were fluttering closed, one tiny fist flung up by her face.
Antonio gazed in rapture and wonder at his daughter, and then back at Maisie. She still looked pale and tired, but also very lovely with the sun gilding her hair in gold, wild curls dancing about her heart-shaped face. The freckles he remembered from before were scattered across her nose. Her figure had been made softer and rounder by motherhood, and she seemed more womanly, and yes, more alluring.
Even now, especially now, Antonio desired her. Knowing she had brought his child into the world only piqued his desire rather than lessened it, a fact which was both undeniable and inconvenient.
Maisie’s expression turned serious as she gazed down at Ella. ‘But what we really need to talk about is the future, Antonio.’ She drew a quick breath. ‘I know it’s a shock to discover you have a daughter, and I applaud your instinct to take responsibility—’
‘Applaud?’ Antonio repeated. He didn’t like the sound of that. He saw how Maisie’s mouth had compressed, her eyes narrowing, her body stiff. She looked as if she was squaring up for a fight.
‘You want to do the right thing—’
‘You make me sound so noble,’ Antonio drawled. ‘Really, I’m overwhelmed.’
‘What I’m trying to say is, I get it.’
‘I really don’t think you do.’
She sighed impatiently, brushing a strand of red-gold hair away from her face. ‘Look, there’s no way Ella could ever fit into your life, not properly. And it’s not fair of you to demand joint custody just because you feel it’s the right thing to do, or maybe because you’re mad at me for keeping her from you—’
‘You think I would ask for joint custody simply out of some kind of revenge?’ Her opinion of him continued to fall, it seemed, and yet he could hardly blame her.
