“Ni-ni, mommy,” Ben obliged, and when Emma set him down on the paved terracotta tiles he toddled over to Grace and wrapped his arms around her legs. She scooped down and lifted him up, burying kisses in his curling brown hair and breathing him in. “Ti amo.”
“Dee-arma,” he repeated, and Grace laughed, the words so sweet.
“Aw! Did he just speak his first Italian?” Emma cooed! “His daddy’s going to be so proud!”
A pang of hyper emotional awareness flooded Grace. His daddy.
That’s what Marco was. She nodded, her throat thick. “Yeah, he is.” She squeezed Ben tight and kissed his nose just as Marco stepped onto the terrace.
“What am I?”
“Hey,” Will stood, shaking his brother-in-law’s hand with easy affection. “Little Ben here just said his first Italian words.”
“Did he?” Marco’s expression was inscrutable, but his eyes shone with a happiness that Grace understood. “What did he say?”
“I love you,” Grace answered, and her cheeks flushed pink at the words. “He said, ‘I love you’.”
“Little flirt,” Marco laughed, apparently unaware of her moment of discomfort, extending his hands. Ben moved towards them without hesitation. Grace looked at the two of them together, her senses jolting wildly.
“I’ll put him in bed, Emma.” Marco’s dark eyes briefly clashed with Grace’s. “You should take a break.”
Grace watched the two of them disappear with a growing sense of something. A heavy feeling assailed her, one that wasn’t new to her, but that she suspected she’d never get used to. She was an outsider. Marco wanted Ben; he was prepared to tolerate her for the sake of their child. When he held Ben, he was happy. Whatever Will thought Marco had felt for Grace, it was all ancient history, forever destroyed by her idiotic, hurtful decisions.
“I suppose I should take a shower,” Emma agreed with a twist of her lips. “Seeing as I’m wearing half of Ben’s dinner.” She spread her arms wide and Grace noted for the first time that Emma was indeed coated in a fine sheen of spaghetti.
“Oh dear.” She wrinkled her nose. “Sorry about that.”
“Meh. I’m used to it. Table manners aren’t his forte, but dimply little smiles are.”
Emma gave Will a wave as she left the terrace and Grace went to sip her wine before realizing that the glass was empty.
“Let me top you up,” Will offered.
She was on the verge of declining but it had been delicious and she was feeling more relaxed than she had in weeks. “Thanks.”
He returned moments later with three glasses of wine, perching one on the table behind them, presumably in expectation of Marco joining them. The idea made her pulse throb.
“She seems like a great child-minder.”
“Emma?” Grace nodded. “She’s so much more than that. She’s family.”
“So much the better. It must be hard to leave him so often.”
Grace’s lips twisted in agreement. “Yes. And when we lost Steve, I was just so grateful to Emma. She kept us going, even though she was grieving too.” Grace lifted her face towards Will. “Ben’s had that continuity all his life. I’m so indebted to her.”
“She seems happy.”
“I hope so.” Grace stared out at the city. Gradually, the sky was darkening and the buildings were twinkling shapes against the skyline. “She loves Rome.”
“What’s not to love?”
“The weather. The cars. The smog. You usually complain non-stop about my city.” Marco’s laugh reached Grace and her stomach swooped with recognition. She didn’t turn around. She needed a moment to recollect her thoughts and to calm her body’s unsolicited reaction.
“Well, it’s no London, don’t get me wrong,” Will grinned. “How are you?”
Grace didn’t see Marco’s reaction, but he came to stand beside her, an arm casually placed around her waist that drew her nearer. “Hi.” The quiet greeting was intimate and husky and her startled face flew to his, her eyes showing obvious confusion. But then she remembered.
The pretense.
The fooling his family.
She wanted to tell him there was no point. Will and Claudia knew the truth about them; they weren’t fooled. But then he smiled. A real smile. And her heart tripped over itself in a rush to return it.
Why not go along with the ruse when it felt so damned good?
* * *
Grace almost choked on a piece of papadum, she was laughing so hard.
“So Marco comes out of the hotel room, dressed in only a towel, and if you’ve ever seen Marco first thing in the morning without at least five coffees – well, you know. It’s not a good look.” Will paused to spoon some more curry into his mouth and Grace leaned back in her chair. Marco’s arm was rested along it and his hand dropped to her shoulder naturally, his fingers curling over her skin. She tilted her head to him, her eyes skimming his face. He was smiling too. The sight of it made every cell in her body sing.
“It was not, as I recall, first thing in the morning,” Marco said with mock-affront, winking at Grace to make his mood obvious. “It was the middle of the night.”
Thump, thump, thump. Could he hear her happy heart tap-dancing in her chest?
“It was 5am. And this guy we’d been out to dinner with – what was his name? Ronald?”
“Regan,” Marco corrected with a laugh.
“Right. Regan, unbeknownst to me has booked on our floor. We’d had a few whiskies to finish the night and obviously he’s kept the party going in his room. At some point, he’s decided to smoke a pack of cigarettes and the damned smoke alarms have gone off. The whole floor’s saturated.” Will was laughing so hard the words were coming out as a wheeze.
“And there’s Marco, dressed in a towel, in the middle of the hallway, demanding to know what was going on, and who was responsible. You were furious!”
“Everyone was furious,” Marco pointed out, squeezing Grace’s shoulder; her stomach dipped.
“But you were incensed. As if you couldn’t believe anyone would dare do something like that to you.”
“Suffice it to say, we did no further business with Regan Halt.”
“Yeah, you put a halt to that all right.” Will shook his head and reached for his wine, sipping it and then laughing some more. “You like things to go to plan.”
“That’s because they generally do,” Marco agreed with a banal lift of his shoulders.
Grace angled her head towards him, studying his profile. Was she another part of his life that hadn’t gone to plan? Perhaps initially, but now? She was fitting in with everything he wanted. His plan was her blueprint. The thought brought a small flicker of a frown to her face.
She didn’t like to think of them in those terms. As though she’d lost her own agency in a rush to please him. And yet, didn’t he deserve that? She’d taken their child and cut him deeply with her decision to keep him from their lives. Wasn’t the reparation hers to make?
Besides, she was getting almost everything she wanted, wasn’t she?
Confusion filled her anew and it was that moment when Marco turned to look at her, the smile still on his face as his gaze locked to hers. He skimmed her troubled face and leaned forward, pressing a kiss to her lips. A kiss borne of kindness and something that, if she let the two glasses of wine she’d enjoyed do her thinking for her, she might even have called affection. Love?
No. Not love.
For him, this was just make-believe. And like everything Marco did, he did it well. Discontent made her pull away a little, and her smile when her blue eyes locked to his brown, was tight.
“You don’t like not getting your way,” she said quietly, and turned back to Will. It was so much easier to talk to him, without the undercurrent of history and tension that consumed her relationship with Marco. The doubt and self-doubt.
“Not particularly.” He squeezed Grace’s shoulder and then his fingers began to trace invisible circles that, even through the thin fabric
of her shirt, made her nipples tighten and her stomach clench. She wanted him. That was a truth she couldn’t deny – the only truth she could lay claim to with any certainty.
“You’ve known each other a long time,” she heard herself ask, the words quiet but normal-sounding, despite the blood gushing through her body.
“Since school,” Will nodded. “My dad was a diplomat based in Rome,” he explained.
“Really? How interesting that must have been.”
“Not particularly. He travelled a hell of a lot, mainly to the Middle East, so I didn’t see much of him. My mom was based in the States.”
“They were divorced?”
He nodded. “Since I was a kid.” His eyes shifted sideways to Marco and he grinned. “The Dettoris became my family.”
Yes, Grace could see that. Will and Marco were obviously close friends; more like brothers.
“It was complete crap having my parents split across the world like that,” he said, and Will seemed to be such a genuinely nice guy that Grace didn’t think he was making a point, even for one second. It was her that was drawing the parallels, imagining a life in which she was in Chicago and Marco in Rome – imagining the way Ben would have felt forever split by geography.
“How come you didn’t stay with your mom?” Grace prompted. Marco’s fingers stilled on her shoulder for a moment before resuming their gentle exploration of her flesh.
“She didn’t want me.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” Grace soothed.
“Nah. It is. But that’s okay. I’m a big boy. I’ve made my peace with it.”
“I’m sorry.” Grace couldn’t imagine that. The mood was somber suddenly, nothing like the joking humor of moments earlier. “Wait a sec,” she turned to face Marco. “How come you were in a towel?”
Marco’s grin was devilish and so, so sinfully sexy. “I’d just got out of bed.” He shrugged his broad shoulders and Grace wanted to lean closer, to press herself against his chest, put her head on one of those shoulders and close her eyes. “Should I have gone out naked?”
Naked. Of course. Because he always slept naked? Or because he’d been in bed with someone?
She swallowed away the unpalatable thought and leaned forward on the pretense of taking another spoonful of curry. His arm dropped away from her shoulder and she shivered at the sense of desolation.
Will reached across the table and topped up Grace’s wine glass. “Are you close to your parents, Grace?” He brought the conversation back to safer ground which only further fuelled Grace’s belief that Marco hadn’t been alone. And why would he have been? He’d always had an active sex-life. That wasn’t new information.
Feeling jealousy of that was illogical, yet jealous she most certainly was.
Grace was so wrapped up in her own thoughts that she almost missed Will’s question. So too the way Marco was deathly-still beside her.
“Grace?” Will prompted, relaxing back in his chair, one knee crossed casually over his ankle.
“Oh. No.”
Marco was behind her, so she didn’t see his small flicker of a frown. But the question had knocked Marco sideways. It wasn’t the first time he realized he didn’t know everything about her, but it struck him as discordant now that he knew so little about her past. Her family. Her life.
“No?” Will pushed, his grin amused. None of the tension that was wrapping around Grace and Marco seemed to have found its way to him.
“No.” Her smile was tight.
“Why not?” The question came from Marco. Graveled and deep.
Grace swallowed, her past something she had run from for so long that she couldn’t imagine speaking about it openly now. And yet, she heard herself say, without looking at Marco, “My parents died when I was little. I barely remember them.”
Nine
MARCO WAS STILL AS a rock, except for his eyes, which moved to Will of their own accord. His own surprise was mirrored there. “You never mentioned that,” he said quietly.
Grace nodded. “I know. I don’t talk about my childhood.”
It was a hint most people would have heeded. But not Marco. Marco needed answers. “You were adopted?”
Grace had moved away from all of this. She’d left her past way behind her. The day she’d married Steve, she’d become Chicago royalty. Someone beautiful and rich and respectable. By mutual agreement, they’d buried her past, hidden the truth of her upbringing.
“Yes.” A closed answer. One that didn’t invite further questions. Old habits died very hard.
“Where did you live?”
She compressed her lips and turned to face Marco. “Does it matter?”
“Where did you live?”
“Excuse me,” Will stood, reaching for the empty take-away containers and stacking them together. His departure was an obvious response to the tense line of questions Marco wouldn’t let drop.
“Where did you live?”
“Look,” Grace sighed, sitting back in her chair but averting her gaze. It was easier to speak when she wasn’t looking into his eyes. “My past is … my past.”
“Tell me.”
It was the pleading tone of his question that did it. If he’d simply demanded, in his dictatorial fashion, she might have resisted. But the softness of his question broke through her barriers and she nodded jerkily, with no idea where to start.
“I was born in Florida,” she said softly and then, the truth of her parentage sat around her neck like an albatross.
Trusting this man with it was terrifying, and yet she found herself speaking almost against her will.
“My dad … my dad was,” she sat back deeper into her chair and drew her legs up, resting her chin on her knees. “He was a drug king pin,” she said finally. Her words were hollow, without emotion. “And by all reports, a horrible, violent, cruel man. He used to pimp my mom out. And then one day he killed her… and then he disappeared.” She swallowed, refusing to look at Marco. “A neighbor found me after three days. I wasn’t even four years old. Walking around this enormous mansion we had on the Glades.” She flicked her eyes to him but looked away when she saw the strength of emotion in them.
“I don’t remember, of course. But I’ve heard the details often enough.”
“Heard from whom?” The question was hoarse.
“I was put into a sort of witness protection for orphans. My dad was a felon. Wanted for murder. Obviously there were concerns about what he might do to me, given his history.” Her voice cracked. “When I was eight, he turned up dead. So I was released from the program but by then,” she shrugged. “No one wanted to adopt a kid like me. So I was fostered out.”
He nodded slowly, trying to reconcile this new information with the picture he had of Grace. She didn’t notice; the story was unfolding inside of her, finding release in the silence of his response.
“I was bounced from home to home. For a lot of reasons. Sometimes I didn’t like them. Sometimes they didn’t like me.” She shrugged. “When I was sixteen, I ran away. I quit the system. It never did anything for me anyway.”
“Where did you go?” Though he knew.
“Chicago.” Her lips lifted in the ghost of a smile.
“What did you do?”
She expelled a slow breath. “What do you think? I had about a hundred bucks and that was it. I spent a few nights on the streets. There was this restaurant and I used to beg from right outside.” Shame brought colour to her cheeks. “Steve was there most days. Lunching. Wining and dining,” she said with a shake of her head. “He got me some food one day. Then the next. And after a week, I realized we’d become friends. That I was looking for him each day, waiting for him to arrive.”
Marco’s jaw clenched. He hadn’t imagined Grace’s past had anything like this in it. A surge of protective instincts battled to the forefront of his mind. And jealousy, too, that Steve had been there to help her. That Steve had been given the opportunity to protect Grace. But did Steve take advantage of that? Did he
abuse her? “And?”
“You don’t need to sound so disapproving,” Grace whispered, instinctively understanding the direction of his thoughts. “It’s not like I prostituted myself to him or anything.”
He made an effort to relax. “I wasn’t suggesting that. I’m just trying to make sense of how you went from begging on a street corner to marrying the guy.”
“He had an empty apartment in one of his condos. He set me up.”
“Out of the goodness of his heart?” Marco prompted with a hint of disbelief.
“Yes, actually. He told me later that he’d just known I would be important to him. That he hadn’t been able to imagine leaving me there. He helped me enroll in a local school and I graduated with great grades. College was all Steve,” she said with a smile. “He helped me apply, paid my tuition. And somewhere along the way, we got together. But it was never a quid pro quo situation,” she emphasized.
Marco nodded, though inside, rage seethed and festered. How could it have been anything but? How was it possible that she’d had any free will in the situation, when she’d owed Steve so much?
But he didn’t say that. He could see how clearly her loyalties were split and for the first time since discovering the truth about Ben, something about her decisions made sense. Or at least, the fact they didn’t make sense made sense.
“Steve’s the only person who knows – who knew – this. We agreed it was better for everyone – his business, me, Ben – if the truth of my upbringing remain in the past. I’ve become so used to not talking about it, I feel like I’m betraying him now.” She lifted enormous, haunted eyes to Marco’s face. “That must sound crazy.”
“No.” He shook his head, and when he looked at Grace, he saw her hurts and worries, her insecurities and needs. And he hated that he wanted to protect her. That he wanted to take over Steve’s role as her protector and provider, to keep her safe and make her happy.
Because he still wasn’t sure she deserved that.
And yet, his arm wrapped itself around her shoulder, holding her tight, stroking her comfortingly.
Billionaire Baby Daddies: A five-book anthology Page 44
