A Deal for the Di Sione Ring

by Jennifer Hayward

  When Carole capped off her second week with praise for her first complete marketing plan, she thought she’d died and gone to heaven. It was almost enough to banish her nerves as she and Nate drove uptown to his mother’s penthouse for the cocktail party she was throwing in their honor.

  Nate had put his mother off as long as he could manage to give Mina time to adjust to the city and her new job, but he could stall no longer, so tonight was the night she was to be introduced to the toast of New York society.

  The nerve-racking drive with Nate weaving in and out of traffic, combined with her nerves, started to make her feel nauseous. Odd when she didn’t ever remember getting carsick, but this was Manhattan they were talking about.

  Nate studied her face as they rode the elevator to his mother’s apartment. “You okay? You look a little green.”

  She forced a smile. “Nerves, combined with your driving, I expect.”

  He put a hand to the wall beside her. “You don’t get carsick.”

  “Not usually.”

  “Don’t be nervous.” He cupped the back of her head. “You’re stunningly beautiful, Mrs. Brunswick. You’ll charm them all.”

  She wanted to tell him to stop calling her that. That every time he did, every time he kissed her, she fell harder for him. But his lips were on hers then, driving everything from her head. Even the fear she was in love with him.

  He lifted his head as the elevator pinged their arrival, his breath mingling with hers. “Now you look the part,” he murmured, jabbing a button to keep the doors closed. “Fix your lipstick.”

  Her makeup repaired, they joined the party. Emily Brunswick, a dynamic, attractive woman in her late fifties Mina had liked from the moment she’d met her, made it her mission to introduce Mina to everyone in the room. Her nausea abated, Mina actually enjoyed herself with Emily easing the way.

  She was in the middle of a conversation with her mother-in-law and the director of an art gallery when the strong smell of an hors d’oeuvre turned her stomach. Her nausea resurfaced with a vengeance, a wave of perspiration blanketing her. She had barely enough time to excuse herself and make it to the powder room before her stomach announced its intentions to vacate itself.

  When she’d decided the heaving had stopped for good, she got to her feet, splashed water on her face and attempted to repair her makeup.

  “Mina?” Nate’s voice pierced the wooden door.

  She opened it to find him standing there, a frown on his face. “You were sick?”

  “No,” she denied, “I’m fine.”

  “You’re a terrible liar,” he said flatly. “We’re leaving.”

  “But your mother went to all this trouble...”

  It was no use. He was already pulling her toward Emily to say good-night. Mina assured Nate’s mother she was fine, likely just exhausted, and apologized for cutting the evening short. In the car, she sat through a lecture from Nate about how she shouldn’t let things like this get to her.

  “I don’t think it was the party.” She pressed her head back against the seat. “I was fine after the first few minutes. Your mother is lovely.”

  He glanced over at her. “A bug, maybe?”

  “Probably.”

  Except she never got stomach sick from bugs. Maybe once in her life. And she never got carsick. The more she thought about it, the colder she got, mixing with the perspiration to make her feel distinctly clammy. There was no way she could be...

  Her heart seized. She’d gone to a doctor to get birth control pills as soon as she’d arrived in New York to be doubly sure there was no chance she could get pregnant. Because getting pregnant would be a disaster.

  Maledizione. She wiped a palm over her brow. She was making herself ill just thinking about it.

  Nate put her to bed when they got home and went off to do some email, promising he’d check on her in a few minutes. She rested her head against the pillows and stared blankly out at the spectacular view of New York. She could not be pregnant. It was impossible. Nate wore condoms; she was on the pill, newly on the pill but...

  She got out of bed. Pulled on yoga pants, a T-shirt and running shoes, grabbed her purse and took the long way around the penthouse to the door to avoid Nate’s study. Riding the elevator to ground level, she headed toward the drugstore in the lobby. Surprisingly, enough people must wonder if they’re pregnant while on vacation or business trips because the shelves were liberally stocked. Heart pounding, she snatched up two and got into line to pay.

  The lineup was five people deep. She tapped her foot impatiently as she waited. Finally, she got to the front of the line, paid and hightailed it back up to the penthouse. Pressing her thumb on the biometric scan, she walked into a solid wall of... Nate.

  Lurching backward, she shoved the bag behind her. “Dannazione. You scared me.”

  Nate eyed her darkly. “What were you doing roaming the streets while you’re sick? Roaming the streets at night, period?”

  She pulled in a breath. “I needed a...a book. And I wasn’t roaming the streets. I went to the store in the building.”

  “Really?” He nodded toward the hand she had behind her back. “What kind of books are you buying?”

  “Not ones you need to see.” She went to walk past him. Nate caught her wrist in a firm grip.

  “What’s in the bag, Mina?”

  She cocked her head to one side. “Honestly, can a girl not have a little privacy?”

  “Not tonight she can’t. Not when you were upending the contents of your stomach into the toilet an hour ago and that’s a drugstore bag behind your back.”

  Her brain worked furiously. “It’s an old-fashioned remedy we Sicilians use.”

  “Fascinating. Show it to me.”

  “Nate—”

  He reached around her with catlike swiftness and plucked the bag out of her hand. Mina pressed her palms to her eyes.

  The longest silence of her life followed. She dropped her hands. Nate was gray. “It’s just a precaution,” she said, talking fast. “It can’t possibly be that. My imagination was running away with me and—”

  “I used a condom every time. You’re on the pill.”

  “Sì,” she said, nodding quickly. “Like I said, it’s just a precaution. I only did it because I didn’t feel well yesterday, either, and I thought why... Nate,” she said, frowning as he turned even grayer, “maybe you should sit down.”

  He ran his palm over the stubble on his chin. “I think you,” he said slowly, handing her the bag, “should go do the tests. One—two—whatever works.”

  She closed her fingers around the bag. Decided there was nothing else to do. She walked with a pounding heart toward the powder room, closed the door and leaned against it. You can do this.

  Two positive tests later, she was sitting on the decorative love seat in the powder room composing herself when Nate flung the door open. “Out.”

  She handed the tests to him, walked past him and collapsed on the sofa in the salon. The door to the garbage can thumped shut, a long silence followed and then Nate walked into the salon, headed straight to the bar and poured himself a drink. Not fair.

  “Mi dispiace,” she said quietly.

  He gave her a grim look. “Why are you apologizing? It takes two to make a baby.”

  “Because this is a disaster.”

  He didn’t refute the statement. Instead, he sat down beside her and downed a healthy gulp of the amber liquid in the glass.

  “I would never—”

  “Stop,” he said harshly. “I would never suggest that.”

  The funny expression on his face caught her off guard. Then she realized what she’d said. Nate had been the result of an unexpected pregnancy...

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “I know you didn’t.”<
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  The seconds rolled by, the ticking of the clock on the wall excruciatingly loud to Mina’s sensitized nerve endings. With every second that passed, with every moment that frozen, dismayed look continued to sit on Nate’s face, her heart slipped deeper into despair. He didn’t want a relationship, let alone a baby. He was horrified.

  She had just attained her freedom, had begun a job she loved. It couldn’t be worse timing.

  Her head throbbed, blood hammered against her temples. She wanted to feel joy, because surely a baby was a wonderful thing. Instead, she dropped her head in her hands and prayed for this to be a dream she’d wake up from soon.

  “Stop panicking,” Nate rasped. “We will figure this out.”

  “How?” She lifted her head. “You can’t even be in a relationship, Nate. How are you going to handle being a father?”

  “Day by day, step by step. And I think we are already doing a pretty good approximation of a relationship.”

  “Because you know you can walk away the minute you feel claustrophobic. The minute your attachment antenna picks up too strong a signal, we’re done.”

  He rested his dark, fathomless gaze on her. “If that were true I would have already cut things off.”

  So he knew. Knew that she was in love with him. Hot color climbed into her face. “Why haven’t you? Why break your rules for me, Nate? Because of that knight in shining armor complex you have for me you deny but is so patently obvious? Because you think I’m so vulnerable I’ll break if you do?”

  His gaze dropped away from hers. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I do.” Humiliation and pain brought everything spilling out. “You have feelings for me. You won’t allow yourself to explore them because you’re afraid they’ll bring this house of cards you have built tumbling down.”

  Heat blazed in his eyes. “I have let you in, Mina. I have shared things I’ve never shared with anyone before.”

  “Because there’s no risk! I’m out the door in a year. You have a built-in out.” She waved her arms around her. “None of this is threatening because we’re just playing our roles. You’re the honorable knight, I’m the damsel in distress. It justifies everything.”

  He slapped the glass down on the table and glared at her. “What do you want from me? I care about you. You know that. I have opened up my life to you, tried to give you everything you need.”

  “And I will never be able to repay you for that.” She met the frustration burning in his eyes with a lifted chin. “What you have given to me, Nate, is a gift. You walked into my life and not only saved me from Silvio, you saved me from myself. From sacrificing my life out of some misguided sense of loyalty to my mother. You have empowered me to be the person I knew I could be but was too afraid to realize. But this,” she said, pointing at her stomach, “is real. It’s our wake-up call. We can’t play this game anymore.”

  He stared at her silently. She sucked in a deep breath, forcing herself to do what he wouldn’t. “If you don’t see our relationship ever moving past the status quo—that’s fine. Honestly, Nate, it’s fine. I told you in the beginning I could handle this and I can. I—” she broke off, raking a hand through her hair “—I just need to know.”

  Ice crackled as he picked up his glass, put it to his mouth and took another long sip. His face was impassive. “We have a good thing, Mina. The way I see it, we don’t have much choice in the matter. We make this marriage permanent and do what’s right by this child.”

  Her chest tightened. Not because he loved her. Not because he wanted her in his life. “Because you won’t see this child abandoned by its father like you were?”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do.” The edge to his voice sliced across her skin in sharp rebuke. “This child deserves the presence of both its parents in its life.”

  She closed her eyes against the pain in her temples. She’d been afraid to admit she loved him because of this. Because she’d feared her feelings wouldn’t be returned. And now she had her answer.

  A vision of the soul-destroying kind of a relationship she and Nate would share filled her head. How she would always be secretly hoping he’d learn to love her just as she had done her entire life with her mother, only to have it never be returned.

  She wrapped her arms around herself, bile rising in her throat. She couldn’t go back to being that lonely, desperate for affection version of herself she’d hated. Not ever again.

  “Mina.” Nate curled his fingers around her arm. “We are good together. You’re flourishing at Brunswick Developments. It makes sense.”

  She opened her eyes, the affection she saw in his dark gaze driving her misery even deeper. “A loveless marriage isn’t an option for me. No matter how practical.”

  An emotion she couldn’t read flickered in his eyes. “This isn’t one of those Hollywood movies you love. Being good together can go a long way.”

  She shook her head. “It wouldn’t work. You’d come to resent me. Me and the baby. You said it yourself, a white picket fence existence isn’t for you. You’re a solitary creature, Nate. You need your space. My feelings for you would sit between us like this awkward thing we both won’t address until you’d wished you’d ended it now.”

  The ensuing silence broke the rest of her heart. “You’re not well,” he said finally. “Not thinking rationally. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”

  It wouldn’t change anything, she speculated miserably as he put her to bed and left her to no doubt ruminate about what a big mess they’d created. It had been her fault letting herself fall in love with him. Convincing herself he could change when he never would.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  MINA WOULD COME AROUND.

  It wasn’t the first time Nate had told himself that on a dull, gray Manhattan afternoon, days after his and Mina’s fruitless discussion about their future had ended in stalemate.

  It had taken him that long to emerge from the numbness that had invaded his brain, the complete sense of unreality that had taken over his life. He was going to be a father. The one challenge he’d been sure he’d never take on. Had never wanted to take on.

  Restless as he waited for a call from the West Coast that was now five minutes behind schedule, he pushed his chair back from his desk, got up and walked to the elegantly cased, floor-to-ceiling windows designed to provide maximum light to his sleek, darkly furnished office space. Gray New York in the dog days of winter didn’t help his mood.

  Further contemplation hadn’t crystallized his and Mina’s situation. The only thing he’d been able to coherently articulate to his wife in the strained conversations they’d had was his sense of responsibility when it came to their child. He would never allow his son or daughter to grow up without a father. He would stand by Mina and this child, he would give up the freedom he cherished so greatly and he would do his best by both of them.

  That had to be enough.

  As for the gray areas? His feelings for Mina. Her demand he address them. His confusion on all of the above. Avoidance had been his strategy. When Mina saw reason, that they were good together, that they were better off raising this child together, it would all sort itself out. Pushing himself into saying things he’d regret, making promises he couldn’t keep, was not how he was going to play this.

  Walking to his desk, he buzzed through to Josephine. “Can you find out why the West Coast call is late?”

  “Will do. Oh, Nate?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Mina left early. Said she’d see you at home.”

  He frowned. “Was she not feeling well?”

  “She seemed fine. A little pale, maybe. She’s been working long hours.”

  He sat down at his desk after Jo went to chase his call. Mina always waited for him. She always had more than enough work to do. Was she not feeling well?

  Th
is morning she’d been unusually silent in the car as they’d driven in. She’d been off, in her own head since the revelation she was pregnant, but this morning had been different. She’d been completely distant.

  An uneasy feeling working its way through him, he got to his feet, collected his jacket, grabbed his briefcase and stopped by Jo’s desk. “I’ll take the call in the car.”

  His sense that something was wrong grew as he sat in gridlocked traffic. By the time he walked into the penthouse he was cranky and worried. Stalking through the salon he found his wife in her bedroom. Absorbed the neatly packed suitcase on the floor.

  “What is that?”

  Mina folded the sweater she’d been holding and dropped it into the case. Her hands clenched by her sides as she absorbed his aggressive stance. “I’m leaving.”

  He stepped closer, a buzzing sound filling his head. “Where exactly are you going?”

  “Paris. I’m going to stay with Celia for a bit.”

  A seething anger, a fury he couldn’t explain, spread through him. “Is this what you do? Run from everything?”

  Her eyes darkened. “That is not fair.”

  He jammed his hands on his hips. “We can make this work, Mina. If you’d stop living in that fairy-tale world of yours and accept the fact that love is this mythological concept you women create that lasts exactly as long as the pheromones do.”

  She lifted her chin. “My mamma told me the night before my wedding, the night Silvio hit me, that life is not all sunshine and rainbows. Well, I disagree. I want that. I’d rather have a few years of wonderful than never knowing love at all.”

  Dear God. He expelled a breath. “So you’re just going to give up the opportunity of a lifetime at Brunswick Developments, jet off to Paris and then what?”

  “I was hoping you would help me with a job at the Grand in Paris.”

  A heavy feeling weighted his stomach. She was serious.