A Family Made in Rome

by Annie O'Neil

  ‘No?’

  He shook his head and smiled. His mother might not have won any parenting prizes, but she had been a character. A very colourful character. And, more to the point, she had taught him not so much the power of love, but the fierceness of loyalty. When his father had left them, she’d stayed. Fed him, clothed him, drilled questionable survival skills into him when a piece of him had always known, but rarely acknowledged, that his mother would have liked to do exactly what his father had...walked away when the going got tough and pretended he didn’t exist.

  He cleared his throat and answered neutrally. ‘She was a dedicated Roman. Occasionally, when the tourist population grew too much in the summertime, she could be tempted out to the Mediterranean... If the boyfriend was right.’

  ‘She never remarried, then?’

  ‘No,’ he laughed. ‘Pigs would’ve flown before my mother agreed to marry again.’

  Lizzy’s lips tweaked into a smile, but he could see her connecting these dots she’d not had access to before.

  They’d had a very clear ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ rule back in the day. His past was messy, emotional and unsettling. He knew very little of Lizzy’s, but she had seemed equally happy not to air her childhood laundry. It was an unspoken policy that had worked for them right up until an hour ago. Now that they were going to have a child everything would have to change. And that included the way he looked at his own life.

  Leon had never questioned his mother’s embittered approach to love because he’d borne witness to its source. His father had never given her a reason for his abrupt departure. He’d simply risen from the supper table one night and walked away. Boarded a plane. Sent word through a secretary that he’d send a courier for his things and that had pretty much been that. No explanation. No hugs goodbye.

  The experience had thrown Leon into the heart of the savage pain of loss. A loss so profound he refused to open himself up to that level of hurt and rejection again. Which had landed him here, in the world’s slowest lift, with the woman who was carrying his child and, by all accounts, didn’t want him involved in his child’s life. A woman, in short, who didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him.

  He glanced again at Lizzy’s flat belly and the space between them. Pictured the child that would one day come into the world and tried to imagine sitting down with him or her and teaching all the distrust and wariness his own mother had taught him.

  What a selfish thing to do. An even more selfish way to love. The anguish his mother must have felt, to teach her child that his love would never be returned, must have been devastating.

  He saw in a flash that what his mother had done was no better than his father’s abrupt departure. He’d always thought he’d been protecting Lizzy and himself from an inevitable pain. But what he’d actually done was smash the foundations of what might have been an amazing relationship. If she’d wanted one.

  Now that she was going to have his child would she want one? The chemistry was obviously still there. The professional respect. But the love...?

  A tang of well-trained panic rose in his throat.

  Lizzy looked up, a question in her eyes. ‘Are you all right, Leon?’

  ‘Marry me.’

  She actually barked with laughter. ‘Don’t be mad.’

  ‘I mean it, Lizzy.’

  To his shock, he did. Mostly. Yes. Definitely. They could be a family. Here in Rome. At her place in Sydney. Wherever. He had no idea how it would work, but he did know he didn’t want his son or daughter feeling the blunt heartache of rejection the way he had.

  ‘Marry you?’ Lizzy said dryly, and gave him an intense look as if scanning him for signs of insanity.

  ‘I’m not the worst option.’

  This elicited a trill of laughter too quickly. ‘Nor are you the best.’

  Her words pierced a place in his heart he hadn’t even known existed. ‘There’s someone else?’

  Indignation flared in her eyes, then reformed as a blaze of strength. ‘I don’t think my personal life is any of your business. Apart, of course, from the baby.’

  Her hand instinctively went to her belly just as the lift churned the final few inches towards the top-floor flat.

  ‘I’ll be a father to this child,’ he said, placing his hand over hers. ‘Our child. And a husband to you. It’s the right thing to do. It’s my duty.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘NO!’ LIZZY LAUGHED as she spoke, but her heart was slamming against her ribcage so hard it physically hurt.

  Marry him? It was the one question she had privately ached to hear five years before—but this way? Being brought to his flat without being asked. Being told he would parent their child without even considering the plans she’d already made for the baby? And she had plans, all right. Lots of plans. In Australia. Without him.

  And marriage as a duty?

  No. Freaking. Way.

  It was exactly what her parents had done. Her mother had fallen pregnant during her first year out of uni. After a long talk between their fathers, Lizzy’s parents had ‘enjoyed’ a shotgun wedding. And her father had never let her mother forget it. He stayed out of duty. Nothing more.

  ‘No, what?’ Leon persisted, as if there was any other question blinking in huge neon letters between them.

  ‘No, I will not marry you,’ she said more solidly. ‘Not under these circumstances.’

  Because he didn’t really mean it. Right?

  ‘Why not?’ Leon asked, in the same way he might ask her why she thought a tricky surgery couldn’t or, more to the point, shouldn’t be performed.

  It’s not possible, came the small voice in her head.

  A flare of light flashed through his eyes. She knew what it was. The acceptance of a challenge.

  ‘Anything’s possible, Lizzy.’

  He’d used to say that all the time, back when they’d shared an operating theatre.

  ‘You just have to find the right path.’

  Lizzy ignored the tiniest waver fluttering through her heart and fixed him with her best Be serious look. Shutting him down was easier than pouring her heart out to him. Telling him she’d watched her mother fade from a beautiful, happy, smiling woman into a timorous, fearful shadow of a mouse, back-seating her own fledgling career as a social worker to support her husband and daughter.

  How could Lizzy admit to someone so strong and solid that there was a part of her terrified of discovering that he would be like her father? A man who ruled with a Because I said so edict. And that, to keep the peace, she’d follow it. There was no way she could give up on everything she’d worked so hard for to enter into a marriage of emotional oppression and control.

  When her mother had died three years back, never having received the love she’d so desperately deserved, something had changed in Lizzy. Hardened. She had vowed, then and there, never to let herself fall into the same trap. Never to live in a marriage hoping and praying for the day when her husband would finally realise he’d loved her all along.

  Leon didn’t budge, his expression expectant.

  ‘You just have to find the right path.’

  Seriously? Did he genuinely want her to consider this as an actual proposal?

  Married. A family. With Leon.

  It was exactly what Lizzy had dreamt of all their years apart, so why did it feel more like a nightmare than a dream come true?

  Because he had asked out of duty. Out of a need to control the situation. Not out of love.

  Something must have changed in her expression, because after a moment of stillness his hand left hers and his eyes locked on the arrow inching its way to the seventh floor. From the brusque way he yanked open the lift door and crossed the marble-floored corridor to his flat, she wasn’t holding out much hope that a declaration of undying love was forthcoming.

  Missing Leon’s touch up
on her belly more than she cared to admit, she dazedly followed him into what was a surprisingly soulless apartment. A feat, considering how incredible it was. Floor-to-ceiling windows. Bifold doors that would open wide to the fresh spring afternoon. Richly coloured rugs took the echoey edge off the marble floors. Immaculate sofas formed an arc around a modern fireplace. Tactical displays of tulips dotted about the rest of the relatively monochrome furnishings provided bright, primary splashes of colour. Black and white photographs that might have been taken by anyone, anywhere, lined the walls.

  It was more show home than comfort zone, unlike her own tiny house back in Sydney. It was her beachside cocoon away from the hospital where, every now and again, she had to rebuild herself after particularly tough cases. Her refrigerator was covered in crayon drawings. Her windowsills were filled with thank-you cards for her and her lodger, Byron, a scrub nurse who also worked at the children’s hospital.

  There were no signs of Leon’s professional calling here. She had an entire wall made up of photos of proud parents holding the babies she’d helped bring into the world. The joy they elicited in her was as powerful as if they were family members. This place looked as if it had hardly been lived in—if at all. The building itself had an old-fashioned exterior that spoke of a deep human presence, but up here on the seventh floor...

  She couldn’t put her finger on it, exactly, but it felt lonely up here. Which, unexpectedly, made her heart ache for Leon.

  The one place she warmed to as Leon gave her a swift tour of the two guest rooms she could choose between and the open-plan kitchen with its pristine marble breakfast bar, was the terrace that wrapped all the way around the building. It was wider than a balcony and canvas awnings were dotted about it, creating little protected seating areas, and just outside the kitchen there was a breakfast area where Leon said you could watch the sun rise.

  ‘And...do you do that?’ she asked, conscious that both of them were avoiding the ‘Marry me’ elephant in the room. ‘Watch the sunrise?’

  He shrugged. ‘If I’m here and I see it, yes. If not, no.’

  The response seemed so bereft of any engagement in his actual life that she had to ask. ‘What do you do for fun?’

  He looked at her, confused. ‘Fun?’

  ‘Yeah...’ She warmed to the topic. ‘You know—that thing we used to have back in the day, when we weren’t in surgery?’

  A midnight picnic they’d once shared in a sloshy bubble bath sprang to mind. Leon, however, still looked confused.

  ‘I thought the surgeries were fun. The stuff in between was—’

  He stopped himself, his eyes meeting hers, and she knew as they did that he’d been caught out. The ‘stuff in between’ had always been the two of them. Giggling over lattes and warm blueberry muffins as they rehashed the day’s surgical rotation. Bashing out their frustrations if there’d been a run-in with a superior at a nearby batting cage, both of them ending up in hysterics over how bad they were as neither of them had grown up playing baseball. And, of course, the countless hours they’d spent in bed, not just making love but daydreaming of a time and a place when performing surgery would be second nature to them and the rest of their energies could be poured into enjoying life the way the rest of their peers who were already established surgeons did.

  When she looked at it that way—clinically—she couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen it before. All their interactions in New York had been work-related. Well. Work and sex-related. What a fool to think he might have loved her as she’d loved him.

  Channelling the woman who seemed capable of asking all the questions she’d kept to herself for the last five years, she plopped her tote onto one of the breakfast bar stools and challenged him. ‘Go on. You were saying...?’ She held her hands out. ‘The stuff in between surgeries was what, exactly? A time-filler? Meaningless? Fond memories?’

  The last words came out a bit more angrily than it should have if she actually wanted to know the answer.

  He gave the back of his neck a scrub. ‘It was great, Lizzy. You know that. It was time with you.’ He pulled his hand up through his hair and rubbed his eyes. ‘Look. You’re tired, and I’m still digesting. I think it’d be a good idea if you had a rest. I’ll go out and get us some food.’

  She felt riled again. Would he stop telling her what to do?

  He pulled open the refrigerator door and showed her the sparse pickings, as if to prove he wasn’t making up an excuse to leave her on her own. A tiny bit of her fury drifted away. Okay. Fine. So maybe he was telling the truth about that part.

  ‘When you get up, we’ll eat and talk about this properly—all of this. Tomorrow’s going to be the first time the full team meets to discuss the twins’ treatment, so I’m as aware as you are that we need to find some sort of happy place, si?’

  Ha! Happy place? The man was mad.

  She wanted to protest. Insist that now was the right time to talk. Sending her off to her room like a naughty child was just the sort of thing her father would have done if she’d dared to question his judgement. Saying that...there had been compassion in Leon’s voice. Concern. Enough to throw her off her guard and, more pressingly, allow room for the jet-leg that adrenaline had been holding at bay to flood in.

  She’d done the hardest part. She’d told him she was having their child. And rather than run away, which had been pretty much her number one choice of options for him, he’d stayed. Proposed, even. Offered her everything she’d ever wanted from him in the space of a lift journey. Everything apart from his undying love.

  If there had been an eighth floor, would that declaration have revealed itself?

  She considered insisting they talk it out now, but knew the chances that things would quickly degenerate because of her increasing fatigue were high. He was right. Annoyingly.

  A huge yawn threatened to consume the remains of her brain cells, all but proving his point that she needed some rest. Reluctantly she acquiesced, and all but tumbled into one of the guest rooms, where a large wooden sleigh bed with a gorgeously inviting duvet beckoned her into a sound, dreamless slumber.

  Several hours later she woke feelingly surprisingly refreshed. There were sounds of cutlery and plates clattering in the kitchen. Her phone, which had adjusted itself to the local time, said it was just gone seven p.m.

  She walked barefoot into the kitchen in the airline T-shirt she’d managed to tug on before falling asleep. It was a hand-me-down from Byron, whose long-term boyfriend was a pilot.

  Leon had also changed. In place of the navy scrubs he wore twill trousers which made the most of his long legs, and a white linen shirt that hung from his shoulders as if it were made to measure. His dark eyes met hers as she walked into the room, brightening in the first instance and then, as he took in her ensemble, emptying of light.

  She tugged on the hem and threw him an apology. ‘Sorry. I should’ve showered and dressed before coming out. I just heard you in here and wanted to make sure I had time before...you know...proceedings get underway.’

  He didn’t laugh at the sonorous voice she’d put on, instead giving one of those indeterminate head-shakes—yes, no, whatever you wish. He was being weird.

  She looked down at the T-shirt. It was very clearly a man’s. Did he think—?

  ‘Like it? It’s my housemate’s. It’s comfy to sleep in. Not exactly as stylish as I know you Italians are, but it does the trick.’

  ‘You live with a man?’

  Leon feigned an air of casual indifference to the point where it was actually kind of adorable. Leon Cassanetti... Jealous of a man he had no need to be jealous of. How long should she let this play out before she told him Byron was her very gay housemate, who would never in a million years like women?

  Leon tipped some antipasti into a bowl and pretty much missed the bowl. Definitely not a precision surgical move. Maybe she’d let this play out just a little bit.r />
  She smiled, nabbing one of the amazing olives. Why was food so much better in Italy?

  Leon bashed a glass against the tap, realised he’d cracked it, then threw it in the bin with a low curse.

  Okay. Maybe she should explain...

  ‘A few years back, when I bought my place, I thought it’d be wise to reduce the mortgage payments by having a housemate. Byron—one of the scrub nurses at the hospital—heard me talking about whether or not to let the room and volunteered himself. I thought... Why not?’

  ‘Oh. Right...’ Leon swept up a newly spilt pool of olive oil from the counter. ‘So you two are colleagues, are you?’

  ‘And friends.’

  He began to chop some carrots with a pronounced thunk of the knife after each incision.

  This was fun. And a little bit mean.

  Her commitment to making Leon sweat was already wavering—which didn’t really speak well to the whole getting custody of their child sorted, moving back to Australia and not worrying about seeing him ever again thing. Or maybe the fact that he’d proposed had given short shrift to that.

  ‘So...you two socialise?’ Leon asked.

  ‘Byron is the only reason I have a social life,’ she answered truthfully.

  After her tenure in New York, and landing her job at Sydney’s premier children’s hospital, she’d fallen into a pattern that had been eighty percent hospital, fifteen percent sleep and the other five pretty much devoted to eating in front of the telly. Byron wouldn’t have any of it, saying that life was for living, not box-setting. He’d said she was too pretty and too young to hang up her stilettos just yet. He’d even been the one to set up her profile on a rarely used dating app.

  When she could see Leon trying and failing to find another question to ascertain if she and Byron were ‘friends with benefits’ she finally broke. She hadn’t come here to be cruel. ‘We occasionally go to the movies or a concert when he’s not out with his boyfriend. Which is a lot.’

  Leon’s shoulders lowered about three inches, and his smile finally allowed a hint of the playfulness she’d once had full access to to surface.