A Family Made in Rome

by Annie O'Neil

  ‘He saw you as a mistake?’ Lizzy put her fork down, unable to match the delicious meal with the awful story he was telling.

  ‘He saw being with my mother as a mistake, and therefore anything that had been affiliated with her—like me—was also a mistake.’

  And then it became crystal-clear to her. He was helping all those pregnant mothers have as perfect a baby as possible. He was preventing ‘mistakes’.

  Her voice caught in her throat as she reached out to him. ‘I’m so sorry, Leon.’

  ‘Don’t be.’ He accepted her touch but soon pulled away to take a drink of water. ‘I’m not telling you for your pity.’ His eyes flared, then steadied. ‘I’m telling you because I want you to understand why I’ve behaved the way I have. Why I held you at arm’s length before we’d had a chance to see where things could go.’

  She sat on this information for a minute. She’d been a willing participant in their when the internships are done, we’re done thing, but if he’d heard her say she loved him...if he’d said he loved her too...would they be together now? Have children already? Be a family.

  He toyed with his food for a minute, then abruptly his face tightened with unwelcome emotion. ‘My father’s wife had a stillborn baby when I was there. They sent me back straight away. She never said anything—she never would have—but my father did.’

  ‘What on earth did he say?’ Lizzy asked, though her churning gut was already telling her the awful answer to her question.

  ‘He blamed me. Said my appearance had caused too much stress and strain and that I’d caused the baby’s death.’

  Lizzy’s hands flew to her chest. ‘I’m so, so sorry, Leon.’

  She didn’t bother telling him it wasn’t true. He knew that. But knowing about the incident threw another swathe of light on Leon’s complicated past. He didn’t explain further, but he didn’t have to. He had become an antenatal surgeon because he wanted to fix what he hadn’t been able to fix as a child.

  Her heart absolutely ached for him.

  All the pieces of the Why does Leon behave the way he does? puzzle were in place now.

  A boy who was abandoned by his father through no fault of his own.

  A mother who withdrew her affections because of a broken heart that had swiftly turned bitter.

  An adolescence spent being told to retreat from happiness because it only led to pain and, heartbreakingly, seeing the evidence to back it up.

  No wonder he hadn’t ever had faith in something as ethereal as love. His life had been mired in rejection and blame.

  ‘Did you tell your mother?’ Lizzy asked eventually. ‘About what had happened?’

  He shook his head. ‘No point.’

  ‘But she could have at least consoled you,’ Lizzy shot back, knowing even as she spoke that the mother Leon had described would have defined love as a mirage designed to fool a person into giving their very best to another, only to be abandoned and left heartbroken and alone.

  ‘Did you light your candle for her?’ Lizzy asked, again already knowing the answer.

  He nodded. ‘And you?’

  ‘My mum.’ She left it at that, hoping they could leave putting the microscope to her own less than happy childhood for another day.

  Leon tilted his head so that he could catch her eyes with his, those dark, beautifully familiar eyes of his searching hers for a cue as to whether or not she wanted to talk.

  She dropped her gaze to his plate.

  ‘Want some?’ he asked.

  She nodded, suddenly strangely ravenous.

  He dipped his fork into the centre of the dish and created a gorgeous whorl of pasta and clams, then lifted the forkful, dripping, up to her mouth.

  As she took a bite she looked up and met his eyes. What she saw made her heart skip a beat. She saw longing. The same longing she tried to hide from the world. A bone-deep ache to be part of a couple. So she would never have to worry about being loved. So she would never have to think about who she could turn to when she was happy, sad, tired, anxious or over the moon. Part of a couple with a partner in life who felt exactly the same way. Two people who were each other’s homing beacons, providing a place of safety and security in a world where so many things were beyond their control. Two people who could raise a child together...

  ‘Should we try it out?’ she asked, after finishing the mouthful of succulent pasta.

  ‘What?’ He shook his head, not understanding.

  ‘Us. Being a couple. While we’re here.’

  ‘What? You mean you’re accepting my proposal?’ His eyes went wide.

  She wasn’t going to go that far, but... ‘How about we consider this a new beginning?’

  He looked at her intently. He was listening. And looking damn hot. Which was distracting.

  ‘Explain,’ he said.

  ‘We just...see how we go. Try being a couple.’

  ‘In the same flat?’ Leon asked, well aware that she hadn’t exactly agreed to move back into his flat with him.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, her heart skipping a beat as she did so. ‘In the same flat, in the same hospital, working on the same case. It’s like an intensive cramming for a final exam.’

  He laughed at that. ‘What? You want to look at this as “cramming”, to see if we’d be any good at marriage?’

  She shook her head and gave him what she hoped was a cheeky grin. ‘We’re cramming so we can see if we’ll be good together—warts and all. Because...babies mean warts.’

  His expression sobered, the reality of their impending parenthood clearly taking a hold of him, and then that hard-won smile of his lit up his face as he took her hand in his and said simply, ‘Our baby won’t have warts.’

  She laughed. ‘You know I don’t mean it literally. I just mean...this is scary. For both of us. Neither of us has any experience at being in a relationship—a proper one, that has peaks and troughs and mistakes and forgiveness.’

  ‘You mean one that lasts a lifetime?’

  His words landed in her heart with an explosion of heat. Yes. That was exactly what she meant. And it scared the living daylights out of her.

  ‘I mean a happy, honest, respectful one,’ she qualified, thinking of her parents’ marriage, which had lasted her mother’s lifetime, but certainly hadn’t been a happy one. Nor respectful. ‘We’re heading into the wilderness here, you and I.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Neither of us has really had the best of examples, have we?’

  He shook his head, giving her the space to continue if she wanted to talk about her own childhood. But she didn’t, and by then Concetta had cleared their dinner plates and brought two ridiculously beautiful servings of pannacotta, and it seemed a perfect time to let the intensity of their conversation have some room to breathe.

  She lifted up the tiny glass of herbal digestif their hostess had slipped onto the table next to her dessert bowl. ‘To seeing how we go?’

  Leon lifted his own glass and shared a smile with her—one that actually looked as excited as she felt. ‘To seeing how we go.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  LEON HAD NEVER believed holding hands could deliver such promise. And yet here he was, walking through the streets of Rome, holding hands with the woman carrying his child, hoping he had the strength to make good on the commitment they’d just made to one another.

  As commitments went it was fairly vague.

  Let’s see how it goes.

  Not exactly Till death us do part, but it was a start. Not bad for two commitment-shy, work-obsessed control freaks like the two of them.

  Abruptly he pulled her into a doorway, cupped her face with his hands and kissed her until they both lost their breath.

  ‘What was that for?’ she asked, her cheeks pinkened with, very possibly, a hint of shyness. This was, after all, the first time
ever they had knowingly gone home together as a bona fide couple since New York. It felt like being a teenager. It felt like falling in love.

  ‘Because,’ he said, dropping a kiss on her nose.

  Because he loved her, and he didn’t know if his version of love was enough.

  He pushed his fears to the side, reminding himself that they were taking this risk together. He wasn’t alone. He had by his side the one woman he could trust to give him the room to make mistakes.

  He slid his arm over her shoulders as they headed towards home. This felt nice. It felt good! It felt right...the Let’s see how it goes approach.

  When they reached his flat and got into the geriatric lift, the sexual tension that had been building between them on their walk home escalated.

  Lizzy teasingly traced her finger from the base of his throat down to his belt buckle, and then suddenly, with a she-devil smile, tugged him in close.

  Something deep and primal surged to the fore and spread like wildfire through his bloodstream. For the first time ever, he didn’t care if it took a lifetime for the lift to inch its way up to the top floor. It gave him time to run the backs of his fingers along Lizzy’s sides. To feel her arch into him as his fingertips lightly grazed the edges of her neck, her breasts, her waist...

  His hands shifted to caress her thighs—which, to his satisfaction, elicited a soft moan. Without a second thought he lifted her up so that she was straddling his waist, kissing her as if his life depended upon it. And in this moment, it felt as if it did.

  The moment the lift juddered into place on the seventh floor he yanked open the iron gate and, still carrying and kissing Lizzy, unlocked his door and took her, without any consultation, to his bedroom.

  She didn’t raise a solitary objection.

  He sat down on the bed with Lizzy straddling him, her fingers already busy undoing his shirt buttons. In one swift, fluid move, he gathered the hem of her dress in his hands and pulled it up and over her head, relishing the sight of her body. Her breasts were fuller. Her curves softer. Everything about her was beautiful.

  He shifted her gently to the bed, laying her down so that he could, for the first time, properly admire the soft curve of her belly. Their child was growing in there. Their beautiful, perfect child.

  He dropped kiss after kiss upon her stomach as Lizzy ran her fingers through his hair—softly at first, and then, as the kisses descended, dropping her nails to his shoulders and scraping them against his skin as she groaned, ‘I want you inside me.’

  * * *

  With each featherlight touch, kiss and caress, Lizzy felt as though her body was being lit from within—as if light was radiating like sunshine from a place she could only define as her very essence. It felt like being lit up by fireworks and enormous fistfuls of glitter.

  They explored each other’s body with a luxuriousness that didn’t acknowledge time or space or the need for sleep or air. They were one another’s oxygen. They were one another’s life force. And Lizzy had never felt more alive in her life.

  Leon lifted himself and then wholly, completely entered her, his eyes connecting with hers in an electricity she’d never known before—a shared energy that could only mean that for the first time neither of them was holding back.

  She cried out in pleasure as he began to move with the rhythm of her hips. Arcing, pushing, savouring each moment as if it were a precious memory. There was a complexity to their lovemaking that was new. A feverish need to be as close together as humanly possible that went beyond those early lust-fuelled days in New York. What they needed now was different. Went deeper. Demanded more.

  And that, Lizzy realised as she tipped her head back and Leon dropped kiss after heated kiss along her throat, was the key, wasn’t it? Knowing one another’s foibles. Knowing one another’s pain. Hopes, dreams, desires, fears... All of it.

  A sliver of her acknowledged that she’d not been nearly as open with Leon as he had with her, but she’d get there—now that they were taking on their fears...and hopes...together.

  ‘Is this all right?’ Leon asked as once again he eased his erection deeper into her, his hands pressing into the bed, his arm muscles growing taut as, with each movement, he turned her insides into liquid heat with stroke after stroke.

  ‘More than,’ she managed. And she meant it.

  She’d thought the lovemaking they’d shared on New Year’s Eve had been other-worldly, but she’d been wrong. That had been fuelled by...not revenge, exactly, but it certainly hadn’t been by love.

  This shared synchronicity they were experiencing now—the vulnerability of it—this was what making love actually was. Sharing the most intimate thing a couple could, knowing they might fail at being together and trying anyway.

  Each time their stomachs touched, their thighs connected or, more urgently, she felt him withdraw completely and then tease at the junction of her thighs, she fought the urge to wrap her legs around him and tug him to her, so their bodies would reach that inevitable moment when they organically moved as one, urgently, uncontrollably, to reach the climax she was so desperately close to.

  But she didn’t. She forced herself to slow to the achingly luxurious cadence Leon had set, drawing out the pleasure as long as possible, trusting him, knowing that she could have faith in him to bring her to climax with him. Just as she had to have faith that he could change and that she too could change, she quietly acknowledged.

  Life was complicated. Just like in the surgical ward, life was full of ups and downs, and, if there was anyone in the world she thought she could take that roller coaster ride with, it was Leon. The father of her child.

  Their eyes caught and cinched.

  She knew what they were communicating to one another.

  Now.

  By silent agreement, the intensity of Leon’s movements gathered pace. Her hips met him thrust for thrust, her breath quickening, and soon enough her body was no longer having to obey her commands but merely following its natural rhythms, so that before her brain had a chance to catch up the two of them were pressed together so completely she felt as though Leon’s body were directly communicating with her. His heartbeat matched hers. His racing blood ran in sync with hers. Their orgasms matched each other’s with such force it doubled the pleasure and the intensity.

  When, later, they were lying side by side, their breaths steadying, and as the long day began to take hold of them, she let herself focus on individual sensations. Leon’s hand on her hip. His long, dark eyelashes. The hair on his leg brushing her smooth one. His scent, warm and citrusy, magnified into something like a warm summer afternoon in an orchard by his body’s heat. Their eyes...his dark ones, her light ones...gazing sleepily into each other’s.

  She almost told him how she felt. That she loved him. But then a light fluttering in her stomach erased everything else from her mind. Her practical side told her it was far too soon to be feeling anything close to kicks or movements. That for a first-time mother such as herself, it was normal not to feel anything until twenty weeks. But...

  ‘What? Did you feel it? Did you feel the baby?’

  She grinned. Leon was clearly throwing his training to the winds, too.

  ‘I don’t think so—not really. But...’ She moved his hand to her belly. ‘Perhaps I sensed it? It’s a bit of a learning curve, all this mother’s intuition, isn’t it?’

  He shrugged. ‘You’re going to be the expert on that one. I suppose I’ll be learning what it feels like to be an anxious father, unable to do anything apart from...’ He pushed his full lips out as he thought of something a pregnant woman might want. ‘I could peel some grapes for you?’

  She laughed and rolled her eyes. ‘No! I think, as we’re in Rome, you being a gelato angel would probably do the trick. And salami. The peppery kind. With fennel.’

  ‘A gelato angel, eh?’ he said, his accent thickening as his voice lower
ed. ‘Is that what you’re going to make our child out of? Gelato and fennel salami?’

  ‘Yes,’ she quipped, feeling strangely happy that her baby was going to grow fuelled by the beautiful foods available in this equally beautiful city, occasionally fed to her, as today’s perfect forkful of pasta had been, by the world’s most beautiful man.

  He gently eased her onto her back so he could spread his hand across her belly, dropping the odd kiss exactly where their baby was growing. One of the advantages, she thought, of having created a child with an antenatal surgeon. The disadvantages, of course, being that they both knew the countless things that could go wrong.

  The moment was so perfect, though, that she pushed all that knowledge to the side and enjoyed feeling Leon’s hand on her stomach, his lips whispering against her tummy as he... ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m teaching our piccolo pompelmo Italian. It’ll be an advantage in life. To enter the world bilingual, si?’

  ‘You know it can’t hear. A couple more weeks yet.’

  He waved away the fact. ‘Our baby is more advanced than other babies. Look at its parents!’ He struck a Brainiac pose that, being done naked, made him look a lot like Michelangelo’s David.

  She giggled as his lips brushed against her tummy while he murmured words she was pretty certain were all food-based. ‘Are you telling the baby what foods to ask for?’

  ‘Maybe...’ Leon threw her a cheeky grin. ‘We don’t want it being raised on sub-standard cuisine. Not when it has the best Rome has to offer, right?’

  ‘Hang on a minute! My country has amazing food, too.’ She shot him a mischievous look. ‘If you don’t watch it, I’m going to find an Aussie deli and feed it exclusively on Lamingtons and meat pies.’

  Leon made a tsking noise and instantly began speaking to the tiny baby inside her in characteristically impassioned Italian. She fought the instinct to combatively counter with a list of the genuinely delicious foods Australia had to offer.