Page 37 of The Housekeeper's One-Night Baby
‘No, no. She fed me and provided a roof over my head and made sure I never missed school.’ He paused. ‘But she found it difficult to talk to me, without...censure, which was why I left Italy just as soon as I could and have never returned.’
Her green eyes had grown narrow. ‘And did your father never try to reconcile with you?’
‘Never. But in many ways, I was relieved. Too much water had flowed under that particular bridge and sometimes there is no way back from something like that.’ He shook his head. ‘You think I wanted to put myself—and him—through all that pain again?’
Lizzie bit her lip as his words died away and the expression on his face was almost too much to bear. But shehadto bear it. To share it. If they were to have any chance together, she couldn’t let him suffer alone any more. And why else had he turned up this morning, if he wasn’t still holding out for some kind of future for them? But, oh, hell. It was worse than she could ever have imagined. No wonder he had such problems with trust and relating to women, if his grandmother had subjected him to such a cold and silent punishment.
He had told her early on that love didn’t feature in his vocabulary and now she could understand why. He was convinced he didn’t knowhowto love, she realised, because nobody had ever shown him. His formative years had shaped him. A boy neglected by his parents as they sought to increase the size of their family. A father who could not live with the consequences of how that had impacted on their son’s behaviour. And a grandmother who had been unable to see beyond her own grief to help the teenager who had been hurting so badly. No wonder Niccolò had become the man he had. No wonder he had pushed emotion away.
But surely he was underestimating himself. He might not be comfortable using the words, but at times he hadbehavedlike a man who knew the true meaning of love. The question was—would he allow himself to believe it? Could she show him?
Shehadto show him. She had grown up without a father and many times had felt the absence of his presence. Why subject their baby to the same fate, if there was a chance it could be different?
But she wasn’t just thinking as a mother, she realised. She was thinking as a woman, too. She wanted this man so much. This clever and complicated man who made her feel things she hadn’t thought possible. Was there any way he could ever open up his heart and let her inside?
‘I think your grandmother and your father were both hurting very badly,’ she said slowly. ‘And because of that, they lashed out at you and behaved in a way they shouldn’t have done, and which made it much worse. But that’s...’ She drew in an unsteady breath. ‘That’s all in the past, Niccolò. It’s the future we’ve got to think about now. So I’m going to start by saying that I really do appreciate you buying Ermecott for me.’
She hesitated as she met the granite of his features and she wondered if she’d imagined the faint flicker of relief in his eyes—as if she’d granted him a reprieve by sticking to practicalities. ‘But don’t you understand that, without you, it’s just bricks and mortar?’ she continued softly. ‘It might as well be a shoebox on the side of the motorway, for all the appeal it would have. It would only be having you there with us which would make it into a real home.’
He gave a swift shake of his head. ‘But I can’t give you what you want. What you deserve. I can’t give you love, Lizzie.’
‘Are you quite sure about that?’ she asked him. ‘You see, I think you already have. You didn’t want a baby—you were so, so clear about that. But despite all those reservations, you came to find me when you found out I was pregnant, and you scooped me up and gave me a place to stay, didn’t you? You guarded and protected me in New York, and even though at times I thought it was a bit over the top, secretly, I absolutely loved it.
‘Remember that day you rushed to find me in the snow? When you...’ Her voice wobbled a little. ‘When you took off your own coat and put it on my back and buttoned it up, and it felt like the most caring thing anyone had ever done for me. Well, actually—it was. You’ve supported me and continue to support me. You’ve tried to do your best by me and the baby, but you haven’t told me any lies along the way. You might not think you’re capable of love, Niccolò Macario, but I do. Love is not what you say, but what you do, and I’m prepared to hang around long enough for you to recognise that.’
She swallowed. ‘And just in case you should be in any doubt of my feelings for you, I’m putting it on the record that I love you. I love you so much.’
Total silence followed these words and Niccolò knew he should say something in response, but... He shook his head, for the change taking place in his heart and his head was so seismic that for a moment he couldn’t think. All he could do was feel. He stared at her. At the softness of her lips and her eyes as the truth of their situation came slamming home—and what a truth it was. She didn’t want his money, but she wanted his baby. And she wanted him. Him. The man beneath all the trappings.
She was the purest, sweetest thing which had happened to him in a lifetime spent trying to bury his pain by papering it over with money and ‘success’. But Lizzie had seen beyond that. She’d looked inside him and seen him, and she loved him. His heart stabbed with pain and joy and recognition, because wasn’t it time to tell her his final secret? To reveal the mind-blowing impact she’d had on him from the get-go?
‘You know something?’ he said huskily. ‘The day we met was the anniversary of my mother and my sister’s deaths.’ He paused to allow the brief sting of tears to pass. ‘A day I always reserved for something to distract me and keep me busy. A day of guilt and pain, which inevitably ended with a whisky bottle and the beckon of oblivion. But not this year. You opened the door and looked at me with those big green eyes, and I...’ How could he explain what had happened—a famously uptight, high-profile man having sex with a total stranger in a broom cupboard? Didn’t the country of his birth have an expression for the love at first sight he had experienced in that moment?
‘Un colpo di fulmine.I was hit by the thunderbolt,’ he explained simply. ‘And I’ve never really recovered from that.’ He cleared his throat, and suddenly the words were coming thick and fast. ‘But that’s good, because I don’t want to. I just want to spend the rest of my life with you, Lizzie Bailey. I would prefer to marry you and make you my wife, but if you refuse—then I will accept it. But be certain of one thing. That I will spend the rest of my life trying to change your mind.’ He stared at her for a long moment, revelling in the sensation of anticipation and desire heating his blood. ‘Now come here,’ he said.
‘No. You come here.’
‘Is this a battle of wills?’ he challenged softly.
She gave a lazy and speculative smile, as all her new-found sexual confidence reasserted itself. ‘Maybe.’
He crossed the floor to take her in his arms, touching her face and hair and then the curve of his unborn child with trembling fingers, as if he couldn’t quite believe she—or the baby—were real. His lips brushed against hers and suddenly he could taste the salt of tears and he couldn’t work out if they were hers or his, and only when the kiss had ended did he wipe them away. ‘I love you,’ he said unsteadily, his fingers tangling with the pliant silk of her fiery hair. ‘Even though you drew the most unflattering portrait of me.’
‘I knew you didn’t like it.’
‘Actually, it was very useful. It made me think—do I really look as forbidding as that?’
She tilted her head to one side. ‘Only some of the time. But not at this precise moment, that’s for sure.’
He gave up on conversation then and pulled her closer still, his heart kicking in his chest as his baby kicked beneath her breast.
EPILOGUE
‘ISHEASLEEP?’
Niccolò’s gaze travelled across the room to the window seat to where his wife sat, bathed in a pool of gold from the nearby lamp. Her green dress matched her eyes and the giant Christmas tree framed in the window as she finished tying a scarlet ribbon around a present. Behind her, thick snow was falling and the newly white grounds of the Jacobean mansion appeared silvery bright in the moonlight. If it looked like a perfect scene, that was because it was, he thought with a sense of satisfaction. Upstairs lay their beloved son, now almost five years old, clutching a toy puppy called Pesto.
Lizzie looked up and smiled, her hair falling over her shoulder. ‘Is he asleep?’
