Luca smiled at her. “They really liked you. I’m pretty certain they aren’t like that with everyone. Even Carla liked you, and she’s pretty hard to win over. And Mama. Well, you could do no wrong in her eyes. If you spoke Italian, you’d be perfect. Maybe we can work on that,” he added with a grin.
“Very funny,” Claire said as she sat down on the couch.
He turned back to Eva in time to see her let out a big yawn. “Uh-oh. I think she is ready for bed.”
“Like me, I think she’s still recovering from all the overstimulation.”
Claire moved to get up, but Luca raised his hand. “You relax. I’ll put her to bed. Why don’t you pour us some wine, if my sisters didn’t drink it all.”
Luca stood and lifted Eva into his arms. Her little eyes kept slowly closing, then startling open as she tried to keep herself awake. “Don’t fight it, bella.”
It only took a few minutes to change the baby, put her into her pajamas and settle her into her crib. He turned on the mobile overhead and ran his hand over her soft baby curls. “Buona notte, cara mia.”
Eva cooed at him for a moment, then her eyes fluttered closed. That was quick. Slipping out quietly, he closed the bedroom door behind him. “You know,” he said, “it’s almost time to go back to New York and we haven’t done the one thing we said we came here to do.”
Claire glanced up at him from her spot on the sofa with a curious look. “What’s that?”
“Discuss the custody arrangement we want to submit to the judge.”
An odd expression flickered in her eyes. Luca couldn’t tell if it was disappointment, fear, anxiety or a combination of all three. “Okay. Let’s discuss it, then.”
Luca crossed the living-room floor and settled on the couch beside her. “Have you had a chance to review the proposal that Edmund sent up here with me?”
“Yes, I looked it over. There wasn’t a lot that concerned me. I was surprised, honestly. It seemed pretty standard to me, and after the time we’ve spent here, I think most of my worries about your abilities as a father have been addressed. I only had one question. The child support seemed a little high to me.”
Luca’s brow went up. “High? I’m sure that’s the first time anyone’s ever heard that.” He wondered, sometimes, if Claire underestimated just how much he was worth. Any other woman would’ve done her research and milked him for every penny.
Claire shrugged off his comment. “Even if I put her in one of the best schools in Manhattan and dressed her in designer clothes, I wouldn’t need that much each month. We have a nice home, a caregiver. It makes me worry a little.”
“About what?”
“That you’re wanting more from me than the plan outlines. Is there an expectation that I should sell my brownstone and move to Manhattan? The expense of an Upper East Side apartment near you is the only thing I could imagine would justify the money.”
The thought had crossed his mind a time or two, but he had learned early on that trying to push Claire would get him nowhere. He had to use his best negotiating skills to get what he wanted. “That wasn’t my intention, no. But would it be so bad if I wanted that? You’d be closer to the museum. Closer to the schools we discussed. It would be easier on Eva to move back and forth between us, or for one of us to step in if the other needed them.”
Luca watched the wheels silently turn in her head as he spoke. He knew it made sense, but he knew she also loved her place. “It’s up to you, but as you said, that amount of money I’m offering you could easily make that a possibility.”
She brushed a stray strand of honey blond hair from her face and nodded. “I’ll have to think on that. I like being able to get away from the chaos of the city sometimes.”
He laughed. “You act as though Brooklyn is in the middle of a hayfield. If you want, I’ll buy a country house in Connecticut you can visit whenever you need to get away.”
Claire’s eyes widened. “Don’t be silly.”
Luca didn’t think it was silly. It seemed completely practical to him. Despite all his planning to seduce Claire and lure her into a relationship while keeping himself emotionally removed, he’d failed miserably. He wasn’t sure he’d call what he felt for her love, but he certainly felt more than he’d ever intended to.
At this point, he was willing to do almost anything it took to get Claire to play a bigger role in his life. Having her live nearby was just one part of that. If buying a country house helped his cause, so be it. He was dreading the end of this trip. He knew that returning home would mean long hours in the office, and, if he was lucky, seeing Eva every other weekend. That wasn’t good enough for him, especially when nothing in the paperwork dictated how often he’d get to see Claire.