She was such a dope, confirming his suspicions before he even knew. How did he disarm her so easily again and again?
“What was their reaction?” she asked, focusing on her deeper concerns. The duque and duquesa had struck Poppy as being aliens in human skin, assimilating on earth well enough not to be detected, but incapable of relating to normal people or showing genuine emotion.
“They asked to be kept informed.”
“I see. And is your mother still on the hunt for the next Señora Montero?”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“I’m capable of reading a headline.”
“Elevate your browsing choices. Gossip sites are garbage. If you wanted to know what I was doing with my life, you should have called me.”
“I’m more interested in how your mother is going to react to Lily.”
“She’ll accept a fait accompli. She’s done it before.”
When Cesar’s indiscretion with Sorcha had resulted in Enrique. But as far as Poppy could tell, Rico’s father had barely noticed he had a grandson while his mother had given Enrique tight smiles and offered unsolicited suggestions on how he could be improved. He looks due for a haircut, Sorcha.
So Poppy snorted her disbelief. “I’ve seen what her type of ‘acceptance’ looks like and it’s colder than an arctic vortex.”
“Be careful, Poppy.”
“That wasn’t a cheap shot. I’m saying Lily is far too important to me to set her up to be the subject of criticism and disapproval for the rest of her life. If they’re going to treat her like a stain on the family name, I won’t take her anywhere near them.”
He probably thought she should be grateful he was planning to let her accompany him and her daughter, but he only said, “They’re not demonstrative people. There will be no welcome embrace from either of them. Reconcile yourself to that right now. They do, however, bring other strengths to the table. We Monteros look after our own.”
“My stepfather can put her in movies if she decides she wants wealth and fame.”
“Wealth is not fortune, fame is not standing,” he stated pithily. “What sort of future are you planning for her? You’ll date, perhaps introduce her to a few contenders and, one day, when you’re convinced you’re in love, you’ll allow another man to raise my child without any of the genuine advantages to which she’s entitled? In ignorance of her family and the attached opportunities overseas? No. I won’t let you deny her what’s rightfully hers.”
“It’s not up to you. And don’t say it like that! ‘When I’m convinced I’m in love.’ I love Lily. Try to tell me that feeling is a figment of my imagination.” She would knock him through the ice. “Do you plan to love her? Because, given what I saw of your upbringing, you were never shown how.”
A profound silence crashed over them.
“Just as you were never taught to hold your temper in favor of a civil conversation?” Oh, he sounded lethal. The cold in the air began to penetrate her clothes.
“Answer the question,” she insisted. “My love for Lily took root the day I learned I was pregnant.” It had grown so expansive her body couldn’t contain the force of it. It quivered in her voice as she continued. “I won’t set her up to yearn for something from you that will never happen. I’ve been there and it is far too painful a thing to wish onto my child. You know it is.”
She had pushed herself right out onto the ledge of getting way too personal. She knew she had, but that was how much her daughter meant to her.
The umbrage radiating off him should have flash-melted the snow and razed the trees, illuminating the skies in an explosion of light.
Even so, she nudged even further by warning through her teeth, “Don’t shove your way into her life unless you intend to be there every single moment, in every possible way she might need you to be.”
His hands jammed into his pockets and his profile was slashed with shadows.
“You—” Something made him bite off whatever he had been about to say. He made a sucking noise through clenched teeth, as though enduring the removal of a bullet or something equally wounding. “My brother’s sons are not unhappy. He had my same upbringing. He’s managed to become quite attached. I would expect to form that sort of c
onnection with my own child.”
She was glad for the dark then, because sudden, pitying tears froze to her lashes. His words were such a careful admission that he was fine with not being loved as a child, but would find a way to extend his heart to his daughter.
For that reason alone, for the opportunity to gift him with his child’s unconditional love, she knew she would have to allow him into Lily’s life.
“Even so...” She folded her arms and squished handfuls of her quilted sleeves with her woolen mittens. She had had a front-row seat to the way his parents’ marriage worked and it was...sad. They spoke without warmth to each other, as if they were inquiring about a telephone bill minus the anxiety that they might struggle to pay. “What kind of marriage would that be as an example for her?”
“A calm and rational one?” he suggested.