“Yes, your father’s election prospects. Quelle surprise.”
“It’s not about votes. Not the way you think. My father is actually a good politician. He’s extremely well-read, believes in science and facts and weighs the costs and benefits very objectively. He’s never swayed by special interests or emotional pleas and certainly not by suitcases full of cash, only by sound reasoning. It’s in the country’s best interest that he retains his seat. That becomes more challenging when his children are having babies out of wedlock every other year.”
“You’re ashamed,” he accused.
“I’m embarrassed that I showed a lack of self-discipline.” And that she had embraced longing and hope and other nonsensical ideals that weren’t based in logic. Soon she would advertise that bad judgment on the big screen that her belly would become. “I failed to live up to expectations. No one enjoys failing.”
“You failed to stand up for our child.”
His words, his tone, caused a spasming clench across her chest. Guilt. Anguish. Resignation. It was so intense, she had to take a moment to breathe through it.
How did she explain there was no point in growing indignant with them? Demanding feelings when there were none?
He turned into a private airfield. A stab of panic struck.
“Where are you going?” Was he so angry that he was leaving her? She couldn’t blame him, but the profound sense of abandonment that gripped her as she faced him climbing onto a jet and disappearing was nearly more than she could bear.
“We are going to my home.”
She opened her mouth, but he was jamming the car into Park and flinging himself from it, handing her car fob to someone with instructions to drive it to her home.
Stunned, she didn’t move until Angelo came around to open her door.
“I don’t have any luggage.” That wasn’t entirely true. She kept a clean pair of jeans and a warm pullover in the back seat for weather changes in the field.
“We’ll manage.” He jerked his head at the waiting jet.
“Angelo.” She sought to reason with him, but he cut her off.
“What the hell do you have to stay here for? They didn’t congratulate you on our baby or your doctorate or your forthcoming marriage. They don’t care about you so why would you want to do anything they tell you to do?”
Tears slammed into her eyes. She fought them back, fought back the clawing sensation in her throat and the sick nausea that roiled in her belly.
The sad fact was, these weren’t tears because her parents overlooked her accomplishments or disapproved of her choice in a husband. This was a deeper anguish that aligned directly with the rejection he was feeling on behalf of their child.
She knew that injured anger so well. It hurt her that he was experiencing it. Hurt her that their baby might one day see it and feel it.
She looked at the jet, thought about how many times she had done exactly this—jumped on an airplane yet never quite managed to outrun this ache. Or had anyone chase her and tell her she was missed.
For once, however, she wouldn’t be alone in her pain.
She cleared her throat and asked that her laptop and other effects be transferred aboard. She waited until they were in the air, after they’d been served a light bisque with puff pastry and Angelo seemed marginally less incensed, to try to explain.
“My parents are not emotional people. They will never be happy about this baby because they aren’t capable of it. If you expect an effusive expression of joy from them in response to anything, you will be sorely disappointed.” She had had to learn that lesson over and over. It still hurt, but it remained true. “On the other hand, they aren’t specifically unhappy, either. What you witnessed was resistance to a course correction.”
“Something I’ve witnessed twice today,” he said darkly.
She fought letting him see how stricken she was to be likened to her mother, which only made her more like La Reina, she supposed.
“One doesn’t achieve a goal by giving in the minute an obstacle is encountered,” Pia said, her voice empty of the defensiveness squeezing her in a vise. “I had no idea how you would react to this. Of course I tried to preserve the life I had planned for myself. That’s very natural and human.”
His snort disparaged the bunch of them as any such thing.
“How will your family react?” she asked stiffly.
He flinched and turned his profile away. “I don’t have any.”
Given what he had told her of his father and his childhood, she had wondered. This was obviously a raw topic for h