“I’m just glad you let me dissuade you from actually bringing the baby, so he won’t reject her to her face.”
“He won’t reject her!” Lucy leaned forward to wave goodbye one last time at Chloe, who was watching from Amelia’s arms in an upstairs window. The girl had eagerly volunteered to babysit for a few hours, and the whole household staff was available for any necessary help. Lucy still felt uneasy leaving her baby, but she’d realized it was for the best.
“You act like you still love him.”
Maximo’s abrupt tone made her sit up straight in her seat as their chauffeur drove the Maserati smoothly through the villa’s gate. “Of course I don’t love him!”
“Then why do you persist in believing he’d be a decent father?”
“He’s the only father she has.” She looked out unhappily through her window at the clear, bright morning. “I can’t send him away.”
Maximo’s cell phone rang. He answered it, speaking in rapid-fire Italian.
She sat next to him on the beige leather seat of the Quattroporte, feeling the hard heat of his leg pressing against hers. She’d spent the whole night quivering on the far side of their bed,
unable to sleep. Listening to him breathe next to her. Wanting to be closer. Wanting the comfort of his arms around her. But knowing that would be the most dangerous thing of all.
She hadn’t slept a wink. The bags beneath her eyes were roomy enough for international travel.
But obviously he hadn’t had the same problem sleeping next to her last night. In his gray wool coat, with his crisp pin-striped suit and clean-shaven jaw, he looked every inch the handsome playboy prince. The kind of man who could take women—and leave them.
Swallowing, Lucy looked away.
As they traveled through Aquillina, she again saw the ramshackle, ruined villa. While the rest of the snow-swept village sparkled like white diamonds in the sun, this solitary place seemed to hunker in shadow.
Then, from the shadows…something moved.
Her eyes went wide as she saw an aged, graying old man wearing only an old robe stumble through the doorway. Crying after them, shouting in Italian, he frantically waved his hands.
Lucy twisted her body to stare after him through the back window.
“Stop!” she cried out, reaching forward to grab the driver’s shoulder. “Please stop!”
The chauffeur glanced back at Maximo. Hardly pausing in his cell phone conversation, the prince shook his head in refusal.
“Mi scusi, principessa,” the driver said apologetically. The sedan continued rapidly down the road.
Lucy glanced through the back window. The old man stood in the middle of the street, staring after them. When they didn’t stop, he covered his face with his hands in a gesture of despair.
Furious, she whirled back around in the plush leather seat as Maximo snapped his phone shut.
“Didn’t you see that old man calling after you?” she demanded.
“He wasn’t calling after me,” he replied in a tone of utter boredom. He pulled his laptop computer out of a black leather briefcase. “It’s you he wants.”
“Me?” she gasped, and instinctively craned her head back around, but they’d already left him far behind. “Why?”
“That man, cara,” he drawled, “is your sainted grandfather.”
“My—grandfather?” she gasped. “And you left him like that in the street? Are you out of your mind?” She turned to the driver. “Stop!” she cried, but the driver kept going. Desperately she grabbed Maximo’s arm. “Make him stop! We have to go back! Didn’t you see how he needs help?”
Maximo looked at her.
“I would chop off my own hands,” he said evenly, “before I’d lift one finger to help that man.”
Shocked by the grim, deadly look in his face, she fell back into her seat.
“How can you be so cold?” she whispered. She thought of the old man sobbing in the street. “He’s sick and old—dying—”