For all this time, she’d told herself that a selfish playboy workaholic like Antonio Delacruz would never change.
But the truth was he already had. In the space of two days, he’d gone from rejecting her, to offering child support money, to asking her to be his mistress, to proposing marriage and asking to share full-time parenting.
Hana thought of what she’d learned about his heartbreaking childhood. And yet he was still willing to take the risk.
The more she learned about Antonio, the more she—cared.
And he was starting to care for her as well. He had to be. Because there was no other reason he would have offered to share his company.
If he was willing to share his most precious possession with her, didn’t that also have to mean he’d be willing to truly share his life?
“How could you do it, Hana?” Ren demanded. “How could you marry him?”
Blinking, she looked at her friend in the elegant, crowded bar. His handsome face looked so strange. She said slowly, “Antonio is the father of my baby.”
“And when I left Tokyo, you said you’d never see him again.”
“He changed my mind.”
“How?”
“He’s not the man I thought he was, Ren. He wants to settle down, and be a father to our baby. Look, I know our wedding was a little sudden...”
“Sudden.” Ren’s face looked grimmer still. “Is that what you call it?” He looked around the modern bar, filled with Antonio’s employees and lawyers in their office clothes, getting drunk on martinis and sake. “This is your wedding reception?” He glanced at her pale pink sundress, which was starting to look a little limp after a full day of wear. “That’s your wedding dress?”
She stiffened. “Do you really think I care about the wedding details?”
Ren stared at her, and she blanched as she remembered all the times as a girl that she’d described ridiculous dreams about her faraway, someday wedding.
Her throat suddenly hurt. A moment before, she’d convinced herself that their impulsive ceremony had been perfect. Efficient. No plans, no worries, just done and over with.
But now, it suddenly occurred to her that she’d never have another wedding. Or the chance to experience romantic, fairy-tale love.
Good, she told herself. So their child would never know how it felt to be excluded, as Hana had.
But the reassurance felt hollow.
“You don’t even have a wedding cake,” Ren said contemptuously, looking around. “Where are your seven tiers with white buttercream frosting flowers?”
“I don’t care about cake.” She lifted her hand defiantly. “Besides. He got me this.”
Grabbing her hand, Ren closely examined the enormous platinum-set diamond ring. Then he snorted, releasing her hand. “That had to be his idea. Not yours.”
Pulling back her arm, she said stiffly, “It doesn’t matter. The wedding doesn’t matter. Just the marriage. We’re having a baby. We’re a family now. Partners.”
Silence fell between them, even as all around them people laughed over the bar’s loud, raucous music. One of the New York lawyers was yelling, “A toast! To annual growth next year of eight percent!”
“Nine!” someone else roared, sloshing his drink.
Ren looked at her in the shadowy entrance of the bar.
“Partners,” he said sardonically. “Very romantic.”
Her cheeks
heated. She couldn’t meet his gaze. “You know I never asked for love.”
“Yes,” he said. “I know.”