He walked into Julia’s building and made his way up to her office.
“You can’t go in there she’s prepping for a mee—Oh, Mr. Calvaresi.” Julia’s assistant offered him a toothpaste-white smile.
“I need to see her.”
“She said she didn’t want to be disturbed.”
“She did not mean me.”
“I already got in trouble for the salmon.”
“She didn’t mean it. She loves it. I need to see her now. I’m going to, even if I have to break the office door down, you might as well buzz me in.”
Thad smiled again and pressed a button on the desk. “Ferro Calvaresi to see you, darling.”
He didn’t return the other man’s smile as he walked toward Julia’s office doors and swung them open.
She jumped up. “Ferro.” She rounded her desk and wrapped her arms around him, kissing him quickly. Such a normal, couplelike gesture. So strange to him. “I wasn’t expecting you yet, we weren’t supposed to meet until later.”
“That is for business, this is a personal call,” he said.
“Oh, really?” Her expression turned suggestive.
“No,” he bit out. “Not that.”
“Oh.” She was hurt, and it was his fault. Because he was short with her. Much more than he’d intended to be.
“I needed to tell you, I realized that I didn’t use a condom last night.”
Her cheeks turned pink. “Oh.”
“You’re safe, in terms of your health. It’s fair of you to be concerned about that all things considered. But I was very careful with my clients. And I had not had sex in twelve years, and in that time I’ve been tested, just in case. My concern is pregnancy, of course.”
“Oh…oh that. No. No that won’t be a problem.”
“It won’t?”
“It’s a bad…time of the month and stuff.”
Julia felt a little shell-shocked. A lot shell-shocked. She wasn’t sure how she’d missed the oversight last night. But she had. So stupid of her. Irresponsible. And yet, shell-shocked though she was, she didn’t feel terrified.
And she had no idea if she was at a fertile time in her cycle or not. She’d never really paid attention to that kind of thing since, until recently, she hadn’t been sexually active. But it sounded like the right thing to say. Sounded like something she should know.
Except lying was wrong.
“I…I don’t really know if it’s a bad time of the month,” she said. “But…but I don’t want to take anything. Any pills or anything to…to stop it. I just don’t want to.”
He nodded slowly. “I understand.”
“You do?”
“I do.”
“I have enough money to take care of a baby,” she said. “I could get all the help I’d need. Even if I had to bring the baby to work, I could. I’m the boss lady. There’s like…no woman on earth more ready, financially speaking, to handle an accidental baby than me, and you wouldn’t have to do anything.”
“You think I want to do nothing?”
“You came in here all panicked.”
“I don’t want you to be pregnant,” he said. “I don’t want to raise a baby, with you or anyone else, but I’ll be damned, if there is a child, if I walk away from it.”
“That’s…well, that’s crazy.”
“How? How is it crazy? Do you want to be pregnant?”
With the potential father looking at her like she was public enemy number one and all kinds of frightening unresolved feelings for the man? No. No she did not.
“No.”
“But if you were pregnant?”
“I would love my baby. I would take care of it.”
“So then, I’m not crazy.”
“Look, nice cart, but the horse doesn’t go behind it.”
“What?”
“Cart before the horse. I’m probably not pregnant. Let’s all chill.”
“This kind of a lapse is unacceptable, Julia.”
“Okay, so let’s be more responsible then.”
“It never should have happened.”
Julia felt her ears starting to burn. “Great. Fine. So it won’t happen again. We’ll be more careful.”