Caroselli's Accidental Heir (2 page)

You can’t have him.

There was a point early in the relationship when his emotional unavailability had been his most appealing quality. She had stupidly believed that because she had never let herself fall in love, she was immune to the experience. And by the time she had figured out what was happening to her, it was too late. She loved him.

But on the very slim chance that he planned to pull her into his arms and profess his undying love for her, now would be the time.

He curled his fingers around her arm instead, and said in a tight voice, “Let’s go.”

She hesitated. “Go where?”

“Anywhere but here,” he mumbled, glancing over at the guests who were now huddled in small groups and watching the action with brazen curiosity. Hadn’t he told her a million times how nosy his family were, how he wished everyone would mind their own business? Could she have picked a worse place to do this?

Tony’s grip was so firm, all Lucy could do was try to keep up with his much longer stride as he half walked/half dragged her to his car out front. But he was touching her, so she didn’t even care. How pathetic was that?

He opened the passenger door for her, then he got in the driver’s seat, but instead of starting the engine, he just sat there. She waited for the explosion. For Tony to accuse her of ruining his life. Then out of the blue, for no reason at all, he started to laugh.

* * *

Lucy was looking at him like he was nuts and she was probably right. Like some divine intervention, she had appeared just as he was about to make the absolute worst mistake of his entire life. And all he could think when he turned and saw her standing there was
Thank God I don’t have to do this
.

“Are you all right?” Lucy asked him, looking as if she was seriously concerned for his mental health. And he couldn’t blame her. Since she left he’d made nothing but misguided—and at times irrational—decisions. Like offering Alice a deal after only a month of dating. They didn’t love each other, but she wanted a baby, and he needed a male heir. With a thirty-million-dollar inheritance riding on it, who could blame him for compromising? But he could see now what a mistake it would have been. Hell, he’d known it thirty seconds after he proposed.

All along, he’d kept reminding himself that the marriage need last only long enough to produce a male child. Then he and Alice would go their separate ways. But as the Wedding March had started to play, and he saw Alice walking toward him, he realized that not only did he not love her, he didn’t really like her all that much, and even if they had to tolerate each other for only a year, that was a year too long. And if they did have a child, divorced or not, he would be shackled to her for the rest of his life.

Crisis averted thanks to Lucy. How was it that she always showed up when he needed her? She just seemed to
know.
And damn, had he needed her today. She was his voice of reason when he acted like a dumbass. And lately, especially since she had left, he’d risen to the level of king of the dumbasses.

Marry a stranger? What the hell had he been thinking?

He nodded toward her stomach. “Is this the reason you left?”

She bit her lip and nodded.

“I don’t get it. Why didn’t you just talk to me?”

She avoided his gaze, wringing her hands in her lap. “I’ll be the first to admit that I handled this whole situation badly. I have no excuse for my behavior. And I’m not here because I want or need anything from you. And I definitely didn’t come here to break up your wedding. That was just bad timing.”

He thought it was pretty good timing, actually. “So why are you here? Why come back now?”

“I heard that you were getting married and I thought you should know about the baby before you did. But I had no idea you were getting married
today.
I was told it was an engagement party.”

Which would explain her look of horrified shock when she realized what she had walked into. “Told by whom?”

“Does it really matter? I swear I didn’t mean to cause any trouble. I just wanted to talk to you.”

Lucy never went looking for trouble—hell, she didn’t have a hurtful or vindictive bone in her body—yet somehow trouble always managed to find her. And though he had every right to be angry with her, furious even, she looked so remorseful, so beside herself, he just couldn’t work up the steam. In fact, his first instinct when he’d seen her standing there, her jaw hanging open in surprise, had been to pull her into his arms and hold her. “So, talk to me. Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?”

“I know I should have,” Lucy said, idly fiddling with the zipper on her jacket, avoiding his gaze. “I just...I didn’t want to be
that
girl.”

“What girl?”

“I didn’t want you to think that I’d gotten myself knocked up on purpose, so you would feel obligated to take care of me. I’m not even sure how this happened. We were always so careful. At least, I thought we were.”

Tony had learned a long time ago that in life there were no guarantees. All they could do now was make the best of a complicated situation. Getting rid of Alice was a decent start.

“First off, let’s get one thing straight,” he told her. “I do not, nor would I ever suspect you of doing anything so deceitful. I know you better than that. You just don’t have it in you. And I’m sure you believed you were doing the right thing by leaving, but it was wrong to keep this from me.”

“I know. I didn’t think it through. I don’t blame you for being angry.”

“I’m not angry. I’m...disappointed.”

She bit her lip and tears welled in her eyes, but she held them back. “I know. I screwed up. And I’m so sorry. I feel so bad for your fiancée.”

“Alice will be okay.” Tony had tried to convince himself that everyone was wrong about her, when deep down his gut was telling him that she would be a terrible wife, and an even worse parent. She was materialistic and demanding, and far too self-absorbed. She had a single favorite topic: Alice. She would go on for hours about the fashion industry and her fame as a runway model, and though he’d tried to feign interest, he often found himself tuning her out.

She had good qualities, too. She was attractive, if not a bit exotic-looking, had a decent sense of humor, and the sex had been okay, but they never really connected. Not the way he and Lucy had. From the first kiss, he knew Lucy was special. And she was adamant that she wasn’t looking to settle down.

He was sure the right man for Alice was out there. It just wasn’t him. They had a total lack of common interests. She liked the theater while he preferred a good shoot-’em-up action flick—the more action the better. She was a cat person and he was allergic. She was a vegan, he was a meat-and-potatoes man. She listened to New Age hippie music and he jammed on Classic Rock. The louder the better.

Two people couldn’t have been less compatible.

“Do you love her?” Lucy asked him.

He barely knew her. “Our relationship is...
was
complex.”

He would like to believe that he would have stopped things before they went too far. Like when the priest asked if there was anyone who opposed the marriage. Or had he been hoping his family would do it for him? They had yet to warm to Alice, if that was even possible, and were vehemently against the marriage. Even
Nonno,
who had been trying to marry him off for years, and had gone so far as to bribe him with a thirty-million-dollar inheritance, refused to attend the wedding in protest.

“You should have trusted me,” he told Lucy. “You should have told me the truth, and we could have worked something out.”

“Like I said, I screwed up. I made a mistake. But I’m here now and I want to make things right.”

Did she? Or would he come home one day a year or so from now and find her gone again?

Two

T
ony had so many questions, and so many things he wanted to say to Lucy, he didn’t know where to begin. It had been a shock to stop by her place all those months ago and be told by her roommate that Lucy had moved back to Florida with her mom. Lucy was such a private person, half the time he had no idea what had been going on in her head. Only now, sitting here beside her, did he appreciate how much he’d missed her, how much he had depended on their friendship. Since she’d left, he’d had no one to talk to. He’d long ago been labeled the strong silent type by his family. Serious, super-focused and private, but there was so much more to him that he didn’t let people see. With her he could let down his guard and be himself. She was the only one who really
got
him.

Maybe that’s why her leaving had been such a hard-hitting blow. It had been unsettling. He’d spent the better part of that last thirty years avoiding emotional entanglements.

Someone rapped on his window and Tony nearly jumped out of his skin. It was his cousin Nick. Christ. Couldn’t he have ten minutes without
someone
in his family accosting him. He was guessing that Christine and Elana, his younger sisters, weren’t far behind.

Tony rolled his window down.
“What?”

Nick leaned down so he could see them both, resting his arms in the open window, looking first at Tony then Lucy. “Everything okay out here?”

“Lucy, you remember my cousin Nick,” Tony said.

“Hi, Lucy,” Nick said, shooting her a megawatt smile. “Let me be the first to congratulate you both.”

Tony recognized the twinkle of curiosity in Nick’s eye, and knew exactly what he was thinking. He was wondering if Tony was still going to take advantage of
Nonno
’s offer. Both Nick and Rob had forfeited their cut of the thirty million to save their relationships with their wives. But Tony had no marriage to save. Although to get the money he would have to marry Lucy.
Nonno
’s game,
Nonno
’s rules. But, if he could talk Lucy into marrying him, which in itself could be difficult, it wouldn’t be a
real
marriage. She didn’t want that.

“My wife is pregnant, too,” Nick told Lucy. “We’re due September twenty-first.”

“Early June,” Lucy said, and Tony could see Nick doing the math in his head. The slight tilt of his head and peak of his brow said he had come to the same conclusion as Tony—Lucy had known about the baby for quite some time before she left for Florida.

“I thought this was going to be a boring wedding,” Nick said with a grin. “But this was even better than my sister’s wedding, when my dad got into a fistfight with my mom’s date.”

A distinction Tony would be happy to forget.

“Is Alice all right?” he asked Nick, noting the pained look on Lucy’s face. She really did seem to feel bad for Alice.

“She’s still upstairs with your mom. Carrie is going to drive her back to the condo. She sent me out here to tell you to be gone before they leave.”

Carrie was their cousin Rob’s wife, and Alice’s best friend. She had introduced Tony to Alice, a move she was probably regretting about now.

Alice being the polar opposite of Lucy had appealed to him. At first. In the end, it only worked against them. He often found himself wishing that she was Lucy, or at least a lot more like her. Those were two months of his life he would be happy to forget. Or erase completely. If it were within his power to go back in time and change things, he would have followed Lucy to Florida and convinced her to come back where he could take care of her. Where they could be a family, even if it wasn’t in the traditional sense.

Hindsight was indeed twenty/twenty.

“Carrie also wants to know if Alice left any of her things at your place,” Nick said.

“I don’t think so, but I’ll take a look around.” Alice had only been to his town house a couple of times. Which made the fact that he was going to
marry
her all the crazier. Come to think of it, he wasn’t even sure how old she was. He’d asked, but he’d gotten a vague nonanswer.

Dude, what the hell were you thinking?

“Do it soon,” Nick said. “She’s already talking about going back to New York in a couple of days.”

“Permanently?”

“Far as I know.”

Tony hadn’t intended to drive her out of Illinois, but on the bright side, he wouldn’t have to see her again. He could live with that.

The front door of
Nonno
’s house opened and people started to file out onto the porch. Thankfully Alice wasn’t among them. Nor were his sisters.

Tony turned to Lucy. “Why don’t we go back to my place?”

She nodded, looking anxiously toward the front door.

“I’ll talk to you later,” he told Nick, who straightened up and made a “call me” gesture with his thumb and pinkie. The Carosellis were known for two things: chocolate and a propensity for gossip. To be honest, Tony’d had enough of both. He wanted out from under the microscope. He wanted the freedom to live his life however he wanted, both personally and professionally. To be who he wanted to be. Not what was best for the family, but what was best for
him
. It was what he’d wanted for a long time now. That thirty million dollars had been his ticket out. He could start over, build his own business. Be his own man.

But at what cost?

Tony started the engine and pulled away from the curb.

“That was...weird,” Lucy said and he glanced over at her. He had to fight the urge to reach over and take her hand. He just wanted to touch her. But now didn’t seem the time.

“What was weird?”

“After what I did, I figured your entire family would hate me.”

It was much more likely that they would be planning to throw her a parade. His family hadn’t exactly warmed to Alice. As in, none of them. He was pretty sure Rob liked her only because she was his wife’s best friend. Just last night he overheard his sister Alana tell his mom that she thought Alice was a bloodsucking she-devil. “Let’s not worry about my family,” he told Lucy. “This has nothing to do with them. We need to talk about the baby. And about us.”

“You’re right.”

He was glad she thought so, since he was winging it. He had never been in a situation like this. Nor did he know anyone who had. The true scope of how his life was about to change hadn’t really sunk in yet, so he was still in a minor state of shock. Over what was to come, but also over what he had almost done today. Thankfully Lucy had been here to save him from himself.

“How has your pregnancy been going? You and the baby are both healthy?”

“I feel great, the baby is active and kicking just like he should be.”

His heart skipped a beat. “He?”

She flattened her palms against her belly and the ghost of a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Or she. I just have this strong feeling it’s a boy.”

That would be awfully convenient. “Where is your suitcase?”

“I didn’t bring one. I wasn’t planning on staying long. In fact...” She pulled her cell phone out of her jacket pocket and checked the display. “I have to get back to the airport soon. So we don’t have a huge amount of time.”

At first he thought she was joking. Did she honestly believe he was just going to let her leave again? While she was pregnant with his baby? He thought she knew him better than that. Of course, if she did, she wouldn’t have left in the first place.

They may not have planned this, but as long as she was carrying his child, she was his responsibility, so for the time being, she was more or less stuck with him. And if the baby really was a boy, he would make his daddy a very wealthy man. If Lucy would marry him, that is.

It sounded simple enough; the only problem was that Lucy was as relationship-phobic as him. Probably even more so. She had been the one to set the boundaries of their relationship, to insist that they keep it casual. Now he had to figure out a way to convince her that getting married was best for the baby.

“You have your ticket?” he asked, and she nodded. “Can I see it?”

Looking puzzled, she pulled a folded sheet of white paper from her fanny pack, which was almost hidden under the swell of her belly. In all the time he’d known her she’d kept her belongings in either a beat-up backpack that she’d picked up in the lost and found at work, or a fanny pack. He’d never seen her carry a conventional purse. There was very little about Lucy that he would call conventional. She marched to the beat of her own drum.

Lucy handed him the sheet of paper and he promptly ripped it in half.

“Oooookay,” she said. “That was very dramatic and all. But you do realize that I can just print another one.”

He crumpled the paper and tossed it into the backseat. “Call it a symbolic gesture.”

“I got that part. I’m just not sure what it symbolizes.”

“You’re not going back to Florida.”

She blinked in surprise. “I’m not?”

“You’re going to stay here in Chicago.”

“Where? My roommate moved to Ohio. Not to mention that I don’t have a job.”

“You’re going to live with me. And as soon as we have time to arrange it, you’re going to marry me.”

* * *

If that was Tony’s idea of a marriage proposal, no wonder he was still single.

How many times had she fantasized about him asking her to marry him? This particular scenario was not at all what she’d had in mind. Technically, he hadn’t even asked. He’d issued an order.

Could anything be less romantic?

“Why would I do that?” she asked, giving him the perfect opportunity to redeem himself.

“I know how against marriage you are,” he said, “and I understand how you feel, but I really believe this is what’s best for the baby.”

Wrong answer, dude.

Not only did he drop the ball, he smashed it flat. He didn’t even try to sugarcoat it. He would only be marrying her for the baby’s sake. So much for those sentiments of love she’d been hoping for. Why didn’t he just reach into her chest and rip out her still-beating heart?

Her mom would have jumped at the opportunity to have a rich and handsome guy take care of her, which is exactly why Lucy couldn’t allow it. Though she couldn’t deny it would be wildly entertaining to see her mom’s expression when she heard the news.

“That sounds like a really bad idea,” she told him, and the deep furrow between his brows said he disagreed.

“It’s not,” he said, as if he expected her to just take his word for it.

“If I marry you, it will confirm what everyone in that house was already thinking. That I got pregnant on purpose to trap you. That I’m looking for a meal ticket.” Just the way her mom had with Lucy’s father. What he had neglected to mention during their brief affair was that he was already married with a family. He had no interest in being a parent to his illegitimate daughter. He’d sent the obligatory monthly check, but when he died three years later, the gravy train—and any hope that he and Lucy might someday meet—died with him.

Lucy had three siblings she had never even spoken to, and whose lack of contact over the years said they had no interest in meeting their illegitimate half sister. She could only imagine what they must have thought of her. And her mother.

“I’ll make sure everyone knows that isn’t the case,” Tony said.

If only it were that simple. “That never works. People are going to believe what they want to believe, regardless of what you tell them.”

His deepening frown said he was getting frustrated with her. “Why does it even matter what my family thinks?”

It mattered to her. She loved Tony, and she wanted to be his wife, even knowing the rest of his family would probably never accept her. But not like this. Not because it was convenient. Or good for the baby. She wouldn’t be anyone’s consolation prize. “I can’t marry you.”

“Sure you can.”

“No. I really can’t.

“I want to take care of you.” He took her hand and held it tight. “You and the baby.”

She pulled her hand free. “Thanks, but I can take care of myself.”

“If you won’t marry me, would you agree to stay with me? At least until the baby is born?”

“I can’t.”

She could tell by his expression that he thought she was being stubborn, and maybe she was a little. But who could blame her? The dynamic was simple. She loved Tony, and he felt
obligated
. Living together would be painful enough. Marrying him would be downright torture. She could fool herself into believing that his feelings might change, but the reality was if he hadn’t fallen in love with her by now, odds were good he never would. To marry him, even if it was for the baby’s benefit, seemed sad and pathetic. She refused to play the victim.

Been there, done that, burned the T-shirt.

Maybe when they were alone at his place he would pull her into his arms and hold her tight, and tell her he was miserable and lonely after she left. Of course he would have a very logical, not to mention romantic, reason for not coming after her.

And maybe the Pope would convert.

Tony pulled down his street and found a spot close to his building. She’d been a little shocked the first time he brought her there. Everything about Tony screamed rich and classy. He drove a luxury import, drank the best scotch, owned a closet full of designer brand clothes, yet he lived in a nondescript apartment in an equally nondescript building, in what seemed to her to be one of the most boring streets in the entire city of Chicago. But as he had logically put it, why spend a lot of money on a place when he was hardly ever there?

Normally he would have held her hand as they walked into the building and got in the elevator. Often he even got frisky during the ride up, but this time he didn’t touch her. She was both relieved and disappointed.

After a history of nomadic tendencies, Lucy had learned to never attach deep personal feelings to places, but when Tony unlocked the door and she stepped inside his apartment, she got a lump in her throat. She had so many good memories of the time they’d spent here together. At some point in their relationship his place had begun to feel like a second home to her, and she had fooled herself into thinking he might actually want her there with him.