as if he was testing her patience, another affront to add to the list. “You have a son, Pascal. And you shouldn’t be surprised to hear that. If memory serves, you never spared the slightest thought for any kind of birth control. What did you think would happen?”
It was the sheer insult of that—and the unfairness—that seared through him, hot enough to loosen his paralysis.
“I was recovering from a car accident in a hospital,” he gritted out. “When do you imagine I might have nipped out to the shops and found appropriate protection? I assumed you had taken care of it.”
“Taken care of it?” She actually laughed, which nearly let Pascal’s temper get the better of him. But she didn’t seem to notice. Or care if she did. “I was raised in a convent. With real-life, actual nuns. It might surprise you to learn that the finer details of condom use during premarital sex didn’t come up much during morning prayers.”
Pascal dragged his hands through his hair, though it was cut almost too short to allow it. Unless he was very much mistaken, his hands were actually shaking, something that might have horrified him unto his soul at any other moment. But right now he could hardly do more than note it and move on. It was that or succumb to the high tide swamping him, drowning him, tugging him violently out to sea.
“I cannot have a son,” he snapped out, not caring that his words were far too angry for a place like this. Holy and quiet, with the watchful eyes of too many saints upon him—and none of them as sharp as Cecilia’s gaze. “I cannot.”
Cecilia sniffed. And her remarkable eyes sparked with what he thought was temper, however little that made sense to him.
“And yet you do. But don’t worry. He’s perfect, and he doesn’t need you.” The gleam in her eyes intensified, and he felt it like a blow to the center of his chest. “Feel free to run back to your glossy magazines. Your lingerie models. Whatever makes you happy, Pascal. You can pretend we don’t exist. The way you’ve been doing for six years.”
“How dare you take that tone with me.” His voice was soft, because his fury was so intense he thought it might have singed his vocal cords. The rage and grief in him so hot and blistering he wasn’t sure he’d ever speak in a normal voice again. “You never told me you were pregnant.”
“How would I have done that?” She fired the question at him, plunking her bucket back down on the stone floor with a loud crash. She even took a step toward him as if she wanted this confrontation to get physical. “The first time I saw you mentioned in the papers, two years had gone by. Before that? You’d just disappeared overnight. The army had discharged you, and even if they hadn’t, they weren’t about to hand out a forwarding address. What was I supposed to have done?”
“You knew I was from Rome. You knew—”
If he hadn’t been close enough to see the pulse in her neck go wild, he might have believed the cold smile she aimed at him meant she wasn’t affected by this interaction. But Pascal wasn’t sure that knowledge was helpful.
“Right. So you think I should have…what? Wandered up and down the Spanish Steps while heavily pregnant?” she demanded. “Calling out your name? Or better still, climbed atop the Trevi Fountain with a newborn in my arms, demanding that someone in the crowd take me to you? How do think that would have worked?”
That she had a point only made his anguish worse.
How could this have happened? He couldn’t accept it. He couldn’t believe it. He wanted to tear down this godforsaken church with his hands as if that would change the way she was looking at him. As if it could turn back time.
As if that could save him from the nasty reality that he’d become exactly what he most loathed without knowing it.
“You keep mentioning magazines, which means you clearly saw me in one,” he found himself saying as if he could argue the conviction from her face. As if he could make this her fault and make it better, or different, by shrugging off the blame. “You must have known the company existed. That must mean you could have contacted me. You obviously chose not to do so.”
Her laugh sliced into him. “I called your company repeatedly. Oddly enough, no one took me seriously. Or I assume they didn’t, because it took you all this time to turn up here.”
“Whoever else might have turned you away will be dealt with.” Though even as he said that, he already knew what had likely happened. Any reports of pregnancies would have been dismissed by Guglielmo as opportunists attempting to cash in on Pascal’s success. He would never have dreamed of wasting Pascal’s time with empty claims. “But if you had actually turned up on my doorstep, Cecilia, I would not have denied you entry.”
She actually dared roll her eyes. At him. “That’s good to know. Should you impregnate me and leave me behind like so much trash again, I’ll be sure to take that tack. I’ll gather up whatever children you’ve abandoned, camp out in your lobby and hope for the best. What could possibly go wrong?”
“What kind of person has a man’s child and fails to tell him?” Something cracked wide open inside him, and it was harder and harder to pretend he was angry when it went far deeper than that. When it felt like a catastrophic fissure, deep within. “It has been six years. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“I know exactly what I’ve done, because I’ve been here the whole time, doing it,” she fired back at him, and he had the uneasy notion that she could see that yawning expanse inside him and was aiming straight for it. For him. “You knew where I was. You knew that I was unpardonably naive. You weren’t without experience as you made a point of mentioning more than once. Surely you must have known that anytime people have sex, especially without any protection, there’s the possibility of exactly this occurring. You never inquired.”
“How dare you put this responsibility on me.”
“I will not stand here and listen to lectures from the likes of you on responsibility, thank you,” she bit out. She moved even closer then, and went so far as to jab a finger toward him—very much as if she’d have liked to put out his eye. “You try being a single parent. All the feedings and diaper changes, the crying for no reason and sudden, scary illnesses. Where were you? Not here, handling them.”
“I could hardly handle something I didn’t know was happening.”
She jabbed that finger again, and it occurred to Pascal that she wasn’t the least bit intimidated by him. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d encountered such a thing. And certainly not from a woman he’d thought was a ghost a few hours ago—and who he remembered as nothing but sweet.
“Don’t misunderstand me,” she was saying with more than a little ferocity. “There’s more joy in it than ought to be possible, or the species would have died out. But what I’m talking about is keeping a tiny human alive. What you’re talking about is your own hurt feelings because you chose to disappear into the ether and it turns out, there are consequences for that. One of them is the child you helped make.”
He felt pale with that anguish, mixed liberally with fury. “You dare to speak to me of consequences?”
“I’ve lived your consequences, Pascal,” Cecilia retorted. “An absolutely marvelous little boy has grown into a five-year-old as a consequence of your carelessness. And after trying more than enough times, I didn’t keep banging my head against brick walls trying to find a man who didn’t leave behind so much as a
