I don’t think I know twenty people who would come to a dinner party I hosted, unless it was to gawp and gossip.’ He spoke tonelessly, without self-pity, and Emma eyed him curiously as she brought the lasagne to the table.
‘You don’t have many friends in America?’
‘I don’t have many friends, full stop,’ Larenzo answered. ‘A stint in prison shows you who your true friends are, and mine turned out to be rather few.’
He tried to put Ava in the high chair he’d brought to the table, but the toddler shrieked and arched her back, sticking her legs straight out. Emma watched, amused, as Larenzo tried his best before looking up with a wry smile.
‘She’s really quite strong.’
‘Yes, and she doesn’t like being strapped in.’ Emma plucked Ava from the chair and put her back down on the floor. ‘She’ll want to join us when we sit down.’
‘I suppose I have a lot to learn.’
‘Fortunately Ava provides a steep learning curve,’ Emma answered with a smile.
Emma brought the meal to the table and they both sat down. Just as she’d predicted, Ava crawled over to them, wanting to be part of things.
Larenzo glanced down at his daughter, smiling when she lifted her arms for him to pick her up. He settled her in her high chair this time without Ava making any protest. ‘Tell me about the last ten months,’ he said to Emma when he’d sat down again. ‘Or even before that. How was your pregnancy?’
‘Mostly uneventful, thankfully,’ Emma answered. ‘I was pretty nauseous for the first three months,’ she continued. ‘But then it settled down. She was quite the kicker, though. I couldn’t sleep most nights because it felt like she was playing football inside of me.’
Larenzo smiled at that, his whole face lightening, and Emma quickly looked down at her plate. Larenzo’s smile was dangerous.
‘And the birth? It went well?’
‘As well as these things go,’ Emma answered frankly. ‘It hurt. A lot.’
‘Why didn’t you get pain relief?’
‘No time. She came a week early; she wasn’t due until New Year’s Eve. And I didn’t think I could actually be in labour, because the contractions were irregular and they didn’t hurt all that much.’ She let out a sudden, embarrassed laugh. ‘I can’t believe I’m telling you all this.’
‘Why not? I want to hear it.’
‘Really?’ She heard the scepticism in her voice, and Larenzo must have too, because he nodded firmly.
‘Absolutely. I missed this, Emma. I want to know now.’
But would he have wanted to know then? If Larenzo hadn’t gone to prison, would he have been an involved father? Would they be dating or even married now? Emma’s cheeks heated at the thought. She was glad Larenzo had no idea the turn her thoughts had taken. She cleared her throat and continued. ‘Well, Meghan had been telling me how first babies take for ever, and as it was Christmas Eve I was hoping the contractions might die down. I didn’t want to be in the hospital over Christmas.’
‘Understandable.’
‘But they didn’t, and by the time I realised we needed to go to the hospital, Ava was almost ready to make her arrival.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘Meghan was pushing me in a wheelchair into the delivery ward, and I was bellowing at the top of my lungs. I’m not so good with pain.’
‘I wish I could have been there,’ Larenzo said quietly, and Emma knew he meant it.
Before she could think better of it, she asked the question that had been dancing through her mind. ‘What do you suppose would have happened, if you hadn’t gone to prison?’
Larenzo frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I would have stayed on as your housekeeper. I would have told you I was pregnant right away.’ She held her breath, waiting for him to say something, although she didn’t know what.
Larenzo sighed and leaned back in his chair. ‘The truth is, Emma, if I hadn’t gone to prison, if I hadn’t known I was going to go to prison, there wouldn’t have been a baby. That night happened because I knew I was going to be arrested in the morning.’
‘Oh.’ Emma blinked, stupidly feeling hurt by this, and not quite sure what to do with that emotion. ‘I see.’
‘You gave me something precious that night.’
‘My virginity?’ she filled in, trying to joke, but it came out flat.
‘No, I didn’t mean that, although that of course is precious too.’
She really didn’t want to be having this conversation. She kept looking at her plate, focusing on the food she no longer felt like eating.
‘I meant comfort,’ Larenzo said quietly. ‘Human connection. Pleasure, not just physical pleasure, although there certainly was that. But pleasure in talking to you, and being in your company. Playing chess, seeing your photographs...that night made a memory that sustained me through many dark days in prison.’
‘Oh.’ And now she didn’t feel so hurt. She felt...honoured that she’d been that important to him, and deeply thankful that their one night together had meant something to him, as it had to her. ‘Well, I’m glad about that, I suppose.’
‘And look at the result.’ He glanced at Ava, who now had tomato sauce in her hair, before turning back to Emma with a smile. ‘I don’t have any regrets, since she came out of it. But I think she needs a bath.’
‘Do you want me to—?’ Emma half rose from her chair as Larenzo unbuckled Ava from her high chair.
‘I can do it,’ he said.
‘She can be pretty tricky in the tub—’
As if to prove her point, Ava started wriggling out of Larenzo’s grasp, and soon his shirt was splattered with tomato sauce.
Larenzo looked rather endearingly amazed by his daughter’s gymnastics and Emma rescued him. ‘I’ve found this is the best way sometimes,’ she said, and, tucking Ava under her arm as if she were a parcel, she took her to the bathroom.
Larenzo followed, standing in the doorway while Emma put Ava down and turned the taps on. ‘Fortunately she likes her bath,’ she said, and turned to look over her shoulder. Her breath dried in her throat as she saw he was unbuttoning his shirt. What, she wondered distantly, was so mesmerising about his long brown fingers sliding buttons out of their holes? Something was, because she couldn’t tear her gaze away from the sight.
‘I’d rather not get my shirt wet,’ Larenzo explained. ‘I have a feeling Ava is a splasher.’ He shrugged out of his dress shirt, revealing a plain white T-shirt underneath that clung to the defined muscles of his chest and abdomen.
‘She is,’ Emma answered, and finally managed to drag her gaze to Larenzo’s face. She couldn’t read the emotion in his eyes,
