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
