he’d purchased the place a few years ago, he was pretty certain he would live there alone for the rest of his life. Despite the fact that he had bent to the will of his doctors and his mother as a teenager by storing the potential for future children at the clinic, he had no intention of ever using it.
A wife and a family were the furthest thing from Luca’s mind. He’d found that people who lived through what he had reacted one of two ways—they were either desperate for family or terrified by the idea of it. Luca fell into the latter category, although he hadn’t always felt that way.
The doors of the elevator opened to the marble foyer of his apartment. He unlocked the door, stepping into his living room. Luca slipped out of his coat and headed for his study. There, he poured himself a finger of Scotch and settled down in his favorite leather chair.
As the oldest of six kids, he’d presumed he’d have a family of his own someday. He enjoyed the camaraderie and the chaos of his childhood home. Then, at age sixteen, those presumptions went out the window when his whole life was derailed by an unexpected illness. The illness turned out to be testicular cancer. The treatment for his cancer was aggressive—surgery and several rounds of chemotherapy and radiation. The majority of patients who went through the treatment were sterile when it was over. Although the idea of it was mortifying, he’d made several donations to be frozen at the fertility clinic for the future. His mother paid the clinic big money for them to hold on to it for as long as Luca might be in need of it.
Luca knew when he was doing it, however, that he would be storing, but not using it, forever. Despite assurances to the contrary, he knew he was a damaged commodity. At any time, the cancer could come back or spread. Physically, he wasn’t the complete man he’d once been. Plastic surgery had corrected the aesthetics, but he knew the truth. He couldn’t knowingly go into a relationship with a woman knowing that he was limited in what he could offer her.
And he was limited. He knew that in his heart. The one time a woman had claimed to have given birth to his child, he’d let himself get his hopes up. His whole family got their hopes up. When the miracle baby turned out to belong to someone else, everyone was disappointed, including the baby’s gold-digging mother, Jessica. He had always been adamant about using protection, just for safety reasons, but after that he was almost militant. He didn’t want another woman to even get the idea that she could have his child.
Sipping his drink, he looked around his study. It was a part of his perfect bachelor pad, decorated with masculine touches of leather and dark wood. The shelves were lined with books he’d never read. On one wall was a framed portrait of the world, reminding him of all the places he’d never been. He’d gone from being a child, to a cancer patient, to a college student, to a CEO. That didn’t leave room for much else.
It was just as well that Jessica’s baby hadn’t been his. Even if he wanted a family, he didn’t have time. From the day he was born, he’d been groomed to take over Moretti’s Restaurants. His great-grandfather had started the company eighty years ago with a small restaurant in Little Italy. By the time his grandfather took over, they had another restaurant in Brooklyn and one in Queens. It snowballed from there. His father’s goal of having a Moretti’s in every state had been achieved not long after Luca was born.
After he got sick, his mother had homeschooled him from the hospital to help him keep up with his studies while he received his treatment. When he graduated from high school in remission, Luca went to Harvard to get his business degree and started working at the corporate offices with his father. His MBA earned him the title of vice president, and his father’s retirement two years ago had turned the reins over to him entirely.
Luca had put his own stamp on the empire by diversifying their restaurants. Not everyone had the time for a long, sit-down Italian feast. He started a fast-food Italian chain called Antonia’s, after his mother. That had exploded, becoming one of the fastest growing chains in that market.
Overseeing this monster took all the time he had. And he liked it that way. When his life was so full, he didn’t miss the family he was lacking.
And now, suddenly, he found he had a family he never expected—one that had been confirmed as actually being his. Thankfully the apartment could accommodate Eva, in terms of size and space. There would need to be some childproofing and redecorating, but that was the least of his worries. The harder part would be seeing to it that the rest of his life could accommodate his newfound daughter, as well.
That started with this trip. The first thing he needed to do was to call his old friend Gavin Brooks. He and Gavin had met at Harvard and hit it off immediately. Like Luca, Gavin was the heir to a family empire of his own—Brooks Express Shipping. They both understood what it was like to have that kind of pressure on their shoulders. The difference was that Gavin had managed to run BXS and have a family. He and his new wife, Sabine, had two small children, including a baby girl named Beth, who was only a few months older than Eva.
Perhaps Gavin could offer Luca more than just a vacation house. He could use some advice, as well.
Reaching for his phone, he dialed Gavin’s number.
“This can’t really be Luca Moretti calling me,” Gavin answered abruptly. “I mean, that’s what my phone says, but my friend Luca never calls me.”
Luca sighed. “That’s because your friend Luca works too much and is never sure when he can call without waking up your kids.”
Gavin laughed. “It’s a crapshoot. Jared is an early bird and Beth is a night owl. We pretty much never sleep around here. How are you, Luca?”
“To tell you the truth, I’m overwhelmed.” It was nice to be able to talk to someone who truly understood what his days were like. He and Gavin were members of an elite club of young, successful businessmen in Manhattan.
“The restaurant business giving you trouble?”
“No. Work is fine. I called because I need your help for a more...personal matter.”
“I thought you didn’t have personal matters.”
“So did I, then it got dropped in my lap.” Oddly enough, this was another situation that Gavin could sympathize with. He didn’t learn about his son, Jared, until the boy was almost two years old. “I need your help, Gavin.”
“Sure, anything. What is it?”
“Okay. If I tell you something, will you promise not to tell anyone?” At this point, Luca couldn’t risk the news of Eva’s existence getting out. He’d worked hard to keep the lawsuit under wraps so far.
“Sounds serious,” Gavin said. “I’ll keep it to myself.”
“Thanks. I’m trying to ensure this whole situation stays quiet for the next few weeks, primarily because of my family. You know how they are. I need to deal with all of this without their interference.”
“Your cancer has come back,” Gavin said in a grave tone.
“No, thankfully. I’ve actually found out that I’m a father.”
“A father? For real this time?”
In retrospect, Luca had wished he’d kept the situation with Jessica quiet until he knew for certain. He’d never expected her to lie about it. He should’ve known when he saw the look on her face after Edmund demanded a paternity test. As though he’d just take her word for it. “Yes, this time it is tested and established to be my child. I have
