made the wrong decision to sleep with him without telling him about Alessandro. But it didn’t give him the right to deny their child. Their child had nothing to do with her stupidity. He or she was the only innocent party in the situation.
She looked down at the screen on her phone. She had her Twitter account all set up and ready to help her contact every news outlet in the area.
She took a breath and started typing.
@theobserver @NYTnews @HBpress I’m about to make an important announcement re Matteo Corretti & the wedding scandal. Luxe Hotel on 3rd.
Then she stepped out of the back of the cab and walked up to the front steps of Matteo’s world-renowned hotel, where he was rumored to be in residence, though no one would confirm it, and waited.
The sidewalks were crowded, people pushing past other people, walking with their heads down, no one sparing her a glance. Until the news crews started showing up.
First there was one, then another, and another. Some from outlets she hadn’t personally included in her tweet. The small crowd drew stares, and some passersby started lingering to see what was happening.
There was no denying that she was big news. The assumption had been that she’d run off with Matteo but nothing could be further from the truth. And she was about to give the media a big dose of truth.
It didn’t take long for them to catch the attention of the people inside the hotel, which had been a key part of her plan.
A sharply dressed man walked out of the front of the hotel, his expression wary. “Is there something I can help you with?”
She turned to him. “I’m just making a quick announcement. If you want to go get Matteo, that might help.”
“Mr. Corretti is not in residence.”
“That’s like saying someone isn’t At Home in a Regency novel, isn’t it? He’s here, but he doesn’t want anyone to know it.”
The reporters were watching the exchange with rapt attention, and the flash on one of the cameras started going, followed by the others.
“Mr. Corretti is not—”
She whirled around to face him again. “Fine, then if Mr. Corretti is truly not in residence you can stand out here and listen to what I have to say and relay it to your boss when you deliver dinner to the room he is not in residence in.”
She turned back to the reporters, and suddenly, the official press release she’d spent hours memorizing last night seemed to shatter in her brain, making it impossible to piece back together, impossible to make sense of it.
She swallowed hard, looking at the skyline, her vision filled with concrete, glass and steel. The noise from the cars was deafening, the motion of the traffic in front of her making her head swim. “I know that the wedding has been much talked about. And that Matteo chasing me out of the church has been the headline. Well, there’s more to the story.”
Flashes blinded her, tape recorders shoved into her face, questions started to drown out her voice. She felt weak, shaky, and she wondered, not for the first time, if she was completely insane.
Her life in Sicily had been quiet, domestic, one surrounded by her family, one so insular that she’d been dependent upon imagination to make it bearable, a belief of something bigger looming in her future. And as a result, she had a tendency to romanticize the grand gesture in her mind. To think that somehow, no matter how bleak the situation seemed, she could fix it. That, in the end, she would make it perfect and manage to find her happy ending.
She’d done it on the night of her bachelorette party. New York was so different than the tiny village she’d been raised in. So much bigger, faster. Just being there had seemed like a dream and so when she’d been confronted with Matteo it had seemed an easy, logical thing to approach him, to follow the path their mutual attraction had led them down. It was a prime example of her putting more stock in fantasy, in the belief in happy endings, over her common sense.
This was another.
But no matter how well planned this was, she hadn’t realized how she would feel, standing there with everyone watching her. She wasn’t the kind of woman who was used to having all eyes on her, her aborted wedding being the exception.
“I’m pregnant, and Matteo Corretti is the father of my baby.” It slipped out, bald and true, and not at all what she’d been planning to say. At least she didn’t think it was.
“Mr. Corretti—” the employee was speaking into his phone now, his complexion pallid “—you need to come out here.”
She released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
“When is the baby due?”
“Are you certain he’s the father?”
“When did you discover you were pregnant?”
The questions were coming rapid-fire now, but she didn’t need to answer them because this was never about the press. This was about getting his attention. This was about forcing a confrontation that he seemed content to avoid.
“I’ll answer more questions when Matteo comes to make his statement.”
“Did the two of you leave the wedding together, or are you estranged? Has he denied paternity?” one of the reporters asked.
“I …”
“What the hell is going on?”
Alessia turned and her heart caught in her throat, making it impossible to breathe. Matteo. It felt like an eternity since she’d seen him, since he’d kissed her, put his hands on her skin. An eternity.
She ached with the need to run to him, to hold on to him, use him as an anchor. In her fantasies, he had long been her knight in shining armor, a simplistic vision of a man who had saved her from a hideous fate.
But in the years since, things had changed. Become more complex, more real. He was her lover now. The father of her child. The man she had lied to. The man who had left her sitting alone in an airport, crying and clutching a positive pregnancy test.
For a moment, the longing for those simple, sun-drenched days in Sicily, when he had been nothing more than an idealized savior, was so sharp and sweet she ached.
“Mr. Corretti, is this why you broke up the wedding?”
“I didn’t break up anyone’s wedding,” he said, his tone dark.
“No, I ran out of the wedding,” she said.
“And is what why I broke up the wedding?” he asked, addressing the reporter, stormy eyes never once looking at her.
“The baby,” the reporter said.
Matteo froze, his face turning to stone. “The baby.” Color drained from his face, but he remained stoic, only the change in his complexion a clue as to the shock that he felt.
He didn’t know. She felt the impact of that reality like a physical blow. He hadn’t even listened to a single message. Hadn’t opened
