Ashley either. It was all about scoring points.
“So this is true,” he said, his tone harsh.
“Yes,” she replied, her voice tight.
“How?” he bit out.
She huffed out an impatient-sounding laugh. “Well, darling, the last time we were intimate you used a condom. I just...made use of it after you discarded it. It was enough for the doctor.”
He swore. At her. At himself. At his body. “Is there nothing too low for you?”
“I guess that remains to be seen,” she said, her tone brittle like glass. “I have a lot of living left to do, but don’t worry, Renzo, you won’t be part of it. My depths will not be of any concern to you.”
“This woman is pregnant with our child,” he said, trying to bring it back around to the topic at hand. To the reason he had some creature-ish backpacker in his home.
“Because she is stubborn. I told her she didn’t have to continue with it. In fact, I told her I refused to pay the remainder of the fee.”
“Yes,” he bit out. “I have had a discussion with her. I was only calling you to confirm.”
“What are you going to do?”
That was a good question. An excellent question. He was going to raise the child, naturally. But how was he going to explain it? To his parents. To the media. These would be headlines his child would read. Either he would have to be honest about Ashley’s deception, or he would have to concoct a story about a mother abandoning her child.
That would not do.
But surrogacy was not legal in Italy. No agreement would be binding within these borders. And he would use that to his advantage.
“There is nothing to be done,” he said, his tone swift, decisive. “Esther Abbott is pregnant with my child. And I will do the responsible thing.”
“Renzo,” she said, her voice fierce, “what do you intend to do?”
He knew. There was no question. He had been in a situation similar to this before. Only then, he had had no power. The woman involved, her husband, his parents, had all made the decisions around him. His ill-advised affair with Jillian costing much more than his virginity.
At sixteen, he had become a father for the first time. But he had been barred from having anything to do with the child. A story carefully constructed to protect her marriage, her family, that child and his reputation had been agreed on by all.
All except for Renzo.
He would not allow such a thing to happen again. He would not allow himself to be sidelined. He would not put him, or his child, in such a precarious position. There was only one thing to do. And he would see it done.
“I shall do what any responsible man would do in this situation. I intend to marry Esther Abbott.”
* * *
Esther had never seen anything quite like Renzo’s kitchen. It had taken her more than ten minutes to figure out how to use the microwave. And even then, the pasta had ended up having cold spots and spots that scalded her tongue. Still, it was one of the best things she had ever tasted.
That probably had more to do with exhaustion and how long she’d gone without eating than anything else. Pasta was one of her favorite newly discovered foods, though. Not that she’d never had noodles in some form. It was just that her mother typically made them for soups, and not the way she’d had it served in Italy.
Discovering new foods had been her favorite part of travel so far. Scones in England with clotted cream, macarons in France. She had greatly enjoyed the culinary adventure, nearly as much as the rest of it.
Though, sometimes she missed brown bread and stew. The kinds of simple foods her mother made from scratch at home.
A swift kick of loneliness, of homesickness, punched her low in the stomach. It was unusual, but it did happen sometimes. Most of her home life had been difficult. Had been nothing at all like the way she wanted to live. But it had been safe. And for most of her life, it had been the only thing she’d known.
She blinked, taking another bite of her pasta, and allowing the present moment to wash away the slow-burning ache of nostalgia.
She heard footsteps and looked up. Renzo strode into the kitchen, and that dark black gaze burned away the remaining bit of homesickness. There was no room for anything inside her, nothing beyond that sharp, cutting intensity.
“I just spoke to Ashley.”
Suddenly, the pasta felt like sawdust in Esther’s mouth. “I imagine she told you the thing you didn’t want to hear.”
“You are correct in your assessment.”
“I’m sorry. But it’s true. I really didn’t come here to take advantage of you, or to lie to you. And I really couldn’t have forged any kind of medical documents. I had never even been to a doctor until Ashley took me for the procedure.”
He frowned. She could tell that she had said something that had revealed her as being different. She did that a lot. Mostly because she didn’t exactly know the line. Cultures were different, after all, and sometimes she thought people might assume she was different only because she was American.
But she was different from typical Americans, too.
“I lived in a small town,” she said, the lie rolling off her tongue easily. She had always been a liar. Because if ever her parents asked her if she was content, if ever her mother had asked her about her plans for the future, she’d had to lie.
And so, covering up the extent of just how strange she was became easier and easier as she talked to more people and picked up more of what was expected.
“A town so small you did not have doctors?”
“He made house calls.” That part was true. There had been a physician in the commune.
“Regardless of your past history, it seems that you were telling the truth.”
“I said I was.”
“Yes, you did. It is an unenviable position you find yourself in—or perhaps it is enviable, depending on your perspective. Tell me, Esther, what are your goals in life?”
It was a strange question. And never once had she been asked. Not really. Her parents had spoken to her about what she would do. About what her duty was, about the purposes of women and what they had to do to be fulfilled. But no one had ever asked her if it would fulfill her. No one had ever asked her anything at all.
But he was asking. And that made something warm glow inside her.
It made her want to tell him.
“I want to travel. And I want to go to school. I want to get an education.”
“To what end?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“What
