Just as she’d been ready to break things off, he’d asked her to overlook a mistake he’d made with a patient. She hadn’t, and he’d been fired.
She told herself she’d never put herself in that position ever again. Except then Luca had come along and all those warnings had been in vain.
Remembering his question, she decided on the simplest answer possible. If he wanted to do the math, he could. “Anna is four months old.”
“Four months.” He placed his hands flat on the desk. “I want to spend time with her. Did you come by yourself?”
He didn’t ask if she was sure Anna was his. A lump formed in her throat.
“And I want you to spend time with her. That’s part of why I came. No, I didn’t come alone. Peggy came with me. You remember my aunt?” If her mom had been well enough, Elyse would have asked her to come, but since she couldn’t, this was the next best thing. She’d needed the moral support or she might have backed out entirely.
As many times as Luca had asked her out, she might have held firm to her resolve that there would be no more work relationships after Kyle. Until the day Luca had come out of one of the surgical suites after monitoring a patient’s brain waves, white-faced, a grim look of defeat on his face. It had done her in. She’d walked over to him, laid a hand on his arm and asked him out.
He’d said yes. The rest was history. A history peppered with moments of beauty and the sting of pain.
But the way he made love...
The realization that her eyes were tracking over his broad shoulders made her bite her lip and force herself to look away.
God! The attraction was still there—still very real. Even if the fairy tale had crashed to dust around her feet.
But from that rubble had come her baby girl. She would go through every bit of that pain all over again if she was the end result.
“After all this time, why come at all? You could have let things be. Never told me at all,” Luca pressed.
The very things she’d told herself as she’d booked her flight.
“It was the right thing to do.” Her hand went to Anna’s head, rocking her subconsciously, still shielding her.
He looked at the baby for a second and walked over to the window, staring out, hands thrust in his pockets, shoulders hunched. “La cosa giusta? The right thing would have been to tell me long before she was born.”
“Would it have changed things?”
He swung back around to face her. “I don’t know. I wasn’t given that choice, was I?”
“No.” Maybe she needed to tell him at least a little of the circumstances. “When I said things were tenuous, I meant it. The doctors weren’t sure Anna was going to make it for a while. And I didn’t see any reason to say anything if...”
All the color drained out of his face, and he walked back to the desk. “Dio. What happened? Is she okay?”
She rushed to put his mind at ease. “She’s fine. Now. I had placenta previa. It didn’t resolve and there were a couple of incidents of bleeding, heavy enough to cause worry.” And in the end it had been life-threatening to both of them when it had ruptured. “I wasn’t going to do anything that might put her at even more risk.”
“And telling me would have done that?” He dragged a hand through his hair.
“I was talking more about physical stress but, yes. Inside I think I was afraid of jinxing the pregnancy. As if telling you might cause everything to fall apart, and I’d lose her. I didn’t see any reason for us both to grieve if she didn’t survive.”
Not that she’d been sure he would. Because she’d convinced herself that he’d be horrified to have fathered a child in the first place.
“And after she was born? Why wait four months?”
She wasn’t quite ready to share more than she already had.
“Does it really matter? I’m here now.”
He crouched in front of her and touched the baby’s arm with his index finger. “I can hardly believe she’s mine.”
“She is.” She wasn’t sure if he was questioning Anna’s parentage, but either way she understood. Here came a woman who shows up over a year after they break up, claiming he’d fathered her child. “We can do a paternity test, if you want.”
“No, I know she’s mine.” He looked up into her face. “Can I see her?”
She realized Anna was sound asleep, but the baby was still facing away from him.
A tiny flutter of relief mixed with fear went through her midsection. While she hadn’t thought Luca would reject his own daughter outright once he knew she existed, she hadn’t been sure what his actual reaction would be.
She carefully turned the baby, cradling her in her arms so that he could see her tiny face. A muscle worked in his jaw and he stroked her hair. “How long are you here?”
“I have a little time left of my medical leave. I want you to get to know her. But...” she hesitated “...I want to have some ground rules in place. Come to an agreement first.”
His fingers stilled. “The only agreement we need is that we have a child.” There was a hard edge to his voice that told her he wasn’t going to let her call all the shots here. And she wasn’t trying to.
“I know that, Luca. I’m hoping we can—”
“A daughter. My daughter.” The anger had melted away and in his voice was a sense of awe. “Annalisa.”
A dangerous prickling behind her eyes made her sit up, teeth coming together in a way that forced it back.
“Yes.”
His head came up. “I have a few ground rules of my own. First we are going to figure out our schedules and come up with a plan.”
His fingers flipped pages on his phone for a moment, probably looking at his caseload. “I have some free time right now, in fact. So I can drive you back to your hotel, and then we’ll sit down and talk about any concerns you might have. But I want to make one thing perfectly clear. I will be a part of my daughter’s life. No matter how much you might dislike me personally.”
PEGGY SLIPPED OUT of the room as soon as the greetings were exchanged. She promised to be back in an hour.
A prearranged signal to keep Elyse from enduring his company?
His gut tightened in anger, even as his eyes soaked in the sight of his daughter. Now that the shock was wearing off, he could finally look beyond his own emotions and see Anna for who she was.
Unlike her mamma’s
