Postcards From Rome: The Italian's Pregnant Virgin / A Proposal from the Italian Count / A Ring for Vincenzo's Heir. Lucy Gordon

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      “My father was big on the men-having-whatever-they-wanted thing,” she said, the tone of her voice disinterested, casual, but he sensed something deep beneath the surface.

      “Traditional, was he?”

      She shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe that’s one word for it. One of the things I’ve been working on is recognizing that whatever my father and the other men like him believed, it isn’t necessarily connected to anything real. It’s not about other people who believe similarly to them. They took something that was all right and twisted it to suit their own ends. And I do understand that.”

      “You had...a religious upbringing?”

      She shrugged. “I’m hesitant to call it that. I’m not going to put the blame on religion. Just the people involved.”

      “Very progressive of you.”

      She shrugged both shoulders this time. “Isn’t that the point of life? To progress? That’s what I’m trying to do. Move forward. Not live underneath the cloud of all of that.” She looked up, refracted light shimmering across her face from the chandelier above them as she did. “I’m not under a cloud at all right now.” She smiled then, and all of the thoughts he had earlier about her potentially calculated behavior faded. It was difficult for him to imagine somebody who was simply genuine. Because it was outside his experience. Yet, Esther seemed to be, and if he looked at her from that angle, if you looked at her now, he felt slightly guilty about what he intended to do. Because that really did make it a manipulation, rather than a simple seduction.

      But still, she would get everything that she wanted in the end, just in a slightly different format. So, he should not feel guilt.

      He turned, and suddenly it felt as though the chandelier had detached from the ceiling and come crashing down around him. It was everything he’d been afraid of, and yet no amount of forward thinking could ever prepare him for it.

      There she was.

      Samantha.

      His daughter.

      Seeing her like this, closer to being a woman than a girl, always shocked him. But then, everything about this had always been shocking, horrifying. Seeing her was always something like having his guts torn out straight through his stomach. Having his heart pulled out of his mouth.

      It was a pain that never healed, and for a man who avoided strong emotion at all cost it was anathema. He controlled the world. He controlled more money than most people could fathom. He had more—would have more—than many small countries ever would. And yet he did not have her, and there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing he could do short of destroying what she thought her life was. Who she thought she was.

      In this, he was helpless. And he despised it.

      But there was very little that could be done. In order to be a good man in this situation, in order to be a controlled man, he had to go against everything his instincts told him to do. He had to honor the life that he had chosen to give to his daughter. Even if he had been coerced into it, the ultimate result was the same. There were things she believed about herself and her parents that he could not shake, not now.

      He knew it. He knew it, but he despised it.

      Fire burned inside him, rage, intensity. He couldn’t go to her. All he could do was hold even more tightly to Esther. And as he did, he held even more tightly to his conviction. He had to make her his. At all costs. Because he would never take a chance that he might lose his children, not again.

      He had lost one daughter. And the pain never faded. He doubted it ever would. There was nothing that could be done about it. It was a red slash across his life that could never heal. A mistake that would not be undone.

      Oh, her existence wasn’t a mistake. It never could be. The mixture of grief and pride that filled him when he saw Samantha was something that defied description. It was all-encompassing, overwhelming. She was not a mistake. She was destined for a life that was better than the one he could have given her at the time. Than the one she would have had if she had been raised by an angry, bitter woman whose marriage was destroyed because of her existence and a sixteen-year-old boy who could scarcely take care of himself, let alone a little girl.

      Yes, there was no doubt she was living a better life than he could have given at the time.

      But now... Now he had no excuses. Now he had resources, he had experience, maturity. He had already lived an entire existence trying to prove that he was unsuitable to raise the child he’d had at far too young an age.

      Now he was going to have to fashion a new existence. One where he became everything these children would need.

      He would give them everything. Starting with a family. One with no room for Ashley, who had engineered their existence for the sole purpose of manipulating him. One that consisted of a mother and a father. Esther. She was the one. She was going to give birth to them. She was the one the public would consider theirs, and so, too, would they.

      He was renewed in his purpose. As he stood there, his insides being torn to shreds piece by piece as he looked at the beautiful young woman whom he would never know, who shared his DNA but would always remain a stranger, his purpose was renewed.

      He turned away from Samantha. He turned back to Esther. “Dance with me,” he said.

      She blinked. “I don’t know how to dance.”

      “Don’t tell me, dancing was forbidden?”

      She laughed, but the sound was uncomfortable, and it made him feel guilty. “Yes,” she said. “Dancing was definitely something that was off the table. But...I did a lot of things I wasn’t supposed to.”

      Something about that admission made his stomach tight, made his blood run hotter. “Is that right?”

      “Yes,” she said, her cheeks turning pink. “But I didn’t dance. I might embarrass you.”

      “You’re the most beautiful woman in the room. Even if you step all over my feet I will not be embarrassed to be seen with you.”

      A warm flush of color spread up her cheeks, her dark eyes bright. She liked that. This attention, the compliments. He reached out, sliding his thumb over her cheekbone, tracing that wash of color that had appeared there. “Do you know that you’re beautiful?”

      “It’s nothing that I ever gave much thought to. I mean, I’ve probably given it much more thought ever since I met you.”

      He drew her close to him, guiding her to the dance floor, curving his arm around her waist and taking her hand in his. “In a good way, I hope?”

      She looked down. “Meeting you has made me think a lot about people.”

      “I’m not sure I follow you.”

      She moved easily along with him as he guided her in time with the music. But she kept her eyes downcast. “Just...people. Men, women.” She looked up then, something open and naked in her gaze. It held him fast, hit him square in the chest. “How different we are. What it means. Why it matters. My beauty never mattered until I wanted you to see it. And then, well, since then I’ve wondered about it. СКАЧАТЬ