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My eyes shut against an unexpected wave of emotion.
“She has your eyes,” Caterina whispers.
My gaze snaps to hers. “What did you say?”
“She has your eyes. They look exactly like yours. The eyelashes, in particular,” she says with a tilt of her lips.
“Even when she was a baby, she had those insane Rossi eyelashes that made her look like a model. All the old women used to ask me if I put mascara on her. Like I would put mascara on a baby,” she scoffs.
“I know you would not put mascara on a baby,” I say softly.
She laughs. “She was a pretty baby. Always smiling, and with the eyelashes she looked like a doll. I would show you a picture but…” her voice trails off.
She doesn’t have her phone.
Which is why she can’t check on her child, and why we are in this situation to begin with.
I have even less of an idea now about why Caterina decided to agree to this marriage. Maybe she didn’t agree, and her brothers forced her to do it.
Or maybe she did because she wanted her daughter to be reunited with her father.
That thought sends something of a thrill through me. When I first saw Caterina at our engagement party all those years ago, I had a similar thought. An impossible future presented itself to me, one in which we were parents. A couple. A family.
Together.
Was that why she agreed to marry me? To give her child a chance at the family we had planned together?
I wonder what she’s like as a parent. One thing is for certain, I know that she has given her daughter a good life. It’s clear to me that she cares, loves, very much. That was always true of Caterina, that her heart has been open and loving, even in her youth.
More than that, it’s clear that Caterina is a good mother.
I know this in my very soul. The way she talks about the child, it’s vividly clear that she is an excellent mother, and she would do anything for this little girl.
Including risk my wrath.
I suck in a breath. Gia is right. I have treated Caterina horribly. Every time I look at her a knot of emotion rises in me, and I don’t know how to manage it.
I hate her, because the last time I was so close with her my life fell apart.
I miss her, and her sweet scent, the life we almost had.
I want her. God help me, I still want her more than I’ve wanted any woman in my life.
Caterina is not an easy subject for me.
But I am likely just as difficult for her.
“Caterina,” I say softly. I can tell she’s as startled by this development as I am, because her eyes shoot to me, wide with surprise. “What is the child’s name?”
She looks at me for a long, long time before responding.
“Luna. Her name is Luna.”
Luna Rossi.
And in that moment, my world changes once again.
9
