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If only her mother was here, maybe it wouldn’t be quite so terrifying. Maybe she wouldn’t feel like she’d blown a giant hole through her life.
“I’m going to ask him to marry me,” she added, swallowing against the lump in her throat.
“What?” Daniel’s face was beet red. Usually, he was the cool, calm, and collected one of this family. But on their return flight from Greece, he’d had nothing but bad things to say about Nico. “Absolutely not.”
“It’s not your call,” she said calmly. “This is my body and my issue. I will deal with it how I see fit.”
“Do you want to marry him?” Felicity asked, biting down on her lip. “It’s a big step with someone you care about, let alone with a virtual stranger.”
“For my entire life I’ve wanted to have a complete family.”
After her mother had died, they’d unearthed a box of mementos containing letters to Santa from when they were all kids. The boys had asked for bikes and toy trucks and gaming consoles. Marianna had asked for her father. Over and over and over, her Dear Santas were followed by requests for her father to come back from heaven.
She might not be able to have it for herself, but she was damn well going to try her hardest to give it to her baby. Even if it meant leaving everything she knew behind—her brothers, her best friend, her studies. Life without those three important things would be tough. But wasn’t that what parenthood was all about—sacrificing to make a better life for your baby?
“Besides, Nico has the money to give our child everything they could possibly want in life. They’ll have a better quality of life. Travel, education…all the things we struggled to afford. And, if we’re married, then at least I know he won’t try to take custody away from me…”
Would Nico do something like that? Take the baby from her? He certainly had the money to overpower her legally. Getting married would at least ensure her involvement in the baby’s life. And if he wanted nothing to do with them, so be it. But she had to try.
The room was silent. Nobody could argue the point.
“Well, we’re here for you,” Felicity said. “No matter what happens.”
“I’ll come with you,” Daniel added. “For moral support.”
“No.” Marianna shook her head. “I need to do this alone.”
She’d gotten herself into this mess, so she would be in charge of getting herself out. The days of her being coddled by her brothers were over. And, as her mother had always taught her, making a mistake wasn’t what defined a person. It was the action they took after it.
…
Nico had been in a funk for the last two months. Ever since the moment he’d watched his driver whisk Marianna away, relaxation refused to come. The woman had gotten under his skin. He surmised it could only be because she’d surprised him. Sure, Nico had seen through the ruse about her identity right away, and he’d suspected the involvement of her brother. But the whole thing about her being a virgin…
Hell, he didn’t know what to think.
If it was true, then he felt like shit. The first time should be about more than sex. His had been special, and he’d experienced the joy of tipping over the edge of restraint with someone he cared about, someone who’d wanted to bask in the afterglow wrapped up in his arms. Thea had been a good friend, a willing partner. It wasn’t love, but the culmination of deep friendship and curiosity mixed with the bright spark of teenage attraction. They hadn’t lasted, but the memories made him smile. They were some of the few memories that made him smile, in fact. Because after that, the next time he’d been with someone it’d ripped his world apart.
And because his experience with Marianna mirrored that, he’d exploded. Pushed her away.
“You don’t even know if she was telling the truth,” he muttered under his breath as he heated his coffee grounds over the stove, holding the handle of his briki carefully so it didn’t tip over. Then he removed it from the heat and let it sit to one side, waiting impatiently for the grounds to settle. “She could have been lying, like she was about everything else.”
“Talking to yourself again?” A familiar voice floated through the large open space of the living area. A second later, Dion rounded the corner. “I thought you abandoned all your imaginary friends years ago.”
His friend chuckled to himself and slapped a hand down on Nico’s back. Dion was probably the only guy charming enough to laugh at his own jokes and get away with it. That was their friendship in a nutshell—Dion was magnetic and easygoing, readily liked by others. Nico was…not.
But despite their differences in personality, they had a very similar history. Missing parents, growing up in an orphanage. Flirtations with poverty. After Nico had lost the closest thing he’d ever had to a family, Dion saved him from doing something stupid. When Nico had been furiously out of his mind, drunk on ouzo he’d stolen from a neighbor, and had wanted to take a crowbar to the nearest car so he could drive himself off a cliff, Dion had wrestled him to the ground and broken his nose in order to slow him down. It was the one and only time he’d ever seen Dion raise a fist. That was another area where they’d differed as kids.
