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She managed to throttle down the unwelcome excitement, and clinically sieved through his words. ‘Eventually,’ she echoed. ‘What exactly do you mean by eventually?’
Incisive eyes rested on her face, dropped down to her mouth before rising to meet her gaze. He shrugged, walked past her to shut the doors of the dining room. Foreboding rained icy shivers down her spine, but she clenched her fist, forced herself to hold her ground as he sauntered back towards her. ‘I’m assuming you wish to be where our son is, don’t you?’
She frowned. ‘Is that even a serious question? Of course I do.’
He nodded, as if she had given him the exact answer he wanted. ‘Then we’re agreed.’
Her ire and confusion intensified. ‘What exactly are we agreed on?’
‘That where I am, you will be. With our son. To start off with, that place will be in Palermo. For the next six months at least. Perhaps even a year. Depending on Nonna’s health issues and how quickly she recovers.’
She spluttered, unsure which outrage to address first. ‘You think I’m coming to Italy to live with you? Why on earth would I do that?’
When you threw me out. When for weeks every street I walked in Palermo reminded me of you and what I’d lost.
His steady regard didn’t falter. ‘What other solution do you propose? That I commute every other day to your little Hampshire hamlet? With Nonna living in a faceless motel somewhere close by, perhaps?’
‘Where you or your grandmother live has nothing to do with me. I’m not going anywhere with you. Let’s make that absolutely clear.’
‘Then how do you propose we raise our son together?’ he delivered with a deceptively silky voice.
Raise our son together.
Against her better judgement, those four words sent a treacherous rush through her. Reminded her of everything she’d yearned for when she’d tried to give him the news of her pregnancy. A chance to raise their child together. A chance to rewrite her own history through Gianni. To give him what her own mother had failed to give her.
A relationship with her father. For her son not to be tormented as she had been with questions about the man whose name appeared on her birth certificate but who she’d never clapped eyes on because her mother refused point-blank to discuss him, save for the fact that he was a mistake that should never have happened.
Much like Mia had been to her.
As if he knew how much the words affected her, Rocco strode closer, his eyes not leaving her face. ‘Tell me about your father, Mia.’
She stiffened, more against the anguish of discussing the man she didn’t kno
w than by Rocco’s question. ‘Why?’
‘Because, as we’re both discovering, we were engaged for a time over three years ago, but clearly didn’t know a few important details about one another.’
‘And why do you think that is?’
He shrugged. ‘Perhaps we thought we’d have time to uncover what needed uncovering.’
‘Do you think so? Or were we too afraid to find out we wouldn’t like what we discovered beneath the surface so avoided it?’
It was his turn to stiffen. ‘Perhaps. So, let’s be brave now. Let’s stop the speculation,’ he said, cleverly tossing the ball back in her court.
Her father.
Her answer was simple. And soul-destroying. ‘I don’t know a thing about him because I’ve never met him. My mother refused to tell me who he was or what happened between them. Other than he was a mistake she’d rather forget ever existed.’
Mia knew by revealing that, she was exposing her jugular. Or at the very least, giving him ammunition for his argument. But Rocco’s gaze gentled, his breath slowly releasing as he absorbed her words. ‘You may think it a bad thing that your mother withheld details from you. But perhaps she was protecting you. Maybe you were better off remaining oblivious.’
Memories of her mother’s bitterness whenever Mia had asked about her father made her think otherwise. ‘Would you have let it go were you in my shoes?’
His lips curved in a rueful smile. ‘Assolutamente no. Even if it meant discovering that one’s parents were far...worth revering.’
Her eyes widened, the notion that Rocco was offering her a brief glimpse behind his private, emotional veil stopping her breath.
They regarded each other for an endless stretch before, with a conscious shuttering of his emotions, he continued, ‘Despite opposing forces, circumstance has brought my son and I together. I don’t intend to squander that chance.’
