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That at least was something it seemed Luke had never been.
‘How so?’
She swivelled her head to look at him, but his expression was masked by the lengthening shadows of the afternoon. ‘Are you really interested in all this?’
‘Yeah, I love a good story,’ he said, sounding surprisingly earnest. ‘Start from the beginning. How did you two meet?’
She listened to the muffled splatter of the water falling onto lichen-covered rocks, felt the dry wind lift the soft hairs on her arm and let herself recount the story she’d never told anyone else, because it had made her feel like such an abject failure as a mother.
‘Claudio and I met at a Christmas party I was catering for one of my celebrity clients. His family is a big deal in Italy. They own land in and around Sorrento. He was dabbling in Formula Two at the time and fancied himself a racing driver—which in his case basically entailed being a globetrotting playboy who drove fast cars. He was charming, debonair, and he knew his way round a clitoris. After three dates, I was smitten.’
She’d worked so diligently to drag herself out of the pit where Luke had left her, to make a success of the cake designing, to bring up her baby girl solo, to schmooze as many celebrity contacts as she could and earn a regular spot on Living’s morning show as their baking expert. Claudio had been her reward. A chance to finally enjoy at least some of the fruits of being an independent, semi-successful career woman, who hadn’t had anything resembling a sex life in close to six years. She’d still been so young, only twenty-five—unfortunately, she’d also still been stupidly optimistic and incredibly naive, despite the lessons Luke had taught her.
‘We’d only been dating a few months when I got pregnant. Which was the result of a drunken bonk in a nightclub toilet.’ She gave a pained laugh. ‘I seem to have a knack for hitting the jackpot during drunken bonks in and around music venues, don’t I?’
‘You’re not the only one,’ he replied wryly.
‘Anyway, I planned to have an abortion. It was a hard decision, but I didn’t feel I had much of a choice. I had Lizzie to think about. And my career and it had been a mistake.’
And after what had happened with Luke, she didn’t want to ever be in that situation again, but she couldn’t tell Luke that, it would be far too revealing.
‘But Claudio …’ She paused, the conflicting emotions always there when she thought about Aldo’s father. He had been a tosser, but he had at least done one thing right, even if it had been for all the wrong reasons. ‘Claudio argued me out of it. He was Catholic, he said, it was a sin and he would be a good father. I suspect now his desire to keep the baby had more to do with his ego than any religious convictions, because he quickly became less keen on the idea as the pregnancy progressed. Dating someone with swollen ankles and ballooning breasts who wanted to hibernate instead of hang on his arm at celebrity parties hadn’t been part of the plan, apparently.’
‘He didn’t like the ballooning breasts? You’re kidding,’ Luke interrupted. ‘I thought that was the best bit.’
She laughed, as she suspected he had intended. The sickening tension in her gut eased, until the ripple of memory brought with it an uncomfortable blast of heat. Luke had certainly never been turned off by her pregnant body the way Claudio had.
She chucked one of the chewed chicken bones at him, determined to stop the stupid warm spot sinking south. ‘Shut up, do you want to hear the rest of this or not?’
He caught the bone one-handed and smiled. ‘Absolutely.’
She settled back on the rock. ‘So, as the months wore on, we saw each other less and less. By the end of the pregnancy I wasn’t into sex, and without that there really wasn’t anything else to keep us together. But even so, I thought …’ She hesitated, suddenly feeling like a fraud.
Had she really hoped Aldo, once he arrived, would bring Claudio back to her? When she was fairly sure she hadn’t wanted Claudio in her life by then?
‘Anyway, Claudio finally showed up at the maternity hospital the day after I’d given birth. He held Aldo, for about ten seconds, then handed him back to me and explained, very politely, that he had made a terrible mistake. He said he really wasn’t ready to be a father. That he had found someone else more suited to his lifestyle, and that he would be happy to make a financial contribution to Aldo’s upkeep, whatever I thought was fair, but he didn’t feel there was any point in forming a relationship with the child.’ She sighed. ‘“The child”, that’s what he called my beautiful baby boy.’
‘I hope you took him to the cleaners.’
The bite of anger in Luke’s tone felt comforting.
‘Actually, no, I told him to shove his offer of financial support somewhere anatomically impossible.’ She released a shaky breath. ‘The last thing I wanted was his money.’
Because it would have given her a connection to Claudio she didn’t want.
Which begged the question why she had never told Luke the same thing? When she’d always refused to spend any of the money he’d sent without fail every month for Lizzie?
‘He doesn’t sound like a tosser. He sounds like a total arsehole,’ Luke said, rescuing her from stressing over that glaring inconsistency.
‘Yes, he was, but …’ She forced herself to breathe round the granite boulder now sitting on her chest. ‘I know the pregnancy wasn’t only my fault.’
Even if two accidental pregnancies in one lifetime makes me the poster girl for dumb blondes.
‘And it definitely wasn’t my fault Claudio turned out to be such an immature, selfish git.’ The pressure on her lungs became painful.
Bloody hell, why is it still so hard to admit, even now?
‘But I wish I could have given Aldo a better dad. Or any kind of dad really.’
