AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘A week after I turned eighteen, I came home from college to discover my father crying.’ Sympathy clouded Amelia’s expression. ‘He’d lost everything—because of your father and your brother. A liquidator had been approached to step in. I honestly believe he wanted to end his life rather than live with the shame of his bankruptcy.’
Pink bloomed in her cheeks. ‘I’m sorry he experienced that.’
His eyes lifted to hers, firing with the same strength that had led him then. ‘I took over the company that same day. Bit by bit I rebuilt it. It was not easy, querida, and it did not happen fast. Every day when I woke up and stared down the barrel of uncertainty and doubt, when I knew my father’s life and pride were riding on my success, I swore that I would win. And that I would make your brother pay for what he’d almost done.’
Amelia drew in a sharp breath.
‘I hate him.’
‘I can see that,’ she whispered unevenly. ‘But that doesn’t give you the right to ruin his life...’
‘He gave me the right.’ Antonio closed his eyes for a moment and he was back in the past, remembering the bleakness in his father’s eyes that night, many years earlier.
‘He made an enemy of me long ago, and nothing will change that.’
‘You talk like this about my brother,’ she said stiffly, ‘yet you actually expect me to marry you?’
‘Yes.’ His answer was instantaneous.
‘And you’d be happy with the fact you’re blackmailing me into it?’ she countered, her eyes narrowed. ‘You haven’t even asked how I’m feeling. You haven’t asked about the baby, the due date, nothing! You are heartless and selfish and so damned focused on revenge against my family that you don’t even see me as a flesh and blood woman, do you?’
At that, his eyes flared and every cell in his body that was noticing only her womanly self pushed him forward. ‘You ask if I see you as a woman?’ he demanded fiercely, and now he cupped her cheeks and hel
d her mesmerised face still. His voice was gravelly when he spoke. ‘You think I don’t want you even now, in the midst of all this?’
Her eyes lowered and he could feel the rushing of her blood; he could see the way she was as affected by this as he.
‘That’s not what I meant,’ she whispered after a moment, but his words were turning her blood into lava. ‘You don’t see me as a person with my own desires and wants, as someone who deserves to be able to steer her own fate; to make her own decisions.’
‘Of course you can decide,’ he contradicted gently. ‘But one of those choices is better for everyone.’
‘Another ultimatum,’ she grunted.
He sighed and dropped his hands, walking a few paces clear of her, to where the air was less thick with Amelia-ness and he could think a little straighter.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Let us look at this differently. The circumstances of our meeting were unfortunate.’
She snorted her agreement.
‘But I am not actually a bad person.’
Her eyes rolled heavenwards and when she spoke her words dripped with scathing sarcasm. ‘You’re determined to ruin the only family I have.’
‘I am determined,’ he corrected coldly, ‘to be a father to this baby. Why can’t we create a new family? Yes, I’m a Herrera and you’re a diSalvo, but we are also a mother and a father now. I want us to live together and to raise this baby side by side, giving it everything we can in life. Tell me this is not what you want, Amelia. Tell me you don’t want our child to grow up with a loving mother and father always at hand.’
* * *
The words were dangerous because they were so, so achingly true.
Her own childhood flashed before her eyes. The absence of any kind of family structure or regular home, the absence of time and love and affection. A mother who saw Amelia at times as an inconvenience and at others as a pet, and eventually an accessory, when Amelia was old enough, at eleven, to be dragged to parties that were, in hindsight, woefully inappropriate for a girl on the cusp of womanhood.
The things Amelia saw at her mother’s side! The drugged-out state of various guests, the orgies, spectacular fist fights. More than once she’d had to call an ambulance when someone had become so high they were a danger to themselves or others. Then there were the nightclubs, when Penny would park Amelia with the bouncers and she’d listen to them swearing and ogling women all night—it was a wonder she’d reached adulthood with any semblance of normality.
In the midst of it all, she had desperately wanted someone who would just be average. Boring. Someone who would read her books and make her pasta for dinner, who would take her to the playground or on long walks, who would ask her about her life, her hopes, her dreams.
She had wanted a mother—and not a mother like Penny.
And oh, how she’d craved a father. In her mind, she’d probably idealised what role a father might take. Her knowledge had been fleshed out from the pages of her books, but she’d imagined a sort of Mr Bennet type figure, benevolent and kindly, strict when necessary.
