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“Are you kidding me?”
Donny poked his head in, and I threw a pair of socks at his head. He was lucky I didn’t have my hairdryer in my hands.
“You know it doesn’t mean anything,” my mother said, trying to get me to stop packing.
Donny gasped from the doorway, clearly deeply offended. “We’re in love, Giana,” he said. “Tell her. She needs to know. You said you loved me, Giana!”
I actually laughed at the idea of my mother loving anyone but herself. She joined me in a disgusted snort before she whirled on him.
“Donny, this doesn’t have anything to do with you. Just shut up for a minute.”
His eyes welled up, and I actually felt a bit sorry for him. Not much, though. No, not really at all. I’d had enough and grabbed the things my mom was pulling out of my bag, stuffing them back in. Whatever I had in there had to be enough, because I was done. Zipping up the bag, I pushed past her.
“Get out of my way,” I screamed when she tried to stop me. Furious tears fell from my eyes, and I swiped them angrily away. Neither of them deserved my tears. “I don’t ever want to see you again. Just pretend you never had a daughter. It shouldn’t be hard.” I shoved past Donny, still standing slack-jawed and broken-hearted in the hall. “As for you, consider yourself a free man, which I guess you already did.”
I slammed out the door. No car keys, but I couldn’t take my mother’s rental when I just disowned myself. I hadn’t thought anything through, blindsided by the sight of them together like that. I was still not thinking straight. I didn’t give a flying fig what Donny did with anyone. Well, anyone but my mother.
And my mother doing that to me? It didn’t matter that I had no feelings for Donny. He was supposed to marry me, on her orders. Was she going to keep sleeping with him throughout our marriage? And to think she’d lied to the delusional fool about being in love with him, and he’d believed her. Well, I was never believing a word from her again.
A fresh wave of exhaustion hit me as the adrenaline began to subside. I headed for the all night diner a few doors down, so I could sit and figure out my next move. In the cozy, well-lit restaurant, I felt like all eyes turned to me when I walked in. I must have looked a sight, red faced and tearstained in a slinky leather dress and hauling an overnight bag at one o’clock in the morning. The server pretended nothing was amiss, and perhaps they were used to people like me dragging themselves in at all hours.
“Just a hot cocoa for now,” I said.
“Sure thing, hon.”
The easy endearment sounded so sincere I almost started crying. My mother always called me some silly, lovely sounding thing, and it never meant crap. A darn server in a diner showed more kindness to me than she did. The cocoa arrived, overflowing with marshmallows, and I smiled gratefully at her as she quickly squeezed my shoulder before leaving me alone to wallow.
Getting a big slurp of sugar in my system restored a tiny bit of my equilibrium, and I began to feel a bit hypocritical for my show of outrage. I was pregnant with another man’s baby after all, so I couldn’t be too mad at Donny. Screw Donny, it was my mother that had me so upset. She was always a maneater, always had a boyfriend around. That was nothing new. But why go after the one she picked out for me? Especially when more age appropriate men had been hitting on her nonstop since we’d been here. Didn’t she have any boundaries? Didn’t she care about my feelings at all? If I had actually been in love with him I would have been devastated. I was devastated.
I did whatever she said and she still left me to fend for myself. I prided myself on being independent but sometimes I just didn’t want to have to be. Well, she had finally forced my hand. I took out my phone and scrolled to the payment app. I laid it down on the table beside me, still not sure about anything. My tired mind strayed to Aleksei, and I let it stay there. Just for a few minutes, while I drank my cocoa and decided what to do with my miserable life.
Chapter 16 - Aleksei
I found it mildly amusing that Theresa thought anything was settled between us. Seeing her at the gallery, having her in my arms again ignited a fire that wouldn’t easily be put out. I gave her every opportunity to come to me again during her show, but she blatantly ignored me. Or tried to make me think she was ignoring me. Even when her eyes weren’t on me, I could tell she felt my presence.
Sofia sensed it too, or at least the fact that I couldn’t take my eyes off another woman, and hung on my arm the whole night, annoyingly kissing my cheek more times than she had since I’d known her. Normally, I would have put a stop to her nonsense, but it served my purpose by making Theresa squirm.
When the show ended, I drove Sofia back to her apartment. Alone again with no one to put on a show for, she barely acknowledged me in the car. A brisk nod was her only goodbye when she slammed out and stalked toward the door. If I hadn’t been in such a bad mood, I would have laughed. I should have gone home, but I drove back to the gallery. I’d seen Theresa’s fiancé and mother leave an hour before I did, so I knew she was left alone to close the place up.
Parking outside with a view through the gallery windows, I wondered what had become of my life. Was I actually stalking a woman? Not just any woman. My woman. The mother of my child. I needed to know that she got home safely. I was too far gone over Theresa to care about how my brothers might tease me if they knew what I was doing.
I snorted. At least two of them would have already had her locked in their homes, since both of them had already done just that. I was itching to do it. Lavish her with the attention she loved so much until she felt the same feelings that burned through me. I was certain it wouldn’t take long to get her to admit we were meant to be together despite the odds.
I kept watching her through the windows as she instructed the staff with a warm smile, despite how tired she must have been. She helped straighten things up, covered the pieces that had been sold and put tags on them, probably instructions for the delivery people. I loved watching her do what she so clearly loved and excelled at. Her fierce independence and capability were just two of the things I found so fascinating about her. I could never take that from her. It would be sinful. So I just watched her.
When she got in a small sports car, I followed at a short distance, just to make sure she got to her apartment all right. That’s what I told myself, anyway. The truth of the matter was I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She had become like oxygen to me. Once she was safely in the building there was no reason to keep sitting in my car on the curb, staring at the door. I should have ended that bout of sanity and went home, but I still sat there, thinking about her.
After only a short time, she stormed back out of the building, in the same outfit as at the gallery, but wielding a big, overstuffed bag. It was instantly clear to me that she was upset. Her pretty face was red as a ripe tomato. She’d probably erupt like a volcano if I confronted her, even though my motives were purely to console her, but I had no real excuse for being there, other than the obvious. She didn’t need to know I was stalking her, but I couldn’t leave her alone to roam the streets so late at night, either.
She headed down the sidewalk on foot, and I followed at a snail’s pace in my car. She slumped into a coffee shop a few doors down, and I pulled into an open space with a view through the plate-glass windows, wondering what to do next. When she wiped tears from her eyes, I started to get out of the car but made myself sit still and wait. If she just needed to blow off a little steam after an argument with her mother and then get up and went home in fifteen minutes, finding out I was following her would only turn her ire onto me. And I was already getting plenty of it.
Through the windows, I watched her take out her phone, then set it down. A second later, a ding rang out from my own phone and I grabbed it, full of hope she was reaching out to me. It was an alert from my personal bank account, alerting me that a large sum had just been moved. The exact amount I’d sent to her payment app for the paintings, weeks ago, and that she infuriatingly had refused to accept. Until now. When she was upset. And had an overnight bag packed to bursting. I could only think of one reason why she’d do that all of a sudden.
She meant to run away. With my baby. And without me.
Hell no.
I jumped out of my car and slammed into the diner, meaning to let her have the full force of my wrath over this betrayal. As soon as I saw her tear-stained cheeks and the dark circles below her beautiful, sorrow-filled eyes, all I could do was quietly slide into the seat across from her.
