The Hidden Heart of Rico Rossi (18 page)

He felt sick. ‘So you want a termination?’

‘I need to think about this.’ She put her head in her hands. ‘A termination would solve all the problems,’ she muttered.

True. Though, if his parents had taken that route, he wouldn’t be here now. And Ella wouldn’t have the same dilemma in front of her. But he hated the thought of a termination. They’d just made a new life together. OK, so it hadn’t been planned. But snuffing it out, as if it wasn’t important … All his instincts told him that no, it wasn’t what he wanted. Not at all.

Though he didn’t have the right to put pressure on her. And he needed to know how she felt about this.

‘Uh-huh.’ He was careful to keep his voice neutral.

She looked up again, her expression tortured. ‘I can’t get rid of a child just because it’s not convenient for me.’ She dragged in a breath. ‘I wasn’t planned, but my mum never gave up on me, and I’m not giving up on this baby, either.’ She lifted her chin. ‘I promised my mum on her deathbed that I wouldn’t make the same mistakes that she’d made. She never made me feel as if I was a mistake.’

Rico flinched. That definitely wasn’t true for him. He’d been planned—but only by one of his parents, and not because she’d wanted him for himself. And both his parents had made him feel as if he was a mistake. A nuisance, one they only put up with so they could get the lifestyle they wanted.

‘So you want to keep the baby.’

‘Yes.’ Her eyes were very clear. ‘Which doesn’t mean I’m expecting anything from you. Financial or otherwise.’

‘It’s my baby, too.’ And, the way he saw it, there was only one way to give their baby stability and love. A traditional Italian family background. And he’d make damned sure he made a better job of it than either of their fathers had done. ‘We’re getting married.’

‘What?’ She stared at him in seeming disbelief.

‘We’re getting married.’

‘Because of the baby?’

He rolled his eyes. ‘What do you think?’

‘What century are you living in?’ she asked. ‘People don’t get married nowadays just because they’re having a baby.’

‘We’re getting married,’ he repeated.

‘We are
not
.’ She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. ‘You told me you didn’t want a family.’

‘That was before you were pregnant. I’m doing the right thing by you.’

She laughed, but there was no mirth in the sound. ‘Listen to yourself—do you have any idea how pompous you sound?’

‘The baby is having my name.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Obviously I’ll name you as the father on the birth certificate. But that’s as far as it goes. You don’t want a family, Rico. You don’t want to get married. And I’m sure as hell not going to trap you like that and make you resent me for it later.’

The way his mother had trapped his father. She had a point. But Rico wasn’t his father and Ella wasn’t his mother. Surely they didn’t have to repeat those mistakes?

The only way she was going to understand was if he told her about his past, the way she’d opened up to him. Trusted her. Asked her to help him change their future.

She took advantage of his silence to state her terms. ‘I expect absolutely nothing from you, Rico. It’s up to you how much time you want to spend with our child but, make no mistake, our child will be living with me.’

‘Our child will be living with
both
of us. And we’re getting married,’ he repeated.

‘My mother brought me up as a single mother. I’ve turned out perfectly fine. Our baby will be fine, too.’

She might be fine, but he definitely wasn’t. ‘Ella, I don’t want our baby to grow up the way I did. My parents …’

There was no way out. He was going to have to tell her. Every last dragging bit of it. Even though his throat felt clogged with the words. ‘My mother got pregnant with me at eighteen. On purpose. So my father would have to marry her.’

She stared at him. ‘Are you saying you think I got pregnant on purpose?’

‘No, of course I’m not. We’re both sensible and our baby’s a surprise to both of us. And you’re very far from being manipulative and selfish. You’re nothing like my mother.’ He raked a hand through his hair. ‘Ella, I don’t find this easy to talk about. At all. And the only reason I’m telling you now is because it’s the only way to make you understand.’

‘Understand what?’ She looked completely baffled.

He blew out a breath. ‘I’m going to have to trust you to keep this to yourself.’

Hurt flickered on her face. ‘When have I ever given you any reason not to trust me?’

‘Never. I know. That came out wrong.’ There was a horrible, salty taste in his mouth. ‘I’m … it’s …’ He shook his head in frustration. Why was it so damned hard to say it? ‘Hell, I’ve always been articulate. And yet this … it makes me feel as if my mouth’s full of glue and the words can’t
come out.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I don’t see my parents, Ella. I have nothing to do with them, other than giving them an allowance.’

‘You give your parents an allowance?’ She looked utterly shocked at the idea.

‘We have a deal. They get the money to fund whatever the thrill of the month is, and they stay away from me. It suits us all perfectly.’

‘Rico, I …’ Her eyes were full of bewilderment. ‘Why don’t you want your parents anywhere near you?’

‘Because they’re not nice people, Ella. I’m better off without them. They never wanted me in the first place.’ He couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t bear to see the pity in her eyes. But he owed it to her to tell the truth. ‘Living with them was a nightmare. My mother got pregnant deliberately so my father would have to marry her, and she’d have the lifestyle she wanted. But they were both way too young to settle down. And they weren’t suited. At all. All they did was yell at each other.’

Even now his skin felt clammy with the memory of it. ‘Every day they had a fight, usually over something completely trivial. And I hated living like that. I hated all the shouting and the smashing things and the slamming doors. I went into myself, barely spoke or communicated with anyone. My teachers told my parents that I might need to go to a special school.’ He dragged in a breath. ‘It wasn’t that I had developmental problems. I just couldn’t cope with what was going on around me at home, so I closed off from everyone.’

‘Oh, Rico.’ She put her arms round him and held him close, as if protecting him. ‘You don’t have to tell me any more.’

‘Yes, I do. So you can understand why I want our child to have a secure, stable home. My parents split up several
times when I was little. Sometimes my mother took me with her, just to spite my father, but most of the time she forgot about me.’ He dragged in a breath. ‘They split up for good when I was four, nearly five. And then there was this battle for me. Not because they wanted
me
—they wanted what I represented.’

She said nothing, but she stroked his hair back from his forehead. As if she was trying to soothe him, take the pain away.

Nothing was going to take that pain away.

‘For my father, I was his heir.’ He smiled grimly. ‘Not that Nonno was stupid enough to hand over the reins of the company to him. My father spent nearly as much money as my mother did. Fast cars, which he crashed. Boats he never even used before he sold on, at a loss. He had a real nose for investments—ones that failed, that is. But I was his bargaining chip for the future. As long as he had me, Nonno would always bail him out. Which made me a goldmine. I wasn’t his son—I was the means to an end.’

‘What about your mother? I mean—she carried you for nine months. She must’ve adored you when you were born.’

How could Ella be that naïve, that trusting? Or maybe that was what came from knowing you were loved for yourself. Something Rico had never, ever had. ‘No. For her, I was a way to get at my father. Keeping me meant that he didn’t have me, and that made her feel she’d won the fight. Not to mention the extra allowance that came with me to support her lifestyle.’ He sighed. ‘I lived with her for a while after they split up for good. Not that I saw much of her. She slept in late every day because she was out partying every night. I had a series of indifferent nannies who brought their boyfriends round and stuck me in front of the television in the afternoons while they were …’
He coughed. ‘Let’s just say they were otherwise engaged behind a locked door.’

‘That’s awful.’ Her arms tightened round him.

‘And then, when my mother finally got full custody of me because the courts agreed my father was too feckless to look after me, she planned to send me to boarding school, so I’d be out of her way. She told her friends all about it when I was playing quietly in the corner of the room. I have no idea if she knew that I could hear every single word she was saying, and even if she did I don’t think she cared.’ He looked at Ella. ‘I had everything money could buy. Every toy—all I had to do was mention it, and it would be there in every colour and size the manufacturer made. My parents tried to outdo each other in who could give me the biggest presents.’

‘But you didn’t have someone there for
you
. Your childhood was the total opposite of mine,’ she said softly. ‘My mum couldn’t afford to buy me much for my birthday or Christmas. My clothes were all second-hand. But she was always there for me. She read me stories every night—from library books, because she couldn’t afford to buy them. And I always, always, knew how much she loved me. She told me every single day.’ She stroked his face. ‘I was the lucky one, Rico. That’s the kind of upbringing I want for my child. Money doesn’t matter. It’s how you are with people that matters.’

He knew that was true. And it turned his blood to ice. He had intentions—the very best intentions—but how would he know how to be a parent? He’d had very little to do with children. He was godfather to his best friend’s children, but it was a nominal title. He was as bad as his grandparents, giving plenty in the material sense but no emotional support. He’d merely made an educated guess that his goddaughter’s favourite colour was pink and
his godson liked toy cars. That, or he asked Sofia, their mother, what they wanted for birthdays and Christmas.

‘So did you end up at boarding school?’

‘No. In the end, my grandparents took my mother to court and got custody of me.’

‘So they loved you enough to rescue you.’

‘To rescue the heir to the business,’ he corrected. ‘They sent me to various medical experts to sort me out and eventually I started talking again.’ Though Rico had a feeling that that’d had less to do with the doctors and more to do with the fact that his grandparents didn’t shout at each other or throw things. That he’d felt
safe
with them.

‘And then, once I was reading and writing and starting to catch up with the rest of my class, my grandfather started pushing me to achieve more at school. I started work in the family business when I was fourteen. And he made it clear he expected me to do well in everything. If I wasn’t top of the class, he wanted to know why. If I dropped marks in an exam, he expected me to go through it all again and work out where I’d failed and why, so I got it right next time. And if I made a mistake with the accounts or the business projections, he’d drill me in how to read a balance sheet until my head ached.’

‘Did he ever say “well done”?’ she asked softly.

Rico shrugged. ‘He made me CEO three years ago, when he stepped down as head of the business. I guess that’s the same thing. He trusts me not to mess it up. I have the final say in what happens.’

‘Maybe he isn’t good with words. Some people aren’t good at saying what they feel.’ She stroked his hair. ‘What you said about your dad … He was an only child, yes?’ At Rico’s nod, she continued, ‘Maybe your grandparents couldn’t have any more children after him, so they spoiled him, poured all their love into him and gave him everything
he wanted. The way he turned out, your grandparents knew they’d got it wrong. They didn’t want to make those same mistakes with you, and that was why your grandfather was so hard on you when you were growing up. Like being the opposite of the way they’d been with your father, so you’d turn out OK.’

Rico had pretty much come to that conclusion himself. Though he’d rather die than actually ask his grandparents if they loved him. ‘I don’t want my child to grow up like that. I want to be there for my child—to be the kind of father …’ He couldn’t say it. He just hoped she’d realise what he meant. The kind of father he wished he’d had.

‘But you’re asking me to marry you for completely the wrong reason. Surely even in this day and age people get married because they love each other?’

He blew out a breath. ‘That’s the one thing I was hoping you weren’t going to ask of me.’ Because he wasn’t sure he was capable of doing it. He didn’t have a clue what a normal family was like. He didn’t know how to love, the way she wanted him to love her. And it scared him to hell that he’d be a failure at it.

He looked absolutely terrified. And suddenly a lot of things were clear to Ella. Rico, who was calm and efficient and terribly good at business, was completely at sea when it came to emotional things. From the way he’d grown up, he didn’t know how to give his heart, and he was always going to hold back from her.

Unless she could teach him to love. Give him the security he’d never had as a child. Make him realise that she valued him for himself, not for what he could give her or do for her.

If she married him, their baby would have the security she hadn’t always had as a child. Two parents. What
she’d always wanted, when she was younger and before she found out what a louse her father had been.

It wasn’t about the money. At all. But, if she didn’t marry Rico, she knew she’d struggle to cope with the business. She’d have to give it up, just when she’d got it off the ground and was doing well—that, or find a business partner to share the workload and give her time to spend with her baby, because she had no intention of neglecting her baby in favour of her career. But how could she possibly trust her judgement to find the right business partner when she was all over the place, emotionally and hormonally?

‘I need to think about this,’ she said. ‘And right now I want to be on my own.’