Caroselli's Accidental Heir. Michelle Celmer

to take care of you.” He took her hand and held it tight. “You and the baby.”

      She pulled her hand free. “Thanks, but I can take care of myself.”

      “If you won’t marry me, would you agree to stay with me? At least until the baby is born?”

      “I can’t.”

      She could tell by his expression that he thought she was being stubborn, and maybe she was a little. But who could blame her? The dynamic was simple. She loved Tony, and he felt obligated. Living together would be painful enough. Marrying him would be downright torture. She could fool herself into believing that his feelings might change, but the reality was if he hadn’t fallen in love with her by now, odds were good he never would. To marry him, even if it was for the baby’s benefit, seemed sad and pathetic. She refused to play the victim.

      Been there, done that, burned the T-shirt.

      Maybe when they were alone at his place he would pull her into his arms and hold her tight, and tell her he was miserable and lonely after she left. Of course he would have a very logical, not to mention romantic, reason for not coming after her.

      And maybe the Pope would convert.

      Tony pulled down his street and found a spot close to his building. She’d been a little shocked the first time he brought her there. Everything about Tony screamed rich and classy. He drove a luxury import, drank the best scotch, owned a closet full of designer brand clothes, yet he lived in a nondescript apartment in an equally nondescript building, in what seemed to her to be one of the most boring streets in the entire city of Chicago. But as he had logically put it, why spend a lot of money on a place when he was hardly ever there?

      Normally he would have held her hand as they walked into the building and got in the elevator. Often he even got frisky during the ride up, but this time he didn’t touch her. She was both relieved and disappointed.

      After a history of nomadic tendencies, Lucy had learned to never attach deep personal feelings to places, but when Tony unlocked the door and she stepped inside his apartment, she got a lump in her throat. She had so many good memories of the time they’d spent here together. At some point in their relationship his place had begun to feel like a second home to her, and she had fooled herself into thinking he might actually want her there with him.

      Shame on her for forgetting who she really was.

      Tony shut the door behind them and when he touched her shoulder her heart stopped. But then she realized that he was only helping her with her jacket, which he tossed over the back of the sofa. His suit jacket landed on top of it, and his tie on top of that. “Would you like something to drink? I have juice and diet soda. Or I could make tea.”

      “Just water,” she said. There were newspapers strewn across the coffee table and a blue silk tie draped over the back of the leather chair. Guy furniture. The apartment was full of it. Leather, metal and glass. Bare wood floors. She would have thought that something might have changed in the four months she’d been gone, but everything looked exactly the same. And she saw no evidence of a woman staying there.

      “Sit down,” he said, gesturing to the sofa, more an order than a suggestion. He was working up to something, she could feel it. For every second he didn’t speak, her nerves wound tighter as her hopes for a civilized solution faded. Responding to her tension, the baby was doing circus acrobatics deep in her womb.

      The galley-style kitchen was separated from the living space by a wall, but she could hear him rattling around in the fridge. He reappeared a second later with a bottled water for her and a beer for himself, and though she’d assumed he would sit in the chair opposite her, he sat down beside her on the sofa instead.

      The urge to touch him, to scoot closer and lean into him—to knock him onto his back and climb all over him—was as strong as ever. She longed for him to take her into his arms and hold her, promise her that everything would be okay. Make love to her until the last four months no longer mattered.

      All he said was, “I can’t let you leave again.”

      She should have known he wouldn’t give up. He was the kind of man who was used to getting his way.

      He would just have get unused to it.

      “It’s not your decision to make.”

      “The hell it isn’t,” he said, and his sharp tone startled her. He’d never so much as raised his voice in her presence, though at times she may have deserved it.

      “Fatherhood doesn’t start after the baby is born,” he told her. “You robbed me of the opportunity to share the experience of your pregnancy with you.”

      Just when she thought she couldn’t feel like a bigger jerk, he had to go and say that. And he was absolutely right. She had robbed him of all sorts of things. And robbed herself of sharing the experience with someone who actually gave a damn. Unlike her mom, who spent the first month and a half trying to convince her to “get rid of the problem.”

      Lucy had also robbed herself of the most basic creature comforts. Her mom’s couch, where she had been sleeping the past four months, was miserably uncomfortable. She woke most mornings with either intense lower back pain or a severely kinked neck. Sometimes both. The idea of sleeping in a bed again, getting a peaceful night’s rest, was alluring. But what would it do to her heart?

      She reminded herself yet again that this was not about what she wanted. Or couldn’t have. She needed to do what was best for the baby, and for now that meant taking care of herself. Tony could help her with that.

      “Hypothetically, suppose I do agree to live here with you,” she said. “I would have to have my own room.”

      “Or you could share mine.” His hand came to rest on her thigh. She didn’t have to see his face to know the expression he wore, and that it had the ability to melt her in seconds flat. Hadn’t she promised herself that she was through making irresponsible decisions?

      Tempting as it might have been, for the sake of her own pride, she couldn’t go back to the way things used to be. At least in the past there had been some hope that someday things would change, that he could fall in love with her, but now she knew that would never happen. If she was going to stay here, in his apartment, they would have to establish some boundaries. Like, no fooling around.

      She took his hand and set it on his own leg. “I think for the baby’s sake we should keep our relationship platonic. So things don’t get confusing.”

      “You can’t blame a guy for trying,” he said, and this time she did look at him, which was monumentally stupid. Curse him and his captivating smile. His deep-set, bedroom eyes.

      “You can have my room,” he told her. “I’ll sleep on the fold-out in my office.”

      Before she could object, his cell phone started to ring. He pulled it out of his pants pocket and checked the screen, cursing under his breath. “It’s Nonno,” he said, rising from the sofa and heading toward the kitchen. “I have to take this.”

      Lucy had never actually met Tony’s grandfather, but she’d heard so many stories about him, in a way she felt as if she already knew him. It occurred to her that she hadn’t seen him at the wedding. According to Tony, his grandfather—and before she passed away, his grandmother—had been present for every significant event in his life.

      Why not his wedding?

      The call barely lasted a minute before Tony hung up. “It was my mom,” he said, shoving the phone back into his pocket. “She’s at Nonno’s cleaning up. She wanted to make sure everything was okay. They want us to come by their house tomorrow to talk.”

      The idea of facing his parents, especially so soon, left her weak with terror. It must have shown on her face because Tony said, “Don’t worry. I told her we had things to work through first, and I would let her know when it would be a good time for us to meet.”

      How about never? Could they meet then?

      If