in the hospital, now that running the country was up to him, he’d had no choice but to come back. Even though it made him feel like he’d crawled into someone else’s skin. Ill-fitting. Uncomfortable. Nearly unbearable.
Now, another role he wasn’t made for. Husband. Father.
“There is no … no room prepared for Luca,” he said, careful not to look down at the top of the boy’s dark head.
“What?” she asked, finely arched brows locking together.
He gritted his teeth against rising annoyance. “Had you told me there would be a need …”
“You didn’t know?” She shot a look to Luca, then back to him, her eyes round with shock. “How did you not know?”
Luca was watching both of them, confusion in his eyes. That was something he remembered well about being a child. That lack of control. Knowing that your fate was in the hands of the adults around you. How little sense it made sometimes.
His stomach tightened, and he looked down at the boy again. “Luca, perhaps you would like to come out to the garden?”
The garden. Such as it was. It was a massive, sprawling green field in comparison to most lawns. But it was likely to keep a child busy. At least, he thought it would.
Luca nodded. “I like to play outside. Do you have a slide?”
Rodriguez looked at Carlotta, then back at Luca, a strange sensation—nerves?—making it hard to breathe. “No. No slides. But we could put one in.” Put one in? Like they were staying?
Of course they were staying. He’d signed a new marriage contract with King Eduardo before leaving Santina. But he hadn’t known about the child. About Luca. He’d known that he and Carlotta would have an heir … but an heir was … It sounded very detached. Unreal. The little boy with serious green eyes was real.
Too real.
“You don’t have to put a slide in,” said Carlotta. “Well, not today. Eventually I guess it might … Luca, let’s go outside.” She held out her hand and Luca wrapped his small fingers around hers. She looked at Rodriguez and he nodded, leading her through the entryway and down the main corridor that led out to the back terrace.
They stepped outside into the warm evening, the heat of the day long past, the setting sun casting electric orange stripes over the vivid green lawn.
“There isn’t a pond or anything is there?” she asked, eyeing the fenced-in area.
“No. It’s safe for him. This part here is just grass.”
“Go, run,” she said.
Luca smiled at Carlotta and trotted off the terrace, and Carlotta watched him, a soft expression on her face.
“The plane ride was long,” she said. “He really needed to get out and move.”
“I can imagine.” He’d learned not to fidget from a very early age. It had stayed with him into adulthood. Sometimes, even now, if he was in a meeting and he found himself fidgeting, he could still imagine that the sharp crack of a ruler on his shins might come next.
“How did you not know?” she asked.
“About Luca? How was I supposed to know?”
“It was … The press, they … He’s the only illegitimate Santina. The headlines were not kind.”
“I don’t read tabloids.”
“You don’t?”
“No.”
“Not even when they’re talking about you?”
“Especially not then,” he said.
“How do you… I mean, how can you not? I had to … I had to know what they were saying.” She looked away from him, her eyes on Luca, who was now turning circles in the middle of the large expanse of grass. “I suppose, looking back, it wasn’t the healthiest thing for a hormonal, pregnant woman to do. But I just felt like I needed to know.”
“I don’t care what they’re saying. Anyway, what they write about me is simply a rundown of my weekend’s events. If I want a recap, I’ll look at the pictures I took.”
She turned her head sharply, her eyes wide. “Pictures?”
“Oh, so you’ve read about me then,” he said.
“I said I read tabloids. Anyway, who hasn’t read about you?”
“Probably a few priests who are trying to deny the existence of evil in the world, but we aren’t supposed to be talking about me right now. I didn’t know you had a son.”
“Does it change anything?”
Did it? He’d never planned on being very involved with his wife and children. He just … he couldn’t think of a single thing he could add to their lives. They would serve their purpose, likely better without his interference. He knew nothing about family. The only thing he knew about children was what not to do with them.
That was something, he supposed.
“I don’t know that it does,” he said. “Is his father in the picture?”
“Luca doesn’t have a father.” Carlotta felt her cheeks get hot as Rodriguez fixed her with a hard stare. “Well … obviously he has a father,” she said. “But he doesn’t have an involved father.”
“Messy breakup?” he asked.
It suddenly seemed a bit harder to breathe. “You could say that.” It would be an understatement, but she wasn’t in the mood to elaborate.
“So I’m not going to get tangled up in any sort of custody thing?”
“Absolutely not. Is that your only concern?”
“I don’t see anything else that should concern me.”
“You don’t see how having a son concerns you?”
His eyebrows locked together. “He’s not my son.”
Carlotta’s heart twisted tight. It was a fair enough statement. Luca wasn’t Rodriguez’s son. And they’d been at his home for all of fifteen minutes. He wasn’t being cruel. Still, it felt a little cruel. “No, I know. But he is a child, and if you’re going to be my husband he will be your stepson, and that means some of the responsibility …”
“He has a nanny?”
“Yes. She had to stay behind for a couple of days but …”
“In that case, I see my responsibility will be limited.”
Anger burned in her, threatening to swallow her whole. “And will it be the same for your children? Because if not, you and I have no more to say to each other. Luca is my son. He’s my world and if you—”
“Yes. It will be the same for our child. I don’t intend to have any more than is required.”
“If we have a girl?”
“Then we will have to have more, I suppose.”
“I don’t … I don’t even know how to have this discussion with you,” she said, panic clawing at her stomach. How could she stand here talking children with this stranger? Was she really going to marry this man?
Yes. Because the other option was going back to her father, standing in that spot in his office and telling him, yet again, how badly she’d failed the Santina family. She couldn’t do it. The guilt would consume her. She lived with enough guilt. No sense in adding to it.
But one thing she had to be sure of. For Luca. And if Rodriguez couldn’t handle it, she would walk away, no matter how disappointed her father was. No matter how much compound interest in guilt it earned her.
“Will you adopt