Page 32 of Her Impossible Boss's Baby

Because he knew one thing for certain, he would not be shut out of his child’s life. He would not have his child thinking that its father didn’t want them.

That was impossible.

He knew what that felt like. He had been a motherless boy, because his mother had died. She had not chosen to be away from him, and it had been an unbearable pain.

But in many ways he had been fatherless. With the man living in the same house that he did. In many ways, he had not had a father, and that was the other man’s choice.

If any one thing had devastated him in a way he could not find purpose for, it was that.

He had lost his mother, but at least in that he had found the aim of his life.

He found nothing in the rejection of his father except pain.

He could not bear the idea of being that for his child.

Could not bear the thought of a child walking out in the world with a wound because he had not been able to...change.

“I have a job here,” she said.

“Can you do it remotely?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to.”

He wanted to offer to move his own work, and yet he did not think that he could manage that. He was on the verge of changing many things in his life, but that felt a bridge too far.

“We can sort that out later. It does not have to be all the time. But while you are pregnant I want you near me. I want to be able to see for myself that you are okay.”

“I’m going to be fine. Many, many women carry babies and give birth every year.”

“And some of them die.”

He had meant that to be an expression of concern. She looked at him in horror. “Luca,” she said. “No pregnant woman wants to hear that.”

“I’ve never spoken to a pregnant woman before, not as far as I know, so how would I know that?”

“Clearly. Clearly you never have.”

“Marry me,” he said.

“No,” she said. “You ran me down in the streets of Milan to demand that I come back and work for you after we had a night together. I don’t want to marry that man. I don’t want to marry a man who can’t even acknowledge that he forgot to use a condom with me, because he needs so desperately to maintain his control.”

“I admit it then,” he said. “I lost control with you. I didn’t even realize that I did. Do you have any idea how terrifying that is? I have never once in my entire life done something that I wasn’t fully aware of.”

It galled him to admit it to her. It was something he hadn’t even fully been able to admit to himself.

“I think that isn’t true. I think that you have done a great many things in your life you’re unaware of, it’s just that you don’t realize you’ve done them because they affect other people’s feelings. And you don’t care about that. You never have. Everything in your life is about you. And I... I accept that on some level, I understand it. I even... I understand why it needs to be that way. But that doesn’t mean they are the kind of man I want to marry. Caring about you would be a terrible mistake. It would end only in pain.”

He felt like he had been slashed about the chest. Felt like he had been physically wounded. What she had said about him was so...so desperately unflattering. So outright, plainly...true. He was everything that she said. His life was centered wholly on himself.

Hearing her say it made it seem like less a necessity of his work, of himself, and more of a flaw.

And he would have to change it, but in order to do that he would need her to come back to Rome with him. In order to do that, he would need her to come with him. He would need his child. So he had to stay uncompromising, he had to continue to see things his way in this moment so that he could do the things that she was suggesting he try to do. At least, that’s what he thought she was doing.

“You must let me,” he said. “You must let me try.”

“You can try by inches. You can try by coming to see me. By fostering a relationship with me that has nothing to do with the company. By...coming to visit your child after they’re born.”

“No,” he said. “You must marry me because that is the right thing to do. Because statistically children do better when they have two parents in the home.”

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