Page 57 of Her Impossible Boss's Baby

Yes, there was a place for them to compromise. Of course there was. Because she didn’t need to be cared for in a way that worked for her. She had lived with parents who didn’t care for her at all. But that wasn’t Luca. And so asking him to meet her in the middle didn’t seem outrageous. But it also meant seeing him as he was.

But she had never had any trouble with that.

He could be frustrating, certainly. And she felt then, as she walked down the lovely, sunny street, that it was fair to be frustrated even by things he couldn’t easily change. Because when you lived with somebody that was the state of things.

But she didn’t feel anymore like there was Luca, a typical man, and all of the little quirks that made him into something more of a project.

They were all him. They didn’t separate.

And so caring about those things was caring about him.

And she wanted him to have the car.

Because she mourned for the lighter things that he had cared about once, that he couldn’t afford to care about when his life became something heavy. When she got back to the penthouse, he wasn’t there. She decided that she was going to cook for him since he had done so much of that for her over the past week.

He liked to cook. It was something that she had always found interesting about him. Because most single men didn’t seem to enjoy that quite so much. And a man of his status could certainly afford somebody to do it for him.

But of course he didn’t really like a surplus of strangers in his home. Because everything needed to be where he wanted it. And that seemed quintessentially him.

She decided to make pasta with olive oil, tomatoes and some Parmesan. Simple, but she had found since moving to Rome that simple was her preference. When the ingredients were so spectacular, there was nothing not to like about simple.

She hummed as she put the food together, as she made a salad.

And by the time he walked through the door, she had everything ready, with her gift for him at the center of the table.

His eyes met hers, and he smiled. It was brilliant.

She could count on one hand how many times she had seen him smile in an unguarded fashion, and every single one of those times prior to this it had been in connection to a medical discovery.

This was the first time that smile had ever been directed at her.

Oh, dear.

She really liked him. A lot.

But imagine loving him.

Only a foolish idiot would love him.

Really.

She swallowed hard. “I made dinner.”

“I can see that.”

“I got you a present. But we should eat first.”

“I want to open my present,” he said, looking suddenly like a petulant child, and her heart squeezed. Because she wondered if he had ever been able to afford to be a petulant child.

“No,” she said in her best stern matron voice. “You have to eat first.”

He growled. But sat down. He dished his plate, and she was walking by him to go do the same, when he grabbed her around the waist and set her down on his knee. “I’d like to share with you.”

“Share with me?”

He pressed his fingertips to her jaw and turned her head. Then he kissed her. Long and deep. “Yes. I would like to share with you.”

He swirled his fork around the pasta, and brought it up to her mouth. She opened without thinking, and took a bite.

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