She didn’t mention the part where she had been sure Javiero would never speak to her again after all of that shook out. That she had been driven to see him one more time while they had a small chance at civility.
“I didn’t mean to sleep with you. I didn’t plan to get pregnant. But he saw my behavior as similar to Evelina’s when she allowed herself to get pregnant with Val, and he lost some respect for me.”
“That’s how it looks to everyone. Including me.”
Her entire being flattened under that indictment, all shreds of hope lost. She conjured a distant smile to hide her despair. “You’d best not reward my underhanded behavior by marrying me, then.”
He made a humorless noise. “You’d prefer a settlement without any promises or investment on your part? I’ve read that book. It’s called Val and Evelina Ruin Everything.”
“And I’ve read the one where Mum made promises to a man who didn’t love her. It’s stacked in the horror shelves. Why would I marry a man who may not hate me but sure as hell doesn’t care one little bit about me?”
He looked right past her then, eye narrow and flinty, mouth a flat line.
“I have a new baby, Javiero. I can hardly think straight from one moment to the next. What you see as overwork on my part is me trying to keep a grip on the one thing I can control. I’m trying to ensure my own security. I can’t stop working and become reliant on you. My mother showed me what a mistake it is to put absolute trust in someone else. At least when I was beholden to Niko, he empowered me at the same time. He gave me an education and experience and a really good salary. I have authority and a job I already know how to do.”
“You have a son.”
“So do you! And you have a family relying on you, same as me.” She flung her hand toward the open doors to the terrace and his small kingdom beyond. “Tell me, as someone who had to make hard choices in order to support his family, do you really expect me to give up my ability to help mine? To put that duty in your hands? You refused Niko’s offer when he finally said he wanted to give you a piece of his fortune again. What’s different about me refusing your offer to do the same thing?”
His shoulders bunched, and then he threw up his hands in frustration. “Fine. Work,” he snarled. “But you’ll set proper hours and you will sleep here.” He pointed at the bed again.
“Why? Because you don’t trust me?”
“No. I don’t. And you don’t trust me, obviously. Which annoys the hell out of me because the one thing I pride myself on is how well I take care of my family. So you and I will share a room and a bed along with a son, and we’ll work on trusting each other.”
Scarlett experienced a sudden, crushing insecurity that he would discover all the other little flaws that would make him truly hate her. She couldn’t stand his doubts and cynicism as it was, but she didn’t know how to break down the barriers between them.
Her fingertips found the grinding knot of tension between her brows and tried to smooth it away. It wasn’t like her to have all this insecurity and angst. She used to feel confident in herself, but lately she felt like an awful fraud. She was blaming it on lack of sleep and all the changes around her. She doubted she would magically recover her confidence by sharing a bed with Javiero, but part of her wanted to believe that being around him in a more intimate setting would help them communicate better.
And maybe she was trying to orchestrate something that looked a lot like them going back to that torrid afternoon when they had conceived Locke. She wanted to see how far their relationship might have taken them if she’d allowed it to play out. Would they have fallen in love and married?
Oh, no, Scarlett. She closed her eyes. Don’t start dreaming about castles in the sky.
The sound of a crying baby approached. It hadn’t even been thirty minutes since she had put Locke down. That cry was starting to make her feel like such a failure.
Javiero moved to the door, but kept his hand on the latch without opening it.
“We both had parents who let us down, Scarlett. We have to at least try to do better than they did.”
She couldn’t argue that. She desperately wanted to feel like a good mum.
He opened the door and she moved to get Locke, bringing him into their room.
“I’m still awake,” Javiero said as Scarlett slid carefully in beside him. His entire body was taut with futile anticipation.
“So is your mother,” she said with a heavy sigh, sinking onto the mattress.
“She went in there?” He picked up his head and looked toward the connecting doors to the sitting room. Over dinner, he had announced that Locke would be using the small lounge as a night nursery and his mother had not been impressed. “I didn’t hear her.”
“She stayed in her room, but I heard her phone down for one of her headache pills and some tea to help her sleep. I should have stayed in the other wing. She already hates me. I don’t want anything to impact her feelings toward Locke.”
“How she reacts is up to her,” he said with a stab of impatience. “If she wants to continue her war of passive aggression toward my dead father and resent our doing what’s best for her grandson, that’s her choice. I gave up trying to make her see reason years ago.”
Did he hear the irony of his own years of stonewalling
