“And I,” he said coolly, “have lived in Rome.”
“Yes, I know that, but—”
“You are my wife.”
His voice had turned hard; even the cabbie, sensing something, reached back and closed the privacy partition.
“But surely—”
“If you wish, I will consider the purchase of a flat in New York.” Why tell her he’d decided on that when he first became interested in buying SCB? “But my primary residence—our primary residence—will be Roma.”
“But—but—”
“Stop sounding like a motorboat,” Nicolo said impatiently. “You are my wife. You will behave as such, and you cannot do that from a distance of thirty-five hundred miles.”
Aimee felt the blood drain from her head. “Nicolo. Please—”
“This discussion is at an end.”
Nicolo folded his arms and turned his face to the window.
“What discussion?” Aimee said bitterly. “You don’t discuss things, you make pronouncements.”
He gave her one final, unyielding look. “Get used to it,” he said.
After that, there was silence.
Hell.
Nicolo glowered as he stared blindly out the window.
He was certainly doing his best to prove Aimee right and be just what she had called him. A no-good bastard. A son of a bitch. He was sure she’d have used other names, far more colorful ones, if only she’d known them.
But what did she expect?
First she told him how much she hated him. Then she told him she’d marry him. Then she said he was never to touch her.
He was the one with a title but his wife had been a princess long before she’d met him. A Park Avenue princess, accustomed to giving orders and getting her own way.
And he had married her.
He must have been out of his mind! How in hell had he let it happen?
He’d come to his senses last night, realized he didn’t have to marry this woman. He didn’t need her grandfather’s bank. He hadn’t needed a child, either, but since one was on the way, he’d finally figured out that he could do the right thing for it without marrying its mother….
It.
Not much of a way to think about one’s bambino but then, he didn’t know the sex. Damn it, he didn’t even know if it was his child.
What in hell had happened to him, to make him do something so impetuous as marrying Aimee? Just because she said the baby was his….
Why believe her? Anything was possible with a woman who screwed like a bunny and wouldn’t even exchange names.
Except, he knew he was the father. Knew it in his bones, and to hell with how ridiculous that sounded. He knew it, that was all, and because he hadn’t been fast enough on his feet this morning, now he was stuck with the consequences.
He glanced at Aimee, sitting stiff and silent in the corner of the taxi, as far from him as she could get.
I feel the same way about you, he wanted to tell her. I’m no happier about what we just did than you are. I don’t want to look at you, talk to you, touch you…