‘Understandable.’
‘But they didn’t, and by the time I realised we needed to go to the hospital, Ava was almost ready to make her arrival.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘Meghan was pushing me in a wheelchair into the delivery ward, and I was bellowing at the top of my lungs. I’m not so good with pain.’
‘I wish I could have been there,’ Larenzo said quietly, and Emma knew he meant it.
Before she could think better of it, she asked the question that had been dancing through her mind. ‘What do you suppose would have happened, if you hadn’t gone to prison?’
Larenzo frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I would have stayed on as your housekeeper. I would have told you I was pregnant right away.’ She held her breath, waiting for him to say something, although she didn’t know what.
Larenzo sighed and leaned back in his chair. ‘The truth is, Emma, if I hadn’t gone to prison, if I hadn’t known I was going to go to prison, there wouldn’t have been a baby. That night happened because I knew I was going to be arrested in the morning.’
‘Oh.’ Emma blinked, stupidly feeling hurt by this, and not quite sure what to do with that emotion. ‘I see.’
‘You gave me something precious that night.’
‘My virginity?’ she filled in, trying to joke, but it came out flat.
‘No, I didn’t mean that, although that of course is precious too.’
She really didn’t want to be having this conversation. She kept looking at her plate, focusing on the food she no longer felt like eating.
‘I meant comfort,’ Larenzo said quietly. ‘Human connection. Pleasure, not just physical pleasure, although there certainly was that. But pleasure in talking to you, and being in your company. Playing chess, seeing your photographs...that night made a memory that sustained me through many dark days in prison.’
‘Oh.’ And now she didn’t feel so hurt. She felt...honoured that she’d been that important to him, and deeply thankful that their one night together had meant something to him, as it had to her. ‘Well, I’m glad about that, I suppose.’
‘And look at the result.’ He glanced at Ava, who now had tomato sauce in her hair, before turning back to Emma with a smile. ‘I don’t have any regrets, since she came out of it. But I think she needs a bath.’
‘Do you want me to—?’ Emma half rose from her chair as Larenzo unbuckled Ava from her high chair.
‘I can do it,’ he said.
‘She can be pretty tricky in the tub—’
As if to prove her point, Ava started wriggling out of Larenzo’s grasp, and soon his shirt was splattered with tomato sauce.
Larenzo looked rather endearingly amazed by his daughter’s gymnastics and Emma rescued him. ‘I’ve found this is the best way sometimes,’ she said, and, tucking Ava under her arm as if she were a parcel, she took her to the bathroom.
Larenzo followed, standing in the doorway while Emma put Ava down and turned the taps on. ‘Fortunately she likes her bath,’ she said, and turned to look over her shoulder. Her breath dried in her throat as she saw he was unbuttoning his shirt. What, she wondered distantly, was so mesmerising about his long brown fingers sliding buttons out of their holes? Something was, because she couldn’t tear her gaze away from the sight.
‘I’d rather not get my shirt wet,’ Larenzo explained. ‘I have a feeling Ava is a splasher.’ He shrugged out of his dress shirt, revealing a plain white T-shirt underneath that clung to the defined muscles of his chest and abdomen.
‘She is,’ Emma answered, and finally managed to drag her gaze to Larenzo’s face. She couldn’t read the emotion in his eyes, and she hoped that he hadn’t noticed how she’d been staring. Wanting.
She knew she should go back to the kitchen and clean up their dishes, but she felt as if her feet were rooted to the floor, and all she could do was watch as Larenzo battled Ava out of her clothes and then plopped her in the tub, one strong hand resting on her back to keep her steady.
‘Is this right?’ he asked, and the uncertainty in his voice made Emma’s heart ache.
‘Yes...yes, that’s perfect.’ She felt as if her feelings were a kaleidoscope that Larenzo twirled every time he spoke. In these unguarded moments of honesty everything in her swelled with feeling, ached with loss.
What if things could have been different? What if that night had still happened, without the arrest, and she and Larenzo had built a relationship? What if they’d become a proper family, rather than this awkwardly constructed temporary one?