The Kiss Thief

That was why she drove us into each other’s arms. She wanted her son to have the happy ending his brother never got.

“His brother was married.” I sucked in a breath, collecting all the pieces, fitting them into the screwed-up puzzle my father had created. “He had a wife.”

“Yes. Lori. They were having fertility issues.” Ms. Sterling nodded. “Went through several IVF treatments. Then she finally got pregnant. She lost the baby when she was six months in, the day after they delivered the news that her husband had died.”

That was why Wolfe didn’t want any children.

It was also why he knew so much about ovulation and when to have sex. He didn’t want the heartache, though heartache was all he knew. He’d lost the people he cared about the most, one by one, and all by the same man. It felt like someone ripped my chest open with a knife and watched as my organs poured out of me.

I plastered a hand over my mouth, willing my pulse to slow down. It was neither good for me nor for the baby. But the truth was scandalizing and too harsh to digest. That was why Wolfe didn’t want me to know—he knew I’d hate myself for the rest of my life for what my father did. Hell, I wanted to throw up right now.

“Thank you for sharing this with me,” I said.

Ms. Sterling nodded. “Give him a chance. He is far from perfect. But who is?”

“Ms. Sterling…” I hesitated, glancing around us. “I’m devastated over your revelations, but I don’t think Wolfe wants a second chance. He knows that I’m here and that I’m pregnant, and he still hasn’t showed up. He hasn’t even called.”

Every time I thought about this fact, I wanted to crawl into a ball and die.

By the way Ms. Sterling winced, I knew that it didn’t look good for me. I escorted her back to her car. We hugged for long minutes.

“Always remember, Francesca—you’re worth more than the sums of your mistakes.”

As she drove away, I realized she was right. I didn’t need Wolfe to save me, or for Angelo to come to my rescue, or even for my mother to grow a backbone or my father to start acting like he had one.

The only person I needed was me.

THE NEXT FEW DAYS WERE pure, unadulterated torture.

The stuff we should bottle up, write down, and use on convicted child molesters.

Three days in, I caved and picked up the phone to call Arthur. Now he was playing hard to get. The tables had turned. The only person I wanted to speak to—my wife—was tucked in Arthur’s kingdom, and the place was gated and guarded more heavily than the Buckingham Palace.

I arrived at my wife’s parents’ house every single day, at six o’clock sharp, before boarding my flight, then again at eight o’clock at night, to try and talk to her.

I was always stopped at the gate by one of Rossi’s muscle, and they were beefier and stupider than his usual variety of Made Men, and showed no signs of stopping, even when my own bodyguards flexed their biceps.

Calling, or texting her was ball-less and inappropriate altogether. Especially since Sterling admitted to spilling the beans about all the things that happened between our families. Considering Francesca was under the impression that my original plan consisted of tossing her in a dark tower and killing her father slowly by stripping him and his wife of everything they owned, I knew I needed a little more than a fucking “Sorry” GIF. The conversation was too important not to be conducted face to face. There was much I needed to tell her. Much I’d found out in the days since she departed.

I was in love with her.

I was dreadfully in love with her.

Ruthlessly, tragically mad about the teenager with big blue eyes who talked to her vegetables.

I needed to tell her that I wanted this baby no less than she did. Not because I wanted children, but because I wanted everything she had to offer. And the things she didn’t offer—I wanted them, too. Not to own necessarily, but to simply admire.

The realization that I was in love didn’t happen in one glorious, Hallmark-worthy moment. It spread across the week we spent apart. With every failed attempt to reach out to her, I realized how important it was for me to see her.

Each time I got turned down, I looked up at the window of her room, willing her to materialize behind the white-laced curtain. She never did.

And that was why I avoided connections, in general. That whole climbing-the-walls thing? It wasn’t for me. But climbing, I did. Kicking things. Breaking things. Rehearsing words and speeches I would say. Avoiding suits who called and called, telling me that I needed to make a statement about my current family situation.