I threw everything into the trash and washed my face with warm water to clean off the sweat. Hanging my head over the sink, I looked into the mirror at my face. What if I had a little girl, and she turned out to look like me? The thought broke my heart. Not because I wouldn’t love her, but because I knew how cruel the world could be. I didn’t want to watch my or any child endure that sort of pain. I just didn’t.
I suddenly felt a huge amount of respect for my own parents. They’d never once led me to believe they’d had these same thoughts and feelings, but they must’ve.
I shook my head and patted my face dry.
A loud knock on the bathroom door startled me. “Lily!”
“Max?” Holy Jesus. I jerked open the door, and there he stood looking wrinkled and beaten down. “What are you doing here?” I threw my arms around him and hugged him hard.
He peeled me off. “Why weren’t you answering your phone just now?”
I blinked up at him, taking in that sublimely beautiful face with several weeks’ worth of thick stubble. “You should talk! I haven’t heard from you for two days!”
“I forgot my phone at the hotel in Buenos Aires, and I didn’t have time to replace it since I had to get to the airport to catch a plane home—the Wi-Fi was also out on the plane. But forget that. What’s this I heard about you hitting my mother and getting arrested?”
I winced. “She had it coming.”
He shook his head, and I saw the raw anger in his eyes. I hadn’t expected him to be so upset.
“I need a drink.” Max headed for the living room, where he had a bar in the corner. I followed him, feeling every nerve ending spark with adrenaline.
He served himself two fingers of scotch. “Care for one?”
I stood opposite him across the narrow counter. “No. Thank you.”
He took his glass, raised it to me, and threw it back. Frankly, I’d never seen Max looking so volatile.
“Are you all right?” I asked. Because there was a lot I needed to talk to him about—the ownership of the company, our very complicated relationship, Patricio’s little issue, but really, there was only one topic I needed to get off my chest ASAP. Baby.
He set his glass down and refilled it. “No,” he barked in reply to my question.
I was about to ask what happened with his sister when the front gate buzzed.
My lips twisted sideways. “I’ll get that.”
Max was too busy pouring another drink down his throat, determined to anesthetize himself from something awful.
I walked over to one of the intercoms stationed in the little hallway just off the foyer. “Yes?”
“Lily! You open this gate right now!”
“Patricio? What are you doing here?” Oh, hell. He must’ve been calling me from the airport earlier.
“I am here to see that bastard! Open the gate.”
Hell no. He’d clearly come for a fight, and Max’s foul mood would guarantee he got one.
I heard the gate buzz open.
What in the… I hadn’t touched anything.
“The man wants to see me? Let him the fuck in.” Max stood behind me with a remote of some sort in his hand and then walked back to the living room.
“Are you out of your mind?”
I heard a car’s engine roar up the driveway, tires screeching, followed by the front door bursting open. “Where is that disgusting mudder fucker!” Patricio pushed past me and stormed into the foyer. “Get your ass out here, Maxwell Cole, you dirty bastard!”
“Patricio!” I grabbed for his arm. “You need to leave…”
“Max! I’m going to beat your ass!” Patricio yelled.
“Go, Patricio. Go!” I tried yanking him out by the arm, but he wasn’t budging.
Max appeared in the doorway, rolling up his sleeves. “What the fuck do you want, you piece of shit meatball?”
Patricio pointed at him. “I want to kill you. That’s what! You think you can frighten me?”
“Clearly, I cannot.” Max went to work on the next sleeve.
Oh shit. They’re gonna fight again.
“No. You cannot!” Patricio shook his finger at Max. “And Lily is mine.”
“No. I’m not,” I protested. “Now go!”
Patricio swiveled on his heel in my direction. “You and I both know that Sunday wasn’t really about doing me a favor.”
“What favor?” Max looked at me.
“Okay. This is getting out of hand.” I looked at Patricio. “I have no clue what you’re talking about. You said your mother would practically die if I didn’t show up for brunch.”
“Because she has wanted nothing more than to welcome you into our family. You don’t know them, but they love you already. And so do I! You only need to see it with your own eyes.”
Lightbulb. Sunday’s brunch was Patricio’s underhanded way of trying to win me back.
“So you what?” I waved my hand through the air. “You thought after our breakup three weeks ago that I’d meet your family and just swoon and agree to marry you?”
“Yes. Because I can offer you a real life with a real family. Not some broken twisted devil for a mother-in-law and a lying sister.”
Oh crap. Now was not the time to be talking trash about Max’s sister.
Before I could say a word, Max charged Patricio and knocked him to the ground. This time, it wasn’t funny or sexy or entertaining. It was fucking scary because I’d never seen Max so enraged.
He pulled back his fist and landed a punch right on Patricio’s neck.
Oh fuck. I lunged forward and grabbed Max’s hand as he cocked his fist. “Stop! You’re going to kill him!”
Diverted by my tugging, Max’s fist landed on Patricio’s shoulder while Patricio gasped for air.
“Max! Stop it!”
“You fucking wanna talk about my sister, you motherfucker?” Max landed another punch right on Patricio’s jaw. “You fucking used her! She was fucked up and you only made it worse.”
I could see the fear in Patricio’s eyes and white-hot rage in Max’s. I didn’t know what to do.
“Stop! I’m pregnant!” I belted out.
Max’s fist halted in midair, but he didn’t look at me. Panting, he glared down at Patricio, hate radiating from Max’s every pore.
“Max, did you hear me? I’m pregnant. And yes, it’s yours. So please get the hell off of him before you make more problems.” God knew we didn’t both need to end up in jail and with arrest records. I mean, what a complete bummer that would be for our kid. Don’t mommy and daddy look so nice in orange, sweetie? We can’t wait to hug you when you’re five once we’re free!
Panting, Max remained frozen over Patricio.
“Please,” I whispered with a controlled calm, “get off of him.”
Max slowly rose, and Patricio rolled to his stomach, still gasping.
I didn’t know exactly what I expected next, but Max turned away from me.
“Where are you going?” I asked, watching him head up the stairs. “Max, say something. I’m fucking pregnant.”
Without looking at me, he stopped mid-step. “That is very unfortunate.” He disappeared upstairs.
I felt my heart drop through a giant gaping hole in my chest and stomach and smash to the floor. I didn’t know what to say or do or…
Patricio, hacking for his life and grabbing at his neck, caught my attention.
I let out a breath and then kneeled down. “Are you okay? Can you breathe?”
He nodded. “I told you, Lily. The Coles are poison,” he whispered with a hoarse voice.
I bobbed my head. “Maybe you’re right.”
“Are you really pregnant?” he asked.
“Yes,” I whispered. “And please don’t call me a puttana this time, or I will stomp on your nuts.”
By the time we pulled up to the ER, about twenty minutes from Max’s house, Patricio was breathing again and insisted he would be fine. “I cannot afford the bad press right now.”
I was in no mood to argue with the man, and the grief in Patricio’s eyes guilted me into taking the same flight home with him versus the first flight out in the morning. Patricio still had family in town, back in L.A., and plans in the morning, so he couldn’t wait.
As for me, I needed to be home with people who cared about me. I was pregnant, and as I sat next to Patricio on the plane home, all I could think about was what a mistake I’d made with Max. Or maybe I hadn’t? Seeing Max nearly kill Patricio—probably similar to the first time when they were younger—and then walk away from me like that had shown me a side of him that was uglier than anything I’d ever seen before. Maybe I needed this to happen in order to close the doors on us—on him—once and forever, though that was not what I wanted.
Yeah, but you can’t pretend that that didn’t just happen. And Christ! I was going to have his baby. We’d be linked for life, one way or another.
“You will be okay, Lily.” From the seat next to me, Patricio patted my hand. He looked like hell and had bruises on his neck and face, but his green eyes were happy.
“Are you gloating?” I seethed.
He shrugged.
Eeesh. Men.
“I am not happy to see your heart broken, Lily, but I am happy that you now see the truth. Maxwell Cole is not a good man.”
Funny, Max had said the same thing about Patricio.
“Well, maybe he’s not, but that doesn’t change anything.” My heart hurt so much that it took everything I had not to cry. My mind kept replaying the image of Max walking away from me. “How can a man say he loves you and then just…turn his back like that?”
“I thought you met his mother?” Patricio said.
I waited for him to elaborate.
“She taught him to be exactly like her,” he said. “And he is. You can’t change him.”
I never believed I could. I had believed that he could.
I rubbed my face and tried to let it all go. I mean, Jesus. I was pregnant. And my life was a goddamned mess. I’d have to return to Chicago and go through a trial. A criminal trial.
When we landed, Patricio and I got in my car in silence, I paid the airport bill of nearly seven hundred dollars—ouch—and drove Patricio to his house. It was almost two in the morning, but his home was on the way.
Less than a block from his place, the streets quiet and tinged with an orange glow from the streetlamps, Patricio finally broke the silence.
“Lily, I think you should stay at my place tonight. It is a long drive to your apartment and it’s very late.”
Uh. No. I didn’t want to create any opportunities for mixed signals. “I’ll be fine.” What were two more hours?
“You might be, but what about your baby?”
I blinked for a moment, letting that sink in. Baby. Baby. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. But dammit. He was right. I had to start changing the way I lived and ate and slept and…my entire life? I was not prepared for this. Truly I wasn’t.
“You can sleep in the guest room,” he offered.
“What about your family?” I asked.
“They’ve rented a beach house—too many to all stay with me. So you can have a bed all to yourself.”
“Sure. Okay. Thanks, Patricio.”
When we arrived at his house, a very adorable Mediterranean with three bedrooms and a pool, about ten miles east of Santa Monica pier, I felt ready to crash.
He came from his room and handed me an oversized T-shirt.
“Thank you, Patricio. And I’m sorry about everything.” The situation had turned into a dramatic cluster fuck.
He raised his hand to my cheek. “I would go to the ends of the earth for you, Lily. What’s a five-hour flight to Chicago and getting punched a few times?”
I smiled shallowly. “Thank you.”
He grinned, and I noticed him looking at my lips. I felt tired and heartbroken and would love nothing more than to be held, but it would be ridiculous to consider doing anything other than licking my wounds and sorting out my life. I had to send the right signal.
“Good night, Patricio. I’ll say goodbye before I leave in the morning.” I planned to get up, drive home, and…I didn’t know, really. I guess I’d open my shop and…
Sleep. You need sleep. Then you can figure it all out tomorrow.
“Good night.” He went his way, and I went into the bedroom and crashed the moment my head hit the pillow.
The next morning, I awoke to the strange sensation of someone watching me. Slowly, I opened my eyes and found a tiny, plump woman, with dark hair in a braid, staring down at me.
She smiled with a twinkle in her bright green eyes. “Leely!”
I sat up, wanting to ask who she was, but instead said, “Uhhhh…I’m going to throw up.”
I sprang from the bed and dashed the short distance to the bathroom down the hall. I barely made it. There wasn’t much in there, but my stomach didn’t seem to care.
The woman appeared with a cool washcloth and placed it on the back of my neck.
“I help you up,” she said with a thick Italian accent and grabbed my elbow.
Once to my feet, she guided me over to the sink and turned on the water so I could rinse my mouth and wash my face.
“Thank you.”
“It is nothing, Leely. We are like-a family now.”
My brain finally made the connection. “You’re Patricio’s mother.”
“Yes. And it is very nice to meet you.” She gave me a quick hug. “I will see you in the kitchen, si? I make the good strong breakfast for you.” She flexed her arm to show me the muscle-building powers of her cooking.
“Si. Thank you.”
She left me there to finish cleaning up, and when I got to the kitchen, Patricio’s mother was yelling at him, shaking her fist in his face. Two men, one older and one younger, who both looked very much like Patricio, sat at his kitchen table, sipping coffee and watching Patricio go at it with his mother.
I didn’t have the stomach for more fighting, so I slowly stepped back. Sadly, his mother noticed me.
“Leely! Come in. I make you the breakfast.”
“No. It’s okay. Really. I’m not hungry, and I need to get to Santa Barbara.”
“Can we talk for a moment, Lily?” Patricio asked.
“Sure.” I followed him into his bedroom, which was decorated in a strange ode to Hollywood style with black-and-white photos of old movie stars—James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart.
He closed the door and shook his head. “I am very sorry, Lily. I did not expect my mother so early today. We have plans to do sightseeing.”
“It’s okay, but I really have to go.”
“That is the thing. I told my mother this, and she got very upset that you are not with us today.”
I rolled my eyes. “Patricio, I’m sorry. Your mother seems like a very nice lady, but I’ve got to go.” And she was pretty dang low on my list of worries. Besides, I’d already figured out that the whole thing to get me to come and meet his family was more about him winning me back versus helping him out. Was his mother even sick? Who knew?
“You cannot, Lily. Now she knows you’re pregnant, and now she is more upset because I did not tell her, and we are not married.”
“Oh. My. God. Patricio, are you hearing yourself right now? I cannot have my life revolve around your lies.” It was ridiculous. “You either tell her right now that we broke up, or I will. Either way, you can’t have her believing we’re still a thing and that I’m pregnant with your child. That’s ridiculous, not to mention cruel.”
Patricio scratched his chin. “I know you are right. I do. And I will tell her, but now is not the time, Lily. I know my mother, and just like your heart is broken, this will break hers. She deserves better.”
Oh Jeez. Why did he have to love his mommy so much, and why did I have to think it was so sweet? That being said, “Look, I know you wanted me to come here and meet everyone so that I might change my mind about us, but you need to beli
eve me when I say that I’m not ready for a relationship. I never should’ve started dating you to begin with.”
“So you lied when you said you loved me.” I watched his face flush.
What a hothead. I mean, there was passion and then there was this. Impulsive, irrational, trigger-happy with the anger. It didn’t scare me, but not knowing when someone might lose their temper wasn’t conducive to a peaceful, stress-free life.
Maybe it’s an Italian thing. Still, it wasn’t a Lily thing.
“I think I loved the idea of us becoming more. I loved our friendship. I loved how you made me laugh and how we had so much fun together.” It had been easy with Patricio, and I suppose after having endured something so not-easy with Max I didn’t want to take any real risks with my heart again. Nevertheless… “Everything I said to you was true, and there was a moment that I could’ve seen us happy if we gave our friendship time to grow.”
“And now?”
“You know about now.” Max had kicked me to the curb. I was pregnant. I’d been arrested for punching his mother—the horror-show mascot—and I had no clue where my business stood. Max had bought my building and put it in my name so while that saved me from an immediate catastrophe, I couldn’t and wouldn’t accept charity from him. I either stood on my own two feet or I didn’t. Yeah, but now you’ll have someone else depending on you.
Christ. I lowered my head into my palms and groaned. “My life is a mess.”
Patricio placed his hands on my arms and squeezed gently. “It doesn’t have to be. I still love you, Lily. I don’t care if you were with him. All right, si. I do care, but I can let it go if I had you. Please do not give up on us.”
Shit. Shit. Shit.
“I can’t think about this right now. I really can’t.” Everything was so fresh and raw. I felt drunk—sad drunk, not happy drunk—with emotional uncertainty that tinged everything around me with gray.
“Fine,” said Patricio. “Then think about it later. But remember that Maxwell Cole has shown you who he is and what he’s made of.”
And Patricio had shown me what he was made of. I mean, the guy called me a whore and wouldn’t even give me the benefit of the doubt. He wouldn’t return my calls, he’d lied to his family, and now he wanted to talk reconciliation?