At the Count's Bidding(71)

                Paige actually laughed then, and it wasn’t her real laugh. It was a bitter little thing that made his chest hurt. More than it already did, than it had since that morning in Tuscany.

                “You’re unbelievable,” she whispered. Then she shook her head. “I could be angry about any number of things, Giancarlo, but let’s pick one at random, shall we? You told me you never wanted to see me again, and I happen to think that’s the best plan you’ve had yet. So please, go back to wherever you came from. Go back to Italy and ruin someone else’s life. Leave me—leave us—alone.”

                He wanted to pull her close to him. He wanted to taste her. He wanted. But he settled for shaking his head slightly and watching her face, instead, as if she might disappear again if he took his eyes off her.

                “I’m sorry,” he said into the tense quiet. “It’s not that I’m not listening to you. But I’ve never seen you angry, ever. I didn’t think it was something you knew how to do.”

                Paige blinked, and pulled the bag higher on her shoulder, gripping the strap with both of her hands.

                “It wasn’t,” she said simply. “Especially around you. But it turns out, that’s not a very healthy way to live a life. It ends up putting you at the mercy of terrible people because you never say no. You never tell them to stop. You never stand up for yourself until it’s too late.”

                And when her eyes met his, they slammed into him so hard it was like a punch, and Giancarlo understood she meant him. That he had done those things to her. That he was one more terrible person to her. It tasted sour in his mouth, that realization. And he hated it with almost as much force as he understood, at last, that it was true. That he’d treated her horribly. That he was precisely the kind of man he’d been raised to detest. That was why he’d come after her, was it not? To face these things.

                But that didn’t make hearing it any easier.

                “That is not the kind of life my baby is going to live, Giancarlo,” Paige told him fiercely. “Not if I have anything to say about it.” She tilted her chin up as if she expected him to argue. “This baby will have a home. This baby will be wanted. Loved. Celebrated. This baby is not a mistake. Or a problem. This baby will belong somewhere. With me.”

                As if she really had punched him, and hard, it took Giancarlo a moment to recover from all her fierceness, and more, what it told him. And when he did, it was to see her storming across the room.

                Away from him. Again.

                “Come have dinner with me,” he began.

                “No.”

                “Coffee then.” He eyed her, remembering that tiny bump. “Or whatever you can drink.”

                “And again, no.”

                “Paige.” He didn’t have any idea what he was doing and he thought he hated that almost as much as the distance between them, which seemed much, much worse now that they were standing in the same room. “It’s my baby, too.”

                She whirled back around, so fast he thought someone without her grace might have toppled over, and then she jabbed a finger in the air in a manner he imagined was meant to show him how very much she wished it was something sharp she could stick in a far more tender area.

                “She is my baby!” And her voice grew louder with each word. “Mine. I knew I was pregnant with the baby of a man who hated me for five whole minutes before you ripped me into shreds and walked away, but believe me, Giancarlo, I heard you. You want nothing to do with me. You want nothing to do with this baby. And that is fine—”