He hadn’t expected that one. Shock froze him for just a moment but then he forced himself to speak.
“What happened?”
“I don’t... It’s ugly. So ugly.”
He didn’t need to hear—didn’t want to hear, but he sensed she needed to tell him, for reasons he didn’t quite understand.
He glanced back at his house and then at her. “Ethan could wake up. I need to be there. Will you come back and tell me? We can sit on the porch.”
“I don’t talk about it. Ever. To anyone. Not even... My family doesn’t even know.”
How could she have kept something like that a secret from her big, boisterous, loving family? His heart ached that she had carried that burden alone.
“It’s your choice. Tell me or don’t. Nothing you have to say will change the way I feel about you anyway.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Not unless you tell me.”
This was the reason she didn’t let him close. Somehow he knew it. Just that afternoon, Claire had told him Alex kept part of herself separate. This. This was the part she didn’t share with anyone.
He wanted to scoop her up and hold her close and tell her his shoulders were strong enough to help her carry any burden.
“Come on up to the porch, so I can hear my son if he wakes up. I can keep the light off if you want.”
Confidences always seemed easier in the dark, something he had learned in some pretty dark and ugly places in the desert.
She drew in a breath that sounded shaky and hollow, as if she wasn’t drawing air deeply enough into her lungs. “Yes. I...need to tell you.”
They walked up his sidewalk without talking or touching, her dog leading the way. She stood for a moment on the porch, her hands tightly clasping the dog’s leash.
“Can I get you something to drink?”’
She shook her head, her features in shadow. She didn’t seem to quite know what to do, what to say, so he made the first move, taking the ladder-back chair and leaving her free to sit on the porch swing.
After a moment’s hesitation, she sat stiffly. The chains rattled a little with the shift in weight then stilled.
She unhooked the dog’s leash and Leo immediately moved to Sam for affection. He petted him for just a moment then surreptitiously pushed him to Alex, sensing she needed the dog more than he did right now.
“This must have happened during your time in Europe,” he finally prodded.
In the dim light, her eyes were huge against her shadowy features as she stared at him. “How did you know that?”
“You said you hadn’t told your family. The way I see it, as close as you all are, as much as they love you, the only way you could have kept something like a pregnancy from them would be by living across the world.”
“Yes. I...I was in culinary school.”
She was quiet for another moment and then she pulled her knees up onto the swing and wrapped her arms around them, drawing into herself. “I was so stupid. From the very beginning.”
He let the silence linger. When she spoke, her voice was crisp, almost as if she had detached herself from the story.
“As part of my training, I worked in various restaurants in France and then Italy, learning different techniques. It was a wonderful adventure and I loved every minute of it. About a year into it, I started work at a restaurant near Florence when I...fell in love. Or thought I did. Marco was the chef and he was...brilliant. In the kitchen and out of it. Just this...irresistible force.”
She drew in another breath. “We had to keep our growing relationship a secret, of course. It would cause friction among the staff if people knew about us. Resentment, petty jealousies, that sort of thing. The political games played in a fine kitchen are as complicated and cutthroat as the Borgias.”
“I’ve heard that.”
“Maybe that was part of the excitement, the forbidden aspect of it. For several months we lived that way, with him sneaking into my little flat in the middle of the night or taking me away for weekends in the countryside.”
She paused. “And then I discovered I was pregnant.”
She was silent for a long moment while a breeze blew through, rustling the leaves of the tree beside the porch.
“I was thrilled,” she finally said. “Beyond thrilled. I had all these ideas that we would marry, I would move to Italy permanently and we could run this wonderful restaurant together. It was a magical time. In my head, anyway. I didn’t tell him right away. Even then maybe I sensed something wasn’t quite right between us, but I told myself I wanted to wait until the moment was perfect. He could...have these moods sometimes, which I told myself was all part of his passionate, creative genius.”