The Bride's Baby Of Shame

“Of course I know. You raced cars for years.”

“What I did, Sophie, was take every opportunity that presented itself to me. Why should this be any different?” He watched her as she straightened from the car and took a shaky step. “What consequences would you like to speak to me about?”

And she understood then.

She understood her own, treacherous heart, and why it had pushed her out here in the middle of the night to further complicate the situation she had already made untenable with what she’d done. She understood that no matter what she might have told herself about threatening texts and potential blackmail, what she’d wanted was that man she’d made up in her head in Monaco.

The man who had looked at her through a crowd and seen her. Only her. Not her family name or her father’s wealth—just her.

The man who had taken her, again and again.

The man who had learned every inch of her in the most naked, carnal, astounding way possible, there in that villa high in the hills with the glittering lights of the city so far below.

The man who had made her laugh, scream, cry, and beg him to do it all over again.

But that had just been a night. Just one night.

And he was just a man, after all. Not the savior she’d made up in her head. Not the answer to a prayer she hadn’t known she’d made.

She should never, ever have answered his text. Because this had only made everything worse.

Her hand crept over her belly, because she couldn’t seem to help herself.

“I thought...” she started, then stopped herself, blinking back the emotions she desperately wanted to conceal from him. “I wanted...”

“Your cake and to eat it, too. Yes? I’m familiar with the phrase.” The curve of his lips was like a razor. “Why give up the bastard for the earl if you can have them both?”

“That wasn’t what I wanted at all.”

“Of course it was.” The razor curl to his lips edged over into outright disgust. “Do you think I don’t know your type, Sophie? Cheating fiancées turn into lying wives in the blink of an eye. And bored housewives are all the same, whether their house is a hovel or a grand hall. Trust me when I tell you that Europe is littered with the detritus of broken vows. You are not as special as you might imagine.”

She shook at that ruthless character assassination, but the worst part was that she couldn’t manage to shove out a single word in her own defense. Of course he believed these things of her. Had she showed him anything different?

What had seemed like sunlight and glory to her had been nothing but tawdry. She had her little accident to prove it. All she had to do was imagine trying to explain her behavior to her fiancé—or worse, her father. She knew the words they would use.

And she would deserve them.

“Renzo,” she said, very carefully, lest she jog something inside and send all these terrible, unwieldy things spilling out into the dirt between them. “There’s something you need to know.”

“I know everything I need to know.” His words were terse. His judgment rendered. It only surprised her that she’d imagined he might be different. “What I cannot forgive is that you made me an unwitting part of your dishonesty. A vow means something to me, Sophie, and you made me break one.”

She smiled, though it felt brittle. “What vows did you break?”

“I made a promise to myself many years ago that I would never, ever take something that belonged to another,” he told her with a kind of arrogant outrage, as if she’d twisted his arm.

“You’re right,” she said then, because something broke inside of her. She hugged herself as she stepped back, away from him and his car and all these messy emotions she should have been smart enough to leave behind her in Monte Carlo. “I should never have come here tonight.”

“These are games children play, Sophie,” he told her, fury and condemnation and all that righteousness making his accent more pronounced.

“You’re the one making threats,” she pointed out.

“You can consider it a courtesy. One you did not extend to me when you decided to entangle me in your sick, sad little marital games.”

She could do nothing but nod her head, everything within her swollen painfully and near to bursting—but she couldn’t let herself give in. She couldn’t show him more of herself. She couldn’t allow him to hurt her any more than he already had.

Because the truth was, she didn’t think she could survive it. She had been frozen solid all her life. Renzo had melted her, it was true, but Sophie hadn’t understood until tonight that the ice had been her armor.

“Marry your earl or do not,” Renzo said with dark finality. “But leave me out of it. Or I will assume you are inviting me to share the details of our night in Monaco with the world.”

She swallowed, which was hard to do when she felt as if the tears she refused to shed were choking her. “I understand.”

He didn’t say another word. He stalked around to the driver’s side and climbed into the car with a grace that should not have been possible for a man his size.

And Sophie stood where she was for a long time after he’d gone, driving off with a muscular roar.

She wanted to cry, but didn’t allow herself the weakness.

He’d treated her like a naughty child but the truth was, Sophie thought she’d just grown up.

At last.

She already hated herself, so what was a little more fuel to that fire? She would marry Dal tomorrow, as planned. She would carry on with the life that had been so carefully plotted out for her. She would force herself to do her wifely duty and Dal would either do the math or he wouldn’t.

Babies were born early all the time.

Her stomach heaved at that, but Sophie shoved the bile back down.

She’d made her bed and now she would have to lie in it. Literally.

Something in her eased at that. There was a freedom in having no good choices, she supposed. If Dal found out, it wasn’t as if it would turn a good marriage bad. Their marriage was a business affair, cold and cruel at its best.

If she was lucky, he might even set her free.

That would have to be enough.

The child she carried might not be Dal’s. It might never know its real father. But no matter what, no matter what happened, it would be hers.

Hers.

And Sophie vowed she would love her baby enough, with all that she had, so that it would never know the difference.

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