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Theo licked his lips. “You heard?”
“I was her maid of honor. I was standing right there. I might have been invisible to you, but...”
“You weren’t invisible.” He remembered that day, Nico and Honora’s wedding on the beach. “You were pretty, in that dress. For once you weren’t smothered in the ugliest clothes you could find.” His gaze lingered on her lumpy, out-of-date wedding gown, and her cheeks went red.
“You despise the idea of marriage. Why would you ask me?”
Theo looked away, at the arched windows overlooking the courtyard. How to explain something he couldn’t even understand himself?
“You’re right. I’ve always avoided commitment,” he said haltingly. “In every love affair I’ve had, I was always planning my exit beforehand. But with you, that night in Rio...”
She waited.
His eyes met hers. “I wasn’t careful.”
Now Theo heard her sharp intake of breath. She looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap.
“The mistake was mine,” he said quietly. She looked up.
“Is that how you see our baby?” Emmie flared. “As a mistake?”
His heart was galloping strangely. “Yes.” He looked at her. “A mistake. But it’s one I intend to take responsibility for.” Looking away, he said softly, “I won’t leave you to struggle alone, like my mother had to.”
Silence fell. He’d never spoken about his childhood before. Not to anyone.
Emmie’s expression changed. “If you want to be a father to our baby, you can.” Her tone was suddenly gentle. “I’ll let you see him anytime you want. But...that doesn’t mean we need to marry.”
“The only way I can truly protect him,” he said, lifting his chin fiercely, “is by protecting you. The only way I can commit to him...is by committing to you.”
Her eyes widened. She took a deep breath, dropping her gaze again. The sweep of her blackened lashes brushed against her cheek like a butterfly’s wing.
Makeup made Emmie look...different. More obviously attractive, rather than the secret beauty she’d been, visible to his eyes alone. Theo wasn’t sure he liked it.
The truth was, he didn’t like any of this.
Not this cheap reception hall. Not feeling tired and hungry after his crazed overnight rush here from Europe. Not being forced into marriage by the conscience he hadn’t known he had.
Not Emmie’s badly fitting wedding dress, which showed off the swell of her baby bump and her full breasts, barely contained by tight, straining satin. Her pregnant body, laced into that modestly demure dress, made her look like a sex goddess of fertility no man could resist.
Except you’d no longer have to resist her, a voice whispered. His body tightened. Not once she was his wife.
He could still feel their kiss pouring through him, liquid fire in his veins. His gaze kept returning to her face, to her bruised, reddened lips.
“I’m being rude.” She looked back at the closed door to the church. “All my family and friends are probably still waiting, wondering what to do. I’m going to tell them it’s all off, and they should go home.”
His gaze sharpened. “Emmie—”
“I’m not running away. I’ll be back.”
After she disappeared through the side door, Theo paced, tapping his foot. His hand went to his pocket for his phone, by habit. Then his stomach growled. He hadn’t eaten since yesterday. His eyes fell on the wedding cake on the center table.
Crossing past the humble homespun wedding decorations, he brushed his finger alongside the edge of white frosting on the plate. Buttercream. Delicious. He heard a noise.
A white-haired woman in a flowery dress and big pink hat walked through the far door, saying happily to another woman behind her, “It was the answer to my prayers, I tell you. When Harold—”
They stopped when they saw Theo, standing beside the wedding cake with one finger on the edge of the frosting.
“We’re here to tidy up,” one of the women blurted out. He gave them a hard, charming smile.
