MARCO OPENED ELEANORA’S door of the Range Rover. “That did not turn out like I’d expected.”
As confused as he was, Eleanora climbed into the SUV. “That didn’t turn out like I’d thought either. My parents aren’t usually so far behind the times.”
“Well, they aren’t happy about us not getting married.”
“Maybe they just need some time to adjust?”
“Maybe.” He slammed the door closed, walked around the SUV and slid behind the steering wheel. For the first time since they’d arrived at the DeLucas’, he glanced at his phone.
“Daniel sent an SOS text.”
From working in the Manhattan office, Eleanora knew Daniel was the new manager for the original Grand York Hotel. He’d been assistant manager, so he knew the ropes. But he was a bit shaky about being totally in charge.
Marco glanced at Eleanora. “Mind if we stop there on our way home?”
“No. That’d be great. I love seeing that hotel.”
He sniffed a laugh. “Me too.”
“Your family’s first venture into the world of hospitality.” She smiled at him, hoping to return his focus to positive things. “And look how you’ve grown. You should be so proud.”
“I am.”
He said the words, but his heart wasn’t in them. They made the almost two-hour drive back to Manhattan with Eleanora taking great pains to avoid the subject of her parents’ reaction to her pregnancy. When she ran out of things to discuss about the Pearsons’ wonderful business and her pride in the Grand York Rome, she jumped into questions about the new hotel in Paris: how far along the plans were, the exact location, other locations they had considered, who was designing the lobby.
If he noticed she was diverting his attention, he didn’t let on. He happily discussed the new hotel until suddenly they were at the first Grand York.
A sedate but beautiful pale brick structure in the heart of Manhattan, it never failed to take her breath away. Some of the happiest moments of her life happened here. Especially the good fortune of having a guaranteed job while she was getting her degree.
After Marco parked the Range Rover, they walked into the lobby. Two reception desks sat parallel to each other. Skylights normally brought sunlight into the space but given that it was close to ten o’clock at night the lighting was subdued, except for the colored lights that twinkled on the twenty-foot Christmas tree that sat in the middle of everything. Open as it was, the lobby rose to the skylights displaying the open corridors of all the floors. Fresh evergreen boughs lined every railing, giving the lobby the scent of Christmas.
Eleanora soaked it all in. “It’s beautiful.”
“The staff always decorates on Thanksgiving,” Marco said as he approached the first registration desk. “I understand Daniel’s looking for me.”
The young woman frowned. “Daniel’s been gone since eight o’clock.”
“He texted me at three,” Marco said with a wince. “But I didn’t read it until we started driving home from Connecticut.” He smiled his thanks at the reception clerk, and he pulled his cell phone from his pocket to call Daniel.
Walking away from the reception desk, he said, “Hey. It’s me. Sorry I took so long to get back to you. I was at dinner with Eleanora’s family and didn’t look at my phone.”
Eleanora glanced around the lobby as he spoke. With the main lights dimmed—even the reception area had only desk lights—the area was dark, yet shiny. Or maybe the lack of light from the skylights exaggerated the sparkle of the multicolored bulbs on the tree and the reflection of lights off the tinsel.
Putting his phone back into his coat pocket, Marco walked over to where she stood by the tree. “Daniel had a question about the decorations. When he couldn’t reach me, he made an executive decision.”
She glanced at the tree. “Whatever decision he made it was the right one. The tree is beautiful.”
“He hunted around until he found an old picture and decorated the tree to match that.”
“Smart.”
Marco sniffed a laugh. “He didn’t want to make a mess of the lobby Christmas tree his first year as manager.” He took a long breath. “It’s just as I remember my mother decorating it. I’m glad he found the picture.”
Eleanora suddenly realized why Daniel had panicked. This Grand York was the first hotel in the Pearsons’ vast holdings. It was the one Marco’s mom had put her stamp on. Especially at Christmastime.
“It’s beautiful.”
The reception area lights dimmed a bit more, until they were down to two desk lights. One for each clerk. Marco glanced at the two clerks working registration. “There must not be any late arrivals tonight.”
“They’re probably getting ready to settle in and study.” Both clerks were young. Eleanora had seen the textbooks sitting beside their keyboards. She’d done the same thing while at university. She’d worked as one of the registration clerks and studied when the hotel got quiet at night.
Suddenly the music of a Christmas song drifted into the lobby. Slow and heartfelt, the melody surrounded them.
As if as surprised as she was, Marco glanced around, then he smiled, took her hand and lifted it so he could twirl her once.
She laughed nervously. “What are you doing?”
“Taking the edge off.”
“The edge?”
“You have to admit it hasn’t been our easiest day. The next few months will be difficult like this. And if your parents are right, having a baby’s going to make our lives even crazier. I think we should enjoy every opportunity like this to relax.”
He pulled her into his arms and danced her to a more private area behind the tree.
“Aren’t you afraid the clerks will see, and rumors of this will get back to your dad?”
“What rumors? That we danced? We’re friends. It’s not like you’re wearing a sign that says you’re pregnant.”
She laughed and shook her head, but she quickly grew serious again. “I know today was weird and I’m sorry. Had I known my parents would react so badly, I would have told them alone.”
They danced a few more steps. “That’s not our deal.”
The nostalgic music, the lights of the tree and being held by Marco, all lulled her into a weird, surreal place where everything felt like magic. She could have happily nestled against him and forgotten the world, but she had to make sure Marco didn’t go off the deep end with rules and deals and whose job was what.
“It’s not our deal, but I’m trying to make this whole experience go as smoothly as possible.”
He pulled her a little closer, danced a few more steps. “Maybe you shouldn’t.”
She pulled back so she could see his face. “Now that’s just crazy talk.”
“You can’t always dictate how people react to things...how they feel. We’re forming a team. A parenting team. Your mom and dad will catch on soon enough. When they do, it will show they respect us enough to trust what we’re doing.”
She thought about that, as the music lulled her back to the soft place, the place where she didn’t care to think. She wanted to snuggle against his jacket, close her eyes and enjoy the moment. The lights were low. The Christmas tree was perfect. She did trust her parents to respect her enough to let her make her own choices. And she and Marco were talking like the good friends they’d always been.
“You’re not falling asleep on me, are you?”
She laughed. “No. Just thinking.”
“About?”
About how perfect this was. She couldn’t tell him that. She didn’t want to give him the impression she was making more out of this than he intended. But deep down, she worried that she was.
That wasn’t their deal either.
Marco’s soft voice broke the silence. “Looking at the tree, thinking of how my mom loved it, it just snuck up on me that I’ll never get to tell her that I’m having a child. She’ll never see our baby.”
The sadness in his voice broke her heart.
Swallowing hard, she looked up at him. “I think mothers can see the future.”
He snorted. “What?”
She wasn’t 100 percent sure what she was saying, wasn’t even sure he wouldn’t think she was a bit off her rocker, but she hated seeing him so sad and if sharing something helped, she would share.
“I think that when mothers look at their kids, they see who they are, what they’re capable of and they see their future. I think when your mom looked at you, she saw you taking the reins of the Grand York Hotel Group from your dad and making sure his vision flourished.”
He considered that for a second before he said, “Maybe.”
“But I also think she knew you’d have children some day and if she didn’t picture them exactly, she knew you’d take the best parts of what she taught you and the best of what your dad taught you, and the myriad things you learned other places and she knew, in her heart, that you’d give your child a hundred percent because that’s how you do everything.”
Tears filled Marco’s eyes and he swallowed hard. Her dad’s comments about him being a user had stung. Mixing that with the heavy sense of loss he felt looking at his mom’s vision of a Christmas tree had shattered something in his soul. His life had been filled with very high highs and very low lows. Sometimes it was difficult to reconcile it all.
“You think that’s what she saw?”
“Yes.”
With his faith in the basic goodness of life teetering, he grabbed her words like a lifeline. He hoped that was what his mom had seen. His dedication. His commitment. His hard work. He couldn’t imagine she’d seen him as a father, since he’d never seen himself that way. But if she had, Eleanora was correct. She’d have known he’d give parenting his all.
Deciding everything had gotten too real, he blinked away the tears brought on by memories and wishful thinking and teased her. “And how do you know, smarty-pants?”
“Because I’m starting to get those feelings now. Inklings of possibility. As if our baby’s trying to show me who he or she wants to be. Once I get the full picture, I’ll share it with you, then as parents we can show them the way to the vision we see in our heads.”
It sounded a little like magic and hope rolled into one, but there was a comfort to it, like a bridge that connected what was with what he wished could be. “So, you think my mom saw me as a dad?”
“I think she saw you as a little bit of everything good and wonderful.”
He knew she had. Though he knew she had seen the bad as well as the good, she’d witnessed his determination, if only because she’d put some of that fire to be the best in him.
They danced another few steps before Eleanora said, “Now that your two clerks think we’re crazy, we should probably go home.”
He broke away, but only far enough to take her hand and loop her under his arm again. If they hadn’t danced, hadn’t had this talk, he would have returned to the penthouse missing his mom because nowhere reminded him more of his mom than the Grand York at Christmas. But Eleanora had taken his sadness and turned it into hope, a little ray of light that cracked into the grief of loss and showed him a vision of his mother that made him smile.
He owed her for that. He owed her for a lot of things.
“They can’t see us back here.”
“But if they do there will be gossip.”
He sighed and dropped her hand. “More gossip.”
“Hey, people are curious, and that curiosity will grow when I start to show.”
After talking about his mother, remembering her as he’d known her and getting a new vision of who she probably really was, talk of gossip sounded trivial. “I guess.”
“We didn’t do so hot at explaining ourselves to my parents today. So maybe we should work out a story for how to explain our situation to people who aren’t related...like employees.”
He slid his arm over her shoulder and walked her to the front of the Christmas tree. “Or maybe we shouldn’t.”
She didn’t reply and he knew she wanted to hear his thoughts on telling their employees. He worried for a second that this was one of those things her dad meant when he’d intimated Marco called all the shots. But he might know Eleanora a little better than her parents did. She wanted his honest input so she could evaluate it. If she didn’t like it, she’d argue. Just as his mother would have held her ground with his dad.
“Maybe we should let people think what they will think.”
It’s what his mother would have done. She’d have shaken her head and said, “People will always talk. Doesn’t matter.”
They walked through the lobby. Passing the reception desk, they said, “Good night.”
The clerks looked up and smiled. “Good night.”
When they reached the lobby exit, Marco turned and took one last look at the tree. He liked believing that his mother had seen into the future and known he’d do his part to fulfill his father’s dreams. It gave him the sense that she was with him, even if it had only been through their imaginations.
Somehow it made it easier to think about spending Christmas with his family, not as a trio of people sharing a great loss, but as three people who recognized the impact she’d had on their lives and who were happy to have known her.
And he’d only gotten here because Eleanora shared an insight she might not have had if they hadn’t created the child that lived inside her.
His connection to their child took a new meaning. Working through the ins and outs of being a parent, he understood his mom better. Understanding his mom better, he saw his position as a parent with a new depth of purpose.
He was also beginning to see Eleanora a little differently.
They returned to the penthouse and entered the main area to find Sunrise and Sunset asleep in their beds. He shrugged out of his coat, before he helped Eleanora with hers and tossed both onto an available chair. Then without a word, he took her hand and led her back to the primary bedroom.
He caught her by the elbows and pulled her close for a long, searing kiss.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that everything was connected. He’d needed something—a way to push past his lingering grief, or maybe his fear that grief would ruin his family’s reunion—and she’d given it to him.
She’d connected the past to the future.
Unable to stop himself, he slid his hands to the bottom of her sweater and yanked it over her head, revealing the prettiest yellow bra he’d ever seen.
“You have spectacular underwear.”
“Sweet talker.”
He laughed but realized that maybe he could be better at that. Men liked visuals and tactile sensations—like pretty underwear and soft skin. Women liked words.
“Let’s see if the panties match.” With a quick unsnap of the closure of her jeans followed by a shove that puddled them at her ankles, her yellow panties were revealed.
“Very nice.”
Kicking her jeans off her feet, she laughed. “You don’t have to narrate.”
He pulled her to him again, luxuriating in the feel of her softness against him. “What if I want to?”
“You want to narrate?”
The skepticism in her voice made him laugh. “I want to woo you.”
She pulled back. “Really?”
“Oh, you don’t think I can?”
“I just don’t believe it’s necessary for two people who know each other to—”
“Whisper the truth?” He divested himself of his clothes in as few movements as he had gotten rid of hers, then slid his mouth across the hollow of her throat, the place he knew wasn’t merely soft; it was sensitive. His lips rode the curve of her jaw. “What crappy boyfriends you must have had.”
She laughed breathlessly. “Yeah. They were the worst. But we’ve been over that.”
“And there’s no need to talk about anybody else when I have you here, so soft and pretty, right in front of me.”
He watched her swallow hard and knew he was getting to her, knew wooing her was the right thing to do. Sliding his knee between her thighs, he gave her a light shove that landed them both on the bed, with her in a delightfully compromising position. He spent the next five minutes tasting every inch of her while describing her softness and his need for her. By the time, he was done her eyes were big, her breaths shallow. She was as soft as putty and so eager for him, he could have laughed at the control he had over her.
Except, naming every sensation he felt when he touched her, acknowledging every desire, had him as desperate as she was.
He joined them, gave action to the promises he’d made while wooing her and sent them both over the edge to oblivion.