Filed to story: Submitting to My Bestie’s Daddy Read Online >>???
“But,” he said, “you chose your wife to be Olivia.”
I sighed and finished my glass of brandy, then poured myself another and offered one to him. He accepted and sat, and I felt the boundary of leader and follower dissolve. I was simply having a conversation with my old friend, like any normal man might in a difficult situation.
The thought brought a smile to my face. I had never been normal, but I imagined this might be how Dahlia and Olivia felt sometimes.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
He sipped his drink and shrugged. “You know her. You knew her when you married her. She doesn’t like being treated like glass. She hates being left out or locked away. You’re never going to be able to exercise the utmost caution with her if you don’t want her to hate you.”
I dropped my head back against the chair with a groan.
Gabriele was right, of course. One of the things I loved most about Olivia was watching her become the sort of woman who knew what she wanted, what she deserved, and she fought for it right before my eyes. I loved that she didn’t follow my orders, and I loved that she was more than a decoration in my house. I had enough decorations and enough lackeys.
Had I been too cautious in this? Perhaps sending a mafia man to dig up our surrogate’s medical records did overstep some boundary. Perhaps Olivia would be angry if she found out exactly how deep I had Gabriele look. I knew, after Dmitri, that she wanted to get back to a normal life. She wanted to make friends without wincing and background-checking every person she approached. I’d held her during the nightmares she’d had for weeks after we took him down, comforted her as she weighed the added stress of having a wedding photographer against not remembering our special day.
Olivia wanted to trust. My long-honed instincts urged me not to. Even with all of Gabriele’s evidence, I still felt a frisson of nerves every time I thought about Elena, alone in her apartment with maybe a roommate for company. I wanted her here, and I absolutely didn’t, for what that would reveal about our lives.
I picked my head up. We had to find a middle ground before this tore us apart.
“Don’t put the tap-and-track on her phone,” I said finally.
“I think that’s smart,” Gabriele said. “It seems like the sort of thing that would upset your wife.”
I smiled ruefully. “But I’d sleep much easier if we had it.”
He laughed. “The compromises we make for love.”
I raised my glass to him. “You can say that again.”
We talked for a few minutes more about less serious topics while Gabriele drank his brandy. When he was done, he set the glass on my desk and stood.
“I feel very certain,” he said, “that Elena isn’t bad news.”
Then he turned and left, abandoning me to my thoughts.
I scraped my hands through my hair. I couldn’t face Olivia yet. She had bubbled with excitement and nerves all the way home, and nearly every other sentence out of her mouth had contained Elena’s name. She really had developed a relationship with the woman quickly, much quicker than I would have expected, given all her nerves beforehand.
I liked seeing the smile on her face when she talked about Elena and the pregnancy. Her eyes brimmed with hope and trust, and I didn’t want to destroy that with my cynicism.
I finished off my second and final glass of brandy, then lifted one of the pictures to study it more closely–my baby, my wife’s baby. Over the next nine months, if these embryos took, we would be slowly agreeing on every element of this baby’s raising, from names to religious upbringing, if we decided to have one. I loved Olivia, and I trusted her.
Perhaps I could trust her on this, no matter how much a little voice in the back of my brain urged me to keep looking.
I scooped up both pictures and stood to retire to our room. I simply had to trust Elena and embrace her presence in our life.
After all, she was carrying my children. I couldn’t go back now.
*Olivia*
I smoothed my hands over the sleek, dove-gray dress Dahlia had picked out for me and tried not to fidget in the back of the limo. The fabric whispered silkily under my fingers and soothed some of my nerves.
Elena was finally off bed rest, and she claimed she was feeling good, so Gio had invited her out to dinner with us to celebrate the transfer.
All of us.
Elena had already met Dahlia and Gio, of course, but Tallon and Alessandro would be new to her. Plus, the siblings were bickering about who had to sit in the middle, which of course none of them did on the spacious limo seats. And, as usual, my husband had picked out a world-renowned, Michelin-starred restaurant. Elena had been surprised by the choice, and the reason Dahlia picked out my dress was that I had been busy sending a gown to our surrogate. I didn’t want her to feel out of place like I had in those early days.
On top of all that, the worrying part of my brain kept insisting it was bad luck to celebrate something before I knew it had worked. Of course, we knew the transfer had been successful, and that alone could be enough reason to celebrate. But hope and nerves warred for control over my opinions, and right now, nerves were winning.
Gio grabbed my hand and pressed it to his lips. “You’re worrying,” he murmured against my skin.
I sighed. He knew me too well. “I just keep thinking that we don’t know if she’s pregnant. This seems like a big celebration for a half-step forward.”
He dropped my hand from his mouth and laughed. “Then we’ll just have to do something even bigger when we find out she is pregnant. Celebrations of increasing magnitude from here on out!”
I laughed with him, tickled by his extravagance, and he grinned.
“There you go, carina. This is a happy occasion. I can’t have you upset around our unborn baby.”
I rolled my eyes. “Then you should’ve married someone else.”
He feigned hurt, and the limo rolled to a stop outside Elena’s apartment building. I stared up at it for a moment. I hadn’t been here while not in the grips of total emotional turmoil yet, so it felt like my first time seeing it–slightly crumbling stucco, bars on the windows. Not an awful place by any means, though. It retained the old Florentine charm with its tiled roof and parchment-tinted fa?ade. I could easily imagine being happy in a place like that when we arrived in Italy.
I was struck with the sudden knowledge that, if Dahlia’s family were not who they were, we would have lived in a building like this. If I had different friends, I could have been Elena in a lot of ways.
I fidgeted with my dress, pulling it further down over my knees, silently cursing Dahlia for making me wear her heels that laced all the way up the calf and demanding they be visible. Elena hadn’t shown a smidgen of judgment yet, but all the wealth on display suddenly felt extravagant.
I texted her that we were out front, and a heart popped up on the message immediately. I took a deep breath. Elena liked us, and we were here to celebrate her and this journey we were taking together. I was just overthinking things.
“She’s on her way down,” I told everyone in the car.
Dahlia, Alessandro, and Tallon abruptly hushed. Dahlia and Alessandro even moved from where they were crushing Tallon between them to sit at a perfectly reasonable distance.
I nodded. My friends knew how to behave, within reason. We probably wouldn’t scare her away.
The door at the front of the building swung open, and Elena stepped out into the dim sunset just as the streetlamps flickered on. She blinked, shielding her eyes for a moment, and I got that strange feeling of looking in a mirror again as Tallon hopped out and held the door open for her.
She was wearing the dress I’d picked out for her, and admittedly, I’d opted in line with my own tastes because I didn’t know hers quite yet. The medium-length cocktail dress shimmered in the streetlights, showing the quality of the fabric even at this distance. The cut was simple, an A-line skirt with a sweetheart neckline and off-the-shoulder sleeves, but I’d noticed she tended toward pastels in her wardrobe, so instead of the black I probably would have chosen for myself, the dress was a pale lilac. As she regained her bearings in the sudden shift of light, I realized how much pale purple and light gray looked alike.
Tallon extended a hand to her, and she laughed. I shook my head. I was letting baby nerves get in the way of a good night.
“Good evening, Elena,” he said, exactly like a vampire. I would’ve smacked him if I could reach him.
Luckily, Elena was made of sterner stuff than me. She simply laughed and put her hand in his. “I’m afraid you have the upper hand on me, sir. What’s your name?”
He bowed low over her hand. “Tallon Valentino, at your service.”
She kept laughing at him as she bent to peer inside the limo. I waved sheepishly. I never should have let Tallon handle door duty.
She grinned. “I’ve never been inside a limo before.”
“Me either, until this summer,” I said. “Make sure to duck your whole body when you get in. I hit my back for the first three months.”
She climbed in carefully and took the bench across from Dahlia and Alessandro. Tallon clambered in after her and made sure to sit so Alessandro was between him and Dahlia. I shook my head.
