hated that she couldn’t stop them. She was everything a de Vries wasn’t: empty of self-control.
He reached out with his soiled napkin and dabbed at her eyes. Nina was too upset to bat it away.
“Calm down,” he said. “Listen, princess. I have a plan. It could save you some grief.” He sat back and looked pointedly at Nina’s still-full plate. “Eat. That wasn’t cheap, you know. At least care enough to nourish your kid.”
Nina didn’t bother telling him that she was more than capable of paying the bill. Instead, she cut a small bit of the lamb, did her best to ignore the nausea rising as she lifted it to her mouth, and waited for Calvin to continue.
“We all know you’ll end up in the papers no matter what—this city loves its royalty, and you, pregnant at twenty, were always going to get some attention.”
The way he said it, like Nina was a specimen they were evaluating together, made her gag. Although that might have also been the mint sauce, which the lamb was absolutely doused in. But she couldn’t deny that, again, Calvin was correct. Even now there were potential photographers meandering through the park, hoping for a glimpse of a celebrity or a socialite. They preferred film or music stars, but they would (and had) settled for someone like her. She and Calvin had avoided the papers thus far, but it was only a matter of time. And when she was visibly showing…
Nina drooped. She’d never have any peace, would she?
The olive farm drifted through her mind. The lazy afternoon. The taste of dry red wine on Peppe’s lips.
Her eyes welled with tears all over again.
“So, the plan is simple,” Calvin said as he plucked a roasted carrot off Nina’s plate and popped it into his mouth. “We make an honest woman out of you.”
Nina almost choked on the over-chewed piece of lamb in the back of her throat. Carefully, she managed to swallow. “We what?”
Calvin leered, his half smile revealing coffee-stained molars on one side. “Look, it would be simple. Your family already thinks we’ve been seeing each other for several months.”
“Well, yes. Only because you told them that.”
Nina cringed again, remembering the awkward meeting. When she had asked him to take her home, she’d only meant to her building, not all the way up to her grandmother’s Park Avenue penthouse. He’d promptly introduced himself as Nina’s “beau,” like they were characters in an Edith Wharton novel, not twenty-first-century humans. Grandmother had eyed his sweaty, unwashed hand like he was handing her a rotten fish. And then she had turned her gaze to Nina with surprise. And disbelief. And then…disappointment.
“I took the heat off you when you disappeared for the day, didn’t I?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“And haven’t I been here since, helping you through the most difficult time in your life?”
“I suppose, but, Calvin—”
He shook his head. “I’m not going to be made a fool of, Nina. Not by you or anyone else. I’ve come too far.”
She frowned. He had only told her once that he was from somewhere in New Jersey, but beyond that, Nina really knew nothing about his origins except when he made statements like these. He said it wasn’t important, and she never pressed. But it didn’t exactly help the perception that he was the social climber others accused him of being. Especially when she had no idea what he was climbing from.
Calvin polished off another oily carrot from her plate, then caught her examining him. He leaned over the table, his tie hanging dangerously above his empty, but still grease-spotted plate. “Don’t think I’m good enough for you, princess?”
Nina paused, unsure how to answer the question. To anyone else, she might have said “No, of course not!” as vociferously as she could manage, but that would have been more for their comfort than for the sake of honesty. Because she was different from the average person. And she had no reason to question that either.
Her family was one of the oldest in New York, but it went beyond that. Celeste de Vries was the first woman in their four-hundred-year history to retain the title of Chairman of the Board of De Vries Shipping Industries while she waited for her grandson to come of age and inherit his birthright. Countless times, Nina had watched her grandmother handle the sniveling, self-righteous, insecure men who considered themselves titans of their class and of the city. Men who had questioned her every move. She’d torn them all