“No, Julie… It’s because I love you. I fell in love with you the moment I saw you when I was buying that book, and that love grew the more I was knowing you. The day you smiled for the first time, I felt like if nothing else in the world was more important than to make you smile. Now that I know what caused your sadness, what broke your heart and confidence, and your enjoying life, I am so angry I could even kill those beasts myself. So, yes Julie. I want you. I want you more than anything. But I can’t risk losing you because tomorrow you will feel I exploited you in a moment of weakness. Now, if you want me to go, I will.”

I was still angry with him, for piercing through my defences, and even angrier at me, for allowing him to do that, for allowing him to take a place in my heart that I wanted to keep close to everyone. “Yes, go.” He started to gather his jacket and leave, but when he was about to exit the door, the fear of losing the only good thing I apparently found in my life for years made my mouth speak again before I could stop it. “No, don’t go. Stay. Please. Thank you for explaining to me and make me understand. Will you stay and just cuddle with me tonight? Or you have someone waiting for you?”

“I have nobody waiting for me, and yes I will stay and cuddle with you for as long as you need me to.”

We laid on my bed, I was again crying, silently, because of many mixed emotions. Fear of what I was allowing myself into, fear for my broken defences, fear for the future, fear that it was another delusion, pain for my lost baby, joy for having someone who was apparently respecting me and liking… loving?... me for just what I was, peace of the moment, relief that he wasn’t just looking for someone to satisfy his sexual urges, and so on… I don’t even remember falling asleep. The only thing I know, is that when I woke up, after the most restful sleep in years, I had the pleasant warmness of a body spooning with me on my back, and two strong arms embracing me. I felt so relaxed, as if that was exactly how my life was meant to be, as if I was exactly where I was meant to be.

I started thinking about what he said the previous night. And at that moment I realized I loved him too, deeply, and that was what made me to stop him from leaving the previous night. Just I was too scared to admit it even to myself, but my body wasn’t and pushed me to give him that first kiss. And probably, if I wasn’t also that distraught and in such need of some human contact the previous evening, I would have been strong enough to allow him to leave, and I would have lost him.

“Good morning, Julie.” His soft voice from behind me said.

“Good morning, Robert. Were you serious yesterday?”

“About what?”

“About… well… your… your feelings for me.”

“Deadly serious.”

“Would you believe me if I said that it is the same for me?”

He moved and turned me to him. “Repeat please?”

“Would you believe me if I told you that I feel the same for you?”

“Are you sure?”

“I am. I couldn’t admit to myself either. And I have to admit that if I wasn’t so much in need, I would have lost you, and sunk back in my self-pity more than the past years.”

“I am glad that you managed to call me back then.” He smiled. And he kissed my lips. Then he moved.

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know about you, but I’m about to burst if I don’t use the bathroom.”

“Ouch… now that you said it… quick, I need it too!”

We cooked breakfast, then ate and cuddled together. “Roby?” I rarely called him that, and just in moments when we were laughing and particularly at ease. Now I felt it was right to call him that.

“Yes, Julie?”

“Would you make love to me, now?”

“I’d love to. If you are sure of it.”

“I am.”

We moved to my bedroom, and he was wonderful. Also, he was much better and satisfying than that loser of my ‘almost’ husband. And he was so caring about making me feel good, and not only in getting his own pleasure. We stopped only to eat… dinner. Almost ten hours of continuous lovemaking, we were so tired that we ate a quick salad, never bothering about dressing, and then went back to bed. We made love again, then talked a little, before falling asleep.

“If you allow me, I’ll look into that matter for you, Julie.”

“What matter, Roby?”

“The matter of your parents. There’s something smelly in their behaviour. No parents would ever behave like that. You can be treated bad, even abused, but such uninterested behaviour, such complete indifference toward a daughter, isn’t something a real parent would do.”

“How would you ‘look in that matter’, Robert?”

“I told you I have a good job. I’m a lawyer at the R&C. Let me check a few things and I’ll let you know.”

“Ok, do it if you want. But remember I’m not going to sue them, I’d rather never see them again, since I’ve been more or less disowned.”

He didn’t show for almost a week, and being still quite sunk in my low trust for the world and even lower confidence in myself, I thought that he simply got what he wanted from me and just didn’t want to see me again. I admit that If I could have afforded it, I would probably have fled far from there. But I was still broken and couldn’t afford a movie ticket, imagine a ticket to travel to another city and restart there.

Then, Saturday morning, he showed up ringing my doorbell. “What do you want? I thought after you got what you wanted, I wouldn’t see you again. I’m no up for a second round.”

“Julie, are you crazy? I told you I love you, trust me a little! Now please let me in, it’s important. Sorry I didn’t call you, you don’t have a mobile, and what I discovered was so big I had to study it well to be sure.”

I opened the door, and he ran upstairs. The first thing he did was to run to me, hug me, and give me the most tender kiss a lover could ever dream from her beloved. I couldn’t help but melt in his strong, and still so tender arms around me.

Then he gave me a box with a new smartphone. “I needed to call you since I couldn’t leave the job. I didn’t even go home to study the papers and I slept just a few hours a night in the law firm library, on the desk. I had to check codes, and everything, but I am now certain. Julie, you are outrageously rich!”

“Robert, you are crazy. I’m dirt poor and you can see it!”

“No, let me explain. But I warn you, there are things that can be really hard for you to bear.”

“Ok, let’s start, I’m ready. You know my story; I can’t imagine things that could be worse for me than what I got already.”

“First, the hardest blow. Your parents, aren’t your parents.”

“What’s that meaning?”

“Just keep this in mind, and I’ll tell you a story. A true story. It starts with an old man. He was filthy rich, but alone. He was almost seventy when he found love. He knew it was love, but he wanted to be sure, since she was only twenty. Fifty years younger of her filthy rich husband would put doubts in everyone. He had her sign a prenuptial. If he died, she would get enough to have a comfortable life for her and their offspring, if any, and everything would be blocked in a fund. She wouldn’t get anything, but in case of children, the child would get everything at his/her/their thirtieth birthday. The thirtieth birthday, because he wanted them to learn a profession and to earn their living, not to be spoiled and inept. I guess he wanted to avoid having children like brave Michael Glantry III or his father, Michael II. If there weren’t children, she would get several millions and the rest would be permanently blocked in a fund, that would be used for charity.”

“What has that doing with me?”

“Wait. She was really in love with her husband, and tried hard to give him children, doing everything she could. At last she got pregnant. Had she been after his money, she would have likely avoided it, because it would have been better for her. But then, during a check, they found that if she gave birth she would likely die. No matter how, she couldn’t pass the fifth month without being at risk of life, and that would be too early for the child to survive. He told her to get an abort, but she refused. ‘Having a child is your greatest wish, and I’m not going to steal it from you, I love you too much. If it’s meant I have to die for it, I’ll do it gladly, for you.’ She was like you Julie, she fell in love with him and she gave herself completely to the man she loved, ready to give her life to fulfill his greatest wish.

And so the child born, apparently, the mother survived, but less than a week after, due to complications, she died in the hospital bed, her daughter sleeping in her arm, her husband hands in her other hand. The nurses said she was smiling when she died. He took the child and loved her more than his own life. He changed his will, and put the same conditions for the tutors of his daughter if he was going to die before she was of age. Two years later his heart simply stopped. By then, the nanny he hired had earned some of his trust, and got the custody of the child with her husband. That child is you, and the nanny and husband are those you believed to be your parents. So, they never gave a damn about you, and when you got pregnant, knowing you’d get a husband who would take care of you, they kicked you out of the house, so they could keep spending your money, and travel around the world with them. The lawyers who should control them apparently didn’t bother flying ten hours every time they had to check on you, and hired a local lawyer for it. He likely gets his share from your ‘parents’ and always reports that everything is regular.

So, Julie, if you contact that firm, and you tell them who you are – they have pictures of you, and a sample of your DNA just in case – they’ll cut the funds of those scums, and in eight years you’ll be so rich that compared to you Michael will appear a beggar.”

“I don’t want to be rich. I despise rich people.”

“Julie, your real father was rich. And he was a very good person. Many people benefitted from his programs to help education. He set countless scholarships so that nowadays any gifted child in need could graduate at university without having to spend a cent. And I am sure you would do even better than him if you had that money.”

“Sorry Robert, but then I would have many doubts about everyone around me, you included.”

“I guessed that. And I’m more than willing to sign any prenuptial you want, if you decided to marry me. But despite knowing me for so long, you don’t yet know my surname. I’m Robert Shore, and even if my family wealth would pale in front of yours, I alone could kick the Glantry family so hard they would never recover.”

“You are rich? And you want to marry me? We can’t. Your family will despise me. I can’t bear that again."