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Dante was brusque, he was up-front, and hecompletelysideswiped her. ‘I just wanted to be sure there were no consequences to our time together.’
‘No,’ Mia said, ‘of course not.’ After all, she had taken the tablets. ‘Everything’s fine.’
‘That’s good, then,’ Dante said. ‘I just wanted to make sure.’
Only now Mia wasn’t so sure herself.
As Dante clicked off, she caused another little pile-up of suited people again as she drew to another abrupt halt, while trying to work out dates.
The pharmacist in Italy had, Mia was sure, said it might delay her period by a week...
She was more than a week late, though.
Damn you, Dante for making me stress, Mia said to herself as she clipped off toanotherpharmacist and bought a home pregnancy test.
Except the little indicator told her that she was pregnant.
And a second test told her the same thing.
Then the doctor told her that, yes, in fact, she was due on the seventh of October.
‘But I took emergency contraception...’
During a deeper discussion with the doctor Mia recalled there had been turbulence on the flight home and she had been ill. It was often the case as Mia did not travel well. She could not even sit in the back of a car and her stomach lurched at the mere sight of a helicopter; certainly she would never set foot in one. Usually she took medication when flying or travelling long distances, but on that night she had been too muddled to take her motion sickness pills and had simply accepted the consequence of that when she’d been ill on the plane.
Had she stopped to think about it, the importance of keeping the pills down would have been obvious, except Mia had no experience with contraception and had been flying out of Italy like a bat out of hell, reeling from what she and Dante had done. Of all the things on her mind, avoiding pregnancy had only been one amongst many.
And now she was pregnant.
Hadit been worth it?
She asked herself Dante’s question again, and for many nights the answer was unequivocally no!
No!
No!
Mia felt terrified, mortified and simply wanted it gone. But then February turned to March and the anniversary of her family’s accident, and Mia lay there, not exactly at peace but thinking, on this painful day, how far she had come—from the terror of the accident and the deep lows of grief to being there for Michael; to two years in Italy, which, for the most part, had been healing and restful; and then to Dante, a man who had awakened a side of her she hadn’t thought existed, and together they had made a baby.
Had it been worth it?
Maybe...
She was starting to come round to the little life inside her.
Yet, aside from the scandal if it ever came out, if two years with Rafael had taught her anything, it was Dante’s reputation that told her he would not take the news well. She knew the board had repeatedly insisted that he tame his ways. She knew that he had absolutely no desire to settle down, or have children; she knew it because she’d heard him arguing with his uncle Luigi. Oh, she knew frommanysources. Dante himself had told her they could go nowhere and had warned her not to fall pregnant by him.
He’d practically had on a white coat as he’d dished out advice!
Well, it was too late now.
She’d survive, Mia knew, because she always somehow did, and that thought got her out of bed and dressed for a third-round interview.
This time with the boss!
The other boss, the very good-looking one in Italy, was more than a touch subdued. His mother commented on it when she dropped by the office to say goodbye before heading off on a cruise.
‘I’m fine,’ Dante insisted.
