The maternal instinct was so strong it took her breath away. She hadn’t expected it, had never even thought about having children, not seriously. After all, she was perennially single, with no one in the picture or even on the horizon.
And yet...a baby. Someone to love, someone to make a family with, a proper family. She would never abandon her baby the way her father had abandoned her. She’d never take out her frustration and bitterness on her child the way her mother had on her. She’d be the best mother she knew how to be, already loving this scrap of humanity with a fierceness that surprised and humbled her.
A baby. A new start, a second chance at love, at life, at happiness. Allegra placed one protective hand across her middle and closed her eyes.
‘CARO?’
The teasing, lilting voice of the woman Rafael had picked up in a bar only irritated him. He glanced across at her, noting the ruthlessly toned limbs, the well-endowed chest, the pouting mouth. None of it appealed to him. He couldn’t even remember her name.
‘You can go.’
Her lipsticked mouth dropped open in outrage and Rafael turned away, bored and disgusted. He hadn’t even touched her, and he didn’t want to. His libido had barely stirred once since Allegra had left his bed. He hadn’t slept with anyone, had lost interest.
‘Rafael...’ She reached out her arms, her pout deepening, and impatience bit at him.
‘Seriously. Go.’ He gestured to the door of his penthouse suite. He was in Paris on business, and as the blonde beauty stalked towards the door, it occurred to Rafael that he was behaving just as he had before, throwing a woman out of his room.
Seemed he didn’t have a great track record.
But, damn it, he’d expected her to call. A courtesy call, at least, to tell him she wasn’t pregnant. Although why he should expect courtesy from her when he’d shown her so little he didn’t know.
So she hadn’t called. Obviously she wasn’t pregnant, and he could move on with his life. He could forget Allegra Wells and the sweet purity of her smile, the tears that had streaked down her porcelain cheeks when she’d listened to that music, the way her body had yielded and curled into his, accepting him wholly in a way he’d never felt before. Complete. Right.
Idiot.
It had been a casual sexual encounter, one of many, nothing more. Allegra Wells was out of his life...for good. Which was just how he wanted it, because he was done with the Mancinis. He’d taken the man’s business, dismantled the industry that had been built on his father’s grave.
Justice had been served, and yet there was no one to share his victory. His mother and father were dead, and he didn’t even know where Angelica was. The family he’d sworn to protect and provide for was scattered, destroyed. And Rafael still felt restless, vaguely guilty and unfulfilled, as if he was missing something...or someone.
* * *
‘This might be a little cold.’
Allegra winced slightly at the feel of the cold gel on her tummy and then the insistent prodding of the ultrasound wand. It was her eighteen-week scan, and she couldn’t wait to see her baby. She craned her neck to gaze in anxious curiosity at the black and white screen and the fuzzy image that suddenly appeared, along with the whooshing, galloping noise of her baby’s heart.
Excitement leaped inside her as the figure gained definition and clarity—head, arms, legs, beating heart. Everything tucked up like a present waiting for her. Allegra let out a choked cry, smiling through her tears.
It hadn’t been an easy pregnancy. It was over three months since she’d made the decision to keep this baby, three months of debilitating morning sickness, throwing up nearly every morning and twice having to go to hospital to be treated for dehydration. She’d lost weight, struggled to work, and wondered how on earth she was going to manage as a single mother.
Because she intended to do this alone. She couldn’t face telling Rafael about their baby. She couldn’t face her child having a father like she’d had, one who would walk away when he felt like it. She still didn’t understand what her father’s note had meant, and she hadn’t dared yet to ask her mother about it, but she’d experienced enough of Rafael Vitali to know she couldn’t trust him to stick around.
Still she didn’t know how she was going to manage, in a studio apartment with a low-paying job. She hadn’t figured it out yet, but she would. Eventually. Now, however, her all of her fears fell away at the beautiful sight of her baby. Her baby.
The technician frowned and poked harder with the wand. Allegra winced. Then, more alarmingly, the technician put the instrument down and rose from her seat by the examining table where Allegra was lying.
‘I’ll be right back,’ she murmured, and then left the room.
Allegra lay there, shivering from the cold gel, her gently rounded belly damp and exposed. Unease crept icy fingers along her spine. Technicians weren’t supposed to leave in the middle of an appointment like that, surely?
She found out moments later when an important-looking doctor in a white lab coat followed the technician back into the room, frowning as she looked at the screen with the beautiful, fuzzy image of Allegra’s child.
‘What’s going on?’ Allegra asked, her voice high and strained with anxiety.
‘Just a moment please, Miss... Wells.’ The doctor glanced briefly at her file before turning her narrowed gaze back on the screen. Something was wrong. Allegra could feel it in her bones, in her frightened, hard-beating heart. Something had gone wrong with this pregnancy. With her baby.
She lay there, everything in her frozen and fearful, as the doctor took the wand and began to prod her belly once more, murmuring to the technician who murmured back, none of it audible to Allegra.
‘Please,’ she begged. ‘Please, tell me what’s going on.’
The technician gave her a smile of such sorrowful sympathy that Allegra wished she hadn’t asked. Then she handed her a paper towel to wipe off the gel while the doctor continued to study the image on the screen—the image of her baby.
‘Dr Stein will speak with you shortly,’ the technician murmured.
Moments later Allegra had all the answers she didn’t want. The words reverberated emptily through her, making horrible sense and sounding unintelligible, impossible, at the same time. Congenital heart defect were the three words that hurt the most.
‘But what does that mean exactly?’ she demanded, her voice shaking. She knew there were heart defects that were operable. There were even some that were asymptomatic, hardly worth mentioning. But looking at Dr Stein’s compassionate face, she feared her baby didn’t have one of those.
‘The particular defect we’re discussing is life-threatening,’ Dr Stein said quietly. ‘The baby wouldn’t live past a few months of age, if that.’ Allegra gaped and she continued, ‘We’ll order an amniocentesis as soon as possible, to know for sure what we’ll dealing with. This may take up to three weeks, I’m afraid. Based on the ultrasound, it could be one of several heart defects, of varying seriousness.’
‘But you think it’s a more serious one?’ Allegra whispered, and Dr Stein gave her an unhappy look.
‘I’m afraid that, yes, it’s looking like that, but we won’t know until we get the results of the amniocentesis. It’s difficult to diagnose this kind of condition from only a scan.’
Allegra walked home in a fog, barely aware of the steps that took her up to her sixth-floor studio. Anton poked his head out of his apartment to ask how she was, and Allegra didn’t even know what she said. The world felt muted, as if everything was taking place far away, to other people. Nothing mattered. Nothing at all mattered any more.