‘Your baby does have a heart defect,’ the doctor explained gently, her smile seeming kind. ‘But it is not as serious as it first looked. We’ll need to do some tests, but I believe the condition is operable and there is every chance your child will live a full and healthy life.’
Rafael stared at her in shock, barely taking in the words. He’d been bracing himself for the absolute worst news and now he felt blindsided by this wonderful surprise. Next to him Allegra let out a small, soft sob and brushed at her eyes, clearly overcome.
‘What kind of heart defect?’ Rafael asked. ‘What kind of operation?’
Rafael and Allegra both listened as the doctor explained the situation. Allegra would need to have some tests done in the next week, but if all went well then her pregnancy could continue normally to term. She would be scheduled for a C-section to avoid the traumatic effects of labour and delivery on their baby, and then a few days after birth an operation would be performed to fix their baby’s heart. The recovery would take several months but then their baby would, God willing, be healthy and whole.
‘Besides the heart defect,’ the doctor continued, smiling, ‘your baby is perfectly healthy, and everything looks normal. Do you want to know the sex?’
Rafael glanced at Allegra, saw a shy hope lighting her features, making her look radiant. She nodded.
‘It’s a boy,’ the doctor said. ‘A healthy baby boy.’
A boy. Rafael’s mind was reeling with the news.
Instead of the baby most likely doomed to die that they’d both been expecting, the awful outcome that Rafael had been bracing himself for, they could hope to have a healthy child. A baby boy whose condition could be healed, who was going to live and grow and know him. A son. He was filled with an incredible, overwhelming joy, almost too great to contain, and then realisation slammed through him, leaving him breathless.
This changed everything.
* * *
Allegra walked from the doctor’s office in a daze of hope and incredulous relief.
‘I can hardly believe it,’ she said as they climbed into Rafael’s waiting limo. ‘Our baby is going to be healthy...’ Again she was both laughing and blinking back tears, overcome by it all as she had been in the doctor’s office.
It had been such an intense twenty-four hours, with the concert last night and then learning they would discover the amnio results today. And then those wonderful moments when Rafael had put his hand on her belly and felt their baby kick. Everything in Allegra had ached at the look on his face, and when he’d held her for the rest of the night she’d felt so safe and secure. She’d never wanted that feeling to end.
Since then she hadn’t let herself think about any of it or what it meant, because the doctor’s appointment had taken precedence. Now she glanced at Rafael and saw the frown that settled between his brows, noted the hard line of his mouth, and unease rippled through her.
She’d opened a part of herself to Rafael last night, had let him in, let him affect her, let him matter. All the things she’d promised herself she wouldn’t do. It had felt so right, but now she feared she was going to pay the price for her trust and need. And so she scrambled to erect some barrier, find that much-needed distance. And yet how could she, when their baby was healthy? When every emotion she had was scraped raw?
‘Rafael?’ she asked cautiously. ‘You...you are pleased, aren’t you? About the baby?’
‘Yes, of course. Pleased and relieved.’ He paused, swinging his hard, amber gaze towards her and pinning her with it. ‘But you realise, Allegra, how this changes things.’
It was more statement than question, and it made her blood freeze. The look on his face was hard and unrelenting. He looked as he had when he’d ordered her out of his hotel room, and she felt the way she had then, uncertain, vulnerable, confused. ‘What...what do you mean?’
Rafael’s gaze remained unyielding as he answered. ‘Before this news the situation appeared temporary. It had an ending point, sadly.’ His gaze flicked away from her to the window where traffic streamed by in a blur of colour and sound. His jaw hardened, his profile reminding her of a Roman statue, perfect and cold. ‘Now the situation is ongoing and permanent, and that changes things between us, naturally.’
Allegra swallowed hard. Yes, she understood that. Now they would have a healthy child together, a child who would, God willing, live to adulthood. A child they would somehow have to raise together, because it was obvious Rafael wanted to be involved. And Allegra wanted him to be involved. She knew the searing loss of a father. She wouldn’t subject her child, her son, to it, if she didn’t have to.
And yet...how was this going to work? What was Rafael saying?
And what if he walked away from her and her son, just as he had before?
‘Of course,’ she said stiffly, ‘we’ll have to come to some arrangement.’ Surely they could, although right now she could not imagine what kind of custody arrangement would actually work. She was in New York and Rafael lived in Sicily. They could hardly pass a baby between continents like some parcel, and she wouldn’t want that anyway. Anything else, however, was unthinkable.
‘Arrangement?’ Rafael swung back to subject her to a cold stare. ‘I am not interested in arrangements.’
His eyes resembled shards of glittering amber as he kept his gaze on hers. ‘I... I don’t understand,’ Allegra said, although she was afraid she was beginning to. Here was the ruthless man who got what he wanted, who took over a failing company, who kicked a woman to the door. Here was the father of her child.
‘I’m not going to be fobbed off with some custody agreement,’ Rafael stated. ‘I would not wish such a thing on any child, and certainly not mine. I’m not going to be satisfied with weekends or holidays, an evening here or there.’
‘I think you’re being extreme,’ Allegra protested. ‘Plenty of children have divorced parents and they grow up well adjusted and happy. We can find a way forward that suits us both...’
Rafael arched an eyebrow. ‘Was that your experience?’
She bit her lip, caught by the admission. ‘That was different.’
‘How?’
‘Because we wouldn’t be getting divorced. Our child wouldn’t know one thing and then have to learn another. There wouldn’t be a sense of loss, because it would be how it always was, our son’s normal.’
His lip curled. ‘My lack of involvement would be normal?’
Allegra looked away. ‘Why does it have to be your lack of involvement? Surely we can work something out.’
‘How? You live in New York and I live in Sicily. A baby’s place is with his mother, I recognise that. So what happens? I get our son when he’s two or three? Four? Five?’
‘No.’ The word was torn from her, trembling and indignant.
Rafael gave a nod of cold satisfaction.
‘You wouldn’t want that either. You don’t want to share our child, and neither do I.’
Realisation crept coldly through her, a seeping mist obscuring rational thought. She understood what he was saying, and yet... ‘Then what are you suggesting?’ she forced herself to ask.
‘I want to be involved in our son’s life, Allegra,’ Rafael stated. ‘Completely involved. You cannot deny me that. You will not.’
Allegra stiffened, hearing an implied threat in the words. ‘And if I do?’ she dared to ask.
‘Do not even think of it.’ Rafael’s voice was a low thrum of grim intent. ‘You do not want to experience the full force of my anger and power.’
‘Wow.’ She let out a shaky laugh, amazed