Don’t worry?Ann-Sophie had to bite back a humorless laugh.
And just like that, all her clients were reassigned. She was free. Very free and very alone. And now that the buffer of work and travel was gone, she was suddenly terrified. She was having a babyalone. And the reality of this very uncertain future was starting today.
Her heart thumped harder in her chest, and she reminded herself to calm down. No freaking out in the middle of the street. Having a baby on her own had upsides, she told herself. She and the little one would make their own family. Soon, she would have a baby to love and care for. This strange pang of loneliness would go away.
She mused that this rudderless feeling was hormones.
As she walked through the crowds at Odenplan, Ann-Sophie dialed her mother, but the call went straight to voice mail. Which was unsurprising, as her mother’s journalism assignments often took her far beyond the reaches of mobile-phone services. Ann-Sophie searched her memory for where her mother was supposed to be, but pregnancy brain seemed to have stolen these details, so she left a message, hoping her mother would call back in the evening, when she had more time. Margarita Svensson had not raised a needy child. Ann-Sophie admired her mother, and any wish for a more conventional upbringing had long ago died. But just this once, she wanted to dial her mother’s number and hear her voice. Just that thought triggered a wave a guilt. Her mother had already given up too much for her, including the man she loved. Ann-Sophie would never ask for more.
Instead of dwelling on this, she sent messages to three friends, proposing weekend getaways. Two messaged back immediately.
Linnea:Sorry! Lena has a ballet recital Saturday afternoon. Call you later!
Helena:Working over the weekend. :( Hope you’re well!
Ann-Sophie ducked into a bakery for her second treat of the day, then headed toward her flat in Vasastan. It wasn’t until she was on the familiar back streets of her neighborhood that her mind wandered back to Alessandro.
Ann-Sophie’s face still flushed with humiliation when she remembered that last night in Nice. She had been imagining scenarios for her next visit, and he had unquestionably moved on. She was so careful with men, so conscious of her still-tender wounds about being abandoned, but something about the intimacy of their connection that week had made her think this was different. At the very least, he could have rejected her with a little more grace. But she had clearly been wrong about him.
The humiliation turned to alarm two weeks later when she calculated that she had missed her period. Multiple tests confirmed what her body sensed: She was pregnant. Though she always had wanted a child or two someday, thesomedayshe had imagined was much further in the future. And she had taken it for granted that she would do this together with a partner she loved. But her mother’s words came through shortly after, words about Ann-Sophie’s own unexpected appearance in her mother’s life: “It’s never the right time for a baby. If you want a child, you make it the right time.”
So Ann-Sophie had made the decision. She was having a baby. Despite their less-than-desirable parting, she decided to call Alessandro, just to inform him. Which was how she discovered he had blocked her number. Ann-Sophie remembered the sinking feeling when the words flashed across the screen of her mobile. Still, after a few weeks of wallowing, she had swallowed her pride for the baby’s sake and tried again, this time sending a discreet email:I have something important we need to discuss. Please call me.
He, of course, ignored it.
She had contemplated leaving a very detailed message with the receptionist in his office, a kind of revenge that exposed his dirty laundry for those he worked with. But as satisfying as the idea sounded, she couldn’t do it. She was carrying this man’s child, and no matter how humiliated and frustrated she was, they would have this baby between them for their entire lives. The idea triggered a strange rustle of feelings inside that she refused to contemplate, so she had focused on the baby, leaving the situation with Alessandro for later. She would find a way to tell him before the baby came. She was just…working her way up to it.
With each work trip to Milan, the guilt of not telling him weighed a little heavier. Sheand Alessandrohad created a baby. And he still had no idea. Though the Carandini family business had nothing to do with her visit, somehow she had still expected to cross paths with Alessandro. She had expected that the opportunity to tell him would simply present itself. Fate had brought them together seven months ago. Wouldn’t it bring them together again?
When fate didn’t cooperate, she took matters into her own hands and looked up the address of his office. If a detailed phone message was petty revenge, showing up to his office seven months pregnant was positively wicked. And incredibly tempting. She had stood on the sidewalk outside the sleek, modern building in the center of the city, gathering her nerves as guilt warred with unease. What if she confronted him, and he walked away, just like her father did?
Ann-Sophie could not make herself enter the building. At one point, she had thought she’d seen a glimpse of Alessandro through the glass, but if it was, in fact, him, he had turned back the moment he saw her. In the end, nothing had come of the visit aside from higher blood pressure. Next time, she told herself. Maybe there was a chance he would welcome a baby. Maybe every aspect of her baby’s life didn’t have to depend on her. In truth, she was overwhelmed, daunted by the task of caring for this tiny, helpless being by herself, and she wanted her baby to be welcomed into the world with love, not stress. For the next two months, she needed to do everything in her power to make sure of it…which meant figuring out how to handle the situation with Alessandro.
But before she could think about that mess, she was starving. Again. So hungry that she was clearly hallucinating because the man standing outside her building looked a lot like…
No. It couldn’t be.
Because there, in front of her tall, stone building, stood Alessandro Carandini. There was a starkness to him she hadn’t noticed before. His thick, glossy hair was clipped shorter than it had been seven months ago, and the cut of his suit accentuated his wide shoulders, making him look even taller than she remembered. But his eyes were the same, and they triggered sensations from seven months ago she had buried. Heat swept through her, and her swollen breasts tingled and ached. Her bodyknewhim. A hot rush of desire mixed with that uneasy giddiness she had refused to think about before. But as Alessandro came into undeniable focus, heat skittered through her body, and she could no longer push the awareness away. This feeling was hope. And for one, heart-stopping moment, he looked at her as if everything in the world had been made right again.
Before Ann-Sophie had time to think through practical questions, like what was he doing here, in front of her apartment building, his gaze drifted down to her belly. Ann-Sophie’s heart thudded in her chest as she caught unmistakable desire glittering in his gaze. But the desire immediately disappeared, and his eyes narrowed. He took a step forward, then another, and with each step, his expression turned harder. By the time he towered over her, he looked far from the charming aristocrat she had spent that one glorious week in Nice with. Instead, he looked stunned. And angry.
Lush. Ripe.The sensations fueled by these words roared through Alessandro’s body. He stared at Ann-Sophie, trying to contain the racket of emotions that thundered through him. She waspregnant. He felt an overwhelming urge to reach for her, to touch her, to feed the hunger that raged inside him. But he gritted his teeth and focused on the other reactions that vied for his attention. Like shock. And outrage. He clung to them, letting them blossom until they quieted the ever-present desire for her that still dogged him, even seven months later. It was this combination of shock and outrage that had spurred this unexpected trip to Stockholm, from the moment his brother had walked into his office and declared that he was almost sure he had seen Ann-Sophie outside their building.
“And she looked…” Massimo, who never found himself at a loss of words, often to Alessandro’s dismay, hesitated.
“What is it?” Alessandro’s patience had been chronically short in recent months, and this topic wasn’t helping. His brother raised an eyebrow, and Alessandro was forced to remember how he had mocked Massimo not so long ago about his brother’s sudden turns of temper when Catarina had fled. But this situation was completely different. He gave Massimo a tight smile. “How did she look?”
Massimo frowned, and warning signals exploded in Alessandro’s mind. “Her belly looked a bit rounder.”
It was as if Alessandro’s entire body went numb. He didn’t realize he was walking until he was out the door. He found himself in the elevator, glaring impatiently as the floors ticked down until he finally arrived at street level. But Ann-Sophie was nowhere. His assistant searched every hotel until he found the place were she was staying, just three blocks from his office. Except she had already checked out. Still, the fact that she had been there, so close, suggested Massimo had not been mistaken about whom he had seen, though surely his brother was wrong about… Alessandro didn’t even want to think about why she might be “rounder.”
It implied the unthinkable.
It implied the thing that should never, ever happen.
For the last seven months, he had been haunted by their week together, but Alessandro had sworn to himself that he would never see Ann-Sophie again. The lingering ache for her was the price he was paying for the way he had let his control slip for one, short moment on the dance floor, he told himself. But if she was… No, he would not let himself think about it until he had confirmation.
Which meant he needed to go directly to her apartment and clear up this situation.
