And yet, as he dialled the number, he felt his heart rate quicken. What if he was put through to Mia herself? What if she was happy to hear from him?
As if, on both counts. He was a fool for thinking it, for wanting it even a little.
‘Mia James?’ Foster sounded surprised when Alessandro mentioned her. ‘She was working out wonderfully, of course. I knew she would, if you’d recommended her.’
‘Was?’ Alessandro frowned, a sense of unease clenching his gut. ‘Isn’t she still working for you?’
‘Not at the moment.’ Taylor let out a little laugh that Alessandro didn’t understand. ‘She stopped about three months ago, but she’s expecting to be back this summer, no pun intended.’ He let out another laugh, and Alessandro’s frown deepened, his body tensing.
No pun…? What was that supposed to mean? ‘Has something happened to make her take such a leave of absence?’
‘Has something happened?’ Taylor repeated, sounding surprised. ‘I guess you don’t know…no reason why you would, although I thought she was a personal friend of yours…’
‘Know what?’ Alessandro demanded, brushing the man’s other words aside. He was not about to explain his relationship, or lack of it, to Mia James in any detail whatsoever.
‘Sorry, sorry. She’s on maternity leave. She had a baby three months ago. A little girl.’
For a second Alessandro couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. He felt as if his brain were short-circuiting, misfiring. A baby. A baby three months ago…nine months after their night together.
It was impossible. Impossible. She’d been on the pill. She would have told him. Surely, no matter what had or hadn’t happened between them, she would have told him. It couldn’t be…
‘Right, I must have forgotten that.’ His voice, attempting joviality, sounded forced. ‘Of course.’
‘I hope she
comes back,’ Taylor said. ‘She’s a good PA. The best I’ve ever had.’
‘Yes.’ Alessandro’s mind felt as if it was buzzing, full of static and white noise. He could not form a single coherent thought. ‘Yes,’ he said again, and then he disconnected the call. He flung the phone across his desk, glad when it clattered noisily across the surface. He half wished it would break, that something would, because he realised he was furious.
Furious, because Mia James might have had his baby and not even told him. Not ever told him. His fists clenched as his blood pumped through his body in hectic, vengeful thuds. How dared she? How dared she? To not tell him something so critical, so utterly important… To deprive him of knowing his own child…
Unless it wasn’t his child?
A little girl. His mind raced as he paced the confines of the room like something caged. Could it be another man’s? Yet she’d been a virgin, no other men in the picture as far as he knew, but of course he didn’t know…anything. And yet he couldn’t believe Mia would have gone with another man so soon after. Surely it was his. Surely…
There was only one way to find out.
He took his private jet to Los Angeles that night, cancelling half a dozen meetings without a word of explanation. The flight felt endless, his mind going in pointless circles as he considered what he would say to Mia.
If it was his child, his daughter, then he knew what he wanted, and he knew he’d do anything, anything, to see it happen. He’d grown up without a father, and it had tormented him for all his childhood. He would never, ever allow a child of his to experience that same sense of loss, confusion, and grief. He’d never walk away from his own flesh and blood the way his father had, without a single thought or care.
But perhaps the baby wasn’t his. A thought that, irrationally, gave him a little lurch of disappointment, even as he recognised that his treatment of Mia had been less than admirable. Could he really blame her if she’d met someone else and forgotten him?
A limo picked him up at the airport and drove him to the address of Mia’s apartment that he’d had on file. It was a beautiful, balmy evening, the sun setting over the ocean, its placid surface shimmering with crimson and gold, palm trees silhouetted against a darkening sky.
The apartment building where Mia lived was a two-storey stucco house with an apartment on each floor and a pool in the back. Hers was on the second floor, and he mounted the steps with grim determination. Rapped once, short and hard. Waited.
A few seconds later he heard light footsteps, and then the slip of a chain before the door opened. Mia stood there, the questioning smile on her face morphing into an expression of complete and utter shock.
‘Alessandro…’ His name came out in a whisper.
‘You should have told me.’ The words came out before he could stop them.
Her face paled and one hand fluttered to her throat. ‘How did you…?’
‘So it is mine?’ he interjected grimly, and her eyes sparked.
‘It is a she, which you probably already know, considering you’re here.’