A Deal for the Di Sione Ring (The Billionaire's Legacy 7)

She cocked her head to one side. “Honestly, can a girl not have a little privacy?”

“Not tonight she can’t. Not when you were upending the contents of your stomach into the toilet an hour ago and that’s a drugstore bag behind your back.”

Her brain worked furiously. “It’s an old-fashioned remedy we Sicilians use.”

“Fascinating. Show it to me.”

“Nate—”

He reached around her with catlike swiftness and plucked the bag out of her hand. Mina pressed her palms to her eyes.

The longest silence of her life followed. She dropped her hands. Nate was gray. “It’s just a precaution,” she said, talking fast. “It can’t possibly be that. My imagination was running away with me and—”

“I used a condom every time. You’re on the pill.”

“Sì,” she said, nodding quickly. “Like I said, it’s just a precaution. I only did it because I didn’t feel well yesterday, either, and I thought why... Nate,” she said, frowning as he turned even grayer, “maybe you should sit down.”

He ran his palm over the stubble on his chin. “I think you,” he said slowly, handing her the bag, “should go do the tests. One—two—whatever works.”

She closed her fingers around the bag. Decided there was nothing else to do. She walked with a pounding heart toward the powder room, closed the door and leaned against it. You can do this.

Two positive tests later, she was sitting on the decorative love seat in the powder room composing herself when Nate flung the door open. “Out.”

She handed the tests to him, walked past him and collapsed on the sofa in the salon. The door to the garbage can thumped shut, a long silence followed and then Nate walked into the salon, headed straight to the bar and poured himself a drink. Not fair.

“Mi dispiace,” she said quietly.

He gave her a grim look. “Why are you apologizing? It takes two to make a baby.”

“Because this is a disaster.”

He didn’t refute the statement. Instead, he sat down beside her and downed a healthy gulp of the amber liquid in the glass.

“I would never—”

“Stop,” he said harshly. “I would never suggest that.”

The funny expression on his face caught her off guard. Then she realized what she’d said. Nate had been the result of an unexpected pregnancy...

“I didn’t mean—”

“I know you didn’t.”

The seconds rolled by, the ticking of the clock on the wall excruciatingly loud to Mina’s sensitized nerve endings. With every second that passed, with every moment that frozen, dismayed look continued to sit on Nate’s face, her heart slipped deeper into despair. He didn’t want a relationship, let alone a baby. He was horrified.

She had just attained her freedom, had begun a job she loved. It couldn’t be worse timing.

Her head throbbed, blood hammered against her temples. She wanted to feel joy, because surely a baby was a wonderful thing. Instead, she dropped her head in her hands and prayed for this to be a dream she’d wake up from soon.

“Stop panicking,” Nate rasped. “We will figure this out.”

“How?” She lifted her head. “You can’t even be in a relationship, Nate. How are you going to handle being a father?”

“Day by day, step by step. And I think we are already doing a pretty good approximation of a relationship.”

“Because you know you can walk away the minute you feel claustrophobic. The minute your attachment antenna picks up too strong a signal, we’re done.”