for his office rather than the boardroom.
There was so much riding on this meeting. He’d never given a damn what the press said about him, but Mia did, and she was worried too about the effect the salacious headlines might have on their baby in later years.
There was a lot to get right.
As he walked into his office, there stood a sight for sore eyes.
Mia, in stilettos and wearing the gorgeous lavender dress she’d had on the day they had met and with her hair worn back from her face.
‘Who are you?’ Dante said, just as he had on that long-ago day.
‘A different person from the one I was then.’ Mia smiled. ‘How did they take it?’
‘Fine.’ Dante gave a tight shrug. ‘Sort of. Ariana is upset with my mother.’
‘It will take time,’ Mia said.
‘Yes.’
‘Say whatever you have to to the board,’ Mia said bravely. ‘I’ll be fine with it.’
‘You’re sure?’ Dante checked.
Mia nodded. ‘You’re right. It is foolish to try and hide it when I’ll soon start to show. We are where we are.’
‘You sound like one of Luigi’s presentations.’ Dante found that he was smiling.
He looked at her sapphire-blue eyes and saw her cheeks flush pink as they had on the day they’d first met.
‘I wish we could go back to that day,’ Dante admitted. ‘I wish you really had been my father’s PA, with terrible Italian.’
Mia smiled.
‘I’d have given you lessons,’ Dante said.
‘I’d have learnt a few choice words then.’
‘Probably.’ Dante smiled.
‘Would you have asked me out?’
‘Mia, I wanted you on sight. I wasn’t thinking about going out, believe me.’
‘You’re too honest sometimes.’
‘I know I am.’
And she loved him for it, Mia honestly did, and so she walked over to him and she looked right into his black eyes and decided that this was the last time she’d be weak. While Dante had been in with his family, Mia had made the only decision she could live with if she had to co-parent with an eternal playboy, and so this might well be goodbye.
And though this was in all likelihood their last ever kiss, she was grateful for this man who had helped her get over her shyness.
It felt so good to kiss him, to slip her tongue between his strained lips and to press herself against his tense body, to hold his head and kiss him as she never had before, for his mouth was barely moving yet she could feel how turned on he was.
‘I wish you had done that the first day we met,’ Dante said.
‘So do I.’
She kissed him again and now he kissed her back, so thoroughly that they were up against his door and making noises that did not sound like just a kiss. And then, because it was Dante, of course there was the intrusion of his phone.
‘I hate your phone.’
‘I hate it too,’ he admitted as he very reluctantly took the call and told Sarah he’d be in shortly.
‘Except I can’t go in like this,’ Dante said. He took her hand and held it there where she could feel him hard through his trousers. But when he released his hand, Mia’s remained.
‘That’s a little more how it goes,’ Dante said in a voice that incited disorder, ‘when I think of that day.’
‘Here?’ Mia frowned. ‘You want to have sex with me here?’
‘No.’ He proceeded to give her her first private Italian lesson, and watched her blush and the nervous swallow in her throat as he told her what he wanted, and it served only to further turn him on.
‘Here?’ Mia checked, a little stunned but feeling sick with excitement too.
Dante could be selfish at times too. He held her eyes as he unzipped his trousers because, yes, he wanted Mia on her knees.
The sound of his zipper, the ragged edge to his breathing had her thighs turning to liquid as she all too readily sank down, but then nerves hit.
‘I’ve never...’ she attempted.
‘I know.’
Mia wanted to, though.
She kissed the shaft and perhaps did not quite meet the mark, but his moan was one of pleasure, and so she inhaled his soapy scent and tentatively kissed higher.
‘Mia,’ he said when she reached the top, and breathed on him a while. Now his voice made her feel dizzy and she tasted him with the tip of her tongue and then ran that same tongue over her own lips to know his taste.
She looked up and met his eyes and asked, ‘Is this filthy of me?’
He gave her his stunning smile, the