I watch him lean back into the taxi and hand the driver some bills.

“Buono notte,” the driver yells before he drives off.

“Do you like your apartment?” Dante asks as we start walking.

“Yes, it is lovely and the magazine has stocked it with essentials too,” I say as we go past the pizza restaurant that still seems to be buzzing with life and activity. “I definitely have to try one of their pizzas. Even though I am stuffed, that smell is doing something to me.”

“Pizza will make you fat,” Dante says as we climb the stairs.

“Oh God, don’t talk about getting fat. I am going to have to turn all the mirrors around when my belly starts growing. I won’t even want to look at myself.”

“Oh, yes you will. You’ll pat your stomach and feel the life growing inside and get emotional knowing you are going to be the best mother in the world,” Dante says as I push the door to my apartment.

“Oh yeah? And how do you know so much about it?”

“I’ve been reading Parenting Magazine.”

I laugh. “No, you haven’t. And I know for a fact they don’t have articles about expectant mothers in Playboy.”

Dante smiles as he looks around the room. “Now serve me some of that terrible coffee of yours.”

“My God, you Italians all have such a snobbish attitude towards coffee,” I tease.

“It’s the rest of the world that doesn’t know how to appreciate good coffee.”

I roll my eyes. “Whatever.”

He sits at my kitchen table and talks to me while I make the coffee.

“Here we are,” I say, holding one mug out to him. His fingers touch mine, and suddenly, the atmosphere changes. The air becomes thick. For a second I can only stare at him blankly as his eyes darken, then I rush to fill the molten silence.

“Taste it, then.”

He takes a sip and his mouth turns down at the corners. “Undrinkable,” he declares, putting the mug down.

I laugh at his expression. “Coffee in my kitchen overlooking that cathedral has to be worth something.”

“It is,” he says softly. “I wouldn’t let that disgusting stuff pass my lips under any other circumstances.”

“Dante.” I say putting down my mug. “I keep thinking how extraordinarily lucky I am to get this awesome, once-in-a-lifetime job here in this beautiful city, but the thing is I’m not exactly the luckiest person I know.”

The room becomes very quiet. Dante looks at me steadily, but says nothing.

“You … er … don’t happen to know the owner of the magazine, do you?”

“Not really,” he says evasively.

My eyes narrow. “Not really? What the hell does that mean? Do you or don’t you know him?” I demand.

“We met at a party once,” he admits.

“I see. Hmmm … so you didn’t recommend me for the job?”

“Not to him.”

I blink, then my jaw drops. “Oh my God! Oh, my God.”

“I just mentioned your name, Rosa.”

“You big asshole. You asked his granddaughter, didn’t you?” I jump up and begin pacing. “Oh, gross! Just gross.”

“You seem very upset. Why?”

I whirl around and face him. “Why? How can you even ask me that? You asked your ex-girlfriend to hire the woman carrying your child. Can you not see how fucked up that is?”

He shrugs. “No. It’s not fucked up at all. I want you and my child close to me and believe me, this is nothing. I would have done anything to get both of you here.”

I start pacing again. “You’re mad. I’m shocked she agreed. What kind of woman does that?”

“Why wouldn’t she? Yes, we were lovers once, but we aren’t anymore. It’s simply an exchange of favors. She does this for me and another day I might be able to do something for her.”

I stop pacing and glare at him. “So she has never even read my work, has she?”

“Well, yes. After I spoke to her, she read your work. Obviously, you wouldn’t have got the job if you had been useless.”

I run my hands through my hair. “Oh, shit. This is so embarrassing. And I thought I got the job on merit alone.”

“Does it really matter? You have the job.”

“Yes, it matters,” I howl. “I have this dream job that I thought I got because of my ability, but now I find out I snagged it because someone I had sex with asked the owner to hire me! Do you realize how sleazy that makes me feel?”

“Okay, I pulled some strings to land you the job. You should be thanking me instead of getting angry.”

“Thanking you. I am going to have to go into the office every day and face people who probably know I got the job only because I slept with Dante, the playboy!”

“Grow up, Rosa. When you accepted that job you did so because you believed in yourself and your ability to do it. That has not changed. The reality is life is a series of unfair advantages. You had a lot more advantages than a girl growing up in an African village, for example. What is important is how you handle the fate you’re given!”

I can’t believe he’s saying this. I stare at him incredulously. He sits gazing back at me. Totally sexy, masculine, confident, without a care in the world, and utterly unaware of the rage he has ignited in me.

“God, you’re the first man who’s made me feel like slapping you really hard,” I mutter.

He arches one eyebrow as his mouth tilts with amusement. “Really?”

“Absolutely,” I say between clenched teeth

“It is a sexual thing?”

I throw my hands up in the air. How do you deal with a man like this? “No, it is not a sexual thing.”

He starts walking towards me. “Are you sure?”

“Of course, I’m sure. It’s pure fury.”

He stops in front of me. “Ah. What a shame.”

Even though I am bursting with anger, his nearness has a strange effect on

me so I turn away. My plan is to put as much distance as possible between us. But as I start walking toward the window, my hand gets caught by his. I whirl around and the words on my tongue die at the look in his eyes.

Smug bastard. He is so sure he is going to bed me.

I don’t know why he always has this effect on me, but I stop thinking. Either I go weak at the knees, or I become a bitter shrew. At that moment, red hot rage slams into my head. I do what I have never done before. I wrench my hand out of his grasp, take a few steps away from him and charge, using my head like a battering ram.

I crash into his abs.

Fuck! It is like crashing my head into a brick wall. It’s possible I broke my neck or did it lasting injury, but that doesn’t stop me. Fueled by frustration, rage, and a hidden sadness. I kick his shin so hard with the sharp end of my shoes he stumbles backwards.

But I’m not finished.

With a cry of fury, I launch myself at him. His hands come around me. It’s almost a protective gesture, but I register only the fact of falling on him is turning me on. I can feel his cock hard and thick against my stomach. With all my might, I try to pull away from him, but suddenly, he has me trapped between him and the wall. I lift my hand to slap him. He catches it easily.

“Bastard,” I yell, and swing the other one wildly towards his face, but he catches that one just as effortlessly. He grips both my wrists in his hand and takes them over my head.

We stare at each other. I’m panting hard.

“I hate you,” I snarl.

“No, you don’t. You just hate that you cannot control the way you feel about me.”

“Yes, I do. You smug, selfish, shallow, arrogant, womanizing jerk.”

He leans down so that his face is very close to mine. “Yes, I am all those things, but you are also carrying my child. It will be a cold day in hell before I walk away from that responsibility. Neither of us are free agents anymore, Rosa. We owe it to the life we created to get on.”

“If your idea of getting on is having sex with me whenever you feel like it, you can forget it right now, because I am never having sex with you again.”

“I want our child to have all the advantages we can give him. I say ‘we’ because I want to marry you and give the child my name.”

“Again with that? Don’t you get it? I don’t want to marry you.”

“Why not?”

“Because of all the reasons I mentioned earlier. I don’t want a selfish bastard for a husband who cheats on me. I’ve been around your type in London. They go from one girl to the next, never leaving their wives but constantly cheating on those sad women. I don’t want that type of marriage. Sooner or later, you’ll break my heart. To put it nicely you are too gorgeous a man to marry.”

He looks deep into my eyes. “Sometimes what you see on the outside is not what is really on the inside. Sometimes the men who seem to be good and loyal are the ones who secretly need the high of cheating on their wives. I’m an open book. I slept with many women, but never cheated on anyone. I was a free agent. When we marry I will no longer be one.”

“Exactly. You will get bored and you’ll be itching to try new flesh.”

“Have you ever thought that maybe I’ve had all the flesh I want? You don’t crave for something that has been plentiful. You crave for the rare thing.”

I stare at him, mesmerized by his words. I so much want to believe it. “Talk is cheap,” I whisper.

“Then let me prove it to you.”

“That sounds like a win-win situation for you. If you make it because you like being married you win, if you decide it’s not for you, which is the more likely scenario, you say sorry and walk away. But I get my heart broken.”

“You never struck me as a coward, Rosa. What’s the point of living if you are never going to take a chance on anything that looks like it might bring you hurt?”

“I don’t care. I am not marrying you.”

“Do you want me to get down on one knee like they do in those corny movies?”

“No.”

“No, you don’t want me to get down on one knee? Or no you don’t want to marry?”

“Both. Please, don’t ask me again! You are not marriage material … not for me, anyway.”

Suddenly I feel Dante’s lips pressing against mine. I feel my resistance melting. He stops kissing me and raises his head to look into my eyes. Immediately I push my hands against his chest. He kisses me again. This time his tongue slips into my mouth. His kiss saps all the strength out of my arms. I stop pushing against him and give in to the tremendous passion of his kiss.

I find myself clutching and pulling him closer to my breast instead of pushing him away. I feel him responding to my hard nipples nudging his chest.

He raises his head.

“We shouldn’t,” I mumble weakly as I attempt one last effort to resist him when we break our embrace.

“Oh, yes we should,” Dante says as he reaches behind me and grabs the tab of my dress’ zipper. “Let me see this beautiful body that drives me wild,” he adds as he pulls down the zipper.

I hold the front of my dress over my breasts as Dante zips it all the way down.

He shakes his head. “Don’t hide your candy from me.”

“You are such a pervert,” I say even as I let go of the front of my dress. It drops to the floor to form a pool of black shimmering silk in front of my black high heels.

Dante takes a step back. “Lovely. I love all your body, but your breasts are perfection,” he says as he leans his head down and takes one of my hard nipples into his mouth.

I sigh loudly as he runs his tongue around my nipple before caressing the top of it with the tip of his warm, wet tongue.

“You are a very wicked man, Dante,” I mutter, as I run my fingers through his thick dark hair.