New Arrivals: His Expectant Mistress: Accidentally Pregnant! / One-Night Pregnancy / One Tiny Miracle...

She didn’t care that their son could hear this. Much as Vincenzo hated it, she’d left him no choice. “Legally I have the right to be with him until nine tonight. I bring him back early as a consideration to you, Mila. Go ahead and call your attorney. By the time you reach him, I’ll have brought Dino back.”

He glanced at his son. “We’re going out to dinner.”

“Can we get pizza?”

“If that’s what you want.”

“With her?” Mila demanded.

Vincenzo didn’t answer. Dino walked out the door with him. It closed hard behind them.

“Mama’s real mad.”

“I’m sorry about that. She’s missed you a lot.”

They got in the car. “Are we going to eat with Signorina Spiros?”

“We are.”

“Did she want me to come?”

“I’ll say. In fact, she refused to eat with me unless you came.”

A smile broke out on his face.

“Hey—our hotel!” he cried a few minutes later. “Is she waiting in our room?”

“Yes.”

Irena thanked the clerk in the gift shop and took the two presents she’d bought back to the hotel room. Vincenzo had told her it was the one he and Dino always stayed in. They pretended it was their home away from home. The more she was getting to know him, the more she realized what an exceptional father he was.

If Vincenzo was the father of her unborn child, it would have no better parent. But she was getting ahead of herself. First they needed to broach the subject of marriage with Dino. These things took time.

Under the best of circumstances, his son might need months, even a year, to get used to the idea. Unfortunately Irena didn’t have that long with a baby on the way. She still hadn’t given up the idea of going to Canada.

Her ears picked up the rap on the door. Nervous over what was to come, she turned in time to see the two of them enter the room. It suddenly hit her they could be her future husband and stepson. As the thought penetrated, she was overcome by a myriad of emotions ranging from anxiety that it couldn’t work, to excitement that it might.

“Hi, Dino!”

His brown eyes smiled. “Hi, signorina!”

Vincenzo’s gaze traveled from one to the other. “I’ve just told him we’re going to have dinner here. I’ll call the kitchen. He wants pizza. What else would you like?”

“Salad? Coffee?”

He nodded and picked up the house phone to place their order.

“Come over here, Dino.” She’d put one of her gifts on the table. When he joined her, she told him to open it. Out of the bag came a canister of fifty pickup sticks. “Have you ever played this before?”

When he shook his head, she looked at Vincenzo. “What about you?”

A gleam entered his eyes. “Once long ago. We called it Shanghai.”

“Well, the game I know works like this.” She opened the top and put all the sticks in her hand. Then she placed it on the table and let the sticks fall. Picking out the black stick she said, “The trick is to remove each stick one at a time so the others don’t move. The person who can remove the most sticks is the winner.”

She got busy and loosened ten sticks before disturbing some. Dino couldn’t wait to be next. The game entertained all of them until their meal was wheeled in on a tea cart.

While they ate, Vincenzo took over in the translation department. “Dino? We brought you here to discuss something very important. It’s about me and Irena.”

“What is it?” Above his lips he had a milk moustache.

Irena exchanged a private glance with Vincenzo and they both smiled. “Do you know how you always ask me how come I’m not married and I always tell you it’s because I haven’t found the right woman yet?”

He nodded. “But now you’ve found Irena, huh.”

When Vincenzo explained what Dino had said, Irena expelled the breath she’d been holding.

“Yes. We want to get married right away. How do you feel about that?”

Once the question was posed Dino said, “Can I see you get married?” He’d asked it without hesitation. Vincenzo translated.

“We do everything together, don’t we?”

Dino nodded. “Will Grandpa be there?” More translation.

“Not this time. Irena’s family won’t be there, either, because we’re doing this too fast for everyone to get ready.”

“It’s not too fast for me!”

The look in Vincenzo’s eyes as he translated said it all.

“Will Father Rinaldo marry you in the little church down the road?”

“I don’t know. That’s up to Irena.” He explained what his son had asked.

Dino looked at her with entreaty. “It’s a very pretty church,” he said in English.

Irena didn’t feel comfortable about that. Although she had strong feelings for Vincenzo, their marriage was going to be one of convenience first and foremost. Neither of them had expressed feelings of love for each other and they were really only marrying for the baby’s sake. Vincenzo didn’t even know if the baby was his or not!

“I tell you what, Dino. Your father and I will talk it over before we decide. Would that be okay with you?”

He let the subject go and asked another question before getting out of his chair to come and stand by Irena. He stared at her with an earnestness that melted her heart and asked her something in Italian. Again Vincenzo explained.

“He wants to know if you’ll let him come to see us more often than once a month after we’re married.”

She didn’t have to think about it. “Tell him I would love for him to come and live with us all the time, but I know he loves his mommy, too.”

Vincenzo cleared his throat before enlightening his son. At that point Dino’s spontaneous response was to reach out and hug her. Irena hugged him back, loving this precious boy already. Wiping the tears from her eyes, she told him to wait a minute. She got up from the chair and walked over to the phone table where she’d put his other gift.