Page 25 of Mafia Doctor's Secret Baby

“We were,” she replies, carefully. “When she was alive.”

“She passed? I’m sorry?—”

“Both my parents did, a while ago,” she explains, her voice dropping to a near whisper. “I—it’s been a long time without them.”

I can hear the pain in her voice. No matter how long it might have been, it’s clear that the weight of it still hangs heavy over her head. I squeeze her knee lightly.

“I can’t even imagine how hard that’s been,” I murmur. “I lost my mom, and that was bad enough. Thought it might damn near carry my father away too, with how heartbroken he was by the whole thing…” I shake my head. “So, you don’t have any other family?”

“No,” she confesses. “I mean, I have Cara, my best friend—and she’s as good as family to me, as far as I’m concerned. But I don’t have any direct relatives here. It’s just Polly and me.”

Things start clicking into place a little more now—why she would have wanted to have a child, after a single hookup with a guy she didn’t know. She had no family of her own, but now, she does. And that’s a pretty damn good reason to want to have a daughter.

“So you were going to raise her all by yourself?” I ask, frowning, as that part of it strikes me too. “No help from anyone other than your friend?”

She shrugs. “I’ve done plenty by myself,” she replies. “I got into college, I came to this city, I got that internship with the councilor…”

“That’s what you were doing when we met?” I ask her, cocking an eyebrow. “You were there with a politician…?”

“I guess,” she replies. “It was my first time going to anything like that, like I told you. It’s crazy now, looking back…”

“So what happened to all of that?” I wonder aloud. “Your internship, college…?”

“I managed to finish college before I had Polly,” she replies, gesturing toward the baby monitor. “I didn’t even know I waspregnant for a few months, I was so distracted with getting everything done for my final exams. But the internship…”

She trails off for a moment, picking at something on her sleeve.

“I had to leave that. I couldn’t keep up with Polly and that kind of work. It takes everything from you, all your time, all your energy, and there was no way I was going to do that to my daughter.”

I eye her for a long moment—so, this job, this career that she had just started that she had already worked so hard for, she let it go for the sake of raising her daughter right? I have to admit, there’s something seriously admirable about that. Even if it breaks my heart a little to think of her turning her back on all of that.

“You don’t miss it?”

“Of course I do,” she replies. “I’ve wanted to get into politics for years, and I was doing well on that internship. I would have been offered a full-time job right out of college, I think, had it not been for…”

She stops herself before she can say her daughter’s name, as though determined not to lay the blame at her door.

“But I made my choice,” she finishes up. “And I know it was the right one. Besides, I can always go back to work, right? I can keep building my knowledge, working on my skills out here in the real world, and come back with even more causes to fight for.”

“I like that,” I reply. “I bet you’re going to kick ass when you go back to that world.”

She smirks at me slightly.

“Oh, and it might be your ass I’m kicking,” she shoots back. “I could come after guys like you, people who are involved in the criminal shit that this city needs to get rid of…”

I know this is dangerous territory we’re skirting into, but there’s something about the smile on her face right now that makes it impossible for me to care.

“Oh, yeah?” I push her. “And what exactly might that look like?”

“You don’t want to know how far I’m willing to go,” she continues, her eyes flashing with mischief. She’s enjoying this, I can tell—enjoying the way it makes her feel to flirt with me right now, even though she knows who I am. It’s not like the first night when we were together, when neither of us had a clue who the other was—no, she is damn clear on who I am, and she wants me anyway.

Or maybe even because of it.

I reach over and pull her into my lap, and her legs slip to either side of me so she’s straddling me. She’s just wearing a nightdress, and it hikes up a few inches on either side as she moves. I groan and rub my hands along her legs appreciatively, enjoying the way they feel beneath my touch.

“Fuck,” she gasps as she leans down to kiss me. Our lips just brush together at first, but soon we sink into a deeper kiss, our tongues moving against each other with the helpless hunger that can only be driven by something as dangerous as what we have. My hands move further beneath her skirt, pushing it up to expose her completely. I know I won’t be able to settle for anything less than all of her, just like I did before—I have to have her, in every way possible.

I pull the nightdress up and over her head. For the first time, she is nearly completely naked in front of me. Her body is perfection—the soft curve of her waist, the spread of her thighs, the light marks on her stomach that remind me of her recent pregnancy. She looks like something people would have worshipped in centuries past, a creature so unreal she is almost a goddess.

---