The Italian's proposal

Melody sat in the back of the car, next to a pleased Timothy. Could it be the most perfect name? Maybe. He could have been named Christian and had a room for wild, forbidden sex.

She blushed just thinking about that sitting next to the most sensual man she’d ever seen in her life.

“Are you all right? You look red,” he was worried, maybe thinking something was wrong with her because of the baby.

Oh, Greek God, if he knew he got me like this. He was thinking about the baby she was carrying in her womb, about her safety and security, it was more than anyone she knew had ever done, including her parents. She found out when she was a month pregnant, she didn’t know how to tell her parents, and all the more reason she might have had, considering that they had reacted in the same way she had calculated. She knew them, she had made the right decision by delaying the news, so they had not been able to force her to terminate her pregnancy.

Twenty-two years old! She was not a girl, she was an adult, newly adult, but one, after all. She was responsible for her actions, actions she had committed under the influence of alcohol and the heat she felt between her legs for being in love for the first time. A fictitious love that had not been reciprocated. She never thought that what she had read about in the romantic novels could happen to her, so cautious, having her first boyfriend while in college and look what a disaster she had ended up in.

Just another one of the bunch. One for the collection of idiots who lost her virginity to the first idiot who paid attention to her.

It was going to be medieval torture for her to be locked in the car with him.

“I’m fine,” she said looking out the window.

“Why don’t you have health insurance if you’re pregnant? Doesn’t Doyle pay you enough? I can talk to him to get that taken care of. No woman should have to go through necessities while in a state of gestation.”

“State of gestation,” she repeated as if it were a joke.

“What? Don’t tell me you don’t know what gestational state is,” he commented wryly.

“I’m not stupid. I’m in college and studying veterinary medicine.”

“I don’t think you’re an idiot. Your eyes say enough, and your intelligence shows. What I don’t understand is why you don’t have health insurance.”

He wasn’t going to let it go. Melody had tried to distract him, making fun of his correct way of speaking and expressing himself. It was obvious that they were from different worlds. He, from a refined and polished one, one where everything moved with money, and she from one where parents slammed the door in their daughters’ faces for a misguided love affair.

Melody was used to getting from college to home, those had been the rules to be able to study at a college that was relatively far from home. In the end trying to get out of her parents’ skirt and excessive care had ended in a colossal and epic disaster, as she had fallen in love and let herself be duped by the worst. Life had repaid her desire to walk away in spades. She had walked away from the stranglehold of her parents as she used to call it, but she had also walked away from her life, from her family.

She had met Richard in her second year of veterinary school, she was immediately attracted and excited, an instant had been enough to make her wish he would at least give her a look and exchange a couple of words with her, and he had. Richard had shown her more than interest, he had given her the attention she had so longed for and without realizing it, in less than a week she had fallen in love with him.

For Melody it had been a thing of fate, of life, of heaven. A man like him, charismatic, with dark eyes that guaranteed a life of adventure and eternal nights of absolute pleasure. She, who had only lived through romantic books, had finally seen what they said so much about.

That was the problem of parents raising their children absorbed in their world, in a world invented by them and managed at their whim, trying to take care of them from adversities and ailments, they hid from her that there were harmful and malicious people, people who took advantage, wolves dressed as lambs.

insurance, period,” she finally replied after considering giving him the real

wretched and heartless man who had

your natural humor.

eyes on him for a second and felt small next to him. She wasn’t tall at all, nor did she have a petite body and even less so now that she was expecting a child. Her body was getting bigger in areas she wouldn’t have wanted, she was sure to have stretch marks and scars for life. She knew because she was beginning to understand that life was not a fairy tale and she was not a

“Congratulations,” she growled.

“Now what for?”

you

Sitting in the car, next to a sexy Italian,

silly to wonder if he was single, for a man like him, with his impeccable clothes, his confident way of walking and with the money and beauty he had, it was impossible that he was somehow not engaged. Surely, he had a magazine wife and two children waiting for him at home, dining in a perfect house, with a table worth the cost of

Her father had taken it upon himself to let her know that she would never again receive

decisions. Like you’re an adult. Which you were already supposed to be!” That had been all her father

emissary of all her father’s requests and interests for a

stubborn. It is for your own good. That still doesn’t feel.” These were the phrases her mother

entity, as a baby. For them he was just

pink! Life is not, Melody! You don’t survive

he doesn’t love me,” she had said the first few days. Then she had realized that she had been stupid to pretend to think that Richard would come to his senses and be with her and her

the reality she had

his hard features, his eyebrows were crossed, as if something made him uncomfortable, she sniffed slyly trying to find out if hormones had played a joke

little bit.

anymore; she was destined to be a stinker as long

woman with glasses and a governess’s hairstyle was screaming inside her that she

had offended him with her comment about not knowing her. Over the years she had developed the habit of saying at every moment whatever she felt and wanted, whatever she thought at the moment she thought it, not when the argument had passed,

grandmother Nana used to say that she was nobody’s trunk.

girl, she had ended up wetting her bed and her

an open book with her body expressions and her gray

that arrogant Italian, she had to admit that he had been nothing but kind and good, he had given her help without her asking for it, except for the twenty minutes he

looking down at her

her, and for a moment

obvious that it even went unnoticed to him when a woman was attracted to him.

this time with

than she could handle. The coffee stain on