by Maisey Yates
She slipped her foot out of the shoe she was wearing and held it out to him, not caring that they were drawing stares, that everyone in the room had realized just who he was.
She could see that Gunnar and Latika were barely restraining themselves, allowing her to handle the moment, out of respect for her strength, she knew. But she also knew it was testing them.
She extended her foot to him, and he slipped it on.
A perfect fit.
“My Queen,” he said. “I am kneeling before you. I am not in my tower. I am at your feet. And I must humbly confess to you that I love you. But I am a broken man who is nothing more than where I came from. But I love you. I love you, and I will spend all of my days trying to prove to you that I am worthy of that love. For I am nothing without you. I am nothing without this life. And it would not matter if you were a queen, or if we lived back in those slums I worked so hard to escape. Love was the thing that was always missing. And love is the only thing I cannot buy.”
“Then it’s perfect,” she said, sliding out of her throne and dropping to her knees with him. “Because love is the one thing that I cannot legislate. Is the one thing that I cannot bend to my will. I cannot manipulate it, I cannot find an old law that would enable me to capture it and hold it in my hands. Love is all that I need. You are all that I need.”
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you too.”
“You have to stay at this party?”
“It’s my party. It’s my birthday.”
“Happy birthday.”
“Thank you,” she said, feeling light-headed and surreal, dizzy.
“We have this? Will we have each other forever?” she asked, whispering softly.
“Yes, my Queen. We will have each other, and happily. Ever after.”
EPILOGUE
WHEN THE BRAND-NEW Prince of Bjornland came into the world some months later, the media instantly hailed him as perfection. A specimen of humanity that possessed his mother’s regal bearing and his father’s determination, but no one was half so infatuated with him as his father. And his mother.
“He is perfect,” Mauro said decisively, laying him down in the crib that first night, pressing a kiss to his soft, downy head.
“He is,” Astrid agreed. “Perfection. As is our life.”
“I had thought that happiness was in the top of a high-rise building. Where I had finally overcome. Where I would finally prove to my father that I had value. I climbed up that hill and begged for him to love me, and received nothing in return. Though, I realize now that I did. I realize now that I learned something I needed right now. Our son will never have to earn my love. And there is nothing he could do to lose it. What our parents did to us... It was never us. It was them. And as for me... Happiness was never alone at the top of a high-rise. It is here. With you. With him. Forever.”
For the first time in his entire life, Mauro did not feel like a boy from the slums.
Astrid made him a king. Not because of her title, but because she had given him her heart.
And he had given her his.
And that was truly the most powerful thing on earth.
* * *
If you enjoyed The Queen’s Baby Scandal by Maisey Yates
look out for the next installment in her Once Upon a Seduction... miniseries Crowning His Convenient Princess coming soon!
And why not explore these other One Night With Consequences stories?
The Argentinian’s Baby of Scandal
by Sharon Kendrick
His Cinderella’s One-Night Heir
by Lynne Graham
The Sicilian’s Surprise Love-Child
by Carol Marinelli
Bound by Their Nine-Month Scandal
by Dani Collins
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Proof of Their One-Night Passion
by Louise Fuller
CHAPTER ONE
RUBBING HER EYES, Lottie Dawson drew the curtain back and gazed out of her bedroom window. The garden was in darkness, but she could hear the steady patter of the rain, and in the glow of the night light the glass was speckled with fat blobs of water.
Yawning, she glanced over at the clock beside her bed.
It was only five-thirty a.m., an unpleasant hour at most times of the year, but particularly so on a cold, wet November day in rural Suffolk. But for once her eleven-month-old daughter’s early-morning routine was an advantage. Today they were going to London, and she actually needed to get up.
Turning round, she glanced over to where Sóley was standing in her cot, her blonde curls flattened against her head, her mouth clamped around the edge of her teddy bear.
As Lottie walked towards her she held up her fat little arms and began dancing on the spot.
‘Hi.’ Leaning forward, she lifted her daughter up, pressing her body close.
Her heart swelled. She was so beautiful, so perfect. Born in December, on the shortest day of the year, she had been as golden and welcome as the unseasonal sun that had come out to celebrate her birth and inadvertently suggested her name.
‘Let’s go get you some milk,’ she murmured, inhaling the clean, sweet smell of her daughter’s skin.
Downstairs, she switched the light on in the kitchen and frowned. A frying pan sat in the sink and the remains of a bacon sandwich were congealing on a plate on the crumb-strewn table. Beside it stood an open tool box and a tattoo gun.
Lottie gritted her teeth. She loved living with her brother Lucas, and he was brilliant with Sóley, but he was six foot four, and it sometimes felt that their tiny cottage wasn’t big enough for him—especially as his idea of domesticity was taking his boots off to sleep.
Tutting under her breath, she shifted Sóley’s weight to her hip. ‘Look at all this mess Uncle Lucas has made,’ she said softly, gazing down into her daughter’s wide blue eyes.
There was no time to deal with it now. Not if she was going to get herself and Sóley dressed and up to London by eleven o’clock. As she filled the kettle her pulse skipped forward. The gallery in Islington was tiny, but it was hosting her first solo show since giving birth.
Incredibly, some of the pieces had already sold and it was great to know that her work had an audience but, more importantly, the Barker Foundation wanted to talk to her about a commission. Getting funding was a huge step up. Not only would it allow her to continue working without having to teach in the evenings, but she might also be able to extend her workshop.
Glancing into the living room at the dark shape on her sofa, she imagined her brother’s eye-rolling reaction to her pragmatism.
Ever since she’d bought the cottage he’d been teasing her about selling out, joking that getting a mortgage was the first step towards the dark side. As far as he and their mother Izzy knew the money had come from a private commission, and Lucas had a very dim view of private clients believing they were only interested in buying art as an investment rather than out of aesthetic appreciation.
She bit her lip. She hated lying to them, but telling the truth—that the deposit for the cottage h
ad been given to her by her biological father, a man who up until two years ago hadn’t even known she existed—was just not an option.
Having tested the milk on her tongue, she handed the bottle to Sóley and they both retreated upstairs. Pulling open drawers, she thought back to the moment when she had finally met Alistair Bannon in a motorway service station.
Her stomach clenched. She’d spent so many hours as a child staring into a mirror, trying to work out which of her features came from that man, but even before he had opened his mouth it had been obvious that he was not looking to reconnect with a fully-grown daughter. It wasn’t that he didn’t accept her as his child—just that he felt no urgency to know her, and their meeting had been strange and strained and short.
From downstairs, she heard the clump of boots hitting the floor. Lucas was up.
She wondered how her brother would react if she showed him the letter her father had sent afterwards. It was polite, carefully worded to offer no obvious rejection but no hope either, basically saying she was a remarkable young woman and he wished her well. Enclosed with the letter had been a cheque for an amount that he hoped would cover his financial contributions for the years he had missed.
Staring at his signature on the cheque, she had felt sick, stunned that she could be reduced to a four-digit sum, and she’d been tempted to tear it up. Only then she’d got pregnant.
Stripping off, she gazed down at her naked body, at the silvery stretch marks that were still faintly visible on her stomach.
Becoming a mother had been so far away in her future plans that she hadn’t even suspected she was pregnant but, having been unable to shift a persistent stomach upset she had gone to the doctor, and three days and one urine sample later she had officially been having a baby.
A baby who, like her, was going to grow up never knowing her father. She still wasn’t entirely sure how it had happened. They had used protection, but that first time had been so frantic, so urgent, somehow it must have failed.
Shivering, she pulled on her clothes, trying to ignore the sudden thumping of her heart.
She could still remember the night her daughter was conceived. She doubted she would ever forget it. It was like a fever in her blood. The heat and the frenzy had faded, but the memory remained in her bones and on her skin, so that sometimes she’d catch sight of the back of a blond head and a pair of wide shoulders and would have to stop and close her eyes against the urgency of wanting him.
Ragnar Steinn.
She would never forget him either.
It would be impossible.
It would be like trying to forget the sun.
But, despite having the muscular body and clean-cut profile of a Norse god, he had shown himself to be depressingly human in his behaviour. Not only had he lied about where he was staying, and about wanting to spend the day with her, he’d sneaked off before she’d woken up.
And yet together they had made Sóley, and no amount of lies or hardship or loneliness would ever make her regret her beautiful daughter.
‘Looks like we’ve got snow coming,’ Lucas said as she walked into the tiny sitting room, holding Sóley on her hip and munching a piece of toast.
He had switched on the ancient television and was wolfing down the remains of his bacon sandwich.
Catching sight of her expression, he grinned sheepishly. ‘Sorry about the mess. Look, I’ll tidy up, I promise, and I’ll chop that wood today. Get it all stacked before the temperatures drop. Do you want me to have little Miss Sunshine?’
She shook her head. ‘No, but you could give us a lift to the station.’
‘Okay—but only if I get a cuddle.’
He held up his hands and Sóley leaned towards him, grabbing at his shirt collar. Watching her brother’s face soften Lottie felt her anger and resentment fade as he pulled the little girl into his arms, wincing as she reached for his hair and grabbed it tightly in her fist.
Unpeeling her fingers, he handed his niece a piece of banana and glanced up at his sister. ‘You couldn’t put the kettle on as you’re up—?’
Glancing at the clock on the wall, Lottie did a quick calculation in her head. There was time before she had to leave. She sighed. ‘I’ll make some tea.’
Rinsing out the teapot, she put the kettle on the stove.
‘You know, I think Sóley is a lot more with it than most kids her age,’ she heard Lucas say.
‘You do?’ Smiling, she poured water into the pot. For someone so laid-back, her brother was extremely partisan and competitive when it came to his niece.
‘Yeah—I mean, she’s watching the news like she knows what’s going on.’
‘Good. That means we can outvote you when the football’s on.’
‘No, seriously, she’s completely transfixed by this guy—Lottie, come and look.’
‘Okay, I’m coming.’
Walking back into the sitting room, she looked over to where her daughter had pulled herself up in front of the television.
Lucas was right, Sóley did seem to be fascinated. Pulling her gaze away from her daughter’s plump cheeks, Lottie glanced at the screen.
The interviewer—a woman—was gazing at the man opposite her with the same fascination as her daughter, so that for a moment Lottie only registered his blond hair and eyes that were the cool, clear blue of a glacier. Then slowly his features came into focus and she felt her mouth slide open.
It was him.
It was Ragnar.
She had wanted to find him after she’d found out she was pregnant, and then again when their daughter was born. But both of them had shut down their profiles on the dating app they’d used to meet up, and there had been no trace of any Ragnar Steinn—or at least none that looked like him—on any internet search.
Her jaw tensed. Not that it would have changed anything if she had managed to get in touch. His clumsy lies had made it clear enough that he’d only been interested in her for one night only, so he was hardly going to jump at the news that he’d fathered a child with her.
She watched mutely, ice working its way up her spine, as Sóley began patting the screen. Her heart was jumping in her chest.
‘Who is he?’ she asked. ‘I mean, why is he on TV?’
She had been aiming for offhand, but her voice sounded thin and breathless.
Thankfully, though, Lucas was too distracted to notice.
‘Ragnar Stone. He owns that dating app. Apparently he’s launching a VIP version.’
‘Dating app?’ she said woodenly. It felt as if she had stopped breathing.
She was about to ask which one, but there was no point. She already knew the answer. Only she’d thought he was like her—someone using the app to meet people. She hadn’t known that he owned it—in fact, thinking about it, she was certain that he hadn’t mentioned that to her.
‘You know—ice/breakr?’
Lucas glanced up at her, and she watched his face still as his brain caught up with his mouth.
‘Course you do...’ he said quietly.
It had been Lucas who had signed her up to the app. Lucas who had coaxed her into replying to the ‘ice breaker’ question. It could be on any topic from politics to holidays. Not all of the questions were profound, but they were designed to spark an instinctive response that apparently helped match couples more accurately than a photo and a list of likes and dislikes. She knew he felt responsible for everything that had happened, but she was too stunned and angry to dismiss his obvious guilt.
Ragnar Stone!
So he’d even lied about his name.
And he hadn’t just been using the app—he owned it.
She breathed out unsteadily, trying to absorb this new version of the facts as she’d known them, grateful that her brother’s attention was still fixed on the TV and not on her face. Grateful, too, that she hadn’t shown him Ragnar�
��s profile at the time.
Her skin was trembling.
‘Is he in London?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, for the launch. He’s got an office here.’ Lucas wiped Sóley’s mouth with the hem of his shirt and met her gaze. ‘One of those converted warehouses in Docklands. You know Nick?’
She nodded. Nick was one of Lucas’s cohorts. He played drums in their band, but in his day job he was a graffiti artist.
‘He did this huge old-school design the whole length of Ragnar Stone’s building. He showed me some pictures and it looks really sick.’ He nodded his head approvingly.
Lottie cleared her throat. ‘Did he meet him?’
Lucas frowned. ‘Nah. Best you can hope with a guy like Stone is that you catch a ride on his slipstream.’
She blinked. Yes, she supposed it was. That was basically what had happened twenty months ago in her hotel room. If she hadn’t understood that before, her brother’s words made it clear now that she and Sóley were not permanent features of that ride.
‘So what time do you want me to drop you off?’
Taking a shallow breath, she looked over at her brother, but her eyes never reached his face. Instead she felt her gaze stretch past him to the TV screen, like a compass point seeking the magnetic north. She stared at Ragnar’s face, the artist in her responding to the clean symmetry of his features and the woman in her remembering the pressure of his mouth. He was so beautiful, and so very like his blonde, blue-eyed daughter in every way—except the dimples in her cheeks, which were entirely her own.
She felt something twist inside her. What if it was more than just looks? Growing up not knowing where half her DNA came from had been hard when her mother and brother were so alike in character. It had made her feel incomplete and unfinished, and even finally meeting her father hadn’t changed that. It had been too late for them to form a bond and get to know one another.
