by Laurie Paige
September. By the end of the month, the leaves would be showing tinges of fall color. Gold. Scarlet. Russet.
Winter would come and with it, the rain. People rarely carried umbrellas here unless it was a real downpour. But she would, for the baby’s sake.
Then it would be spring. The baby would be due in April, along with the tulips and daffodils. She would name the baby after a flower. Or the month. April, that was a pretty name. Perhaps Katherine for her sister.
April Katherine? Katherine April?
Arriving at the path, she continued to think about the baby as she started a slow warm-up run. It occurred to her that she was assuming the child was a girl.
She sighed and stopped to do some light stretches at the half-mile marker. Girls are easier to raise, she decided as she touched her fingers to her toes.
On the other hand, boys didn’t get pregnant.
If her son got a girl pregnant, she would throttle him, then escort him and the girl to the minister. No child of hers would disavow a child….
Please, she ordered her wildly roaming mind, one problem at a time. Let’s get this baby here before we start worrying about grandchildren.
“Watch out!”
She glanced up in time to see a golf ball come whizzing right at her. She ducked and it went flying over her head to plunk against a tree, then roll down the path and stop against her shoe.
Two men rushed down the slope from the golf course. “I’m terribly sorry,” one of them called. “I sliced, and the ball hit a tree, then came flying your way.”
“That’s okay. No harm done,” Ivy assured the two older men, who were panting from their run. She picked up the ball and tossed it across the narrow creek to them. “Have a good game.”
“Thanks,” the men said in unison and trudged up the hill to the fairway.
Ivy stretched her arms over her head, reaching for the sky. She started when she spied two other men standing at the bend in the trail ahead, observing her intently.
A shiver danced along her scalp and down her spine. The two men were the same height. They had identical lean, muscular builds. One’s hair was lighter, though, with sun streaks running through the brown. The other’s was as black as midnight. The dappled sunlight cast diamond dust over it as the leaves shifted above his head. His dark gaze never strayed from her face.
She gasped. Blinked. Gasped again.
Thankfully the world started to rapidly go dark. She grabbed the post supporting the chin-up bar, then felt her right knee sink into the soft mulch of the path. Forcing her eyes open, she saw she was going down like a ship with a slow leak.
“She’s fainting,” a man’s voice said close by.
Well, duh, she thought, pressing one hand against the ground to stop the downward spiral.
“I’ve got her,” another said.
She was lifted into strong arms as if she weighed no more than a sack of sugar.
“Can you hear me?” the man holding her asked.
She opened her eyes and focused with difficulty. “Put me down. I can walk,” she said coolly, furiously.
“She’s glad to see me,” Max said to his companion, ironic amusement overlaying his deep baritone.
“I can tell,” his friend replied.
Ivy closed her eyes, hoping when she opened them that none of this would be happening….
Four
“That’s a steep hill,” Ivy heard the other man say. “Let’s make a packsaddle to carry her up. Her apartment is the one on this end of the nearest building.”
Ivy opened her eyes and struggled to be free. “I’m fine. I can walk.”
Max let her feet slip to the ground, but he kept her in a protective embrace. “The hospital is closer.”
“Good idea,” his friend said.
“It isn’t a good idea,” Ivy informed them. She groaned and put a hand to her head as dizziness attacked her, belying her words.
“Let’s go,” Max said. “I’ll carry you if I have to,” he warned when she balked. He turned back to the path, his arm around her waist.
“I don’t need to see a doctor. And I don’t need you,” she said, desperate to get away from him and get herself composed and used—resigned?—to the idea of Max being here in Portland. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
“Looking for you,” he replied in his wonderfully smooth voice. “Why else?” He gently turned her again and headed for her apartment complex.
“Oh.” She couldn’t think of another word. They started up the grassy hill. She glanced at the other man and found him surveying the area as if thinking of buying it or else looking for a mugger behind every tree. “Who are you?”
“A friend,” Max said. “Charles Curland. Chuck and I went to school together. Brown University,” he added before she could ask.
“Glad to meet you,” the friend said politely.
From the laughter in his eyes, she thought he was about to become hysterical with delight. “My pleasure,” she responded automatically, her tone full of doubt.
The man cast her a knowing glance, then grinned. There was something open and very likable about him. Her gaze went to Max. Prince Regent Max. Huh. Too bad she couldn’t detect the same traits in him!
Although she tried to ignore it, she was acutely aware of his arm around her waist, of the strength and warmth of his body as he walked next to her. She wanted to lay her head on his shoulder and let him take the burden of an unplanned pregnancy from her.
A gasp escaped her at the ridiculous idea. Then the awful dizziness flashed over her again, and she had to lean into him to keep from swaying.
“We’re almost there,” he murmured in the same dulcet tones she recalled from that night.
They strode up the sidewalk, the three steps to her porch, and stopped at her door.
“The key,” Max said.
“It isn’t locked.”
He gave her a stern glance before opening the door and ushering her inside. His dark eyes took in the whole living area at a glance, then he led her to the sofa and with a gentle but firm touch laid her upon it.
“I’m fine,” she said, smiling brightly to prove it. “You can go now.” She pushed herself upright in the corner of the sofa.
“What is the number of your doctor?” he asked.
“It’s Saturday. His day off,” she added, when the day of the week didn’t seem to make an impression.
“He will see you,” Max asserted.
At last anger came to her aid. “This isn’t Lantanya, Your Highness or Majesty or whatever you call yourself. You have no authority here.”
He studied her with a gaze so sharp she felt it right inside her. It made her nervous. She crossed her arms over her middle so he couldn’t detect the child growing there.
“So you know,” he said in an oddly quiet, thoughtful manner, as if he regretted the fact.
“I saw it in a tabloid. Along with a picture of us going into the resort.”
A blush started at her toes and rushed up to her face like a wildfire through a dry forest. She glanced at his friend and saw compassion in his gaze. Pressing her lips together, she stared miserably at the floor, feeling foolish and deceived and gullible.
All of which she had certainly been in July.
“Chuck is also my security advisor,” Max told her. “He knows everything.” He paused. “Everything,” he murmured in a low, husky tone.
The heat swept over her again. She leaped from the sofa and headed to the powder room down the hall past the kitchen. “I have to—I’m going to—”
She clamped a hand over her mouth.
Max followed her into the tiny bathroom. He held her head while she was violently ill. She didn’t know whether she was going to die from the nausea or embarrassment. At the moment she didn’t much care which it was. She just hoped it would happen soon.
In a bizarre repeat of that magical night, he dampened a washcloth and ministered to her, ignoring her protests as he had nearly two months ago. He w
iped her face and down her neck, then stood close while she used mouthwash, all the while wishing she could disappear in a wisp of smoke.
“I’m fine,” she said in a near whisper, yet feeling weak and shaky and terribly unsure of herself.
Grabbing a comb, she tried to bestow some order to her riotous curls. Her elbow bumped him in the chest. The room was much too small for both of them.
She tossed the comb in a drawer, refusing to look at him or herself in the mirror. “I’m really okay.”
“Yeah, right,” Max said. He touched a curl. “I liked your hair long—”
“It was too much trouble,” she said, defending her decision to have it cut.
“But,” he continued, “I also like it this way. It suits you, I think.”
“Oh.”
He inched closer, then encircled her with his arms and laid both hands on her abdomen. “Is there a child?”
Startled, she met his eyes in the gilt mirror she’d found beside the Dumpster behind her building and had rescued and restored to its original beauty. The glass seemed to go hazy, then it began to darken.
“Not again,” she said in equal parts disgust and despair.
Max’s arms tightened around her as she held the edge of the counter. Then she slipped into blissful oblivion.
“Chuck!” Max called. “I need some help.”
Chuck appeared at the door. His eyebrows rose in amusement as he helped Max get the unconscious Ivy into the living room again. “You do have a way with women,” he murmured, stepping back as Max bent over Ivy.
“Should we call an ambulance?” Max wanted to know, his insides clenched into knots as he studied Ivy’s still figure. “I think there’s a baby. Could she be miscarrying?”
Guilt at surprising her—shocking her, he amended—hit him deep and hard. He stared at her beautiful face, which looked like that of a cherub with its frame of golden curls. He groaned silently as desire mingled with the prickling of his conscience.
Chuck looked worried now. “That’s her car in the parking space outside. Let’s use it and take her to the emergency room. That will be the quickest.”
Max nodded. He needed action. “Find the keys. I’ll take care of her.”
Chuck went to the purse on the kitchen counter and removed a set of keys. “Got ’em. Let’s go.”
Max carried Ivy while Chuck opened and closed doors. In a couple of minutes they were off. They used the frontage road to the hospital instead of going on the freeway, and in less than five minutes pulled up at the emergency entrance to the hospital. An orderly brought a gurney out when he saw them lifting the unconscious woman from the car.
“Accident?” he asked.
“No. She fainted,” Max said. “Twice.”
The man wheeled her into the emergency room.
Another nurse joined them. “That’s Ivy Crosby,” she said. “I was with her this morning in the nursery. What happened?” Her hazel eyes darted between Max and Chuck as if suspicious of them.
“She fainted,” Max said again, beginning to feel he was going to do something desperate if the E.R. staff didn’t stop asking questions and start treatment. “I thought…she could be miscarrying.”
“I’ll get help,” the orderly said and left them to go to a phone at the receptionist’s desk. “Can one of you sign her in?”
“I will,” Max said impatiently. “Where’s a doctor?”
“On his way,” the cheerful orderly said a few seconds later. “We’ll put her in a room.”
Max and Chuck followed the others through swinging doors that said No Admittance and into a cubicle. The nurse already had a chart in hand and began filling in blanks as she took Ivy’s vital signs. She hooked up monitors and soon the steady blip of a heartbeat appeared on a screen.
Ivy opened her eyes. “I want to go home.”
Max took her hand. “Not until the doctor sees you.”
“That would be me,” the doctor said, coming into the cubicle. “Ivy is my patient. Hi, what have you done to yourself?” he asked her.
Max didn’t like the casual manner of the entire E.R. personnel. “She fainted,” he said for the umpteenth time. “She’s…she may be pregnant, so there could be a problem.”
An odd feeling pierced his chest. He realized he felt the possible loss of the child as a physical thing—an actual ache in his heart.
“Is that so?” the doctor said, peering at Ivy.
“I have an appointment with you next week,” she said, not looking at Max. “I, uh, got a test kit earlier this week. It was positive.”
The doctor, who looked pretty young to Max, turned to the men. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, Max noted.
“If you gentlemen will excuse us?” he said.
The orderly ushered them into a waiting room to the right of the E.R. reception area. “I’ll call you when she’s ready,” he said and disappeared.
“Ready for what?” Max demanded irritably. He hadn’t liked being tossed out of the cubicle. If he’d been her husband, they wouldn’t have thrown him out.
But he wasn’t.
“We have to be married right away,” he said to Chuck.
Chuck’s eyebrows rose sardonically. “No, thanks. It isn’t that I don’t like you, but not that way.”
If looks could kill, Max would have sizzled his friend into a cinder in ten seconds.
Chuck smiled slightly. “She’s in good hands. Her water hasn’t broken so I don’t think there’s a miscarriage. I also think part of her fainting was that she didn’t want to face you, old man.”
Max stilled at this diagnosis. He considered it from several angles. One reason Chuck was his best friend was that the man told him the truth as he saw it. Max hoped he was right about the child being okay.
“You think she’s afraid of me,” he concluded after mulling over the second part of Chuck’s observations. “Why?”
Chuck went over to the coffeemaker and poured them each a plastic cup of the strong brew. He returned to his chair and handed one cup to Max. “She doesn’t know what you want from her. Maybe she’s worried you’ll try to take the baby when it comes. Mothers can be pretty protective.”
“Hmm.” Max paced the narrow space between the sofa and the table where the coffee setup was located. “Pregnant women can be pretty unreasonable.” He saw his friend’s quickly concealed surprise. “Or so I’ve read,” he muttered, frowning to cover the disturbing swirl of emotion that ran over him at the thought of Ivy carrying his child.
Chuck nodded. “She seems rather independent. She also didn’t seem interested in the fact that you’re of a royal family. How are you going to convince her to marry you and return to Lantanya?”
Leave it to Chuck to state what Max hadn’t wanted to admit. His passionate rose may have literally fallen at his feet, but she wasn’t the woman he’d kissed and made love to.
The blood boiled through his veins at the thought of that night. He couldn’t remember the last occasion he’d made love three times in one night with a woman. When he’d run out of condoms after the second time, he’d knowingly taken a chance, unable to resist the passion that rode him with a relentless demand for completion.
It had been the same for her, he recalled, unable to suppress a smile as he recalled the pleasures in her lips, her arms, her supple body, the way she’d touched him and clung to him….
“Earth to Max.”
He glanced at Chuck. “What?”
“The doctor.”
The doctor entered the small waiting room, his smile meant to be reassuring. Max wanted the man to tell him what he needed to hear.
The doctor removed the stethoscope from around his neck and slipped it into the pocket of his white jacket. “She’s doing fine.”
“So she insisted just before she fainted a second time,” Max said.
“Hormones,” the doctor said casually. “And surprise. She said she hadn’t expected to see you.”
“Obviously.”
It occurred
to Max that Ivy didn’t want to see him, that she hadn’t intended to contact him about the child. Had their night together meant so little?
Something hard and painful coalesced inside him. Was she, like his uncle, playing some game of her own?
He would find out. Neither his kingdom, his heir nor his heart was up for grabs. Not by anyone, not even the rose.
Ivy Crosby appeared composed while she gave her insurance information to the E.R. receptionist. Nancy Allen returned Ivy’s smile when she thanked her and the orderly for their help. When the tall, dark-haired man took her arm and escorted her outside, she went docilely.
Nancy thought the man’s actions were rather romantic. She continued her duties, glad she had the day shift and that it wasn’t yet busy for a Saturday. After checking supplies and straightening up the cubicle, she went on her break. In the cafeteria, at the tables reserved for the medical staff, she sank into a chair with a cup of tea and idly picked up a newspaper someone had left there.
The headline read The Lion Roars.
Nancy grimaced in disgust. The paper was a weekly tabloid, its articles so wild they couldn’t possibly be true. Nevertheless she propped her feet on another chair, sipped the tea and read through the main story.
Ah, a romantic tryst with a prince, who was soon to be king of some place she could just barely recall from long-ago school days. She glanced at the accompanying picture.
Then looked again.
Holding the grainy print nearly to her nose, she studied the pair. “My gosh,” she murmured. “My gosh!”
She removed the front page from the tabloid, folded it into a neat square and tucked it into her pocket. This was exciting news, and she couldn’t wait to tell it to someone.
At that moment, Everett Baker, the accountant she’d been sort of seeing of late, entered the cafeteria. His face brightened at seeing her and he came over.
“Hi,” she said, glad to see him, too. “What are you doing here? It’s Saturday.”
“Catching up,” he told her. “Inputting files into the computer.”
