Innocent’s Nine-Month Scandal

by Dani Collins

  Viktor listened with half an ear, reconfiguring things in his mind as he began accepting the reality of a wife and child.

  “Were we keeping you from work?” Rozi asked when they retired to their room for the night. “You seemed distracted.”

  “I was thinking about your work, actually. Do you intend to keep it up if you’re pregnant?”

  “What?” The tension around her eyes returned. “I haven’t thought about that at all.”

  “Can you work pregnant? Are there chemicals or other dangers?”

  Her eyes grew bright with concern.

  “I wear masks, mostly for dust, but a special one for fumes if I’m soldering. The workshop has to be properly ventilated, too. That’s the, um, tricky part, I suppose.” She swiped the back of her wrist across her eyebrow. “I would have to check out the different shops in Budapest, see if anyone is looking for a goldsmith. But I’m not ready to think about that, Viktor. We don’t know.”

  “But we should think about it. I can help you set up a shop at home or somewhere in the city. Could the conservatory be converted, do you think? Either way, you have lots of choices.”

  “No, I don’t! That’s why I’m panicking!”

  It struck him that she really hadn’t expected to be pregnant.

  He bit back a chuckle, not sure where the urge to laugh came from. It was definitely a bad idea to imply that her distress amused him. It didn’t, but there was a swell inside him somewhere between pride and exaltation. He had to temper an urge to pick her up and spin her around.

  He settled for cupping her face in his hands and pressing his mouth over her trembling lips in a warm, lingering kiss, trying to convey that she was safe. He would look after her.

  She reacted the way she always did, as though she couldn’t get enough of him. She released an indulgent moan into his mouth. The sound echoed in his ears, causing his own response to double down. He took control, shifted his hands to cradle the back of her head as he ravaged her mouth, bordering on rough, but she gave back the same insatiable, mind-blowing passion.

  With another whimper of frantic hunger, she slid her hands up his chest and around his neck, pulling him down into the kiss as she threw herself against him.

  Just as quickly, she cried out in pain and jerked back, startling him into dropping his hands onto her hips, steadying both of them. Her eyes had welled.

  “Drágám, what—?” He had never used the endearment in his life, but he was struck with bewilderment that he had caused her pain. He needed her to know it wasn’t intentional.

  “That hurt. A lot.” She splayed her hands protectively over the swells of her breasts. “I noticed they were getting tender and thought it was PMS.” The corners of her mouth trembled and dipped. “But they’ve never hurt this bad and—” She covered her face. “Oh, Viktor. It’s another symptom.”

  “Rozi.” He drew her in for a gentle embrace, taking care to let her keep her arms between them so she could protect her chest from another painful squashing. He rubbed her back, but she remained tense. He finally stroked her hair and kissed her temple.

  “We don’t have to make love if you don’t want to.”

  “But I want to make love. I just don’t want my chest to hurt. It’s frustrating.”

  He was back to smiling and burying it in her hair so she wouldn’t think he was laughing at her when he was simply delighted by her. He drew her into his lap as he sat on the edge of the bed and held her as though she was made of spun glass, inhaling the scent in her hair.

  “If you want to make love, I will always find a way,” he promised her, nuzzling her ear and working his way toward the mouth that he was hungry to plunder again. “You know how I adore your breasts. I’ll miss sucking your nipples. You seem to like that as much as I do. But there are other places I like to put my mouth.”

  She made a restive noise and shifted on his thighs, responding to his suggestive talk. He let his fingers trail over her knee and drew teasing circles on the sensitive skin of her inner thigh.

  “Places that drive you wild.”

  Her breathing was changing and she was trying to catch at his mouth with her own.

  “Tell me what you want,” he commanded, rubbing his lips into her throat. He trailed kisses down to her breastbone and lightly nudged her knees farther apart, so he could stretch long fingers up to the hot silk between.

  “You know,” she said, arms around his neck, teeth sharp on his earlobe before she soothed the pain by sucking, making his scalp tingle.

  He did let her see his savage smile then, lifting his head to watch her as he traced his finger against silk that was growing damp. “Tell me you want my mouth here.” She was trembling, lips parted and eyelashes fluttering as her focus tried to balance between his distracting touch and his commanding voice. “You know I do.”

  “Say it.” He was going out of his mind with this little game, as aroused by the tease as she was. “I don’t want to hurt you. You have to tell me everything you want me to do to you.”

  She shifted, arched, tried to open her legs and invite an increase in pressure. “Please, Viktor.” She ran her tongue around his ear, nearly sending his eyes into the back of his head. “Make love to me with your mouth and your hands and this.”

  Her hand went down his abdomen, finding his shape behind his fly and squeezing. He was so hard and ready, he nearly exploded.

  He shifted her onto her back on the mattress and flipped her skirt up to her stomach. Then he snapped her underpants at the hip with a wrench of his wrist, leaving the torn scrap on the floor as he sank to his knees. One long wet lick up the inside of one thigh, then the other, had her quivering in readiness. Her scent intoxicated him, driving him to the edge of his control.

  But as much as he wanted to throw himself on top of her and drive them both off the edge into ecstasy, he wanted this. Her utter surrender to his care of her. He wanted her to know she was safe in her vulnerability to him. That he would look after her in every possible way.

  Stretching his hand across her abdomen, he held her flat when she writhed under his pleasuring, urging her to endure it. He reveled in the way she muffled her cries of joy with her wrist. Then he did it again. And caressed her until the sharp pinnacle of climax stole her control a third time.

  He hesitated briefly then, before he put on a condom. He was convinced they didn’t need the protection. She was his now. He knew it and wanted her to know it.

  He used one, though, then moved onto the bed, staying on his knees between hers as he thrust into her, holding himself above her so he wouldn’t hurt her tender, beautiful breasts.

  She was on her back below him, all glazed eyes and hair clinging to her damp temples. She licked her swollen lips so they were shiny and inviting. She arched her neck in luxuriant joy. “Never stop,” she breathed, and locked her heels into his buttocks, urging him to drive deep and stay there.

  He bared his teeth, turned on beyond bearing when she fought his withdrawal with her feminine strength, inner muscles clinging to keep him from retreating.

  He set his fists into the mattress beside her rib cage and let his hips meet hers heavily, watching to ensure she was with him.

  “You’re mine,” he told her, hearing himself at a distance and wondering where this barbarian had come from. Still, he insisted she confirm it. “Say it.”

  She moved her arms across the covers as though making angels and bit her lip.

  He slowed his strokes and used his thumb to caress where they were joined, teasing her, circling the knot of nerves that made her thighs tense and her breath catch.

  “Say it.”

  “I am,” she groaned in capitulation. “I’m yours. All yours.”

  Words were impossible after that. It was all he could do to keep from becoming a true savage. He ensured he didn’t hurt her, but a primal need to imprint himself on her ove
rtook him and she came with him. She used the leverage of her feet in his ass to meet his thrusts and twisted in erotic agony right before his vision went red and his heart exploded. For long seconds, he felt nothing but wave after wave of ecstasy.

  Slowly he let himself wilt next to her, breathing ragged, eyes too heavy to open.

  * * *

  Rozi had been sure...quite, quite sure...that she wouldn’t be pregnant. This sojourn with Viktor was just a poignantly sweet side trip she would carry into old age as a youthful memory. His talk of her marrying him and setting up her own shop in the conservatory and raising her child in a foreign land away from her family was talk, that’s all.

  For all her romantic notions, she was a very ordinary person. Big things didn’t happen to her. She preferred vanilla ice cream and blue jeans and even preferred to listen to middle-of-the-road music like adult contemporary or country pop.

  So even though she bolted out of Viktor’s arms first thing in the morning and threw up violently enough to alarm him, she refused to believe she was pregnant.

  He insisted on taking her to the doctor in Visegrád that morning, though, while she insisted on looking up exotic diseases that might cause abnormal breast tenderness and nausea without a fever.

  “A negative could be a false negative,” the doctor warned when he realized she hadn’t even missed her cycle yet. “But a positive is almost certainly a positive.”

  Even now, armed with that warning, as the doctor sat across from her wearing his white coat and a pleasant yet very much not joking look on his face, and said the words, “You’re pregnant,” she was still thinking, But it could be norovirus.

  The doctor prescribed prenatal vitamins. Viktor promised to find her a family doctor in Budapest for routine screenings and ongoing pregnancy care. Rozi tried to think of any other time they had forgotten contraception beyond that very first time and bit her tongue against asking if it was really possible that it only took the once?

  They left his aunt’s home as soon as they could without arousing suspicions. His mother was staying with his aunt until her ankle improved so it was only the two of them in the back of Viktor’s chauffeured car as they continued on their journey.

  She didn’t realize she was working her ring against her knuckle until Viktor’s hand covered hers. He wove his fingers through hers and said, “You’re going to bruise yourself.”

  She flexed her hand in his. “I honestly didn’t think it would happen.”

  “And you’re unhappy?”

  “No! I’m worried...” She made herself look at him. She’d been avoiding that, too afraid to see suspicions had returned or some other accusatory emotion.

  He wore a look she could hardly describe. His features were sharp with alert tension, but the kind that came from anticipation. Like a racehorse ready to bolt out of its gate. Dynamic excitement came off him in such radiant waves, she was fairly blinded by the glow.

  “You’re happy,” she said in stunned comprehension.

  “I am.”

  “But now you have to marry me.”

  “Yes.” His hooded eyes watched her. “And you have to marry me.”

  A giddy coil sprang in her with a jolt of excitement. “You want that?”

  “I do.”

  Now she was going to fall apart again, chin crinkling and mouth unsteady as her emotions wobbled.

  “When?”

  He brushed the back of his knuckle under her eye where a single tear had blinked onto her cheekbone.

  “I looked up a few things myself, you know,” he teased lightly. “I’m to expect mood swings. And a woman who is rightly overwhelmed by the changes going on inside and around her.”

  “Everything is changing.”

  “True. So you tell me. A big wedding is a lot to organize when you’re not feeling well. So is restructuring your life. If you want me to take on some of those tasks, I will. Fair warning, I’d likely opt for marrying in a courthouse as soon as I can arrange it. But I know your family is important to you. We’ll talk again in a few days, when you’ve had time to get used to this news. But this is going to work, Rozi. You’ll see.”

  She smiled, starting to believe him. Starting to recognize this gorgeous, expansive, promising emotion swelling within her. It was love. Hers was too shy and tentative to be acknowledged aloud. His feelings were even more deeply buried, but she wanted to believe that tender light in his eyes was the match to what was dawning within her.

  Then she received news from her family that sent them plunging back to square one.

  CHAPTER TEN

  GISELLA FORWARDED THE press release and Rozi was reading about a truly horrific admission of massive fraud when Viktor appeared with his own tablet in hand.

  His expression was so forbidding and cold, her heart clutched in her chest. Gone was the doting husband-to-be. This was the starkly aloof, dismissive man she had met that first night.

  “I didn’t know,” she swore.

  His jaw clenched and he only penetrated her skull with a furious stare.

  “I don’t even have anything to do with Benny’s company,” she said of her cousin. Benny was the eldest son of her boss, Uncle Ben, who owned the jewelry shop, and ground zero for this explosive news. “Benny is a geologist. Barsi Minerals is his baby. It’s only associated to Barsi on Fifth in an arm’s-length way, to allow some of our clients to invest in precious and rare metals.”

  “You don’t get dividends?”

  “Grandmamma bought all of us some shares when Benny was starting out. It was her way of supporting his venture. So yes, I get a few dividends, but it’s not big money.”

  That wasn’t entirely true. It was the only investment she had other than a very modest emergency fund in her savings account. She had always liked knowing she had those shares as a retirement nest egg. Now it was being smashed open and eaten by coyotes.

  “Viktor, our reputation is very important to us. Gisella is saying that Benny is accepting responsibility, but his mistake was in trusting the wrong person. He didn’t salt those mineral samples.”

  “And it’s purely a coincidence that Kaine Michaels was set up to take the fall for this ‘mistake.’”

  “I don’t know how he was pulled into it.” Rozi had read between the lines on Gisella’s email and suspected that Gizi was romantically involved with Kaine. Or had been, before Benny’s crime tore them apart.

  Kaine Michaels was washing his hands of all of them, leaving the Barsi family to face investigations and possible criminal charges. Benny was on the hook for massive fines and Gisella was worried that the shop wouldn’t survive. All Rozi could think was that their grandmother would be devastated. Not just by the loss of her lifetime of work, but by what was happening to her grandson and the rest of them.

  “I have interests in steel,” Viktor said. “Was I to be the next mark?”

  His accusation was a knife straight to the base of her throat. “No.”

  “We can’t marry with this going on. I won’t associate my family name with that.” He threw his tablet onto an ottoman.

  “Fine.” She held his gaze, eyes so hot they ached, but she refused to blink.

  “And I won’t bail them out.”

  “Did I ask you to?”

  “Now you know better than to try. I have to go to the office.”

  She barely saw him for days, not that she wanted to. She felt horrid, sick all the time, exhausted, worried and homesick. She was miserable and couldn’t go home because she would only be dragged into the scandal. Even her mother, who was so worried she couldn’t speak without bursting into tears, was telling her to stay away until things settled down.

  Rozi would have given anything to spill out all her worries to Viktor, but she was so afraid that he would think she was playing for his sympathy she could only isolate herself and suffer in silence. She went to bed
early, avoided meals—which wasn’t hard since everything turned her stomach—and watched TV in her room instead of joining him downstairs.

  Finally, when she couldn’t contain her anguish another minute, she called Gisella on the tablet, catching up to her properly for the first time since Gisella had gone to San Francisco and Rozi left for Hungary.

  “How are the charges not cleared up yet?” Gizi asked her, sounding scandalized.

  “That’s just an excuse. I want to come home, Gizi. So much. But... Don’t tell Mom, okay? I’m pregnant.” It had been potentially exciting news—for a few days. Now it was exactly as distressing as she had feared it would become.

  Gisella was stunned, of course. “What are you going to do?”

  “Viktor said he wanted to marry me, but that was before...”

  “Benny,” Gisella provided.

  “Yes. He won’t make any announcements. It would impact his family and business. How bad is it there?”

  “Bad. But we’re figuring things out,” Gisella assured her in the determined tone that was her signature. “It’ll be messy and maybe we’ll all move into your parents’ house, but it’ll bring us closer, right?”

  It was a worst-case scenario and Rozi wanted to be there so bad, she nearly burst into tears.

  “I miss everyone so much. I feel horrible, Gizi. Morning sick and so guilty I’m not there. I want to curl up and cry.”

  “Do you want me to come?”

  “You can’t, can you?” She swallowed, hopeful for about one minute before she realized it would likely only arouse Viktor’s suspicions further.

  “Probably not. The investigators might think I’m fleeing the country or something. We’re being watched, Rozi. The investigators are probably monitoring this conversation right now. It’s a total nightmare. You’re smart to stay out of it as long as you can.”

  “I still feel horrible. And keeping this baby from Mom? She would want to come, but there’s no way they can afford it.” Especially if the modest income they all enjoyed from the shop had dried up. “I would far rather she paid Bea’s tuition for Juilliard. There’s nothing you or anyone can do here anyway.”