by Maisey Yates
“The baby isn’t yours. The baby is ours,” he said.
“But…but you and your wife…”
He froze, realizing suddenly that she didn’t know who he was. It didn’t seem possible. Her face betrayed nothing, not a hint of recognition or foreknowledge concerning what he was about to say. If she did know who he was, she was a world-class actress.
“My wife died two years ago.”
Those exotic eyes widened and her mouth dropped. “I’m…I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Melissa didn’t tell me that. She didn’t tell me anything about you but your name.”
“Usually that’s enough,” he said ruefully.
“But then…you don’t think I’m going to give you my baby?”
“Our baby,” he growled. “As much mine as yours. Assuming of course that you’re actually the mother and it wasn’t some other woman who donated genetic material.”
“No. It’s my baby. Biologically. I was artificially inseminated.” She lowered her gaze. “This was my third attempt. I didn’t get pregnant the first two times.”
“And you are certain it was my sample that took?”
“They were all your samples.” She pursed her lips. “They made the mistake months ago. They only realized after the last time. The time that was successful.”
Silence hung between them, thickening the air. Maximo felt his heart rate quicken, his blood pumping hard through his veins. He looked down at her, at those full pouting lips. In that moment his only thought was what a shame it was that he had not made three traditional conception attempts with this woman. She was incredibly beautiful—an enticing mix of strength and vulnerability that appealed to him in a way he didn’t understand. He crushed the surge of almost crippling desire that was washing through him.
“So you’re capable of having a baby with a man the usual way, and yet you chose to make one with a turkey-baster?” he said, his voice harsh.
Her lip curled in disgust. “That’s horrible.”
It was, and he knew it. Yet he felt compelled to lash out at her, at the woman who had walked into his home and tilted his world completely off its axis. He hadn’t been entirely happy with how his life was, but he had come to the point where he’d accepted it. Now she was here, offering him things he had long since let go of. Only what she was offering was a mangled, twisted version of the dream he and his wife had shared.
“You’re a lesbian?” he asked. If she was, it was a loss to his gender. A waste of a very beautiful woman, in his opinion.
Color flared in her cheeks. “No. I’m not a lesbian.”
“Then why not wait and have a baby with a husband?”
“Because I don’t want a husband.”
He took in her business attire for the first time. The extreme beauty of her face had held his attention before, preventing him from examining the rest of her appearance too closely, and he hadn’t noticed the neatly tailored charcoal pantsuit and starched white shirt. She was obviously a career woman. Probably intent on having day-care workers raise their child while she set about climbing the corporate ladder. Why have a baby, then? An accessory no doubt, the ultimate symbol of all she had achieved without the help of a man. Distaste coiled in his stomach, mingling with the desire that lingered there.
“Don’t imagine for one moment that you will be raising this child without me. We’ll have paternity testing done and if it is in fact my baby, you may yet find yourself with a husband, regardless of your original plans.”
He didn’t want to get married again. He hadn’t even been inclined to get involved in a casual relationship since Selena’s death, but that didn’t change the facts of the situation. If this was his child, there was no way he would be an absentee father. He wanted his son or daughter in Turan with him, not half a world away in the United States.
The thought of having his child looked upon as a royal bastard, illegitimate and unable to claim the inheritance that should belong to him or her by right, was not something that settled well with him. And there was only one way to remedy that.
The look of absolute shock on her face might have been comical if there were anything even remotely funny about the situation. “Did you just propose to me?”
“Not exactly.”
“I don’t know you. You don’t know me.”
“We’re having a baby,” he said simply.
“I fail to see what that has to do with marriage,” she said, that luscious mouth pursed into a tight pout.
“It’s a common reason for people to marry,” he said drily. “Arguably the most common.”
“I fully intended on being a single parent. I wasn’t waiting around for a white knight to sweep me off of my feet and offer matrimony. This wasn’t plan B while I waited around for Mr. Right. The baby was my only plan.”
“And I’m sure the League of Women applauds your progressive viewpoint, Ms. Whitman, but you are no longer the only person involved here. I am, as well. In fact, you chose to involve me.”
“Only because I need to know if you’re a carrier for CF.”
“Couldn’t you have had the baby tested?”
“I want to know before the baby is born if there’s a chance he or she might have the disease. It’s something that would require a lot of emotional preparation. There’s testing that can be done in utero, but they typically don’t perform the test unless both parents are found to be carriers. I could have waited and said I didn’t know the father and gotten prenatal testing done but there’s a slight miscarriage risk and I just couldn’t take the chance, not when I could just come and talk to you.”
“Or perhaps all of your feminist posturing is simply that. Posturing. You said you have a friend at the clinic, and I’m a powerful, wealthy man. It is not outside the realm of belief that you did not receive my sample by accident. How is it that my sample has been sitting there for two years and it suddenly got mixed up with the donor sperm?”
Maximo had seen people go to extreme lengths to get a hand on his money, to use his influence. Had this woman cooked up a scheme in order to net herself money and power? People had done worse for far less than he had to offer, for less than the mother of his child would stand to gain.
“I don’t know why the mistake happened, I only know that it did,” she said, her pretty white teeth gritted. “But don’t flatter yourself by thinking I would go to such trouble to tie myself to you just to get money. In fact, don’t flatter yourself by assuming I have any idea who you are.”
He barked out a laugh. “It’s hardly flattery to assume that a woman who is presumably well-informed and well educated would know who I was. Unless of course you’re neither of those things.”
Her eyes shimmered with golden fire, her finely arched brows lowered and drawn together. “Now you’re measuring my intellect by whether or not I’m aware of who you are? That’s quite an ego you have there, Mr. Rossi.”
“I’d hate to confirm your take on my ego, Ms. Whitman, but my official title is Prince Maximo Rossi, and I’m next in line for the throne of Turan. If the child you’re carrying is mine, then he or she is my heir, the future ruler of my country.”
Chapter Two
SUDDENLY it was horrifyingly clear why he’d looked familiar when she’d first seen him. He wasn’t just Mr. Max Rossi. She had seen him before. On the news, in the tabloids. He and his wife had been media favorites. They were royal and beautiful, and, by all accounts, extremely happy. Then, two years ago, he’d been in the news for his personal tragedy. The loss of his wife.
She was thankful she was sitting or she would have collapsed.
His dark brows snapped together and she registered concern in his eyes before her vision blurred slightly.
“Are you all right?” He knelt down in front of her and put a hand on her forehead. His skin felt hot and his touch left a tingling sensation behind when he swept his hand down to her hair and moved it aside, exposing her neck to the cool air. She hadn’t realized she’d been sweating until that moment.
“Yes,” she said. Then, “No.”
“Put your head down,” he said.
She was far too sick to do anything but comply. He gently tilted her head down, his hand moving slowly up and down the curve of her neck, the action soothing, his touch shockingly gentle despite the strength of his hand. It had been a very long time since anyone had touched her. There had been handshakes, casual contact during conversations at work, but she couldn’t remember the last time someone had put their hand on her with the intention to comfort. She hadn’t realized how amazing it could feel.
But Maximo’s touch was causing little rivulets of sweet sensation to wind through her, the slight rasp of his firm fingers against her skin a source of pleasure rather than the kind of anxiety she might expect. It was amazing how a man’s hands could be so gentle, yet so firm and masculine. She looked down at his other hand, which he’d settled on her thigh. It was so different from hers; his fingers long and blunt with clean, square nails, his palms wide and strong.
She could feel the warmth from his hand seeping through her wool trousers and she was shocked at how comforting it felt. And something beyond comforting. Something that made her breasts feel heavy and the air seem thick. She’d thought she just wasn’t the kind of person who responded to physical touch. She had never really been tactile or sexual, and that hadn’t ever bothered her. In fact, it had been something of a relief. She had never wanted to have a relationship, had never wanted to open herself up to someone like that, to grow to depend on them. As a result she’d gone out of her way to avoid serious romantic entanglements.
Her reaction to Maximo was due to pregnancy hormones. It had to be. There was no other explanation for why a part of her left ignored for so long should suddenly come roaring to life.
“I’m fine,” she said, her voice sounding strangled. She covered his hand with hers to move it away and the contact sent a shiver of something purely sexual through her. She jerked her hand back and stood up, ignoring the wobble in her vision. “Thank you.”
“Are you sure you’re healthy enough to sustain a pregnancy?” he asked, his voice full of concern, though for her or the baby she wasn’t sure.
“I’m fine. It just isn’t every day a girl finds out she’s pregnant with the heir to the Turani throne.”
Maximo knew there was no way Alison could have faked the way the color had suddenly drained from her face, no matter how accomplished an actress she was. And now, her golden eyes looked haunted, those pretty hands unsteady. After seeing the expression of pure shock on her face he couldn’t really believe that she’d orchestrated anything. She certainly didn’t look like a woman who was watching a carefully plotted scheme come to fruition. She looked like a hunted doe, all wide-eyed and terrified.
“It isn’t every day a man finds out he’s received a second chance to have a child,” he said.
“You want the baby,” she said, her voice hollow.
“Of course I want the baby. How could I not want my own child, my own flesh and blood?”
“If this is about producing an heir can’t you find some other woman to…”
“Enough!” He cut her off, rage heating his blood. “Is that what you think? That it would be so simple for me to forget that I had a child in the world? That I could simply abandon him because he was not planned? Could you walk away so easily?”
“Of course I couldn’t walk away!”
“Then why do you expect me to do it? If it is so simple, you have this baby and give him to me. Then have another one with a different man’s contribution.”
“You know I could never do that. I could never leave my baby!”
“Then do not expect that I could.”
“This is…This is all going wrong,” she moaned, sinking into the chair by his desk again and covering her face with her hands.
He swallowed. “Things in life don’t always go as we plan. Things change. People die. Accidents happen. All that can be done then is the best thing possible with what remains.”
She looked up at him, her eyes glittering with frustrated tears. “I don’t want to share my baby with a stranger. I don’t want to share my baby with anyone. If that makes me selfish then I’m sorry.”
“And I’m afraid I can’t let you walk away with my child.”
“I didn’t say I was going to walk away with your child. I understand that this is…difficult for you, too. But you weren’t planning on having a baby. I was, and…”
“I planned on having children for years. It was denied me, first through infertility and then through the loss of my wife. And now that I have the chance again, you will not stand in my way.”
He couldn’t let her out of his sight, of that he was certain. And his course of action after that was still undecided. Marriage still seemed like the most viable of his options, the only way to prevent his son or daughter from suffering the stigma of illegitimacy. And yet the very idea of marriage was enough to make him feel as if his lungs were closing in. But in the meantime, this woman wasn’t going to get any chances to escape from him.
“I have to fly back to Turan to see my personal physician. I’m not undergoing any medical testing in the U.S.”
“You and your wife obviously did your fertility treatments here.”
Yes, they had. Selena had been raised on the West Coast of the United States and they’d always kept a residence in Washington for vacations. It was the place they retreated to when they needed a break from the stresses of life under the microscope in Turan. That was why they had chosen the clinic in Washington to pursue their dream of starting a family. It was relaxing here…a place they had both felt at ease.
“Yes,” he said drily, “but my confidence in the competence of your medical system has declined greatly in the past forty minutes, for obvious reasons. My doctor in Turan will be fast and discreet.”
She nodded slowly, obviously not seeing any point in arguing with him. “When do you think you’ll be able to have the test done?”
“As soon as I arrive. The health of my child is important to me, too.”
She suddenly looked so desolate, so achingly sad, that it made him want to take her into his arms and just hold her, gather her fragile frame against him and support her, shelter her. The sudden, fierce need to comfort her shocked him. Was it because she was pregnant with his child? That had to be it. There was no other explanation for such a burning hunger to keep this woman safe from everything that might harm her. His child’s life was tied to hers and that called to him as a man—as a protector—on the most primal of levels.
Alison herself called to him on an even more basic level. Was it some kind of latent male instinct to claim what now seemed to be his? The ache to take her in his arms, crush those soft breasts against his chest, kiss her until her lips were swollen, to thrust into her body and join them in the most intimate way possible, was almost strong enough to overtake his carefully cultivated self-control.
“I’m thinking of taking legal action against the clinic,” she said softly. “I’m a lawyer and I’m certain we would have a case.”
“I’m certain we would, too, despite the fact that I don’t have a law degree,” he said wryly. “That would mean a lot of press.”
The media circus would be out of control. Sensational headlines for a world that loved nothing more than scandal. And his wife’s fertility issues, his marriage, all of it would be thrust into the spotlight. It was the last thing he wanted, both for Selena’s sake and his own. There was no point in tearing down her memory—not now that she was gone. Some things were best left buried, and the final months of his marriage were among them.
“You do tend to attract a lot of media attention, don’t you?”
“I didn’t think you listened to entertainment news.”
“I don’t. But I do stand in line at the grocery store on the odd occasion, which means I’ve seen the headlines. I just didn’t pay close enough attention to recognize you on sight.”
“Or by name.”
She shrugged. “I only have so much room in my head for trivia. Then I start losing important information.”
A reluctant laugh escaped his lips. He liked that she was able to take shots at him, even in the circumstances. It was rare that anyone stood up to him. Even Selena hadn’t done that. She had simply retreated from him. Maybe if she had been willing to come at him with her anger rather than keeping it all inside…
It was much too late for what-ifs. He pushed thoughts of Selena aside, choosing instead to focus on the problem at hand.
“I would like you to go to Turan with me.”
Her thickly lashed eyes widened. “No. I can’t. I’m busy here. I have a heavy caseload that demands a lot of my attention. Each one of my clients is extremely important and I can’t put anyone off.”
“Is there no one else at your office that can take care of that for you? You are pregnant, after all.”
“There’s no ‘pregnant, after all.’ I have responsibilities. Responsibilities that aren’t going to take a holiday just because you want me to.”
“I see. So your career is so important to you that you cannot manage to take time off to be there in person for the testing? For something that is so important to our child?”
She stiffened, her cheeks suddenly flooded with color, her pert chin thrust out at a stubborn angle. “That isn’t fair. It’s emotional blackmail.”
“And if that doesn’t work I’ll resort to some other form of blackmail. I’m not picky.”
Her lips were pursed again and he wanted to see her relax her mouth, wanted to enjoy the fullness, the temptation that she presented. It had been so long since a woman had tempted him he was enjoying the feeling. He extended his hand and rested his thumb on her lower lip. Her mouth parted in shock and heat shot from his hand to his groin when the action caused his thumb to dip between her lips and touch the wet tip of her tongue lightly.
Desire twisted his stomach. He wanted her with an intensity that shocked him. And he wasn’t certain the pregnancy had anything to do with that. He wanted her as a man wanted a woman. It was as simple as that.
