One Night Heir

by Lucy Monroe

  Which meant she’d better turn in an Academy Award nominee worthy performance of a woman feeling one hundred percent better. Or her grandparents wouldn’t be leaving town and heading for Canada the middle of next week as planned.

  She would tell them her doctor said she was a little run down and needed to take better vitamins. It was the truth, if not the whole truth. Gillian’s GP had prescribed gummy prenatal vitamins, which were supposed to be easier on her sensitive stomach, and folic acid for improved fetal development.

  She’d also suggested an iron supplement because Gillian’s levels were on the low end. That, at least, was a better explanation of her fatigue than the one she’d come up with on her own.

  Missing Maks was exhausting.

  Her grandparents would have no trouble accepting that Gillian wasn’t feeling completely up to par in general. They believed the breakup had taken its toll on Gillian’s health and hadn’t hesitated to say so. Gillian had reminded them that most women had their heart broken at least once by the time they were her age.

  Many had even been married and divorced by the age of twenty-six.

  Nana had harrumphed and commented several times that she thought, “That young man had a lot to answer for.”

  It was a good thing Gillian’s first appointment with her obstetrician wasn’t until the following Friday, though. She didn’t want to tell her grandparents another half-truth if she could help it.

  *

  Maks barked an answer into his phone and then cut the connection without saying goodbye.

  “Idiots,” he grumbled under his breath.

  Demyan said from the doorway, “It seems everyone we do business with has lost IQ points in the last months.”

  Maks took a deep breath and consciously reined in his initial urge to snap at his cousin. “Did you need something, Demyan?”

  “I have some information I believe you will find very interesting.”

  “We don’t need another outlet for the rare minerals mines. We cannot keep up with demand as it is.” Not and maintain environmental integrity.

  A must for any energy or mineral extraction endeavor for Volyarus companies. Maks’s father and grandfather before him had been well ahead of times in protecting the earth for future generations. No country on earth had stricter environmental regulations and policies than Volyarus.

  And Yurkovich Tanner was ahead of any of the big ten oil companies in developing alternative energy sources as well.

  As CEO, it was Maks’s job to make sure that continued to be the case. “The last time I checked, our wind farm productions are all on schedule, too.”

  “It’s not about business.”

  “I already know Father and the countess are on a secret getaway in the Cayman Islands.” Maks made no effort to curb the bitter sarcasm lacing his voice. “Why do you think I’m returning to Volyarus tomorrow? I’ll have to play Head of State for the month they are gone.”

  As if his job as CEO of Yurkovich Tanner wasn’t enough.

  But then his father had fulfilled both roles in the years between his own parents’ deaths and when Maks took over as CEO of the company at the age of twenty-five. King Fedir could have hired someone else as CEO for Yurkovich Tanner, as Maks planned to do when he was made official Head of State, but his father insisted on running the company personally.

  “Your mother will enjoy your company.”

  “More than my father’s. I know.” There was never anything as distasteful as a public row between his parents, but it was also no secret that they were not the best of friends.

  His mother lived a completely separate life from his father except when their roles in the monarchy drew them together.

  Demyan settled on the corner of Maks’s large, antique executive desk. “I think you’ll want to put off your flight at least a day.”

  “Why?” Maks all but growled.

  He was looking forward to going back to his homeland and getting out of temptation’s way. Nine weeks had not made staying away from Gillian any easier. He wanted her with a hunger he’d never had for another woman. It was inconvenient and frustrating.

  Dating other women had only proved to him that when he could still remember driving a brand-new Mercedes sports class, he wasn’t going to enjoy getting behind the wheel of a 1980s Volvo station wagon.

  He hadn’t had sex since his last night with Gillian.

  “Ms. Harris made an appointment with a doctor.”

  Just the sound of her name made that desire in Maks he’d striven so hard to control thump inside him.

  Using his formidable control, he evinced little interest in his cousin’s words. “So?”

  “An obstetrician.”

  “So, she’s looking into fertility treatments.” Maks’s already dark mood took a turn for the worse. “Making plans for the future.”

  “Not exactly, no.”

  “What the hell are you talking about then?”

  “According to our hacker, she’s confirmed by two blood tests and the baby’s heartbeat to be ten weeks’ viably pregnant.”

  “What?” His cousin could not have said what Maks thought he’d heard. “We have a hacker on payroll?”

  “Really? That’s what you want to know?”

  Maks glared at his cousin, his thoughts whirling and no clever retorts springing to mind for the first time in memory.

  Demyan grimaced. “Your decision to go without a condom came with consequences.”

  Maks had never regretted sharing confidences with his older cousin, but he never would have told Demyan about that particular folly if he had not been paralytically drunk, either.

  “Impossible!”

  “Not so much, no.”

  “Damn it, Demyan, this is no topic for jokes.”

  “I am well aware.” And Demyan had never looked more serious.

  “Are you telling me that Gillian is pregnant with my child?”

  “I am telling you that Ms. Harris was given a pregnancy test as part of a checkup for the flu and that test came back positive. A second test was administered. That test also came back positive. A Doppler ultrasound was performed and a baby’s healthy heartbeat was recorded. Her file indicates the pregnancy is ten weeks old.”

  “She has the flu?”

  Demyan just looked at him.

  Shock had destroyed Maks’s usual high level thinking processes. “What?”

  “I imagine she went in for the flu and discovered it was morning sickness.”

  “Oh.” Maks hadn’t spent much time in the company of pregnant women, but even he knew about morning sickness. He should have realized immediately. “Is she all right?”

  “I did not speak to your former girlfriend, Maks. I read a report from our investigative agency.”

  The reality of what Demyan was telling him, and all that it implied, finally and completely pierced his mind’s stupor. Maks swore vehemently and at length in Ukrainian.

  Demyan didn’t flinch, though he understood the words as well as Maks. “You believe you are the father.”

  “Of course I’m the father. Gillian doesn’t sleep around.”

  “She could have bedded another man in reaction to you dumping her.”

  The very thought infuriated Maks, but he kept all expression from his face. Even his cousin wasn’t privy to Maks’s innermost thoughts.

  He didn’t hide his displeasure at Demyan’s description of the breakup however. “I didn’t dump her. I was forced to end our relationship for the sake of the Crown.”

  “Because she could not give you children.”

  The irony was not lost on Maks. “Yes.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “What I planned to do before I found out her fallopian tubes are compromised. Marry her.” There was no other option.

  This child might well be their only child, but it would be his and that was a fact Maks would never dismiss.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  GILLIAN SHUT THE door behind her grandparents an
d sagged against it, free to do nothing to hide her fatigue and nausea for the first time in a week.

  It had been touch and go for a while there, but Gillian had successfully hidden her pregnancy from the older couple. She had an entire lifetime’s experience protecting them from truth that would hurt.

  She had spent her childhood doing a very good job of keeping how devastating their beloved son’s neglect of his only child had been to her emotions and ability to trust. Gillian had convinced them she did not mind only seeing her mother once a year, and that her father’s more frequent but still sporadic and mostly impersonal visits were just fine.

  To this day, neither of her grandparents knew how many nights she’d cried silently in her bed at night because neither of her parents would allow her to call them by anything but their first names. No mom or dad, or even mother and father.

  Nothing to indicate that Gillian belonged to them.

  She rubbed her hand over her still flat stomach. The baby growing in her womb would never doubt its place in her life.

  Unfortunately her own poor judgment meant she couldn’t guarantee the same from her baby’s father.

  That knowledge, more than any other, caused her sleepless nights now.

  Sighing, she moved into the bedroom. Time to get ready for work. She’d taken the week off to spend with her grandparents, but her boss and clients expected her in the studio later that morning.

  Ten hours later, Gillian had put a full day in at the photography studio and stumbled into her apartment well after her usual dinner hour. Dragging with exhaustion, she popped some corn in the microwave for dinner.

  Her plans for the evening included watching reruns of Extreme Makeover—Home Edition in her pajamas on the couch. She could do with some feel good, full on sap programming right now.

  The door buzzer sounded and she had a terrible irrational thought that her grandparents had decided to stay in town for a while, but she dismissed it.

  She’d gotten a quick call from Nana when they reached the Canadian border. They wouldn’t have turned around without reason and she hadn’t given them one.

  It could possibly be her father. Rich was known to drop in without warning, but his unexpected visits were as infrequent as the planned ones.

  She had friends, but one result of her upbringing and moving to the big city from a small Alaskan town was that she didn’t invite many of them to her home. That had only gotten more acute the last year as she’d dated a man who could define circumspect with his social life.

  Leaving the popcorn to finish, she crossed to the intercom box and pressed the communication button. “Yes.”

  “It is me, Gillian. Let me up.”

  Maks’s voice.

  Her fist came up to her chest, between her breasts, and she gulped in air. How could such a small thing wreak such devastation?

  But his voice had the power to take her to her knees. Literally. It was only leaning onto the wall that kept her upright.

  What was he doing here? In ten weeks, he hadn’t so much as texted her to see if she was all right.

  And now he showed up at her door?

  “Gillian?” His voice sounded tinny through the intercom. “Are you there?”

  “Yes,” she croaked, her mouth and throat dry.

  “You haven’t pushed the release for the door.”

  And he was surprised?

  She swallowed and took a breath, trying to ease the tightness in her chest. “What are you doing here?”

  “We need to talk.”

  A week, or even two after he’d left, she would have welcomed those words. “It’s been three months.”

  “Not quite. Ten weeks.”

  So, he’d tracked the time. It didn’t mean anything. “What do you want, Maks?”

  “Let me up and I will tell you.”

  “I don’t want to see you.” She’d just gotten to the point where she could go to sleep without a physical ache to be with him.

  And that didn’t happen every night.

  “I will make it all right.”

  He didn’t love her. Didn’t want her. Thought she was defective. How did he make that okay? “No.”

  “Gillian.”

  A small voice laced with that horrible emotion hope whispered to her that at least he was here now. This was better than her approaching him with news of her pregnancy and facing “duty driven” Maks. Wasn’t it?

  There was only one way to find out.

  It took more courage than she expected for her to give her tacit agreement to see him, but she was not weak.

  She also wasn’t overjoyed to have Maks seeking access to her apartment. “You’ll have to keep it short, I’m tired.”

  He didn’t reply and she didn’t expect him to. It wasn’t the empty admonishment it might have been before she rang security on him the last time he’d been to her apartment.

  Gillian pressed the button to open the downstairs security door before very pointedly returning to the kitchen.

  She’d showered after getting home from work and hadn’t bothered to do anything but pull her hair into a ponytail and slip into her favorite pajamas since.

  For the first time since meeting Maks, Gillian didn’t care that she wasn’t looking her best to see him. She wasn’t about to go rushing around trying to look gorgeous for a man who had ejected her from his life with the efficiency and power of a missile launcher.

  She was pouring the popcorn into a bowl when the doorbell rang.

  Carrying the bowl, she made her way to the apartment’s front door. She only had to take three deep breaths and give herself one very stern reminder she was in control here before opening it.

  Maks looked a little less than his immaculate self, too. His almost black hair was messy, like he’d been running his fingers through it. He’d lost his tie between the office and her apartment and he’d skipped his second shave of the day, leaving the five o’clock shadow to darken his cheeks and jaw.

  Ten weeks ago, she would have found that incredibly sexy. She also would have taken his state as proof he felt comfortable enough to be himself in her presence.

  Now, it worried her a little.

  Had their separation been hard on him, too? She had a very hard time believing he was here in hopes of getting back together. As far as he knew, nothing had changed.

  She wasn’t making any assumptions this time, one way or another, though. Whatever he wanted, whatever he was feeling, he’d have to come out and say it. In words that could not be mistaken to mean something else.

  If he was looking for reconciliation, however, she had no idea how she would respond.

  Things had changed for her, unequivocally, but one thing hadn’t. He didn’t love her.

  Her stomach roiled with stress and she forced herself to take shallow breaths so she did not retch.

  The one saving grace to this situation was that he didn’t know she was pregnant. That, at least, wasn’t on the table to complicate things further.

  He reached out as if to touch her. “You’re pale.”

  “I’m tired.” She stepped back, not allowing that casual connection to happen.

  It wouldn’t be good for her campaign to get over him.

  “So you said.” He almost seemed lost for words.

  “Come inside.”

  He nodded, the movement jerky, and followed her into the living room. She set the popcorn bowl on the table next to the glass of milk she’d poured herself earlier. “Would you like something to drink?”

  He nodded and then shook his head. “You shouldn’t be drinking.”

  “Because I’m tired?” She shrugged. “I’m not going to fall asleep on you. Besides, I’m drinking milk.”

  “Good. That’s great.”

  She didn’t respond. Seeing him was stirring memories and feelings that brought pain and hope, both in debilitating degrees.

  The hope scared her the most. A lot of people didn’t realize just how truly terrifying hope could be. Particularly for some
one whose hopes had been dashed as many times as hers had been.

  There was a cost for believing in someone bound to disappoint. Someone like her charismatic, famous and perennially distanced father.

  Deciding a more relaxed Maks would be better for both of them, she crossed to her small bar and poured him a whiskey.

  He was standing right behind her when she turned to hand it to him, making her jump back.

  He reached out to grab her. “Careful!”

  “Don’t have a conniption.” Once again, she jerked out of the path of his potential touch. “I wasn’t going to fall and I wouldn’t have been startled if you hadn’t been hulking behind me. Take your drink and sit down.”

  He frowned, but then nodded almost meekly and did just that.

  Gillian wasn’t exactly sure what to do with an awkward, meek Maks. Maybe it was her pregnancy hormones, but she wasn’t feeling any big urges to make him more comfortable, either.

  She took her own seat, grabbing a handful of popcorn and starting to eat it one kernel at a time. Her stomach needed settling and she wasn’t standing on ceremony to do it.

  “Is that your dinner?” Maks asked, sounding truly appalled.

  “Yes.”

  “But that is hardly adequate nourishment.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “But…”

  She rolled her eyes. “Did you come here to talk to me about my eating habits or something else? News of our former relationship hasn’t leaked to the press, has it?” she asked, the prospect a truly dismaying one.

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  “Yes, that would complicate matters in ways we do not need at the present.”

  “What matters? I’m not sure why you’re here, Maks.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  She wanted to believe it was because the prince couldn’t live without her, but somehow Gillian knew that particular fairy tale wasn’t for her. “No.”

  “We have a very delicate situation and if we do not handle it correctly, it will blow up in our faces.”

  “The delicate situation of…”

  “You can drop the pretense. I know.”