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King Gregorios shut his eyes. When he opened them again, a fierce determination burned in their depths. “Idas will never get what he wants.”
An answering fury stirred to life inside of him. “He will never take Akathinia. But if he is behind Athamos’s death, he will pay for it.”
“It was no accident,” his father bit out. “Idas and his son want to provoke us into a conflict so they can use it as an excuse to swallow us up to cover their own inadequacies.”
He was well aware of the reason Carnelia wanted Akathinia back in the fold, but he sought to keep a rational head. “The grudge between Athamos and Kostas has been going on for years. We need the facts.”
The king’s mouth curled. “Kostas is his father’s errand boy.”
Nik raked a hand through his hair. “The Carnelian military is twice the size of ours. Akathinia is prospering, but we cannot match what they have built up, even to defend ourselves.”
His father nodded. “We have made an economic alliance with the Agiero family to acquire the resources we need. Athamos was to marry the Countess of Agiero to tie the two families together. The announcement was imminent.”
His head reeled. A marriage had been in the works while Athamos had been carrying on an affair with another woman? Why had his brother not mentioned it to him?
His father fixed his steely blue gaze on him. “I will never rule again. You will marry the countess once you are coronated king. Cement the alliance.”
He swallowed hard, all of it too much to process. His father’s gaze sharpened on his face. “You must be a leader now, Nikandros. As strong as your brother was. The time has come to step up to your responsibilities.”
His responsibilities? Hadn’t he been bankrolling this nation with his work in New York? Hadn’t he made Akathinia the talk of the Mediterranean—the place to visit—where almost every one of his people had a job? Antagonism heated his skin. What had it taken, five, six sentences for his father to start drawing comparisons between him and his brother? Unfavorable comparisons.
His father and Athamos had always been in lockstep, their philosophies on life and ruling at polar opposites of his own. He was progressive, rooted in his experiences abroad; they remained stuck in the past, preferring to cling to outdated tradition.
He had always been the afterthought. The prince embedded in New York, quietly building the fortunes of his country while his father and brother took the credit.
His desire to make peace with his father faded on a surge of antagonism. Always it was like this.
The machine at the side of the bed started beeping. Nik lifted a wary eye to it. “You must rest,” he told his father. “You are weak. You need to recuperate.”
His father sank back against the pillows and closed his eyes. Nik released his hand and stood up. To battle the enemy was one thing. Locking horns with his father another campaign entirely. The latter could prove to be a far more stubborn, drawn-out war of wills.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_74b34927-8891-5a58-a397-8b4077b0415b)
SOFÍ A WAS CONSCIOUS of the fact that chocolate was emotional gratification of the highest level, emotional gratification that would dissipate as rapidly as it left her bloodstream. But since nothing else was working, she was giving it her best shot.
In the weeks following her final assignation with Nik she’d promised herself she would move on. She’d been fairly successful at it, throwing herself into her work at the boutique and interviewing for a new staff member—what she considered the silver lining of her and Nik’s split—the knowledge that she did, indeed, need to pursue her dream, now not later. But somehow, after all their weeks of keeping their relationship out of the public eye, a photographer had documented her and Nik’s departure from Natalia’s benefit. Had immortalized their final adieu.
Putting the whole thing behind her had become an exercise in futility. Which would all have been bad enough, if the rumors of Nik’s pending engagement to the Countess of Agiero hadn’t added fuel to the fire. The press were having a field day comparing her to the stately countess. If she heard herself described as the fiery temptress of Latin descent versus the icy, cool aristocrat Nik was about to marry one more time, she was going to start living up to her nickname.
Tearing the paper off the bar of dark European chocolate she’d purchased at the corner store, she shoved a piece in her mouth and began the walk back to the boutique.
She was also hurt, she acknowledged. That Nik was to be engaged to a woman weeks after their own affair had ended stung. That she was just that forgettable. Her rational brain told her there were political factors behind it given the countess’s powerful family, but Vittoria Agiero’s stunning beauty was a kick in the ribs. As was the fact she was a blue-blooded aristocrat whom Sofía would be more likely to dress than ever rub elbows with.
She tore off another piece of chocolate and popped it in her mouth. Emotional gratification had never tasted so good. Not when her mixed cauldron of emotions also included her sorrow for Nik. Her heart went out to him for what he was going through. She wanted to be there to comfort him in the storm he was facing. And how crazy was that, because he’d made it clear he didn’t want her.
Still, it made her heart ache to look at the photos from his brother’s funeral, from his coronation day, which had taken place a month after Athamos’s death. He had looked stone-faced through all of it, devoid of emotion. But she knew it was all a cover for a man who carried his feelings bottled up inside of him.
Katharine gave the chocolate bar in her hand a wry look as Sofía made her way through the chime-enabled doors of the boutique.
“That’s one a day this week. You going to let him ruin your figure along with everything else?”
Sofía scowled at the woman who’d been her best friend since design school. “This has nothing to do with him. I was too hungry to wait for lunch.”
Katharine hung the dress she was holding on a hanger. “I think you have depression hunger. The to hell with it kind.”
“I’m also starving.” Sofía set the chocolate bar down on the counter and reached for the bottle of water she’d stashed behind the register. “Like nauseous hungry if I don’t eat lately. It must be the exercise.”
She’d been sweating it out in a fitness class every night to take the place of her dates with Nik. It was definitely helping her figure, despite the chocolate.
Katharine gave her a funny look. “You know what that sounds like, right?”
Sofía blinked. Blanched. “Oh, no. It couldn’t be. We were always careful. Obsessively careful.”
Katharine shrugged. “I’ve just never seen you eat junk food.”
A customer popped out of the fitting room at the back of the store. Her partner went to assist her. Sofía put the bottle down on the counter, a jittery feeling running through her. There was no way she was pregnant. She was on birth control.
She pulled her phone from her purse and checked the calendar. The blood drained from her face. Dear God. She was late. She hadn’t even noticed given the insanity of her life of late.
“Back in a minute,” she blurted to Katharine, grabbing her purse and hightailing it out the door. There was only one way to dispel the impossibility of what was running through her head.
At the drugstore, she snatched two pregnancy tests from the shelf, paid for them and flew back to the boutique, where she locked herself in the bathroom and administered them. Two solid blue plus signs later she stood looking at a disaster in the making.
“Sofía...” Katharine banged on the door. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.”
Katharine’s tone was grim. “Open up.”
She opened the door. Held up the stick.
Katharine’s face dropped. “Did you do more than one?”
Her head bobbed up and down.
“Okay,” her friend said slowly, “This is what we’re going to do. You’re going to remain calm until you see your doctor. Then you can panic.”
Except seeing her doctor the following morning only triple confirmed what she already knew. She was pregnant. And no amount of denial or panic was going to change it.
* * *
Nik lifted his gaze from the seemingly endless document recapping plans for the immediate expansion of the armed forces, his eyes having glazed over ten minutes ago. Undoubtedly it was a complex, tightly timed schedule on how the government should move forward, but he failed to see how it required fifty pages to bring him up to speed. He’d gotten the gist by page five.
Exhaling deeply, his gaze slid to the pile of newspapers on his desk. Admittedly, part of his distraction might have to do with the picture of Sofía on the front page of the society section of one of the New York papers, her face turned down as she left her apartment. Beautiful Sofía Trumped by a Countess Licks Her Wounds blared the headline.
Aside from being patently untrue—spirited Sofía could never be found lacking versus his chilly soon-to-be fiancée—the racy headlines weren’t helping his merger with the Agiero family. Although when it came to Vittoria, it was hard to tell if it was just her stiff demeanor or that her nose was, in fact, out of joint. He had dined with her three times now and was actually wondering how he was going to psyche himself up to bed her. Beautiful she might be; engaging and personable she was not.
Unfortunately, he and the countess were announcing their engagement next week and his choice of who to bed would be forever taken away from him. As it had been with everything else.
His chest tightened at the thought of what he’d had and what he’d lost. Things that would never be given back to him. His brother. His life. The world as he’d known it. It was like opening a can of worms, thinking about it. He’d tried not to.
His life had been a living hell since he’d come back to Akathinia, his father’s recovery slow, his country’s recovery from its crown prince’s death equally lengthy and sorrow-ridden, particularly given Carnelia’s failure to deliver anything other than a formally worded apology via messenger. As if that would ever do.
His coronation had been a blur. He was fairly sure he had processed little of it, his only focus his increasingly verbose neighbor who continued to insist Akathinia was better off back within the Catharian island fold—a desire that Nik knew was motivated by economic reasons. Carnelia’s economy was struggling, had been for years, and Akathinia was prospering. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together.
And, if he were to be honest, he wanted, needed to prove to his father and the people that he had the ability to lead this country as well or better than Athamos would have. It was something that kept him up at night.
Exhaling a long breath, he took a sip of his coffee, set the cup down and returned his attention to the report in front of him, skipping to the conclusion. His attention was pulled away once again when Abram knocked on the door and entered.
“Sorry to interrupt, sir.”
He lifted a brow.
“You asked me to keep an eye on Ms. Ramirez, given the news coverage.”
His fingers dropped away from the papers. “Is she all right?”
“She’s fine.” Abram clasped his hands together in front of him. “There has been a development.”
“Which is?”
“Ms. Ramirez is pregnant.”
“Pregnant?” He repeated the word as if he couldn’t possibly have heard it right.
“We had a detail on her as you requested, with so many photographers still trailing her. She purchased a pregnancy test earlier this week, then saw her doctor.”
Thee mou. His brain attempted to absorb what his aide was telling him. It was inconceivable. They had been so careful.
A buzzing sound filled his head. “And the doctor? We know for sure it was confirmed?”
“Yes.”
He got to his feet, his head spinning violently. It was impossible. Impossible.
He excused Abram. Paced the room and attempted to wrap his head around what he’d just been told. He was going to be a father. Sofía was carrying the heir to Akathinia. It was a disaster of incalculable proportions.
It occurred to him Sofía hadn’t told him because the baby wasn’t his. But as soon as the idea filled his head, he discarded it. Sofía hadn’t had a lover before him for a long while. They had been exclusive. That he knew.
So why not tell him? What was she waiting for? An image of that last time they’d been together filled his head. Woke up old demons. Sofía running a finger down his cheek. I wanted to end it like this. The emotion he’d read in her eyes that said she’d gotten too attached. How she’d stopped him when he’d reached for a condom... Can it be just us tonight?
Blood pounded his temples. Had she bedded him that night with the intention of getting pregnant? It seemed so at odds with Sofía’s independent personality. With her acceptance of the no commitment rules of their relationship. Yet didn’t he know from personal experience just how far a woman was willing to go to keep a prince? To preserve a relationship she knew was ending?
His head was in only a slightly better state when he found his father taking a mandated walk in the formal gardens. He curtly broke the news, without preamble. The king’s leathery old face turned thunderous.
“Pregnant? Thee mou, Nikandros. We have all turned a blind eye to your philandering, but to have her conceive your heir? Have you lost your mind?”
His jaw hardened. “It was not planned, obviously.”
“By you. What about by her?” He shook his head. “Has history taught you nothing?”
A red mist descended over his vision. “Sofía is not Charlotte.”
“You wouldn’t hear ill of your first American plaything either. Then she sold her story to the tabloids and seriously damaged the reputation of this family.”
And his father would never let him forget it. Never mind the fact that Gregorios had indulged in countless affairs during his marriage, had torn this family apart and was far from a saint.
His father waved a hand at him. “No use dwelling on your irresponsibility. We are on top of this. It gives us a chance to deal with it. Consider our options.”
His heart skipped a beat. “What options are you referring to?”
“We need this alliance with the Agieros.”
What his father didn’t say rendered him speechless. When he did recover his voice, his tone was as sharp as a blade. “This is the heir to the Akathinian throne we’re talking about. What exactly are you suggesting?”
“We can make this go away. There will be other heirs.”
Stars exploded in his head. He clenched his hands by his sides. “Do not utter that thought ever again.”
“Don’t be naive about her, Nikandros. Women are your downfall. They always have been.”
Nik gave him a dismissive look. “I’m flying to New York on Friday.”
His father gaped at him. “You can’t leave the country right now.”
“Idas is not going to start a war overnight. I’ll be there and back in twenty-four hours.”
“And if it gets out you’ve left Akathinia at this crucial time?”
“It won’t.”
“Send Abram.”
Nik pinned his gaze on his father. “As you’ve just said, the country is on tenterhooks right now. I am trusting no one to deal with this extremely sensitive issue but me. I know Sofía. I know how to reason with her. We’ll be back within twenty-four hours.”
His father clenched his jaw. “This is insanity.”
Nik shook his head. “Insanity was when Athamos decided to take Kostas on in a suicidal race neither of them should have survived. This is practicality. Sofía is carrying my heir. Marriage is the only answer.”
* * *
Sofía turned the sign on the boutique door to “closed,” kicked off her shoes and carried them to the register, where she started doing the nightly deposit. Working was preferable to facing up to the question of when she was going to tell Nik she was carrying the royal heir.
When she unleashed a ticking time bomb with the potential to rock a nation and its leader at a time when it needed it the least...
From the timing the doctor had given her, she had conceived her and Nik’s baby the night they’d ended it. When she’d questioned the effectiveness of her birth control pills, the doctor had informed her the migraine medication she was on could have interfered with the pill’s effectiveness, a fact she hadn’t been aware of. A fact she’d desperately wished she’d been in possession of.
That she’d gotten pregnant that night seemed to be the only thing she was certain of. That and the fact that she was keeping this baby. Treasuring it.
