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“I can assure you that my time is valuable, too, Mr. Rossi,” she said stiffly. “But I need to speak with you.”
“Then speak,” he said.
“I’m pregnant,” she said, wishing, even as she said the words, that she could call them back.
A muscle in his jaw ticked. “Am I meant to offer congratulations?”
“You’re the father.”
His dark eyes hardened. “You and I both know that isn’t possible. You may not keep a record of your lovers, Ms. Whitman, but I can assure you I’m not so promiscuous that I forget mine.”
Her face heated. “There are other ways to conceive a child than sexual intercourse, as you well know. When Melissa from ZoiLabs called she implied that I worked there but I’m a … I’m a client of theirs.”
He froze, his expression hardening like granite, his jaw tightening. “Let’s go into my office.”
She followed him through the large living area of the house and through a heavy oak door. His home office was massive, with high ceilings that were accented by rich, natural wood beams. One of the walls was made entirely of glass and overlooked the valley below. There was nothing as far as she could see but pristine nature. Beautiful. But the view was cold comfort in the situation.
“There was a mistake at the clinic,” she said, keeping her eyes trained on the mountains in the distance. “They weren’t going to tell me, but one of my friends works there and she felt I … that I had a right to know. I was given your donation by mistake and there was no log of your … of your genetic testing.”
“How is this possible?” he asked, pacing the room with long strides.
“I wasn’t offered a specific explanation. The nearest thing to an answer I got is that your sample was mixed up with the donor I had selected because your last names were similar. My intended donor was a Mr. Ross.”
Max gave her a hard look. “He was not your husband or boyfriend?”
“I don’t have a husband or a boyfriend. It was all meant to be done anonymously. But …” She took a shaky breath. “It isn’t that simple now.”
His lip curled. “Not so simple now that you’ve found out the ‘donor’ for your child is a wealthy man? Are you here to collect some kind of prenatal child support?”
Alison bristled. “That isn’t it at all! I’m sorry to have bothered you, I really am. I’m sure you didn’t expect the recipient of your donation to show up on your doorstep. But I need to know if you underwent genetic testing prior to using the clinic.”
“I didn’t leave a donation,” he said, his voice rough.
“You must have! She gave me your name. She said it was your sperm that was given to me by mistake.”
A muscle in his jaw tightened and she noticed him slowly squeezing his hands into fists and releasing them, as if in attempt to gain control over his temper. “I had a sperm sample at the clinic, but it was not meant for anonymous donation. It was for my wife. We were having trouble conceiving.”
“Oh.” Alison felt all of the blood drain from her face, leaving her light-headed and dizzy. Now she really wanted to turn and run away. She’d read horror stories in the paper about couples involved in mix-ups, and people losing their babies. She clamped a possessive hand over her stomach. The baby was still hers, even if this man was the biological father. She was still the mother. No judge would take a baby from a competent, loving mother. And Max’s wife wouldn’t want a baby that didn’t belong to her anyway. She couldn’t.
“I just … I just need to know …” She took a breath. “I’m a nonaffected carrier of Cystic Fibrosis. The donors are all screened for genetic disorders before they’re accepted. But your results weren’t in the file. Melissa knew that I was concerned and she was going to get me the information about you, only it wasn’t there.”
“That’s because I wasn’t a donor,” he said harshly.
“But have you been tested?” she asked, desperation clawing at her. She had to know. Watching her sister succumb to the disease in childhood had been the hardest thing Alison had ever endured. It had been the end of everything. Her family, her happiness. She had to know so that she could prepare herself for the worst. She wouldn’t terminate her pregnancy. No matter what, she wouldn’t do that. The memory of her sister, of that wonderful, short life, was far too dear to her to consider that. But she did need to know.
“I have not had that test done.”
She sank into the plush chair that was positioned in front of the desk, her knees unable to support her anymore. “You need to get it done,” she said. “Please. I need you to do it.”
Maximo examined the woman sitting in front of him, his heart pounding heavily in his chest. He hadn’t given a thought to the clinic in the past two years, not since Selena’s death. When he’d received the phone call from the employee at ZoiLabs he had assumed it pertained to his sperm sample. They had called shortly after the accident to ask him if they could discard it, but he’d ignored the voice mail message. At the time he simply hadn’t been able to deal with it. He hadn’t imagined that these might be the consequences.
Now he was going to be a father. It was the most amazing and terrifying moment he’d ever experienced. His gaze dropped to Alison’s flat stomach. She was so slender it was almost impossible to believe that she could be carrying his baby. His baby. A son or daughter.
He could easily see a vision of a dark-haired child, cradled in Alison Whitman’s arms as she looked down at the infant with a small, maternal smile on her face. The image filled him with longing so intense that his chest ached with it. He thought that he’d let that desire go, the desire for children. He thought he’d laid that dream to rest, alongside his wife.
But in one surreal moment all of those dreams had been made possible again. And in that very same moment he’d found out that his child might have serious health complications. His tightly controlled life was suddenly, definitely, out of his control. Everything that had seemed important five minutes ago was insignificant now, and everything that mattered to him rested in the womb of this stranger.
But he could get the test. Find out as soon as possible if there was a chance their baby might have the disease. Having something to do, something to hold on to, real action that he could take, helped anchor the whole situation to reality, allowed him to have some control back. It made it easier to believe that there really was a baby.
“I will have the test done right away,” he said. He hadn’t been planning on going back to Turan for another two weeks, but this took precedence. He would need to see his personal physician at the palace. He wouldn’t take any chances on having this made a spectacle by the press. They’d caused enough damage in his life. “And what are you planning if the test is positive?”
She looked down at her hands. They were delicate, feminine hands, void of jewelry and nail polish. It was far too easy to imagine how soft those hands would feel on his body, how pale they would look against the dark skin of his chest. A pang of lust hit him low in the gut. She was a beautiful woman; there was no denying that. Much less adorned than the type of woman he was accustomed to.
Her face had only the bare minimum of makeup, showing flawless ivory skin, her copper eyes left unenhanced by colored eyeshadow. Her full lips had just a bit of pale pink gloss on them that wouldn’t take long to kiss right off.
Her strawberry blond hair was straight, falling well past her shoulders, and it looked as if it would be soft to touch, not stiff with product. A man would be able to sift it through his fingers and watch it spill over his pillow. His stomach tightened further. It said a lot about how much neglect his libido had endured if he was capable of being aroused at this precise moment. And when had a woman ever appealed to him so immediately? When had lust grabbed him so hard? Never in his recent memory, that was certain. Guilt, usually easy to ignore after living with it for so long, gnawed at him, harder and more insistent than usual.
“I’m keeping the baby no matter what,” she said slowly, raising her eyes to meet his. “I just need to be prepared.”
Something about the way she said that she was keeping the baby, as if he, the child’s father, had no place in its life, caused a torrent of hot, possessive anger to flood through him. It was so intense that it momentarily blotted out the lust that had just been firing through his veins.
“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 (#ulink_53038c75-6e8c-526f-8f50-34a12346dbd0)
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.”
