CHAPTER SIX
V IJAY TEXTED M AGNUS five months later.
We need to chat. In person would be better.
Aside from that one text in March that he had relayed from Lexi, Vijay’s only texts since Paris had been a monthly reassurance of “no concerns.” Today should have been the seventh of those.
Not that Magnus was counting.
He was definitely counting.
Magnus prompted him.
About?
Possible vulnerability. Important. Not yet urgent.
I’m due in New York tomorrow.
I can meet you there Wednesday.
See you then.
“Is that a meeting I can take, sir?” Ulmer asked when he received the request from Vijay’s assistant to firm things up. “I understood all training is up to date with the security team. Your schedule in New York is already very full. If he’s merely pitching—”
“Find room. Tack it on to the end if necessary.”
“We can’t put off the departure time. You’re due in Reykjavík Thursday.”
Outwardly, Reykjavík was a diplomatic engagement. In reality, it was a covert second date between Magnus and yet another woman who did nothing for him.
“Am I correct to assume your meeting with Mr. Sahir relates to Ms. Alexander?” Ulmer pried. He’d been deeply annoyed that her presence at the party in Monaco had slipped through his otherwise Big Brother–level surveillance.
“I’ll let you know once he tells me.”
“Her Majesty will not be pleased.”
“Then don’t tell her.”
Katla was tied up before he left so Magnus was able to skip any stern warnings against seeing Lexi. Ulmer was likely correct, though. Magnus had no doubt Lexi was the subject of their meeting.
Landing in New York, he pushed himself through the meetings he had scheduled, counting down the minutes until Vijay arrived at his hotel suite.
When he did, Magnus brought him onto the terrace where they could have a modicum of privacy.
“This is about Lexi?” Magnus voiced the concern that had been grating in him. “Are there new threats against her?”
“No. Her team remains vigilant, but things have settled down now that she has cut ties with her brother. He faces a defamation suit if her name passes his lips.”
After she had said “my new agent,” Magnus had quietly looked into her settlement from X-Calibur. It was an eyebrow-raising amount, making him think, Good for her .
“And her stalker?” he asked.
“She didn’t want to pursue charges for his presence at the Paris hotel, but he’s now on a no-fly list. He also knows we’re watching his every move. If he tries to sell Ms. Alexander’s likeness, it will trigger another lawsuit. It’s enough of a threat that he’s moved on.”
“Where is she? Europe?” God, he was weak, but he had the sense she’d done exactly as she’d suggested and dropped off-grid to write her book.
“She’s in Switzerland. I’m going to see her on my way back to India. She wants to settle up on the services that you’ve covered, then restructure her arrangement with me.”
“Meaning you’ll reimburse me and everything between you and Lexi becomes confidential.” His gut tightened as he realized his last tie to her was about to be severed. “You mentioned a vulnerability?”
“I did.” Vijay squeezed the back of his neck, betraying uncharacteristic hesitation. “I’ve struggled with how much to tell you. I discussed it with Killian, actually,” he said, referring to the owner of TecSec. “He said he had a similar situation once. In that case, his mandate was to protect the entire family so the ethics were clear-cut. In this case, Ms. Alexander gave me permission to share pertinent details with you, but my problem is that I can’t be one hundred percent certain this detail is pertinent to you .”
“I am a busy man, Vijay,” Magnus reminded him with a roll of his wrist.
“She asked me to prepare a quote for additional security. For the baby, once it arrives.”
“The—” Magnus had only experienced this complete blankness once before in his life, when Ulmer had said to him, It’s our belief that your father is not your biological father .
A strange, searing pain arrived at the periphery of his awareness. A recognition of a truth that was too painful to accept, one that would blind him when it was allowed in so he mentally held it off, staying safely inside a bubble of disbelief. Denial. It wasn’t real. He’d misheard.
A thousand years and less than a minute passed.
Slowly he became aware of being on the terrace in New York. The sun was on his shoulders. City sounds were far below. Vijay’s expression hadn’t changed, but an acidic burn of betrayal began to seep into his bloodstream.
“It’s mine?” he asked in a rasp.
“She didn’t say.” Vijay pushed his hands into his pockets, expression turning circumspect. “I felt you should be informed regardless, since assumptions will be made that it is. She wants everything in place two weeks before her due date. The math from the end of October calculates back to conception in January, about the time we all met in Paris.”
“Math.” You couldn’t argue with math, could you?
“Take your time. My first was unplanned. I know how it scrambles the jets.”
“It can’t be mine,” Magnus blurted.
He had used condoms. He was supposed to marry someone appropriate. Katla would have him flayed alive in the town square. He might chafe at her lectures and Ulmer’s interference, but he understood the stakes. He needed to continue Katla’s efforts to repair the royal family’s image, not prove he was his father’s son by having an illegitimate baby—
This was why he used condoms!
But he had a memory of drifting in the twilight of postorgasmic bliss, exhausted by lovemaking, then lurching awake to a strange sensation. The condom was slipping as his erection faded.
He’d hardened as he’d awakened still inside her. That damned woman seemed to keep him in a perpetual state of erection. He was twitching with arousal just thinking of her and their night of sensual debauchery.
The rush of erotic memory was countered by a cooler thought, though. Had the condom slipped enough to fail? Even if it had, that didn’t automatically mean he was the father. She could have slept with a dozen men before and after him.
Even as he had that thought, he recalled how frightened she’d been that night in Paris, after seeing her stalker. How angry she’d been when she’d said, You’re accusing me of staging this?
And he could still hear her admitting in the shadows of his bedroom, I don’t do this .
He ran his hand down his face, giving his beard a tug hard enough to hurt, grounding himself into this new reality.
“She’s keeping it.” Obviously. She was seven months along and making arrangements for the baby’s protection. “This will be a PR nightmare. But that’s the least of it, isn’t it?”
“If the baby is yours, broader decisions become necessary, yes,” Vijay said evenly. “I’m here to assist any way that I can.”
If the baby was his? Magnus knew it was. That’s why she had looked so damned uncomfortable when she had told him she was going into hiding to write her memoir. That’s why his brain was exploding.
Secrets had been kept from him again .
Lexi covered where the baby was pressing a foot against the side wall of her round belly and smiled while trying not to yearn for the baby’s father to experience it with her.
How could she want to see him when she was still so mad at him?
The prince is unavailable.
That was what Vijay had texted back the night after she’d seen Magnus in Monte Carlo five months ago.
Because he’d been on a date with Lady Annalise?
God, it had hurt to see him with someone else. It had taken her very best acting to pretend she was unbothered by the sight of them together, and to claim that she was “always happy to speak with a fan,” and that Portugal did sound like a wonderful place to hole up and write a book.
He had been horrible to her that morning in Paris and he stood there pretending nothing had ever happened between them at all while she had thought her pregnancy must be obvious to everyone. How could it not be?
As much as she had dreaded telling him, her conscience had demanded she reach out.
The arrogant jerk refused to see her.
Devastated by his fresh rejection, she hadn’t pressed it. Had that been cowardly? Sure. Mostly, she’d been embarrassed at having asked to see him at all. She had felt like one of those needy women who couldn’t take a hint that a man wasn’t interested. She had never, ever wanted to be the sort of woman who couldn’t live without a man, yet she felt like one. Or rather, she felt sometimes as though she couldn’t live without that particular man.
When he had rebuffed her again, she had made herself move on to prove that she could. She seized his refusal to see her as an excuse to delay telling him about the baby, sold her mansion in California and leased a flat in Zurich until she began to show. Then she moved into this private clinic where she wrote between swimming and yoga and birthing classes.
She didn’t love regurgitating her past for financial gain, but the generous advance had been a nice boon while she’d been waiting on Hadley’s settlement. He had paid a pretty penny for her shares in X-Calibur and included an additional settlement to avoid a forensic audit and an investigation into his PR practices.
Lexi would always be sad that things had ended on such a sour note with him and Janet. In her heart of hearts, she had always hoped she and her father’s children would develop a closer bond, but there was something cathartic in letting go of that dream as she started her own family with her baby.
Now that was finalized, she could settle up with Vijay—and Magnus. Then, and only then, would she insist Magnus speak to her so she could tell him about the baby.
She wouldn’t let his dating life get in her way, either. Yes, she looked him up often enough to know he was wining and dining every eligible heiress around the globe—amid rumors that he was in search of a wife. That stung, too. And if he’d seemed serious about any of them, she might have felt guiltier about keeping him in the dark, but as he was photographed in various places with various women, her pride had hardened her silence around their baby. Her baby.
After today, however, she would be out of Magnus’s debt. She had put an offer in on a house in France where she and her baby would reside when not on set. Between the book she was writing, and the movie, and other investments, she had enough income to raise their child without Magnus’s involvement.
It will be fine , she kept telling herself.
Her baby didn’t need a close relationship with its father. She hadn’t had one. Not at first. Her father hadn’t wanted anything to do with her until her career had taken off and, frankly, she would have been better off if he’d stayed out of her life.
So she could almost convince herself there would be a bright side if Magnus preferred to hide the fact he’d fathered her child.
It would hurt, though. It would crush her on their baby’s behalf.
But she and the baby would be fine. Somehow, someway. She would make sure of it.
She checked the time. Almost ten. She made her way to the foyer, where Vijay would have to wait for her since guests were discouraged within the residential part of the clinic, to protect the privacy of its wealthy, high-profile clientele.
The clinic was a beautiful chalet-style building situated above a quiet village in the Alps, one that could easily be mistaken for an upscale spa with its kidney-shaped pool and serenity garden and five-star chef. It had treatment rooms for massage, a gym and three very well-equipped exam rooms, plus two birthing suites and an emergency OR. Between the midwife, the nutritionist and her doctor, Lexi was being very well cared for.
The receptionist was on the phone, but she held up two fingers, then pointed down the hall, indicating Vijay was waiting in room two of the visitor parlors.
Lexi nodded and turned the corner, surprised to see Vijay outside the closed door.
“Ms. Alexander,” he greeted politely as she approached. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine. You?”
“Fine, but mine was a real question. Is everything going well? No high blood pressure or other concerns that could affect our meeting?”
“My back hurts when I sit too long. And I’m getting to the stage where I need the powder room constantly,” she added wryly.
He didn’t crack a smile, only nodded gravely.
“I’ll use it before we start. I believe there’s one in there.” She pointed at the door he had yet to open.
“I need to explain something before we go in. When we started our arrangement in Paris, you agreed—”
The door was abruptly pulled inward, creating a vacuum that nearly pulled her soul from her body and into the towering figure that blocked the opening.
Magnus. He was broader and more imposing than she remembered. Angrier.
Lexi had an impression of a dark suit and a green tie and a sensation of all the blood leaving her head. She watched his impossibly blue irises sweep down to her middle. An inward thump might have been a kick from their baby, but it might have been the impact of her heart landing on the floor.
His gaze came back to hers, rife with accusation.
Her vision disintegrated at the edges. Had she forgotten to breathe?
“Ms. Alexander.” Vijay’s hand closed tightly around her upper arm.
She tried to grasp on to him, but her limbs had turned to overcooked pasta. A ringing sound filled her ears—
The sight of Lexi’s undeniably pregnant figure was still hitting him when Magnus realized her color had drained. Her eyelids fluttered and her eyeballs rolled back.
Vijay was already starting to catch her, but Magnus reacted in a flash, stepping out to gather her crumpling form. If she’d gained any weight since the last time he’d held her, he didn’t feel it. So much adrenaline was firing through his veins, he could have lifted her over his head and carried her across the continent. She felt no heavier than a long winter coat draped limply over his arms.
“I told you to let me warn her,” Vijay snapped, as Magnus carried her to the sofa. “I’ll get someone.”
“You were taking too long,” Magnus muttered, but the door was already closing.
Patience was not in his wheelhouse. That’s why Magnus had insisted on accompanying Vijay to this clinic. When he’d heard the murmur of her voice beyond the door, he had wanted the answers he’d come here for.
He hadn’t meant to startle her so badly she fainted. He forgot sometimes that he was such a big man. She was tall and lean, but flexible and strong. He had remembered her as assertive and surprisingly adept at rolling with punches.
In his mind, he’d begun to believe she was using this pregnancy as a form of extortion. By the time they’d landed in Zurich, he’d worked himself into seeing her as a threat and arrived ready to fight.
She was pregnant, though. Delicate? As he lifted her head to adjust the cushion beneath it, he noted the soft curve of her cheek, the shadows beneath her eyes.
“Lexi?” He hitched his hip beside hers and set two fingers in her throat where her pulse was strong, if uneven. She was breathing, but her lips were colorless. Her hand was lax when he picked it up.
The door opened and a fresh surge of protectiveness had him standing to face the intruder.
It was a woman in a white lab coat with a stethoscope hung around her neck. Vijay came in behind her and closed the door.
“I’m Dr. Rivera. Can you tell me what happened?” She barely looked at Magnus as she brushed him aside and gave Lexi’s sternum a rub. “Lexi?”
Lexi winced and twitched away from the light that the doctor shone into her eyes.
“It’s Dr. Rivera, Lexi. Are you in pain?”
“No,” she murmured, blinking her eyes open. “What hap—Oh.” She saw Magnus and turned her face to the back of the couch.
“Do you want me to ask these men to leave?” Dr. Rivera asked.
“How many are there?” Lexi looked around, then said sullenly to Vijay, “Are you planning to ambush me with anyone else? My brother? My dead father, perhaps?”
“Don’t be angry with Vijay.” Magnus stayed behind the doctor where he could see that color was returning to her lips. “I wanted to see you and didn’t give him a choice.”
“I’m not giving you a choice, either.” Dr. Rivera straightened and looped her stethoscope behind her neck. “Stay here while I get a wheelchair. I want you in an exam room while we check a few things. Oxygen, glucose. We’ll put the fetal heart monitor on you, to be sure everything is as it should be. No stress please, gentlemen.”
“I apologize, Ms. Alexander,” Vijay said as the doctor left. “This wasn’t how I wanted to handle this. At all.” He glowered at Magnus.
“Leave us,” Magnus said.
No one ever defied him, but Vijay folded his arms and said, “Ms. Alexander?”
“It’s fine. I was going to ask you today if you could contact him for me.” Her voice was quiet and heavy.
As the door closed behind Vijay, Lexi started to sit up.
Magnus pressed her shoulder into the sofa cushion. “The doctor said don’t move.”
“I can sit up.” She tried to brush his hand off her, but he only caught it, keeping the weight of his fingertips against the hollow of her shoulder.
He was still unsettled by her faint. Her cool hand twitched in his grip before she twisted it free. Her brow flexed and she bit her bottom lip, gaze skating toward the back of the sofa again.
Reluctantly, he straightened so they were no longer touching.
“Why did you want to speak to me?” he asked.
Lexi released a humorless choke and looked toward the basketball that was her waistline.
“Mine.” It wasn’t really a question. It was more something that washed through him like a visceral sensation.
Not that he’d had any real doubt. No, the greater surprise was the nature of this feeling that swept through him. It wasn’t a cold chill, the way he’d felt when he’d been told his father was really King Einer. When that had happened, a bleak weight had fallen on him, one that had severed him from his old life and left him sick with loss.
This was the opposite. His life had flipped again, reordering everything he believed to be true. A similar crushing sense of responsibility crashed over him, but this time it expanded a force within him. Strength pulsed through him. Determination. Fire.
Why? Everything about this was wrong, especially the part where he was becoming a father. What the hell did he know about parenting? Neither of the two men he referred to as his father had given him a good example to follow. They’d each cut him adrift in their own way, leaving him floundering in strange waters, abandoned and questioning his self-worth.
Yet he was the father of Lexi’s baby. He had a thousand pressing matters that he’d disregarded to come here and all he could wonder was Where is that damned doctor? He needed to know the baby was okay. That Lexi was.
“You’re not happy,” Lexi said heavily.
He hadn’t been happy, truly happy, since he’d beat his own record on a giant slalom the day he’d turned eighteen. Things had gone downhill even faster than he had, once Ulmer had introduced himself, but at least that memory reminded him what needed to be done as the doctor returned with the wheelchair.
“Let’s get you down the hall for your tests,” Dr. Rivera said to Lexi.
“Add one more,” Magnus said. “Paternity.”
He didn’t believe the baby was his.
She shouldn’t be surprised. Or insulted. But she was both.
Lexi agreed to have blood drawn for the paternity test along with the rest. A nurse helped her change into a hospital gown and she answered all the questions about what she had eaten today, submitted to various pokes and prods, then tried to relax while the monitor recorded the baby’s heart rate.
It wasn’t easy. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the thunderous expression on Magnus’s face when he had pulled open that door.
“They said I could come in as long as I don’t upset you.” He walked in with the energy of a caged lion and closed the door behind him.
She suppressed her jump of surprise, but decided she would rather get this discussion over with than sit in preperformance jitters, feeling as though she was waiting to go on a talk show for a six-minute mea culpa.
He had removed his suit jacket and wore a pin in his tie over a crisp white shirt. His hair was smoothly pulled back, his brows low with consternation. His shoulders were so broad. Everything about him screamed power, intimidating her, yet she reacted in a potently sexual way, too. She was accosted by memories of his lips pressing her skin, his wide hand between her thighs. His body surging over hers while lightning gathered in her belly.
She tried to swallow and looked to the pastoral painting on the wall, pretending that her cheeks weren’t stinging with a bloom of sexual heat.
“You’re the one who’s upset,” she said stiffly. “I hope you believe me when I say I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“The responsibility is mine. I never should have touched you.”
Oh, Gawd. His disdainful tone made her shrivel inside.
“Why am I the last to know?” he asked in that same aloof voice.
“No one knows you’re the father. Only a handful of medical professionals know I’m pregnant and Vijay only knows where I am because I asked him to meet me here. I wanted to clear my debt with you before I told you so you’ll believe me when I say I’m not asking for anything from you. By hiding my pregnancy, I can say the baby was born by surrogate and keep you out of it completely.”
“Am I supposed to be comforted by that?” His tone was even, but she heard the roil of emotion beneath it.
“I knew this wouldn’t be welcome news,” she said shakily, touching where the baby was giving a reassuringly strong kick at the top of her belly. “I know the challenges I’ll face if we acknowledge this baby is yours. We both have a vested interest in keeping your name out of it.”
Her deliberate use of his words landed on target because he narrowed his eyes.
“You’re deluding yourself,” he said flatly. “On several fronts. That baby is going to come out at five kilos wearing a horned hat. There won’t be any doubt that it’s mine.”
“I...don’t know how much that is.”
“Big.”
She was afraid of that. Had literally been worrying about it.
Magnus muttered something under his breath and flexed his hands.
“This is me keeping my temper so I don’t upset you as I explain why I’m very angry that you kept this from me,” he said in a tone that was exaggerated in its evenness.
“My body, my choice, Magnus.”
“Agreed,” he cut in, still with that suppressed emotion suffusing his deep voice. “I appreciate that pregnancy is a huge decision. You needed time to consider whether you wanted to continue with it. Fine. Hiding the pregnancy from the rest of the world is also fine. Hiding it from me strikes a very raw, personal nerve.”
“I tried to meet you in Monte Carlo,” she reminded in a hiss.
“You didn’t try very hard,” he snapped back.
She couldn’t argue that so she didn’t bother.
“I told you I never met my father. My biological father,” he clarified. “Everything about my relationship to him was kept from me until it was thrown in my face on my eighteenth birthday.”
“By whom?”
“Ulmer. He found me at a ski hill, showed me some identification and asked to speak with me. My mother was born on Isleif. She still had family there. I thought he was going to tell me someone we knew had died. Instead, he told me Queen Katla was approaching forty and was childless. She feared she would be the end of the Thorolf line so she was forced to determine whether I was her bastard half brother.”
“He didn’t call you that.” Ulmer knew how to make a person feel small, but he didn’t resort to insults. Did he?
“It quickly became obvious that’s what I was,” Magnus stated with a sweep of his hand through the air. “My mother wasn’t married when I was conceived, only engaged to the man I came to believe was my father, Sveyn. She genuinely didn’t know who the father was, but she feared the palace would take me if I turned out to be the king’s. She talked Sveyn into moving to Norway.”
“Did she tell him ?”
“No. King Einer was killed six years later. By then Katla was married and trying for an heir. My mother thought it would never come up again.”
“Sveyn never questioned it? Did you? Do you look like him?”
“Enough. We’re all tall with similar coloring. I thought Ulmer was delusional when he said what he did. I consented to the blood test because it seemed the quickest way to make him go away. Within a few hours I was confronting my mother, blindsiding Sveyn in the process.”
A chill settled into Lexi’s chest. She bunched a handful of the sheet that covered her legs, feeling the anger and betrayal coming off him as waves of icy gales and scorching heat, understanding that some of that was directed at her, for hiding this baby from him.
“That must have been a difficult moment for all of you,” she murmured.
“It broke their marriage,” he said starkly. “Sveyn left. I haven’t spoken to him since. For years after, my brother and sister barely spoke to me.”
“They blamed you?” She flashed a look up at his grim expression.
“They didn’t know what to think of me. Everything we had in common, everything we believed about our family, was a lie. I had to move to Isleif so I wasn’t there to... Hell, I don’t even know what my side of it was, only that no one cared to hear it.”
Her heart felt squeezed in a giant fist. “Magnus—”
“It’s water under the bridge,” he said bluntly. “What I’m saying is, I would never do something like that to my own child. I wouldn’t hide their parent from them. That’s why this—” he waved a finger to take in the clinic and her pregnancy “—infuriates me.”
“I understand.” And she hurt for the young man he’d been. It explained so much about how remote he was, walking around as though infused with the force of a hurricane. “But I didn’t know any of that. And if we’re talking childhoods, let me explain where I’m coming from. When my mother got pregnant, my father shuffled her off to Arizona and resentfully paid her support, angry that she insisted on having me. I was six when I realized I was the reason we had nice things, and that other little girls didn’t play house on film sets every day. It was only when my career began to take off that my father showed an interest in me. Once he got involved on the contract side, the pressure to work really hit. And when Paisley Pockets became a hit, Mom and Dad got into a huge custody battle that had everything to do with the value of my renewal contract and nothing to do with me .”
She glanced at the monitor to ensure that her strident voice and climb in temperature wasn’t affecting the baby.
“ I want this baby. It had to be my decision and I had to know I could raise it alone. You think I don’t know how it looks? Your first thought had to be that I plotted to have the baby of a rich man. Don’t deny it.” She waved an accusing finger at him. “But that’s not what this is. I need you to believe that. I was waiting until I was in a position to not need you before I told you.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“I’m not lying to you!” She dropped her hand to her side.
“No, you’re lying to yourself.” He glanced with concern at the monitor. “You wanted to cement yourself into a life where you can raise this baby alone because you knew what would happen as soon as you told me.”
Her heart lurched and she splayed both hands on her bump. “You’re not taking this baby from me, Magnus.”
“Of course not. I just explained why it’s paramount to me that my child knows both their parents from their first breath. No. For such a smart, ambitious, levelheaded woman, you have been remarkably naive, Lexi. I can only assume it’s fear. You’re not wrong to be frightened. It’s a hellish life you chose for both of you when you decided to have that baby. But you did.”
“No, Magnus.” She dug her heels into the mattress, pushing her back into the pillows because she sensed whatever he was going to say would be too big to withstand.
His flinty gaze flickered to the monitor and he seemed to choose his words carefully.
“I wish things were different, Lexi. I do. But that’s not just any baby. You knew that the moment you found out you were pregnant. That’s why you’ve been hiding it. You didn’t want to admit what that means.”
“It doesn’t have to mean anything. That’s what I’m saying. You don’t—” Hot-cold shivers of premonition were washing over her. “You don’t have to be involved.” She forced the words through her tight throat, but they came out high and desperate. Panicked. “This is my baby. My body. My life . I decide what happens to me. To us.”
He said nothing, only looked at her with pity in his expression. Pity.
Goose bumps rose on her arms and prickled down her back. Her whole life had been fishtailing on ice since she had learned of her pregnancy. No, since she had first locked eyes with him. She had thought she had begun taking control over the last months, but now a cliff seemed to loom before her, offering nothing but a huge, foggy void that she was about to plummet into.
“No, Magnus,” she whispered.
“I have a duty to produce the next ruler, Lexi. Preferably within the sanctity of marriage, but that part has been overlooked before.” His lip curled with cynicism.
“I’m not marrying you.”
He snorted.
“You don’t want to marry me,” she hurried to continue. “You didn’t even want to talk to me five months ago. The morning after, even!”
“Lexi—”
“No. It would be a disaster. You know that. ” Her throat grew hot and so did the backs of her eyes. “Your people won’t accept me. Your queen won’t. No to everything you’re saying. No. ”
“Do you think I didn’t try saying that when it happened to me?” Maybe if he had sounded patronizing, she wouldn’t have welled up, but he sounded sorry for her.
“I’m not unreasonable, Magnus.” She was in a fight for her life. Her heart rate picked up and tension gripped her. “I will grant you some say over what happens to our baby, but you don’t get to make decisions for me .”
“I’m not making these decisions, Lexi.” He didn’t raise his voice, but it rang with power all the same.
She was trying to sink through the pillows behind her, through the exam table and into the floor. Anything to escape the invisible force that seemed to emanate out of him, pushing against her like the wall of a bubble that was going to break only enough to pull her inside it where she would be trapped forever.
She couldn’t breathe, not enough to speak. Not enough to tell him to quit talking.
“History is making this decision for both of us. People think rulers rule, but we are ruled by precedent and necessity and duty. There are perks. The royal chest can buy you all the nice things you want. Every physical need you have will be amply met from now on. What is unaffordable to me, however, and to you, is choice. We are bound by duty to the crown.”
“You might be.” She reached for a tissue and blew her nose. “I’m not. Not to your ruler or your rules. I’m not...”
“Lexi. It’s done. Unless that paternity test comes back with a negative, we started down this path in Paris. There is no fork in the road now.”
“There is ,” she insisted, but her lips were quivering too much for her to say more.
“I’m upsetting you.” He came close enough to cup her cheek and set the pad of this thumb against her trembling mouth. “Believe me when I say I know exactly how you feel. You put up a good fight and I admire you for it. It reassures me that you’ll weather what’s coming. But save your strength for other fights because this one is over.”
“It’s not.” The tears brimming her eyes overflowed, infuriating her because she wasn’t a weak woman. “I have a p-plan.”
“Cry if you need to.” He reached for a tissue and dried each of her cheeks, expression dispassionate. “But accept it. I’m taking you to Isleif and we’re going to marry. I have to tell the queen.”
He walked out, leaving her with a scream of frustration caught in her throat.