Chapter Eight
Gabriel stood in a bright sunshiny end-of-summer day in Maine in America, winded.
Of course it’s yours.
It couldn’t be. None of this could be.
Not because it was impossible—in his lack of control he had not used protection, a fact he remembered all too clearly now.
It was impossible because he did not know how to move forward.
When he always knew how. He had made mistakes before, but none had cut him off at his knees leaving him reeling and absolutely uncertain how to… exist.
Even losing his control and sleeping with Evelyne had left him with a clear course of action. Leave. Never return.
He could not leave now. He could not take her back to Alis in her condition.
What had he done? And what the hell could be done about it?
Of course it’s yours.
A child. A child. He had left her six months ago and she’d carried a child—his child—all this time and…
And not told him. She had kept this a secret from him. If the king had not died… She might never have told him. A child would be alive, breathing, growing and he would not have known.
It was enough of a glimmer of something to do that he stormed inside after her. He found her in the kitchen, humming as she put together a sandwich. Happy as you please, and definitely not packing as she’d claimed.
“You had my contact information,” he blurted out.
“I did,” she agreed. She took a big bite of the sandwich, looked at him with a careless smile. “I chose not to use it.”
He opened his mouth, surely to say something intelligent and cutting. All that came out was some kind of pained grunt.
“You left, Gabriel. You made your feelings clear. You wanted nothing to do with me.”
“You is not the same as our child.” He did not like those words, could not fully engage with child. He had to think of this as a problem to solve or he might be forced to…feel.
There was a moment she held herself very still. Whatever reaction she had to the somewhat insensitive words was hidden in that stillness. She carefully set the sandwich down on the plate in front of her.
“Our.” She laughed—it wasn’t bitter, but it wasn’t happy. “Our. How would there be an our anything, when you won’t even deal with me? You run away.”
The characterization of what he’d done—when what he’d done was save them both—still grated. “The last time I checked, people who run away did not leave their contact information.”
She had the gall to roll her eyes. “You made it clear you wanted nothing to do with me. I mean, aside from sex. You seemed to enjoy that quite a bit.”
“As did you, principessa.” Which was neither here nor there, and certainly not the point.
She made a low, satisfied kind of sound that went straight to his loins with an arrow sharp intensity.
“How did you plan to explain this?” he demanded, so as not to think about his physical reaction to her.
“I didn’t,” she returned. She sighed in a way that made it clear she had had months to deal with this while he had only had minutes so far.
“I would have kept him a secret forever,” she said, and clearly meant it.
She settled a hand over her burgeoning belly with a gentleness that thundered through him in ways he couldn’t parse.
But he could not even be hurt by her forever because…
“Him.” She would have kept him a secret forever. A boy. A son. No… He couldn’t…
She was quiet for a long moment, almost looking sad. “Yes. Congratulations, it’s a boy.” She lifted her chin, finding her haughty. “I will not be naming him after you.”
Naming… A boy to be named. His boy. His son. All Gabriel seemed to hear now was a high-pitched whistle in his ears.
“Do you need a paper bag?” Evelyne asked. When he stared over at her in confusion, she shrugged. “I saw this funny old TV show where someone hyperventilated into a paper bag.”
“I am not hyperventilating,” he ground out.
“Close.”
“Evelyne, this is a mist—”
“Do not finish that sentence,” she said fiercely, skirting the counter and stalking toward him.
“I will not have anything bad said about my child. Ever. He will be loved and treated with kindness. Always. And he will never, ever, not once be made to feel as though he was a mistake. He will never be a mistake to me, no matter how you feel about it.”
Gabriel wanted to tell her it was impossible to ensure a child was always treated with love and kindness, but she looked so fierce, with her arm curved around her belly.
In a strange, blinding moment he knew she would be a good mother.
She would protect the child—their child—in all the ways she had not been protected and all the ways she had.
And what would he be?
A father. He did not know how to wrap his head around this. His life had been nothing but skating the surface of anything so important as fatherhood since he’d been eighteen. Only Evelyne had taken him back under dangerous old waters.
The things he would do for her without a second thought, the violence he would enact throughout the world to keep her safe. Perhaps he would never turn it on her, on their child, but he had the potential to be an echo of King Enzo all the same. A reminder.
What would a child do to him? What would that kind of love and devotion create inside him?
It was terrifying. Overwhelming. He needed to somehow keep this…separate.
Why was she always overwhelming him when he had learned for years to fight against anything that might wave over him and crush him?
But he looked at her and felt endlessly crushed. Not just by this child.
How could she be more beautiful than when he’d left her? How could the obsession run so deep that cold turkey had not staved off this destructive need? She was pregnant, ripe with child, and he wanted to touch every inch of her, hear her pant his name again.
Which was no doubt incredibly inappropriate. Obsession and destructive need. He could not be destructive with a child’s life at stake. He needed to focus on the practicalities. On what must be done.
Not her.
“I have a plane waiting, Evelyne. If there is anything you want or need, I will collect it for you. But we must hurry.”
She cocked her head, studying him. He couldn’t possibly read her mind. Didn’t want to, at all.
“I can get my own things. Pregnancy is not fragility.” But she did not make a move to get her things. She continued to study him and went back to eating her sandwich. When she finally spoke, the question was one that he was trying to avoid thinking about.
“What do you think Alexandre will say?”
Gabriel could not begin to guess. There would be no approval, no celebrations, certainly, even if he somehow fixed this so Alexandre did not know about the six-month abandonment. Alex would not approve.
So Gabriel had to find some way to ensure it. Practicalities. Legalities. He was good at both these things. They were part of his job. How could he use his expertise to make this all right?
The only way Alexandre would even begin to accept this were if certain…legalities were in place. It was not what Gabriel wanted, but he would have to make it work somehow.
Without destroying them all.
“If we take the personal out of it, you are the princess. A baby out of wedlock will be frowned upon,” he said, knowing he sounded stiff and not being able to do anything about it. “Not just by Alexandre, but by the kingdom as a whole.”
“Are you suggesting we marry, Gabriel?”
She said it like a joke.
It wasn’t a joke. “I am not suggesting. I am stating that we will be married, Evelyne. Now, in fact. Before we return to Alis.”
Evelyne stood stock-still, watching him as he moved into action. He disappeared and returned with a laptop bag. He pulled out the computer, sat at her kitchen table and began to…work.
Marry. Gabriel. She should be appalled, she knew.
He wasn’t marrying her out of anything but a sense of duty or whatever to Alexandre.
He did not like her, and she needed to really accept that.
She did not want her child growing up knowing his father did not like his mother.
A forced marriage certainly wasn’t going to make that fixable.
“Gabriel. Alis might be a bit old-fashioned and traditional, but perhaps this is an opportunity to usher in some modern ideas. Like, I don’t know, not making each other miserable with a marriage neither of us want.”
It was a lie. She did kind of want it. Because she liked him. But that was pathetic, and even if she didn’t mind being a bit pathetic here and there, she now had a child to concern herself with.
She would not be pathetic for him. She would be strong and right and true. She would be an example of love and…and goodness. No matter the effort it took.
Gabriel looked at her, eyebrow raised in cool disdain. “Do you really think the time around your brother’s coronation is the time to introduce modern ideas? Particularly when you have an entire army moving from a war-hungry king to one who will promote peace, and well they all know it.”
Fear gripped her. She’d thought the danger died with her father, but… “Do you think he’s in danger?”
“No,” Gabriel said, with a certainty that eased some of her concerns. “Alex knows how to handle things. I’m only saying, I will not be adding to the things he has to handle. Any more than I already have.”
Right. Because she did not just get to go home. She had to bring home a complication. She rubbed the swell of her stomach, chewing on her bottom lip. Should she take her child back to Alis with all this hanging over them?
But she thought of Alexandre. Of the palace. Of home. Even if her father had made her childhood hell, there was so much she yearned for back in the place she’d been raised. She wanted her son to have family. She wanted her son to have…
She studied Gabriel. She had not allowed herself to consider him as a father. As the father. She had spent considerable time just focusing on her and the baby. What she had, not what she wanted.