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
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.”
“This is…This is all going wrong,” she moaned, sinking into the chair by his desk again and covering her face with her hands.
He swallowed. “Things in life don’t always go as we plan. Things change. People die. Accidents happen. All that can be done then is the best thing possible with what remains.”
She looked up at him, her eyes glittering with frustrated tears. “I don’t want to share my baby with a stranger. I don’t want to share my baby with anyone. If that makes me selfish then I’m sorry.”
“And I’m afraid I can’t let you walk away with my child.”
“I didn’t say I was going to walk away with your child. I understand that this is…difficult for you, too. But you weren’t planning on having a baby. I was, and…”
“I planned on having children for years. It was denied me, first through infertility and then through the loss of my wife. And now that I have the chance again, you will not stand in my way.”
He couldn’t let her out of his sight, of that he was certain. And his course of action after that was still undecided. Marriage still seemed like the most viable of his options, the only way to prevent his son or daughter from suffering the stigma of illegitimacy. And yet the very idea of marriage was enough to make him feel as if his lungs were closing in. But in the meantime, this woman wasn’t going to get any chances to escape from him.
“I have to fly back to Turan to see my personal physician. I’m not undergoing any medical testing in the U.S.”
“You and your wife obviously did your fertility treatments here.”
Yes, they had. Selena had been raised on the West