Luxury Escapes

“Well, I imagine it’s hard to get through the security lines at the airport with all that gold jingling in your pocket.”

“Are you a snob, Alison?” he asked, amusement lacing his voice.

“Am I a snob?”

“An inverse one.”

“Not at all. I was simply making a statement.” To keep him at arm’s length and annoyed with her if she could help it. There was something about Maximo, something that made her stomach tighten and her hands get damp. It wasn’t fear, but it was terrifying.

She had never wanted a relationship, had never wanted to depend on someone, to love someone, open herself up to them only to have them abandon her. She had been through it too many times in her life to willingly put herself through it ever again. First with the loss of her beautiful sister. She knew she couldn’t blame Kimberly for dying, but the grief had been stark and painful; the loss felt like a betrayal, in a way. And then her father had gone, abandoning his grieving wife and daughter. As for Alison’s mother, she might not have left physically, but the person she’d been before Kimberly’s death, before her husband had walked out, had disappeared completely.

Through all of that she’d learned how to be completely self-sufficient. And she had never wanted to take the chance on going back to a place where she might need someone else, where she might be dependent in any way.

But she did want to be a mother. And she’d set out to make that happen on her own. Now somehow Maximo had been thrown into her perfectly ordered plans. Everything had been so carefully laid out. It hadn’t seemed as if there was a possibility anything could go wrong. And now those idyllic visions she’d had for her future were slipping through her fingers.

Her baby had a father, not just some anonymous donor of genetic material. Her baby’s father was a prince. A prince whose arrogance couldn’t be rivaled, and whose dark good looks affected her in ways she didn’t want to analyze. So much for the best-laid plans.

“You seem to have a statement for everything,” he said, settling into the plush love seat that was positioned in the middle of the cabin.

Alison took her seat on the opposite side of the cabin, settling primly on the edge of a cream lounge chair. “I’m a lawyer. Making statements is an important part of my job.”

Max couldn’t help but laugh at her acerbic wit. She wasn’t like the women he was used to. She didn’t cling or simper or defer to him in any way. Some men might be bothered by a woman like her, threatened by her strength and intelligence. He enjoyed the challenge. And it helped that he was certain he held the upper hand in the situation. Now that he had coaxed her into coming to Turan with him the power balance would be shifted completely in his favor.

It wasn’t his plan to force Alison’s hand in any way; on the contrary he planned to make her an offer that was too good to pass up, once he figured out exactly what he wanted to do. He could tell that Alison would defend their child to the death if she had to, could see that she would lay everything aside for the sake of her baby. But he would do the same. There was no way he was taking the chance that she might disappear with their baby.

It was a strange thing to him that a woman would be so resistant to the idea of having his baby. He wasn’t a conceited man, but he was pragmatic in his view on things. First and foremost, he was royal and extremely wealthy. He was to be the next king of his country and along with that would receive an inheritance worth billions, coupled with the personal fortune he’d amassed with his hugely successful corporation. His chain of luxury hotels and casinos were popular with the rich and famous, both on the island of Turan, and in almost every other major tourist spot in the world.

In the eyes of most women he would be the golden chalice. A ticket to status and riches beyond most people’s imaginations. And yet Ms. Alison Whitman had acted as though carrying his baby was equivalent to being sentenced to the royal dungeon—which they did not have at the Turani palace, regardless of what she thought.

“And your job is very important to you?” he asked, still unable to understand where a child was supposed to fit into this cool businesswoman’s schedule.

“Yes. My job is important. I’m a court-appointed advocate for children. My law firm does the work pro bono with funding from the government. The pay isn’t what it could be, but I put in some time at a more high-profile law firm and quickly found that handling the divorces of the rich and petulant isn’t very rewarding.”

“You’re an advocate for children?” That didn’t mesh with the picture he’d been developing of her in his mind. He’d imagined her to be a toothy shark of a lawyer. With her sharp wit and obviously keen intellect, combined with her cool beauty, he had a hard time imagining her as anything else.

“It’s what I’ve been doing for the past year. I wanted to make a difference, and I knew that if I was going to get ready to have a baby I couldn’t be pushing myself the way we were expected to at Chapman and Stone. Corporate cutthroat doesn’t really suit me anyway.”

“Then why did you get into law in the first place?”

“It pays well,” she said simply. “I’m good at it … It just doesn’t suit me. But I worked in the industry as long as I could stand, and then I moved into an area of law that was a much better fit. Children shouldn’t have to stand in court and face those who made victims of them. I speak for them. I won’t allow those who defend abusers and pedophiles to revictimize a child so that they can line their pockets with a little more cash.” She offered him a rueful smile. “I am a lawyer, but sometimes there isn’t anyone I hate on the planet more than another lawyer.”

Alison’s cheeks were flushed, the passion that she felt for her job, for her calling, evident in the way she spoke of it. The woman who was carrying his baby made her living advocating for children. Could he have selected better? It was a turnaround from how he’d felt about her before. Instead of seeing a hard-as-nails career woman, he now saw a defender, willing to fight for the right thing, a woman who dedicated herself to the service of others. It only cemented in his mind what he’d already been considering.

Marriage was not a part of the plan for his life. He’d been married. He’d loved his wife. But not even love and respect had made them happy in the end. It hadn’t erased their problems. He hadn’t been able to fix it, and ultimately, his wife had spent that last months of her life in misery. That was something he would bear for the rest of his life.

But Alison was carrying his child and duty demanded that he do the honorable thing and make her his wife. Perhaps there was a different protocol when a woman had conceived through means other than sex, but it felt the same to him.

A heavy ache pulsed in his groin area, reminding him that it wasn’t the same at all. And yet he couldn’t have felt more responsible if the baby had been conceived in his bed rather than a lab. He felt responsible for Alison in much the same way, as though they had made their baby the good old-fashioned way.

And the fierce attraction he felt for her was an added bonus. He hadn’t intended to remain a monk for the rest of his life, but neither had he felt ready to enter the world of casual dating and one-night stands again. He’d been married for seven years and it had been more than nine years since he’d been with any woman other than his wife. It was safe to say his little black book was outdated. And at thirty-six, he felt far too old to reenter that world anyway.

In that respect, a marriage between Alison and him would be beneficial. The ferocity of his attraction to her was shocking, but that could easily be attributed to the long bout of celibacy. Men simply weren’t made to deny their sexual needs for that long and it didn’t really come as a surprise to him that now his libido had woken from hibernation it was ravenously hungry.

The beautiful temptress sitting so primly across from him with her milk-pale skin and flawless figure was what he craved. She was different than his wife. Selena had been tall, her curves slight, but the top of Alison’s head would rest comfortably beneath his chin. And her curves—they were enough for any man. Her breasts were lush enough to fill his hands to overflowing. Lust tightened his gut and he shifted to relieve the pressure on his growing arousal, and to hide the evidence of his arousal from Alison. He didn’t relish the idea of being caught like an adolescent boy who had no control over his body.

“So you like children?” he asked.

She nodded, a shimmering wave of strawberry hair sliding over her shoulder. “I’ve always wanted to be a mother.”

“Not a wife?”

She shrugged, and he couldn’t help but notice the gentle rise and fall of her breasts. “Relationships are complicated.”

“So is parenthood.”

“Yes, but it’s different. A child depends on you. They come into the world loving you and it’s up to you to honor that, to care for them and love them back. With relationships, with a marriage, you’re dependent on someone else.”

“And you find that objectionable?”

“It requires a measure of trust in human nature that I just don’t have.”

He couldn’t deny the truth of her words. Selena had depended on him, and in his estimation he had failed her.

“So you elected to become a single mother rather than deal with a relationship?”

She frowned, her full lips turning down into a very tempting pout. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. My goal wasn’t to become a single mother. It was to be a mother. I wasn’t giving too much thought to the exclusion of a relationship. I was just pursuing what I wanted.”

“And this complicates things.”

“Very much.”

“Is it so bad for our child to have both parents?”

She turned her face away from him and fixed her gaze on the view outside the window. “I don’t know, Maximo. I don’t think I can deal with everything at once. Can’t we just get through the testing and talk about the rest later?”

He inclined his head. “If you like. But we still have to discuss our options at some point.”

“I know.”

“It isn’t what you had planned, I understand that. None of this is what I had planned, either.”

Alison knew he wasn’t just referring to her pregnancy, but to the death of his wife. Finding a woman he had loved enough to marry, and then losing her—she couldn’t even imagine the void that must be left in Maximo’s life.

She didn’t really want to feel anything for Maximo. Already her awareness of him was off the charts, and it scared her. Adding any kind of emotion to that was asking for trouble.

Romantic love had never really appealed to her, and neither had any kind of intimate relationship. She’d seen the aftereffects of romantic love turned sour in her childhood home, watched her parents fall apart and self-destruct. Her mother had simply folded in on herself, leaving Alison to fend for herself.

When her father had left they’d lost their financial stability. People her mother had considered friends had all but abandoned her. Alison never wanted to find herself in that position, never wanted to place so much of her life in someone else’s hands that losing them could undo everything. Those experiences had taught her that she had to make her own way, find her own security, her own happiness.

Every inch of her life had been in her complete control since her disastrous childhood. She could control how good her grades were, and in high school she’d been obsessive about keeping her 4.0 so that she could get scholarships. In college she’d been single-minded in the pursuit of her degree, so that she could get a job that would allow her to remain independent. And every step in her life since then had been carefully planned and orchestrated, down to when and how she would become a mother.

All of that seemed laughable now that she was on a plane, headed to a foreign country with a shockingly handsome prince who also happened to be the unintended father of her baby.

CHAPTER THREE

HER first glimpse of Turan stole her breath. The island was a jewel set in the bright Mediterranean Sea. Gleaming white rock faces beset with stucco houses dotted the pale sanded coastline. The beach faded into lush greenery, and set into the tallest visible mountainside was a stone castle with masculine angles that gleamed gold in the late-afternoon light.

“It’s lovely.” Lovely, and yet untamed. Sort of like its master. For all of Maximo’s urbane sophistication, there was something about him that was raw and almost primitive. It appealed to her on a basic level she’d hardly been aware of before she’d seen him descending the stairs of his elegant mansion.

The entire flight had been thick with tension, at least on her end. Maximo seemed totally unaffected by her presence. Which was more than she could say for herself. It wasn’t as though she didn’t like men or that she had never felt any kind of sexual desire—of course she had. She simply hadn’t acted on it, hadn’t wanted to. The very idea typically made her feel as if she was on the edge of a panic attack. Sexual intimacy, opening herself up to someone like that, exposing herself, and possibly even losing some of her carefully guarded control, was usually about the least appealing thing she could think of. And yet something about Maximo ignited a curiosity that was starting to override her normal sense of self-preservation.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice full of total sincerity. “It is my belief that Turan is one of the most beautiful places on Earth.”

The plane began to descend, taking them low over grassland where cattle grazed free-range. “I wouldn’t have thought you could do much cattle farming on an island.”

“Not much, but we try to make the most of every natural resource we have. Vineyards and olive groves do well. And our grass-fed beef is almost world renowned. Of course, being an island, seafood is also a large part of our exports. But we don’t export as much as we might. My first priority has always been self-sufficiency.”

She made a small sound of approval. “What do your duties encompass? Your father is still the official ruler, right?”

He nodded. “I have been put in charge of managing the economy. In the past five years I’ve managed to increase tourism by fifty percent. With the new luxury casinos and the renovation of some of the historic fishing villages, Turan has become a popular destination for wealthy people looking for a high-profile vacation spot.”

She arched an eyebrow. “So you’re more of a businessman than a prince.”

He gave a low laugh. “Perhaps. Maybe in another life that’s what I would have been. But in this one, I’m happy to fulfill my duty. I do have some business interests on the side, but my main responsibility is still to my country.”

“And duty is the most important thing?”

“It means a lot to me. I was raised to believe that it was duty before self.”

Duty before self. And did that mean she had a duty to her child to ensure that he knew his father? If her father had wanted her and her mother had never given him a chance, how would she have felt? Pain twisted her. She would have given anything for a father who wanted her. For the protection and safety it would have represented. Did she have any right to refuse her own child this amazing gift? Especially one she would have given just about everything to have herself? She didn’t want to face the fact that having Maximo involved in the raising of their child was the right thing to do. What she wanted was for things to turn out according to her plan. But she knew that wasn’t possible now.

The plane touched down on the tarmac and her stomach rose into her throat.

When the small aircraft came to a stop, the stairs let down and Maximo took her arm in a very proprietary manner, his posture stiff. He held her as far from his body as was possible, as though too much contact was beneath his royal self. Which was just fine with her. She was still disturbed by the strange effect he seemed to be having on her equilibrium. It was as though her self-control had gone on vacation and now her body was making up for it by craving a whole host of things that had just never seemed important before.

She would much rather have him be aloof than have him touch her again like he’d done at his house. She could easily remember the slow burn against her lip as he drew his thumb over the sensitive skin. She shivered, trying to shake off the little thrill that assaulted her as the scene replayed in her mind.

A crew of five lined the runway, ready to unload his royal highness’s luggage, and her one little carry-on bag. She’d chosen to pack conservatively since she planned to be back in Seattle in just a few days, but seeing all of his belongings next to her one well-used suitcase made the disparity between their social standing widen before her eyes.

He ushered her into the back of the black limousine that was waiting for them, and she complied, mostly because she was in such awe of the wealth that surrounded her.

Money she was used to. For the early part of her childhood her family had enjoyed quite a bit of luxury, and though there were a few years of poverty after her father left, she remembered what it was like to live in the most coveted home in the cul-de-sac. Even now her income was healthier than most, though she chose to save her money rather than spend it on frivolous possessions.

But this … this was like nothing she had ever encountered.

The sleek limo slid through the wrought-iron gates that served to divide the castle and its inhabitants from the serfs who populated the rest of the island. Massive stone statues of men with swords stood watch by the gates, as if to reinforce the exclusivity of the location.

“No moat?” she asked facetiously as she gazed up at one massive turret that rose from the inner walls.

“No, the crocodiles could never discern between the intruders and the residents, so it made for a lousy security system. Now we just have a silent alarm like everyone else.”

His unexpected stab at humor brought a giggle to her lips. “No hot oil, then, either?”

“Only in the kitchen.” A small smirk teased the corner of his mouth and she noticed a small dimple that creased his cheek. Why couldn’t he stay austere and distant? It was easier to see him as the opposition when he was being an autocrat, much more difficult to do so when he actually seemed likable.

They came to a stop in front of the heavy double doors that were flanked, to her amusement, by formally dressed guards who didn’t look so different from the stone soldiers that stood at the gates.

He turned to face her, the full impact of his masculinity leaving her close to breathless. “After the doctor comes to perform the test, we will be having dinner with my parents so that I can introduce you to them.”

“Why would you need to introduce me?”

“Apart from the fact that you’re a guest, you are also the mother of my child, and their grandchild.”

Grandparents. He could even give her son or daughter grandparents, while she … well, her own father was heaven-knew-where and her mother was an extremely bitter woman who drank her issues away and forced everyone around her to listen to her vitriolic diatribes about life and men in general. Alison would never subject her child to that. She didn’t even subject herself to it unless absolutely necessary.

“This just gets more and more complicated.” She put her hand over her face and pressed hard on her eyes, trying to stop tears from overflowing. It was overwhelming in so many ways. Being pregnant, actually knowing she was having a baby, had been change enough, but to add all of this seemed impossible.

“They have every right to their grandchild, as I have every right to my child. Just as much right as you have, Alison. I will not allow you to deny my family this chance.”

Anger rolled through her, heating her blood, giving her strength. “By royal decree, is that it? Is this where the dungeon comes into play?”

“What is it with you and dungeons? Do you have some kind of weird fetish?”

“Just concerned I might end up on a twenty-four-hour cable news channel. American held captive by primitive prince,” she snapped. She pressed cool hands to her cheeks in an effort to release some of the heat that had mounted at his mention of fetishes. As if she would ever, ever, let a man tie her up so he could have his way with her.

Oddly, instead of the distaste she expected the thought to evoke, when she placed Maximo in the role of her captor, a sensual thrill tightened her stomach. Completely shocked by the direction of her usually sexless thoughts she turned her burning face away from Maximo and opened her own door, not waiting for any of the overeager staff who had appeared outside the palace, to assist her.

Maximo caught up to her in two easy strides, his long legs eating up the ground much faster than her five foot four inches would allow her to do. “Have I embarrassed you, tesoro?”

She ignored him, thrusting her chin up and trying to look unaffected by him, his presence and his innuendos.

He gripped her hand and stopped her from walking, drawing her close to him. Her heart began to pound so hard she was certain he must be able to hear it. Standing this close to him she could feel the heat emanating from his body, smell the heady, masculine scent that was one hundred percent raw, sexual man. One hundred percent Maximo.

Since when had she noticed how a man smelled? Unless she was at the gym and it was in a negative connotation she didn’t think she ever had. So why did Maximo’s smell appeal to her like this? Why did it make her pulse race and her breasts feel heavy? He wasn’t wearing cologne or any other kind of added scent. It was just him.

“I would have thought that a sophisticated career woman like you wouldn’t be so easy to embarrass.” He brushed his thumb across her burning cheek. She knew she was flushed, could tell by how hot she felt. “But it seems as though I’ve made you blush, cara.”

“Stop with the foreign endearments,” she said, her voice sounding breathless rather than snappy as she’d intended. “I don’t like them.”

“Really?” He dipped his head and her stomach dropped. She had thought, for one breathless moment, that he might be leaning in to kiss her. “Most women find them very sexy.”

“I’m not most women.”

He frowned, his dark gaze searching. “No, you’re not.”

She didn’t know whether or not she should feel complimented by that, but she did. Not that she would let him know it. His words shouldn’t have the power to flatter or hurt her in any way. They shouldn’t have any effect on her at all. He shouldn’t have any effect on her. The only thing they had between them was their baby. Their relationship had nothing to do with personal feelings. If not for the mistake at the clinic they never would have met. They ran in totally different social spheres. He never would have given her a second look if it weren’t for the baby.

It was important for her to remember that.

“When are you seeing the doctor?” she asked, hoping to distract him, eager to not be the focus of his undivided attention.

“She will come as soon as I call her.”

She nodded, not knowing why she’d thought he might need an appointment. Maximo wasn’t the sort of man who made appointments. People made them to meet with him, not the other way around.

“When will you call her?” she asked, pretending that all of the edginess she was feeling was over the test, and that none of it was due to Maximo’s proximity and the way it made her feel.

“Right away, if you like.”

She nodded, her stomach fluttering. “Yes, please. I’d like that.”

The doctor came immediately, and Alison followed Maximo and the beautiful young physician into his office. When he’d mentioned having a personal physician she’d imagined an elderly man, not a blonde in her early thirties who was tall and willowy enough to be a model.