Luxury Escapes

Completely without permission her mind began to play a slideshow of what that might look like. She could see it clearly. Maximo’s hands gripping a woman’s rounded hips, his dark hands covering full breasts, kissing the white column of his lover’s throat. And when she saw strawberry blond hair fanned out over the pillow she blinked to try to banish the images. A hot tide of embarrassment assaulted her when she realized she’d cast herself in the part of Maximo’s lover. It was laughable. Apart from the fact that she had no desire to sleep with him, there was no way he would want to take a twenty-eight-year-old virgin to bed.

She knew that some men got off on inexperience, on being a woman’s first lover, but she had a feeling that at her age it ceased to be sexy and started to look a lot more as if there must be something wrong with her.

“This is nice,” she managed to squeak out through her suddenly tight throat.

“Glad it meets with your approval. Is there anything you’d like to have brought up to you?”

A sudden roll of nausea assaulted her. “Yes. Saltine crackers. And a ginger ale if there’s one handy.”

He drew his eyebrows together, his expression full of concern. “You are not feeling well?”

“I’m never feeling well these days.”

“This is normal?”

She shrugged. “Morning sickness. Although mine lasts most of the day. But yes, that’s normal for some women.”

“Rest,” he said, his tone commanding. “I will see that you are cared for.”

Suddenly she was so tired her only wish was to comply with his command. “Thank you.”

He turned and left the room, closing the door behind him, and she stumbled to the bed and climbed on top of it, relishing how she sank into the soft bedding. She didn’t bother to take her shoes off or to get under the covers, and in a matter of seconds she was completely dead to the world.

When Maximo returned to Alison’s room half an hour later with her requests she was sound asleep, her arm thrown over her face, her hair spread into a golden-red halo. His eyes were immediately drawn to the gentle rise and fall of her generous breasts. She was an amazingly beautiful woman.

Kissing her had been shockingly exciting. He couldn’t remember the last time simply kissing a woman had aroused him so much. Maybe when he’d been a teenage virgin, but certainly not any time in the twenty years since then.

He hadn’t intended to kiss her. Not yet. Seduction wasn’t the way to win Alison over to his way of thinking. She was cerebral; the way to appeal to her would be through logic and reason, not through sensual persuasion. At least that’s what he’d thought. She’d been surprisingly passionate in his arms, a little hesitant, but she’d been all the sweeter for it.

The temptation to join her in the bed, to lift the hem of her shirt again, touch her flat stomach and move higher to the lush swell of her breasts, was so powerful his teeth ached. It wasn’t only his teeth that were aching, either. He steeled himself against the hot flood of arousal that was coursing through him, fighting to maintain control over his body.

“Alison, cara.” He reached out and touched her bare arm and desire raced through him like a shot of pure liquor into his system. She was so beautiful. So different from any other woman he’d been with or even wanted to be with.

Always he’d gravitated to tall, slender women. Models, actresses, women with style and sophistication. Alison was slender, her waist small, but she had a woman’s curves; her hips rounded, her breasts enticingly full.

Unlike the extremely fashionable women he’d preferred in the past, Alison seemed to dress simply to stay warm, or to avoid indecent exposure. There was nothing unflattering about her wardrobe, but there was nothing especially flattering about it, either. It was as though she honestly didn’t give it a second thought. She had been wearing some makeup the first day he’d met her, but today she’d gone without it entirely. Most women of his acquaintance would have moaned about how pale they looked without it in an effort to get some sort of compliment. Alison didn’t seem to care either way.

She shifted beneath his hand, a sweet moan escaping her lips. Her eyes fluttered open and she fixed her sleepy copper gaze on him, her full lips turning up slightly.

“I know you’re half asleep,” he said softly, “because that’s the only way I could have earned a smile from you.”

Just like that her brow creased and she frowned. “Oh,” she said softly, putting her hand on her stomach.

Anxiety shot through him. “Is everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine. Well, my stomach hurts and my mouth is really dry, but everything’s fine with the baby.”

“That’s why I brought your requested items.” He gestured to the tray that was sitting next to her.

The crease between her eyebrows deepened and her lips tugged further down at the corners. “You brought me saltines and ginger ale?”

“Not just any ginger ale.” He picked the long-stemmed glass up from the tray. “My personal chef mixed it especially for you. It has fresh ginger and honey, good for your nausea.”

She extended a shaky hand and took the glass from him, lifting it to her lips. Her expression turned to one of relief almost immediately. “The ginger is amazing. It solves all my problems. All my physical problems, anyway.”

“Still viewing all of this as a problem?”

She took another sip of her drink and shot him a hard look. “Well, yes, morning sickness is kind of a problem. Anyway, you can’t tell me you’re ecstatic about this.”

“I’m not sorry about it.”

“How is that possible?”

“I want to be a father. I had given up on that ever happening. There is no way I can regret this.”

She lowered her head and pressed the glass to her forehead. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Marry me. It’s the best solution. For the baby. For us.”

Her head snapped up. “Why is it the best for us?”

“If we were married we would have our child all the time. No missed Christmases, none of this every-other-weekend business. If we had shared custody there is no way you or I could be there for everything.”

“That’s true,” she said softly.

“And I can’t imagine that you intend to spend the rest of your life without a man. You’re what, twenty-nine?”

Her copper eyes narrowed. “Eight.”

“Either way you’re far too young to embrace a life of celibacy. Raising a child and having a personal life is not easy. If we were married, that would be taken care of. You and I share a pretty potent attraction, you can’t deny that.”

“I’m not exactly concerned about the baby’s impact on my sex life,” she said drily, pulling a cracker off the tray.

“Perhaps not now, but eventually you will be. I can also offer you financial security. You would be free to do what you liked.”

“I could stay at home with the baby?”

“If you like. Or you could continue to work and our child would be provided with the best caregiver available.”

“I wouldn’t keep working,” she said.

“I thought your career was important to you.”

“It is. But raising my child, being there for everything, that’s more important to me.”

Maximo only looked at her, his eyebrows raised as if he were waiting for her to continue. Alison wasn’t sure how to explain how she felt to him, or if she even wanted to.

She wanted to be the kind of mom who was there when her child got home from school; she wanted to have cookies baked, and to drive them to soccer practice. She wanted to be there, be interested, be involved. She wanted to be everything neither of her parents had bothered to be.

“If that’s what you want then I can’t imagine you want to spend a good portion of our child’s life shuttling him back and forth between households.”

She bit her lip so hard she tasted blood. “Well, it isn’t as though we’re bitter exes. We could share some of the time together. I could stay here sometimes.”

“And you think some kind of pieced-together living arrangement would be better than an intact family?”

“What I think is that we have an extremely unconventional situation and you’re playing like we can make it into the perfect, model family, when that just isn’t realistic.”

“I’m trying to do the best thing. You’re the one that’s too selfish to do the right thing by our son or daughter.”

She took another swallow of ginger ale to prevent herself from gagging. She’d been touched when she’d realized that he’d brought her the crackers and soda, but she was much less impressed now that she realized he was just using it as an opportunity to try to goad her into agreeing to marry him.

“I don’t understand why you’re the one pushing for marriage,” she said when she was certain she wasn’t going to be sick all over the floral duvet. “Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”

A short, derisive laugh escaped his lips. “Perhaps traditionally, but then this is hardly a traditional situation. In this case, I am the one who has the most realistic concept of what it means to be a royal bastard.”

“Don’t call him that!” she said, putting a hand on her stomach, anger flaring up, hot and fast. “That’s a horrible term. No one even uses it in that way anymore!”

“Maybe not in the U.S., or maybe just not in the circles you’re in. But I can guarantee you that here, among the ruling class, legitimacy matters a great deal. Not just in terms of what our child can inherit. Do you want our son or daughter to be the dirty secret of the Rossi family? Do you want him or her to be the subject of sordid gossip for his or her entire life? The circumstances of the conception don’t matter. What matters is what people will say. They will create the seediest reality they can possibly think of and that will be the new truth. Whether you like the term or not, if you’re intent on refusing to marry me, you had better get used to it.”

The picture he painted was dark. She could see it clearly. People would stop talking when their child walked into a room, their expression censorious, their rejections subtle but painful.

“You may not want to be married to me, and frankly, I don’t want to be married at all,” he said. “But you can’t deny that it makes sense.”

“I just don’t like the idea of it.”

“Of marriage without love?” Maximo knew that most women would reject the idea, at least outwardly, even if their motive for marriage was truly money or status and not finer feelings at all. “I can assure you that love within a marriage does not guarantee happiness.” He didn’t like to talk about his marriage to Selena. Inevitably it brought up not only her shortcomings, but his own failures. And neither were things he revisited happily.

“That isn’t it.” She drew her knees up to her chest, the action, combined with her messy hair spilling over her shoulder and her pale, makeup-free face, made her look young and extremely innocent. “I never planned on marrying at all. So love isn’t really an issue. I just don’t want to be married.”

“Is this some kind of feminist thing?”

She snorted. “Hardly. It’s a personal thing. Marriage is a partnership, one that asks a lot of you. I don’t have any desire to give that much of myself to another person. Look how often marriages end in divorce. My own parents’ divorce was horrible, and during my two years as a divorce attorney I saw so much unhappiness. Those people grew to depend on each other and for one of them, usually the woman, divorce left them crippled. It was like watching someone trying to function after having a limb chopped off.”

“I know what it is to lose a spouse,” he said grimly, the brackets around his mouth deepening. “You can survive it. And what you’re talking about is love gone sour. That isn’t what we have. Our reasons for marriage are much stronger than that, and they will be the same in ten years as they are now. Love fades, lust does, too, but our child will always bond us together.”

He was right about that. Whether they married or not, Maximo Rossi was a permanent part of her life, because he would be a permanent part of her son’s or daughter’s life. A key part. One of the most important parts. He was her child’s father. Hadn’t her own father, or rather his absence, shaped her life in more ways than she could count?

And that was a whole other aspect of the situation she hadn’t considered before. It wasn’t just the presence of a parent that had an effect on a child, but the absence of one. What would it do to their child to live in a separate country from his or her father? What would it mean for them to be shuttled back and forth?

That was another tragedy she’d witnessed during her time as a divorce lawyer. The way it hurt the children involved. What it did to their self-esteem. Often, the children she helped in her new job, the ones who were on trial for petty crimes, were from broken homes.

She knew she would never let her child fall through the cracks like those children had, but the issue remained the same. If she could offer her son or daughter a greater amount of security, a better chance at success, shouldn’t she do it?

But marriage hadn’t factored into her life plans. She didn’t want to be a wife. Didn’t want to need Maximo. But no matter whether or not she needed Maximo her child would.

Logically, if she’d never intended to get married she wasn’t sacrificing anything by marrying Maximo. But … she still didn’t want a husband-and-wife-type relationship. It was too much. Too intimate. Too revealing. Even without love.

“I don’t want to do this,” she choked.

“It isn’t about what we want, Alison. It’s about what’s right. What’s best for our child. You’ve already made so many decisions based on that. I know you love the baby already, that you were already prepared to make major changes in your life in order to offer him the very best you could give. Now the best has changed.”

It would be so much easier to refuse him if he were simply being an autocratic tyrant, if he were being demanding and arrogant and commanding and all those things she knew he was capable of being. But he wasn’t. He was appealing to her need to reason and plan and choose the best, most sensible way to do something. And he was winning.

He was right. The only reasons for her not to marry him were selfish. All of the reasons to marry him benefited their child. If she could see another way she would grab it.

“Okay,” she said slowly, feeling the words stick in her throat, “I’ll do it. I’ll marry you.”

CHAPTER FIVE

A SENSE of triumph, along with a compressing sensation in his throat that felt suspiciously like the tightening of a noose, assaulted Maximo. It was necessary; the only thing that could be done. The only way for him to truly claim his child, make him his heir. And the only way to claim Alison.

A heavy pulse throbbed in his groin at the thought of claiming Alison in the most basic, elemental way. He wanted her with a kind of passionate ferocity that was foreign to him.

He would have wanted her no matter what, would have desired her had he passed her when she was walking down the street. But the intense, bone-deep need to take her, to enter her sweet body and join himself to her … that had to be connected to the pregnancy because it was outside anything in his experience. He’d experienced lust—the basest kind that had nothing to do with emotion—and he’d been in love. This didn’t resemble either experience.

He could satisfy his lust for her without marriage, but marriage was necessary for him to have the sort of relationship with his child that he wanted, that he craved. And it was the only way he could give his child everything he or she deserved.

“My acceptance isn’t without provisos,” she continued, her gorgeous face deathly serious. “I agree that marriage seems to be the best solution, but don’t expect that I’m just going to cave into all of your demands.”

“Even after knowing you for only a few days, I would never expect that,” he said drily.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed, a cracker still in her hand, and stood. She wobbled and he reached out for her, hooking his arm around her waist to steady her. His response was immediate and fierce, his blood rushing south, his body hardening instantly. He could feel her heart pounding hard against his chest. Her copper eyes were wide, her lips parted slightly. How easy it would be to dip his head and taste her again …

She straightened, much too quickly for his taste, and pulled away, adjusting the hem of her casual T-shirt, her mouth now pulled into a tight line.

“Thank you,” she said tartly, moving back from him again, creating even more distance between them. “I’m not feeling very well.”

“So you said. Is it like this every day?”

“Pretty much. It hit with a vengeance right when I entered my sixth week.”

“How far along are you?” He realized then that he’d never asked.

“Seven weeks.”

His stomach tightened. She was nearly two months along already. It wouldn’t even be nine months until he held his son or daughter in his arms.

She was still slender, her stomach flat. He had to wonder if her breasts had already changed or if this was her normal shape. He could easily imagine her filling out, her belly getting round. Some previously undiscovered, primitive part of him surged with pride at the thought.

Pride … and a hot tide of arousal. He’d never actually thought of pregnant women as sexy before, but he could very easily imagine running his hands over Alison’s bare, full stomach, feeling his child move beneath his hands.

“The baby’s due in October,” she said.

He’d heard of pregnant women glowing, but he’d never seen it before. Until now. Alison’s whole face was lit up, a sweet, secret smile curving her lips slightly. The absolute joy he could see shining from her eyes was staggering. And it reminded him again why marrying her, providing his child with both parents, was the absolute best choice. She would be a good mother; he was absolutely certain of that. Were he not, there was no way he would have considered marrying her. If he wasn’t sure of that he would have simply sought sole custody of their child, and he would have done it without compunction.

“You are excited about it,” he said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Of course I am.”

Their eyes locked and held, and the tightening in his stomach intensified, radiating outward, desire gnawing at him with an urgency that was impossible to ignore.

“We’ll have to have the wedding soon. Before you start to show,” he said, his voice harsher than he’d intended.

She chewed her lip, her eyes betraying insecurity, fear, for the first time since he’d met her. Anger he’d seen, sadness, too, but never this bleak hopelessness. It made his chest ache as fiercely as the rest of his body.

“As I said, there are provisos to my agreement.”

“You did say. What you didn’t say was what those little stipulations were.”

“I don’t want our child in boarding school or anything like that. I want him or her to have as much of a normal upbringing as possible. No team of nannies, no catering to his every whim. I don’t want a spoiled child, either.”

“Do I seem like I was a spoiled child?”

“Yes.” She replied without missing a beat, and then continued. “I want to continue being active in advocating for children. Maybe organize a charity or something.”

“A wonderful idea. We have several organizations in place and having my princess closely involved would probably do wonders for them.”

“And I don’t … I want my own room.”

He inclined his head. “That is a common practice in royal marriages.”

“I don’t think you understand. I don’t want for us to … I don’t want to have a sexual relationship with you.”

Alison tried to clamp down the wild fluttering in her stomach. She knew Maximo wouldn’t be happy. Hadn’t he referenced their physical attraction as a reason for marriage? But this was what she needed in order to be able to accept his proposal, such as it was.

His kiss had decimated her control, had made her forget who she was, who he was, where she was. Going to bed with him … What would that do to her closely guarded self-control? The thought of surrendering herself like that, of stripping herself bare both physically and emotionally before another human being in that way, terrified her to her bones. Marriage she could deal with, but sexual intimacy was several steps beyond her.

She was attracted to him; unreasonably so. And that only made her more determined to maintain a healthy distance between them. If she didn’t want him like this, if being near him didn’t make her limbs weak and her pulse pound in her chest, at the apex of her thighs, if she didn’t get embarrassingly wet with wanting just from the brush of his mouth over hers, she might be able to simply deal with it. But it was the ease with which he robbed her of her common sense, her ability to think coherently, that had all of her internal alarms going off. He had too much power over her already, and throwing sex in with that big mess of emotions was a recipe for absolute disaster.

“That makes no sense. You can’t deny that we are extremely attracted to each other.”

“Maybe not. But I don’t feel like I can commit to that sort of relationship with you. Things are complicated enough. A marriage in a strictly legal sense I can handle. But I’ve only known you for twenty-four hours and I can’t even begin to consider a sexual relationship with you. And you’re a very attractive man. I’m sure there will always be lots of women who want to …”

“If you’re concerned about my fidelity, don’t be. I was married for seven years and never once did I look at another woman. It was not a hardship for me.”

Maybe not, but Maximo had been in love with his wife. They weren’t in love. Not that she cared. But if she were to sleep with him, she would need to know that he was being faithful to her. And that was just one more reason not to cross that line with him. Even imagining a hypothetical situation where they were intimately involved made her care about who he slept with. It made her feel things like jealousy and insecurity, and other emotions she had no business feeling. If she actually made love with him it would no doubt be multiplied by a hundred, and that was just one of the many things she was trying to avoid.

“I’m not concerned about that. But if we were sleeping together then yes, I would want you to be faithful. You would want the same from me. Emotions would become involved.”

“Not for me,” he said starkly. She knew he spoke the truth. But he probably had lots of sexual experience. Divorcing love from sex was probably second nature to him. For her … she knew instinctively that sex could have a seriously devastating emotional effect on her. She just wouldn’t be able to open herself up like that to someone without becoming involved. It was one of the reasons she’d avoided it for the past twenty-eight years.

The last thing she needed was for him to become a necessity to her, and she knew that if she let herself she could easily melt into Maximo, let his strength hold her up when things were hard. She could grow to depend on him, and she’d spent far too long learning to be independent, to be in control, to take that chance.

“Maybe not. But this is what I want.”

“And you wouldn’t mind if I were having sex with other women?” he asked, his words obviously chosen to elicit a response from her. One they most certainly got, but she wasn’t going to let him know that.

“I wouldn’t care either way. If we aren’t sleeping together then there isn’t a relationship to be faithful to.”

“You may feel differently once we speak our vows.”

“I can’t imagine that I will. What we have in common is the desire to do what’s right for our child. Nothing more. We didn’t even conceive in the way most couples do.”

“But we very easily could have.”

It wasn’t true—she knew it wasn’t—and yet it was far too easy to visualize the image, a picture of her meeting Maximo in a bar, a restaurant, on the street. Of them talking, smiling, laughing. Having dinner together. Going home together. Making love.