I’ve hung my coat in my closet and settled at the small desk in the office adjoining my bedroom to investigate this cookie company Lavoie found—though as always, the secret room tucked behind the wall beside me is a far more tempting idea since banging down Gracie’s door and offering to take her to the zoo after shagging her until neither of us can walk straight is not an option—when there’s an audible click from the door in my bedroom.
I set aside my tablet and angle my body to peer through the doorway as a female form steps through the foyer and into my private chambers. “Hello?” Gracie calls.
Her voice sends a thrill humming through my veins.
I’ve always thought myself happy. She’s sunshine itself.
And I need to send her away. I lean back in the rolling leather desk chair and cross my feet atop the elegant writing desk. “Miss Diamonte. I thought I’d locked that knob.”
“Yet here I am.”
“You’ll find the door works the same when you leave. Do pull it shut behind you, please.”
She waltzes easily through my bedroom to lean into the doorway, her curvy hips encased in tight gray cotton leggings that look soft as a lambskin, a patch of smooth olive skin showing beneath her snug white shirt—but not the belly button stud, alas—and her nipples are two perfect points centered in her luscious breasts, as though she’s either sans bra, or encased in nothing more than thin silk. The tank hangs just low enough to showcase a hint of cleavage.
Her feet are bare, her toenails a brilliant Halloween orange, her largest toes sporting decorative black detail that I’m unable to clearly make out from this angle. A spider, perhaps.
Her hand drifts over her lower belly. Where my child is growing within her.
And she looks so very bloody right in my private quarters.
Natural. Complete. At home.
“You wish for a larger settlement,” I say, because apparently being an ass is the only tool at my disposal in doing the right thing for this woman.
“Oh, those documents you sent? I fried them up in butter, added some ground beef, and served them to the goats on Old Man Jones’s farm.”
Heaven above, life with this woman would not be boring.
And I do despise boring.
I pin her with a frown, which feels as unnatural as pouring petrol into my ears. “I’ll have another copy sent.”
“Or you can tell me why you’d pretend to be a dick when I’m perfectly capable of helping you solve your problem.”
The woman is turning my own good cheer against me, smiling brightly as she informs me she has no intention of doing this the easy way.
I do despise the easy way as well.
Generally.
But not when the welfare of my unborn child and one of the most genuinely kind women I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing is at stake.
“I’ve no problems you need to concern yourself with.”
“But you do have a problem.”
I do have a fucking problem. A big fucking bloody problem. Several, actually. One is growing beneath the desk, demanding that I touch this woman, kiss her, claim her, tear her clothes from her body and ravish her until neither of us can breathe.
It’s a struggle to remember why touching her is a bad idea. We’re alone. No witnesses. Who would know if we were to indulge in our primal urges?
“You misunderstand me, my lady.”
“I’ve met Elin. I’m pretty sure the only thing I’m misunderstanding is why any of your relatives thought the two of you should get married.”
She’s bloody vicious with her buckets of ice water, yet it still doesn’t detract from my desperate desire to toss her across my desk and have my way with her.
I’m clenching my fingers together so tightly they’re going numb. “It’s a political arrangement to keep peace within my kingdom,” I tell her tightly. Which is true. But not nearly all of the truth.
“Because your loyal subjects will looooove that you and your wife hate each other?”
“I do not hate Elin.”
She lifts a brow. Her expression should irritate me—it’s bloody identical to her meddlesome sister’s Don’t lie to me facial expression—but I find myself battling against my natural urge to smile in the face of Gracie calling my sheepshit.
“You’re a good man, Manning Frey, but I don’t believe you’re that good,” she says flatly.
“Hatred requires far more care and concern than I generally give to the woman my grandfather chose for me twenty-odd years ago. Tell me, Miss Diamonte, would you like to see your child sold for political gain in a country you’ve never visited and know nothing about?”
Ivory replaces the lovely olive glow of her cheeks, her hand stills over her belly, but even as her complexion visibly recoils at the idea of our child being forced to wed against his will, her bright brown eyes narrow in determination. “You wouldn’t do that.”
“I am not now, nor will I ever be, the king of my country. Decisions of those nature are above my royal rank.”
She pushes out of the doorway and swings her hips as she crosses the relatively modest space to lean her hands on my writing desk, giving me a perfect glimpse of the deep vee of her cleavage and the light pink satin cups holding her perfect globes.
I swallow as my cock roars a protest to the idea of doing nothing more than looking.
Which I also should not be doing.
“Why do you have to marry Elin?” she asks.
“Why matters not.”
“Do you already have a secret love child with her?”
“Dear god, no.”
“Does she have naked pictures of you that she’s threatening to release to the press?”
Finally, I allow a smile out. “And why should I be ashamed of naked pictures? I’m quite the delectable specimen.”
“Hardly dignified and royal though.”
“Perhaps not, but tourism would increase tenfold if American women knew what they might find in Stölland. Speaking of naked pictures, Miss Diamonte—”
“I only give naked pictures to men who don’t try to buy me off.”
My royal jewels throb tight, my questions about those cookies dissipate into thin air, and a howl of outrage threatens to erupt from the bowels of my soul. “You’ve given other men naked photos of yourself?”
“That’s on a need-to-know basis. You don’t need to know.”
I’ll bloody well search every house in that little town of hers and destroy every copy.
“So what does Elin have on you?” she presses. “Is your father so cruel that he can’t see you’d both be miserable?”
“Do not insult my father.” I want to kiss those lush rosy lips until she can’t eat, can’t speak, can’t so much as breathe without feeling the imprint of my mouth upon hers. “You need to leave my quarters, Miss Diamonte. What would Ares say if he found you in here?”
“Probably not much.”
Her cheeky grin is nearly my undoing. I smooth my hands down the denim of my trousers. “You cannot fix this, Gracie.”
At her name on my lips, her dark eyes lock with mine.
“Please,” I say, my voice more hoarse, more raw, more honest than I ever wish to be, “please take care of my child. Keep him safe. Love him. I cannot. But I have every confidence you can and will.”
Her lips part and she slowly straightens. “You’re not marrying Elin.”
“If I do not, every citizen of my country will feel the ramifications.” I cannot tell her everything, but I can tell her this much. “My biggest regret is that you and the child have to suffer for decisions beyond any of our controls.”
She shakes her head. “We won’t suffer. You will.”
It’s not a threat.
Not from Gracie.
It’s a regret.
She leaves me then, and it takes every ounce of strength I possess to not leap after her, call for a jet, and disappear to the far corners of the earth to live as a normal man courting the woman destined to have his child.
Instead, I stand, text Viktor that I’m not to be disturbed until an hour before the party, and hit the lever to release the cleverly hidden door that takes me to the one place in my penthouse where I think best.
It’s not the room I want to be in, but it’s the only place I can allow myself to go.
