was a knock on the bedroom door.
“Rafael? Are you in here? Your father is in a car waiting downstairs and if you’re not down in ten minutes he’s coming up here and getting you.” It was his personal assistant, Jose.
Jose was his right-hand man at Montoro Enterprises and at home. He took care of all the details.
“I have company,” Rafe said. But Emily was more than just company. She was his lover. The mother of his unborn child.
“I am aware of that,” Jose said.
“Tell Father I’ll be down when I’m down,” Rafe said.
But the mood was broken and Emily was getting up and putting her clothes on. She had her jeans on and buttoned, but he stopped her before she put her T-shirt on. He pulled her into his arms. It seemed the sort of gesture that would reassure her, but since he was already thinking of everything he had to do, it felt hollow. He knew she noticed it, too, when she pulled back and shook her head.
The mantle of being a Montoro was tightening around him. “I—”
“Don’t. No excuses and definitely no lies,” she said. She reached into her back pocket and pulled out a business card for Shady Harry’s; he turned it over and saw she’d written her name and number on the back. “If you want to know about our child, contact me.”
“I do. I will,” he said.
She smiled up at him. “I know that the next few weeks are going to be crazy for you, so no pressure.”
She pulled her shirt on and then tucked her underwear into her purse and started for the door. He watched her walk out. Part of him wanted to run after her and make her stay so he could talk her into trying a relationship or maybe even marriage. Another part wanted to scoop her up and run away with her to some Pacific island where no one would know their names, far enough away from his family and everyone they knew.
But Emily was a brave sort of woman, and running had never been his style, either, so he had no choice but to get dressed and head down to the car.
His father didn’t speak to him the entire way to the airport. Rafael III had wanted the throne enough to try to convince his ex-wife to come back, but Rafe’s mother wasn’t interested in doing anything to help out her former husband. To say the two of them had a strained relationship was putting it mildly.
They were a prime example of how getting married to the wrong person didn’t make for a happy family. Rafe had the childhood to prove it.
During the ride, his cousin Juan Carlos spoke too much. Telling him what was expected of the next king of Alma.
Juan Carlos had been orphaned and seemed to be fixated on the monarchy as a way of proving to himself and the rest of the family that he could carry on his parents’ legacy. Perhaps if Rafe’s parents hadn’t divorced and been horrible to each other, he’d have felt the same way about the family honor.
Rafe freely admitted to himself that if Emily’s pregnancy became public knowledge it would create a scandal that would make protecting that legacy even more difficult. But Rafe tuned Juan Carlos out and tried to figure out what he expected of himself as a man.
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