“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
