we have a moment?” He directed the question at Samantha, then, without waiting for a response, grabbed hold of Bailey’s arm and guided her back into her bedroom. He closed the door, enclosing them both in the space.
And for a moment, she was completely lost in him. In his strength, in his very presence, which reached to every corner of the room, and around her. She wanted to lean into him. To rest her head against the solid wall of his chest and release hold of all of the heartbreak, fear and stress she had been enduring for the past few months.
She just wanted to fall into his arms and lose it all. Lose herself.
But that was impossible. He was...he was a liar. On so many more levels than she had realized.
“My engagement is off,” he said, as though she were not holding a magazine in her hand proclaiming exactly that. “And, given that, I see no reason why the two of us can’t resume our liaison.”
“Our...liaison. The one where you come and visit me every couple of months for sex?”
“Bailey,” he said, his tone exceedingly hard done by. It made her want to punch him. “I have a certain life, certain expectations, and...”
“These expectations?” She turned the tabloid around, thrusting it toward him. “You’re a prince? What strange fairy tale did I fall into, Raphael? You said you were a pharmaceutical rep.”
“You said I was a pharmaceutical rep, Bailey,” he said. “Don’t you remember?”
“I...” She remembered everything about the night she met him. The way that her world had stopped completely when their eyes had met. How out of place he looked in the sleazy diner that she worked at, Sweater Bunnies, where the waitresses all wore sweaters with plunging necklines and short shorts, with glittering tights and high heels.
His plane was delayed because of the weather. He had come into town on business. They had ended up talking. And then she had done something she had never done before in her life. She went home with him.
They didn’t have sex. Not that first night. But he had kissed her, and she had...well, she’d learned an entirely new definition for the word want. Her entire body had caught fire with the touch of his lips, the touch of his hands. They had been talking one moment, and then the next, he had her down on the bed.
“I’m a virgin,” she said.
“I don’t need you to be,” he responded, his voice rough, his hands tangled in her hair. “We don’t have to play that game. Unless you want to.”
“No,” she said, “I really am. Like, a really, real virgin. Who has never done anything like this before, ever.”
He sat up. “Never?”
“Never. But, I like you. And...maybe if the weather is bad tomorrow...”
“You want to wait, but you might be ready tomorrow?”
“I don’t know.”
“We’ll wait,” he said, kissing her cheek.
And he hadn’t thrown her out. Instead, he had poured her a glass of soda and then continued to talk to her.
She hadn’t made him wait long after that. The next night she’d made him her first, and she’d already been spinning fantasies about him being the only.
Then...well, then he’d turned out to be a frog. Except he was actually a prince. Which was just insane.
“Of course I remember,” she snapped.
“Then you remember that you were the one who laughed at me, and said, ‘You aren’t a pharmaceutical rep or something, are you?’ And I did not correct you. In fact, you will find, Bailey, that a great many of the things you think about me you created.”
“So now you’re gaslighting me? You’re making this whole thing about what I chose to believe? And somehow, you think that will make me want you back. Not as a girlfriend, or anything like that, just as your little Colorado-based... Tell me, Raphael, where do your other women live?”
“I never thought of you that way,” he said, his tone fierce. “Never.”
“Actions speak louder than words and all of that. You treated me like one. You’re still treating me like one. Get out of my apartment, Your Majesty,” she spat.
“I am not in the habit of taking orders, you will find. I was all right playing your game before, but now you know. I am a prince, cara mia. And what I want, I have.”
“Well,” she said, flinging her arms out wide, “you don’t get this.”
He reached out, cupping the back of her head and drawing her forward. “You don’t mean that.”
“Oh, but I do.” She pressed her hands flat against his chest—the better to shove him backward—only then he felt...so much like home. Like everything brilliant and perfect that she’d been missing while her life had been upended.
It was easy to forget he was the one who’d upended it.
He curved one arm around her waist, drawing her body flush against his. And then he frowned.
And she came back to reality, hard.
“Don’t touch me,” she hissed, pulling away and straightening her coat a little bit frantically.
She didn’t want him to see that she was pregnant because...
Because she didn’t know why. She’d resigned herself to her fate as a single mother because he was supposed to be married to someone else. Because the text she’d sent out to him after the fact saying she needed to talk to him had gone unreturned.
But he was here now. And he was a prince, damn it all.
Her own father had never been around, and she and her mother had suffered financially for it. Raphael could support their child. Could make sure they didn’t struggle.
She flicked the top button of her coat open, her heart pounding. “I’m not going to be your lover, Raphael,” she said, her voice trembling as she continued undoing buttons. She let her coat fall free and revealed the bump that was only just now visible beneath her tight-fitting sweater. “But whether you want to be or not, you are the father of my baby.”
IT WAS RARE that Prince Raphael DeSantis was rendered speechless. But then, it was rare for him to be rejected.
And that had happened twice in the past week.
Were he a man with any insecurity, he might be wounded. However, he was the Crown Prince of Santa Firenze, a man who had been born with the world in hand and every advantage available to him. A man who—upon his birth—had been worshipped by the palace’s many servants, simply because he existed. Reverence was a gift bestowed upon him from his first breath. And he had spent his life ensuring that he maintained the admiration of his people.
And
