LITMIR.BIZ

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cradled in Alison Whitman’s arms as she looked down at the infant with a small, maternal smile on her face. The image filled him with longing so intense that his chest ached with it. He thought that he’d let that desire go, the desire for children. He thought he’d laid that dream to rest, alongside his wife.

      But in one surreal moment all of those dreams had been made possible again. And in that very same moment he’d found out that his child might have serious health complications. His tightly controlled life was suddenly, definitely, out of his control. Everything that had seemed important five minutes ago was insignificant now, and everything that mattered to him rested in the womb of this stranger.

      But he could get the test. Find out as soon as possible if there was a chance their baby might have the disease. Having something to do, something to hold on to, real action that he could take, helped anchor the whole situation to reality, allowed him to have some control back. It made it easier to believe that there really was a baby.

      “I will have the test done right away,” he said. He hadn’t been planning on going back to Turan for another two weeks, but this took precedence. He would need to see his personal physician at the palace. He wouldn’t take any chances on having this made a spectacle by the press. They’d caused enough damage in his life. “And what are you planning if the test is positive?”

      She looked down at her hands. They were delicate, feminine hands, void of jewelry and nail polish. It was far too easy to imagine how soft those hands would feel on his body, how pale they would look against the dark skin of his chest. A pang of lust hit him low in the gut. She was a beautiful woman; there was no denying that. Much less adorned than the type of woman he was accustomed to.

      Her face had only the bare minimum of makeup, showing flawless ivory skin, her copper eyes left unenhanced by colored eyeshadow. Her full lips had just a bit of pale pink gloss on them that wouldn’t take long to kiss right off.

      Her strawberry blond hair was straight, falling well past her shoulders, and it looked as if it would be soft to touch, not stiff with product. A man would be able to sift it through his fingers and watch it spill over his pillow. His stomach tightened further. It said a lot about how much neglect his libido had endured if he was capable of being aroused at this precise moment. And when had a woman ever appealed to him so immediately? When had lust grabbed him so hard? Never in his recent memory, that was certain. Guilt, usually easy to ignore after living with it for so long, gnawed at him, harder and more insistent than usual.

      “I’m keeping the baby no matter what,” she said slowly, raising her eyes to meet his. “I just need to be prepared.”

      Something about the way she said that she was keeping the baby, as if he, the child’s father, had no place in its life, caused a torrent of hot, possessive anger to flood through him. It was so intense that it momentarily blotted out the lust that had just been firing through his veins.

      “The baby isn’t yours. The baby is ours,” he said.

      “But…but you and your wife…”

      He froze, realizing suddenly that she didn’t know who he was. It didn’t seem possible. Her face betrayed nothing, not a hint of recognition or foreknowledge concerning what he was about to say. If she did know who he was, she was a world-class actress.

      “My wife died two years ago.”

      Those exotic eyes widened and her mouth dropped. “I’m…I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Melissa didn’t tell me that. She didn’t tell me anything about you but your name.”

      “Usually that’s enough,” he said ruefully.

      “But then…you don’t think I’m going to give you my baby?”

      “Our baby,” he growled. “As much mine as yours. Assuming of course that you’re actually the mother and it wasn’t some other woman who donated genetic material.”

      “No. It’s my baby. Biologically. I was artificially inseminated.” She lowered her gaze. “This was my third attempt. I didn’t get pregnant the first two times.”

      “And you are certain it was my sample that took?”

      “They were all your samples.” She pursed her lips. “They made the mistake months ago. They only realized after the last time. The time that was successful.”

      Silence hung between them, thickening the air. Maximo felt his heart rate quicken, his blood pumping hard through his veins. He looked down at her, at those full pouting lips. In that moment his only thought was what a shame it was that he had not made three traditional conception attempts with this woman. She was incredibly beautiful—an enticing mix of strength and vulnerability that appealed to him in a way he didn’t understand. He crushed the surge of almost crippling desire that was washing through him.

      “So you’re capable of having a baby with a man the usual way, and yet you chose to make one with a turkey-baster?” he said, his voice harsh.

      Her lip curled in disgust. “That’s horrible.”

      It was, and he knew it. Yet he felt compelled to lash out at her, at the woman who had walked into his home and tilted his world completely off its axis. He hadn’t been entirely happy with how his life was, but he had come to the point where he’d accepted it. Now she was here, offering him things he had long since let go of. Only what she was offering was a mangled, twisted version of the dream he and his wife had shared.

      “You’re a lesbian?” he asked. If she was, it was a loss to his gender. A waste of a very beautiful woman, in his opinion.

      Color flared in her cheeks. “No. I’m not a lesbian.”

      “Then why not wait and have a baby with a husband?”

      “Because I don’t want a husband.”

      He took in her business attire for the first time. The extreme beauty of her face had held his attention before, preventing him from examining the rest of her appearance too closely, and he hadn’t noticed the neatly tailored charcoal pantsuit and starched white shirt. She was obviously a career woman. Probably intent on having day-care workers raise their child while she set about climbing the corporate ladder. Why have a baby, then? An accessory no doubt, the ultimate symbol of all she had achieved without the help of a man. Distaste coiled in his stomach, mingling with the desire that lingered there.

      “Don’t imagine for one moment that you will be raising this child without me. We’ll have paternity testing done and if it is in fact my baby, you may yet find yourself with a husband, regardless of your original plans.”

      He didn’t want to get married again. He hadn’t even been inclined to get involved in a casual relationship since Selena’s death, but that didn’t change the facts of the situation. If this was his child, there was no way he would be an absentee father. He wanted his son or daughter in Turan with him, not half a world away in the United States.

      The thought of having his child looked upon as a royal bastard, illegitimate and unable to claim the inheritance that should belong to him or her by right, was not something that settled well with him. And there was only one way to remedy that.

      The look of absolute shock on her face might have been comical if there were anything even remotely funny about the situation. “Did you just propose to me?”

      “Not exactly.”

      “I don’t know you. You don’t know me.”

      “We’re having a baby,” he said simply.

      “I fail to see what that has to do with marriage,” she said, that luscious mouth pursed into a tight pout.

      “It’s a common reason for people to marry,” he said drily. “Arguably the most common.”

      “I fully intended on being a single parent. I wasn’t waiting around for a white knight to sweep me off of my feet and offer matrimony. This wasn’t plan B while I waited around for Mr. Right. The baby was my only plan.”

      “And

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