LITMIR.BIZ

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      Max couldn’t help but laugh at her acerbic wit. She wasn’t like the women he was used to. She didn’t cling or simper or defer to him in any way. Some men might be bothered by a woman like her, threatened by her strength and intelligence. He enjoyed the challenge. And it helped that he was certain he held the upper hand in the situation. Now that he had coaxed her into coming to Turan with him the power balance would be shifted completely in his favor.

      It wasn’t his plan to force Alison’s hand in any way; on the contrary he planned to make her an offer that was too good to pass up, once he figured out exactly what he wanted to do. He could tell that Alison would defend their child to the death if she had to, could see that she would lay everything aside for the sake of her baby. But he would do the same. There was no way he was taking the chance that she might disappear with their baby.

      It was a strange thing to him that a woman would be so resistant to the idea of having his baby. He wasn’t a conceited man, but he was pragmatic in his view on things. First and foremost, he was royal and extremely wealthy. He was to be the next king of his country and along with that would receive an inheritance worth billions, coupled with the personal fortune he’d amassed with his hugely successful corporation. His chain of luxury hotels and casinos were popular with the rich and famous, both on the island of Turan, and in almost every other major tourist spot in the world.

      In the eyes of most women he would be the golden chalice. A ticket to status and riches beyond most people’s imaginations. And yet Ms. Alison Whitman had acted as though carrying his baby was equivalent to being sentenced to the royal dungeon—which they did not have at the Turani palace, regardless of what she thought.

      “And your job is very important to you?” he asked, still unable to understand where a child was supposed to fit into this cool businesswoman’s schedule.

      “Yes. My job is important. I’m a court-appointed advocate for children. My law firm does the work pro bono with funding from the government. The pay isn’t what it could be, but I put in some time at a more high-profile law firm and quickly found that handling the divorces of the rich and petulant isn’t very rewarding.”

      “You’re an advocate for children?” That didn’t mesh with the picture he’d been developing of her in his mind. He’d imagined her to be a toothy shark of a lawyer. With her sharp wit and obviously keen intellect, combined with her cool beauty, he had a hard time imagining her as anything else.

      “It’s what I’ve been doing for the past year. I wanted to make a difference, and I knew that if I was going to get ready to have a baby I couldn’t be pushing myself the way we were expected to at Chapman and Stone. Corporate cutthroat doesn’t really suit me anyway.”

      “Then why did you get into law in the first place?”

      “It pays well,” she said simply. “I’m good at it…It just doesn’t suit me. But I worked in the industry as long as I could stand, and then I moved into an area of law that was a much better fit. Children shouldn’t have to stand in court and face those who made victims of them. I speak for them. I won’t allow those who defend abusers and pedophiles to revictimize a child so that they can line their pockets with a little more cash.” She offered him a rueful smile. “I am a lawyer, but sometimes there isn’t anyone I hate on the planet more than another lawyer.”

      Alison’s cheeks were flushed, the passion that she felt for her job, for her calling, evident in the way she spoke of it. The woman who was carrying his baby made her living advocating for children. Could he have selected better? It was a turnaround from how he’d felt about her before. Instead of seeing a hard-as-nails career woman, he now saw a defender, willing to fight for the right thing, a woman who dedicated herself to the service of others. It only cemented in his mind what he’d already been considering.

      Marriage was not a part of the plan for his life. He’d been married. He’d loved his wife. But not even love and respect had made them happy in the end. It hadn’t erased their problems. He hadn’t been able to fix it, and ultimately, his wife had spent that last months of her life in misery. That was something he would bear for the rest of his life.

      But Alison was carrying his child and duty demanded that he do the honorable thing and make her his wife. Perhaps there was a different protocol when a woman had conceived through means other than sex, but it felt the same to him.

      A heavy ache pulsed in his groin area, reminding him that it wasn’t the same at all. And yet he couldn’t have felt more responsible if the baby had been conceived in his bed rather than a lab. He felt responsible for Alison in much the same way, as though they had made their baby the good old-fashioned way.

      And the fierce attraction he felt for her was an added bonus. He hadn’t intended to remain a monk for the rest of his life, but neither had he felt ready to enter the world of casual dating and one-night stands again. He’d been married for seven years and it had been more than nine years since he’d been with any woman other than his wife. It was safe to say his little black book was outdated. And at thirty-six, he felt far too old to reenter that world anyway.

      In that respect, a marriage between Alison and him would be beneficial. The ferocity of his attraction to her was shocking, but that could easily be attributed to the long bout of celibacy. Men simply weren’t made to deny their sexual needs for that long and it didn’t really come as a surprise to him that now his libido had woken from hibernation it was ravenously hungry.

      The beautiful temptress sitting so primly across from him with her milk-pale skin and flawless figure was what he craved. She was different than his wife. Selena had been tall, her curves slight, but the top of Alison’s head would rest comfortably beneath his chin. And her curves—they were enough for any man. Her breasts were lush enough to fill his hands to overflowing. Lust tightened his gut and he shifted to relieve the pressure on his growing arousal, and to hide the evidence of his arousal from Alison. He didn’t relish the idea of being caught like an adolescent boy who had no control over his body.

      “So you like children?” he asked.

      She nodded, a shimmering wave of strawberry hair sliding over her shoulder. “I’ve always wanted to be a mother.”

      “Not a wife?”

      She shrugged, and he couldn’t help but notice the gentle rise and fall of her breasts. “Relationships are complicated.”

      “So is parenthood.”

      “Yes, but it’s different. A child depends on you. They come into the world loving you and it’s up to you to honor that, to care for them and love them back. With relationships, with a marriage, you’re dependent on someone else.”

      “And you find that objectionable?”

      “It requires a measure of trust in human nature that I just don’t have.”

      He couldn’t deny the truth of her words. Selena had depended on him, and in his estimation he had failed her.

      “So you elected to become a single mother rather than deal with a relationship?”

      She frowned, her full lips turning down into a very tempting pout. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. My goal wasn’t to become a single mother. It was to be a mother. I wasn’t giving too much thought to the exclusion of a relationship. I was just pursuing what I wanted.”

      “And this complicates things.”

      “Very much.”

      “Is it so bad for our child to have both parents?”

      She turned her face away from him and fixed her gaze on the view outside the window. “I don’t know, Maximo. I don’t think I can deal with everything at once. Can’t we just get through the testing and talk about the rest later?”

      He inclined his head. “If you like. But we still have to discuss our options at some point.”

      “I know.”

      “It isn’t what you had planned, I understand that. None of this is what

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