LITMIR.BIZ

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      Nico’s brows drew together. “We will need to work on that mouth of yours. It’s unfit for a royal.”

      Lily snorted. “But not unfit enough for you two years ago when you seduced me, huh? Go to hell, Nico,” she said, stressing his name without the title.

      “You most definitely require etiquette lessons, cara mia.” His gaze raked her from head to toe. “And a suitable wardrobe.”

      Lily stiffened. Her clothes might not be the height of fashion, but they were usually clean and neat. Unlike now, when she’d spent the last twenty-four hours in a prison cell and just wrestled on the floor with a prince.

      Nico retrieved a cell phone from a table. “You and your son will never want for anything again. You will no longer have to work. I will take care of you both.”

      Lily stared at the gleaming phone held so casually in his hand, his words more seductive than she cared to admit. Never to have to struggle again? Never have to worry about keeping her apartment or her health insurance? Money and freedom from the fear of not having enough to take care of her baby?

      But no. What was he offering her—the chance to be a kept woman while he married his princess and had babies with her? She’d work herself half to death before she accepted such treatment. She’d taken care of Danny this long; she could continue to do so just fine on her own.

      “I can take care of my son without you,” she said.

      His expression grew so chilly she had to suppress a shiver. “Apparently I have not expressed myself in a manner you understand. There is no choice, Liliana. You and the boy belong to me.”

      Lily snorted. “Even you can’t own people, Nico.”

      He merely smiled at her. A frisson of warning raced down her spine and pooled in her belly. A moment later, he lifted the phone to his ear and began speaking in Italian. This time, it was a conversation, not simply a set of orders. When he finished, he laid the phone on a nearby table.

      “What did you do?”

      His self-satisfied smile did nothing to ease her tension. “Five million dollars is a lot of money, no? Do you think your friend will turn this down for you?”

      Black spots swam before her eyes, but Lily refused to buckle. “My God…”

      “Si, it is not likely, is it?” He moved closer, shadowing her like the predator he was, impossibly male and utterly beautiful in spite of the hatred she felt for him in that moment. “She will not turn it down, Liliana. Shall I tell you why?”

      When she didn’t reply, he continued, “Carla has a boyfriend with a little problem. He likes the game tables in New Orleans a bit too much, yes? He has taken much from her in the last three years. Her savings are gone, her house leveraged in excess of its current value. This money represents a new life, cara mia. She will not say no.”

      Lily blinked up at him. She knew she was defeated. Carla hadn’t told her the extent of Alan’s problems, but Lily had known that it worried her. Carla was almost as bad as her own mother when it came to her slavish devotion to a man who cared more for himself than for her.

      His fingers stroked down her cheek, impossibly tender when compared with his actions. She shuddered in spite of her vow not to react. “What do you plan to do with my baby?”

      His eyes hardened, his hand dropping away. “Our baby, Liliana.”

      Lily faced him squarely, ready to do battle, heartsick and heartbroken all at once. “You can’t buy me off, too, Nico. I will never leave Danny with you willingly.”

      “Clearly not,” he said, his voice deepening with anger. “But you will not need to do so.”

      Lily gaped at him. “My God, you are unbelievable—how do you think your wife-to-be is going to feel about me and Danny, huh?”

      “Why don’t you ask her yourself?”

      “What? Are you insane?”

      Nico grabbed her by the arm and propelled her toward the opposite wall, her puny resistance not slowing him in the least. He approached a door, and for one crazy minute she thought it was a bedroom and there was a woman inside. He would throw open the door and there she would be, the Princess Antonella Romanelli of Monteverde, a black-haired gray-eyed beauty, sprawled across silk sheets and pouting prettily because her lover was taking too long to get the baby mama under control.

      Abruptly, they slammed to a halt, Nico pivoting behind her, the full length of his body pressing into her. She tried to jerk away, but he gripped her chin—more gently than she expected—and forced her head forward.

      Lily gasped. “Is this a joke?”

      She stared at her reflection—their reflection—in the mirror. The darkness of his fingers against her skin, her hair wild and tumbling around her shoulders in a silky mess. Her pink cotton shirt was stained over her left shoulder, and her eyes, though tired, gleamed with fury. Nico, in contrast, was cool and unruffled. If not for his quickened heartbeat against her, she’d almost think him bored.

      But no, there it was, that flash of something in his eyes, in the set of his jaw, that spoke volumes without a sound being uttered.

      “No joke, Liliana. I have broken a long-sought-after treaty between my country and Monteverde, not to mention embarrassed my father and our allies, so that I can do what should have been done the instant you conceived my child.”

      “I—I don’t understand,” she whispered, searching his face in the mirror, her heart slamming into her ribs.

      “Of course you do,” he replied, dipping his head until his lips almost grazed the shell of her ear. Almost, but not quite.

      “You, Miss Lily Morgan, are about to become the Crown Princess, my consort, and the mother of my children.”

      Chapter Three

      SHE LOOKED UTTERLY STUNNED. Not that he blamed her; he was still somewhat stunned himself. He had a son with this woman, a fact that had the power to punch him in the solar plexus and leave him gasping for breath every time he thought of it.

      A son she’d kept secret from him. The electric current zapping through him as he pressed against her was most certainly rage, nothing more.

      “You can’t be serious,” she finally squeaked out. Her green eyes were huge as she blinked at him in disbelief. The platinum color of her hair made her almost ethereal. Surely, this is what had attracted him to her in the first place. That and the fact she’d been blissfully unaware of his identity. The experience was so novel that he’d quite possibly been more attracted to her than he would have otherwise been. She’d treated him like an ordinary person and he’d found it refreshing.

      “I am indeed serious, Liliana.” He’d gotten his answer in the moments before he’d left his quarters to attend the State dinner. His investigators worked remarkably fast, and what they’d turned up was evidence he could not ignore. She’d given birth almost nine months to the day from the night he’d made love to her. She could have found another lover right away, true, but the child’s resemblance to him was too strong to discount. He would of course take the official step of verifying the child’s parentage, but it was merely a formality at this point.

      When he considered how he’d missed the first seventeen months of his boy’s life, how this woman had kept his son from him, he wanted to shake her and demand to know how she could do such a thing. He let her go before the urge overwhelmed him and took a step away.

      He would marry her because his personal code of honor would permit nothing less. It was his duty. But he didn’t have to like it. Or her.

      She spun around to face him. “B-but I’m not a princess, I don’t know how to be a prin—”

      “You will learn,” he said harshly. She wasn’t the ideal bride for him, but she could be trained.

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