Midnight in the Harem. Susanna Carr
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“I should have … I realize that now.”
“Why the hell not?” he demanded, his voice raised in a way he never allowed.
“I don’t know. It wasn’t rational. I know that, but I thought … one night. I was a virgin, disgustingly naive. I wouldn’t get pregnant.” She frowned. “I thought you’d use condoms.”
He ignored the last statement and concentrated on the ones that came before it. “You are too smart for that.”
She glared at him and then seemed to deflate. “Yes, I am. There’s no excuse. I really just thought … I don’t know. I’ve tried to understand why I didn’t say anything when you didn’t use a condom, but my excuses are feeble and stupid. Even to me.”
“You expected me to use condoms?” He couldn’t dismiss the claim a second time.
Her brow furrowed as if she didn’t understand his question. “Well, yes.”
“Why?”
“Why not? We weren’t lovers. For all intents and purposes, what we had was a one-night stand.”
“What we had was a premature wedding night,” he practically shouted and then took a deep breath in shock at himself.
She waved her hand in dismissal, apparently unmoved by his loss of cool. “Call it what you like, but I expected you to use condoms and when you didn’t … Well, that first time, I was just so lost to the moment and afterward, I thought the damage was already done.”
“Damage is right.”
That brought the glare back, but there was something else in her expression, something he couldn’t quite name. “What is your problem? You’re getting your way.”
“You think this is me getting my way? My first child has been conceived without the benefit of a wedding ceremony. I have spent my entire life protecting my family from scandal and now it will visit itself on my child. He or she will forever carry the stigma.”
“Please. This isn’t the Middle Ages.”
“If this child is my heir, his throne could be called into question.” He cursed, using more than one language and feeling like that still was not enough to express his fury at the current development.
“Do a DNA test.”
He drew himself up and scowled. “I do not doubt his paternity.”
“I know that.” She rolled her eyes. “I meant so there could be no question of the baby’s parentage to others. Anyway, it might be a girl.”
“Yes, because the men in my family are so good at fathering female offspring.” They hadn’t done so in five generations that he knew of, not in his direct lineage anyway.
She turned an interesting shade of green and started taking more rapid shallow breaths.
“Are you well?” What the hell was he asking? She was pregnant. Of course she was not well.
“Morning sickness,” she gasped between breaths.
“It is nowhere near morning.”
“The baby doesn’t seem to care.”
“This is not acceptable.”
She cringed, her expression filling with too many emotions to name. “You don’t want the baby?”
“Of course, I want this child. How could you ask such a thing?”
“Well, you’re acting like it’s the end of the world, or something.”
“Are you that naive?”
“I am not naive. Not anymore.”
“I disagree. You have not considered the complications this pregnancy will cause. It will be all over the press. After a lifetime of protecting my privacy and behaving with circumspection, I will make a bigger tabloid splash than your father and my brother combined.”
“You don’t want me to have this child? You think I should terminate my pregnancy?”
“Have you lost your mind?” How had she gone from what he had said to something so reprehensible? “Do not ever suggest such a thing to me again.”
“I wasn’t suggesting it. I’m not the one having a temperamental fit.”
The accusation snapped the last thread of his control.
“Did you do this on purpose?” he leaned forward and asked, memories of Elsa’s betrayals freshly branded in his brain. “Was this your way of getting back at me for my relationship with Elsa?”
“Now, who’s making insane accusations?”
“Women scorned have been known to do worse.”
“You never scorned me, you arrogant ass!” Then she swallowed convulsively and scrabbled for the button that would open the sunroof.
He reached up and pressed it when she seemed unable to make the stretch. “When you were eighteen, and I refused your kiss.”
“That was five years ago.”
“Revenge is a dish best served cold.”
She took several deep breaths before saying, “I can’t believe this.”
“Join my world.”
“Oh, get over yourself.”
Fresh air came in through the opening in the roof and Angele leaned back in her seat, seemingly breathing easier. Good.
He mentally ran through a list of things needed doing. Consulting an eminent obstetrician was top of the list. “You are not taking this seriously, what this pregnancy means.”
“Oh, I’m taking it seriously all right. I know exactly what it means.”
“Oh?” She certainly had not shown proper understanding so far.
“Yes.” She shot daggers with her usually doe-soft eyes. “It means I’m agreeing to a marriage I don’t want.”
“Why?”
“Why what?” she asked, sounding genuinely confused.
“Why agree to the marriage?” “Because I’m not a stone-cold bitch.” “I never said you were.”
“My mother told me something a few years ago. It was after I found out about my father’s infidelities. I apologized to her for having to live in the States where I could know relative anonymity, instead of her home country of Brazil where she was better known. She’d done it to protect me.”
“I am aware.”
“Well, she told me I had nothing to apologize for, that from the moment a baby is conceived, his or her needs must come first.”
“You are willing to marry me for the sake of our child.”
“Under certain conditions, yes.” The limo pulled to a stop.
She looked at him with that same sick expression she’d had before opening the sunroof. “We’re not at the restaurant. We’re hours too early for dinner.”
She swallowed convulsively on the word dinner.
“No, we are at your apartment building. I originally had planned to give you time to get ready for our date.”
“More like, you intended to seduce me before dinner and hoped to cement the romantic proposal over dessert.” The words should have been mocking, but she merely sounded resigned.
“You think you know me.” She was wrong. On the proposal over dessert part.
He’d planned to woo her in person for two weeks before popping the question, so to speak.
“What?” she asked. “It would have been