Princess's Nine-Month Secret. Кейт Хьюит

      ‘If you’re not on birth control, you could be pregnant.’ Lina lifted her chin another notch and said nothing. ‘Damn it, Lina, that’s a rather major issue, don’t you think?’

      A muscle flinched in her cheek. ‘It’s not your concern.’

      ‘It is very much my concern,’ Rico returned in a low, dangerous voice, certainty thrumming inside him. He would never abandon his own child, as he had once been abandoned. He would die first. ‘If you are pregnant with my child, it is my paramount concern.’

      Her face paled and she blinked slowly, seeming to absorb that statement. Rico shook his head, impatient as well as furious. ‘Did it not even occur to you that you could become pregnant?’

      ‘Not exactly.’ She bit her lip. ‘I wasn’t thinking about that just then.’

      ‘Then why on earth did you say it was safe? Did you lie on purpose?’

      ‘I... I didn’t understand what you meant.’ Colour crept into her face and she looked away.

      Rico stared at her incredulously. ‘What did you think I meant, then?’

      ‘I don’t know.’ Her voice rose in agitation. ‘I wasn’t thinking at all, to be honest.’

      ‘Neither was I,’ Rico returned grimly, hating that it was true. What a mess. And he had no one to blame but himself. He should have realised how naive she was. She’d given him plenty of clues.

      Sitting in his bed, wrapped in his sheet, her hair everywhere, her eyes wide and her face pale, she looked very young and incredibly vulnerable. How could he have thought for a moment that she was experienced, a woman of the world? She was anything but.

      ‘How old are you?’ he asked abruptly and she gave him a look of scorn.

      ‘Twenty-two, so you have no worries on that score.’

      ‘Still—’

      ‘I’m not your problem, Rico.’

      ‘But you could be—’ His words were cut off by a sudden buzzing. Lina looked at him questioningly.

      ‘It’s the lift,’ he explained tersely. ‘The doors lock automatically, since it opens right into the suite.’ The buzzing sounded again, insistent. Whoever was in the lift wanted to get in. Who the hell was trying to find him now?