Oh, what does it matter?
She would never know. She didn’t need to know, or want to know. She didn’t love Maximo. She didn’t have any feelings for him at all. She respected him. Respected his strength, his drive to do the right and moral thing, his love for their unborn child. But that was all.
He moved his thumb over the tender skin of her wrist and a team of butterflies took flight in her stomach, calling her a liar.
So she was attracted to him? It didn’t mean anything. He was an attractive man. And then there were the pregnancy hormones. But that was all it was. And thank God for that.
“I’m glad we can agree on this,” Maximo said, his tone containing a hint of warning that Alison assumed was meant for his mother.
“We will not have you marry in some civil ceremony,” Luciano said, his tone imperious. It was obvious where Maximo had inherited his arrogance from. “You will marry in church, and we will make a formal engagement announcement. We will not treat it like a dirty secret. You are giving our country an heir and we will celebrate that.”
His mother looked as though she had swallowed a lemon. “I suppose a wedding is preferable to the birth of a royal bastard.”
Alison sucked in a sharp breath. It was no less offensive hearing it said now than it had been to hear Maximo say it earlier. And she knew now that he’d been telling the absolute truth about how their child would have been viewed had they not married. And it wouldn’t have just been the people or the media, but his own family who would have branded their child with that label.
“I won’t tolerate hearing our baby talked about like that!” The words tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop them. “I won’t allow anyone to hurt my child. Ever.”
Maximo cupped her chin and turned her face to him. “No one will hurt our child, cara. I will not allow it.” He gave his mother a dark look. “This is your grandchild, Mamma. Think about that before you ever say such a thing again.”
He stood, and pulled her gently with him. “Alison and I will have dinner in our room.” His mother looked offended at that, but she didn’t say anything.
Alison elevated her chin, careful not to look defeated in any way. They were just rich, titled snobs. They had no right to judge her. And anyway, she’d dealt with far worse from her own mother. She was hardly going to let venom spewed by a complete stranger make her crumble now.
As soon as they were out in the empty corridor he released his grip on her hand.
“That went well,” she said.
“As well as I expected. My mother loved Selena like a daughter. This is difficult for her.”
“Then wouldn’t it be better if they knew how I got pregnant instead of assuming that …”
“Selena did not wish for my mother to know. She did not want my parents to see her as a failure.”
Maximo began to walk back toward his quarters, and she had to take short, quick steps to keep up with his long strides. “That’s ridiculous. Not being able to have children doesn’t make you a failure.”
“It felt that way to my wife.” He paused for a moment. “My mother introduced us. It was her opinion that Selena was perfect for me. Her family was wealthy and well-known, she was talented and cultured. In my mother’s estimation she would make a wonderful princess. A wonderful mother. When Selena could not fulfill that part of what she considered to be her requirements, she became very depressed.”
“But that wasn’t the only thing you loved her for,” Alison said softly.
Maximo turned to face her, his mouth pressed into a grim line. “No.”
“I understand why you don’t want it to become public knowledge. I won’t tell anyone.” It might make things easier in a way, although Alison imagined the queen would dislike her regardless, but she just didn’t want to hurt Maximo by dredging up things from the past. And it would hurt him. His expression was always stoic when he talked about Selena, but she had seen glimpses of devastating pain in his dark eyes. And she cared about that. A lot more than she should.
She shouldn’t be able to feel his pain in her chest, shouldn’t ache for him, want to take his hurts and heal them. She really shouldn’t want that at all. But she did. Her heart hurt for him, felt linked to his. Was that because she was pregnant with his baby? It was a link between them that was impossible to ignore. He was a part of her, in a way.
On the heels of that revelation came a slug of panic. She didn’t want to feel so much for him. Didn’t want to feel anything for him beyond a circumspect amount of tolerance.
Once they were back in Maximo’s quarters he led her into a small dining room that looked as if it belonged in a more casual home. A very, very upscale home, but the room was definitely intended for family use, unlike the massive dining hall in the main portion of the palace.
He sat at the head of the table and it seemed natural for her to sit at the other end. It was easy for her to picture a child sitting between them, chubby fingers gripping a cookie, a big smile on their baby’s face. Would their child be fair like her? Or olive-skinned like Maximo? The thought made her stomach tighten painfully, the image of family, their family, so poignant that it touched her more deeply than she’d imagined possible.
This was a new picture, one that was quickly replacing the original images she’d had of life after her baby was born. Now she couldn’t help but see Maximo, his presence there both physically and in the features of their child. The ache that settled in her heart was both sweet and scary at the same time. She shouldn’t want this. But part of her did. Very, very much.
“Anything special you want to eat?” Maximo asked.
He was so handsome. She couldn’t help but notice. With the overhead lighting from the chandelier above the table throwing the planes and angles of his face into sharp relief, making his cheekbones look more prominent, his jaw even more chiseled, he was almost devastatingly handsome. That was a term she’d never understood before this moment. It had never made sense that a person’s looks could devastate. But his could. And did. Because looking at him filled her with so much longing, for things she shouldn’t want, that it made her heart squeeze tight.
“Honestly, all food sounds basically disgusting to me so it doesn’t really matter.”
He nodded. “Then I will have the staff bring what they prepared for my parents.”
A few minutes later a woman came in pushing a trolley that was laden with silver domed trays. She set two in front of Alison, along with another glass of homemade ginger ale.
Alison didn’t even bother to uncover the trays, but went straight for the ginger ale to calm her perpetually unsettled stomach.
“You need to eat,” Maximo said. “You are too thin.”
She paused midsip. “I’m not too thin! I’ve been to see a doctor and he said I, and the pregnancy, were perfectly healthy.”
“Well, it doesn’t seem like you should allow yourself to get any thinner.” Maximo rose from his spot at the end of the table and leaned over to uncover her food. There was pasta with marinara sauce on one and what looked like half of a beautifully roasted chicken on the other. But the sight of poultry turned her stomach.
“I might be able to try the pasta,” she said, shoving the bird away from her.
Maximo sat in the chair next to her, putting the chicken in front of himself.
“Was your wife on a special diet?” She regretted saying anything the moment the words