“No. She has no experience with men, as far as I know. As far as I knew,” he corrected. “In fact only recently she was asking me quite breathlessly about a man she saw at the masked ball we went to a month or so ago.”
Cristian gritted his teeth, a strange tension taking him over. “Was she?”
Flashes of the ball played back in his mind. A beautiful, lush figure. Tight, wet heat. A kind of indulgence he had not had in years.
“Yes. She was chagrined to discover that the man who’d caught her eye was you.”
Cristian set his glass down, his pulse thundering in his temples. It was not possible. But he had to ask. He had to know.
“What was she wearing?” His heart was thundering hard now, his blood roaring through his veins.
“A mask the same as all the other women. She had some purple in her hair and a purple dress. A dress our parents absolutely did not approve of.”
Cojeme.
It could not be. The first woman he had touched in years... And it was Allegra Valenti. And she was... Well, she was pregnant with the Acosta heir.
While the concept of a dukedom was somewhat outmoded, his own was still functioning. With whole swaths of property and farmland left to his management, and hundreds of families dependent on his continuing bloodline.
He was the last, and he’d known he could not let that stand. Now, he didn’t have to.
Apart from that, he was part of Allegra Valenti’s double life. Part of her sin. And such sin it had been. The kind that haunted his sleep with flashes of memory so erotic and sweet he woke up on the verge of release every night.
“Where is she?” he asked, an edge of desperation in his voice.
Renzo frowned, realization dawning slowly over his friend’s face. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”
“No more than I like it,” he said his tone hard. “Where is she?”
“Holed up in one of my apartments in Rome.”
“I need to speak to her. Now.” He had no time for subtlety. If his suspicions were correct, there would be no keeping secrets anyway.
Damn. They could not be correct.
Renzo’s expression turned suspicious. Dark. “I assume that afterward you will be speaking to me.”
“We can only hope not.” Then Cristian turned and walked out of his friend’s office.
He had to see her and put all of this to rest. It cannot be. He refused to believe it. But he would have to see her, so that he could know.
He had to prove to himself, once and for all, that Allegra was not his mysterious lover from the masked ball. It could not be her. That little brat could not be the woman who had touched him, who had aroused such heat and fire in his blood.
Impossible.
He refused to believe it was true. And he would prove that it was not.
* * *
Allegra was doing her best to avoid the media. But sometimes she would forget. And then she would turn on the TV and be assaulted by the news, or open up her computer and go to the wrong webpage and see yet more headlines.
It was horrible. Seeing her painted as the person she simply wasn’t. Bold enough to call off the engagement to the prince at the eleventh hour, without a care for his feelings or for the future of his country.
She wasn’t very bold at all. And she really did care about leaving everything in the lurch. And if Raphael had feelings, she’d never seen them. Not that that excused her.
When she’d given in to her fantasy and taken a lover at the ball, it hadn’t been with the mind that she would abandon her upcoming marriage. It had been with the idea that at least one thing would be her choice. A stolen moment that would always be hers, and hers alone.
Well, now it was everyone’s.
The world knew she’d broken off the wedding. Her family knew she was pregnant. It was only a matter of time before speculation began flying about that too.
Strangely though, as ownership of her and her mistakes became the world’s, she felt more and more like her life belonged to her. She had decided, firmly, to keep the paternity of the child a secret.
It was her key. Yes, she had let everyone down. Yes, her parents may well cut her off—they seemed to be making a decision on that score still. But apart from all that...her life was suddenly filled with possibilities it hadn’t been before.
She had always known she would be a mother. But part and parcel to that had been being a royal wife. As a princess, her life would never truly be hers.
But now for the first time, it just might be. At least she had choices. Even if they weren’t infinite. At least she would only have to answer to herself. To her own mistakes.
Even her relationship with her child...it would be her own. And maybe it wasn’t the most ideal thing to try to find yourself as a person while you were finding yourself as a mother, but it was still better—more—than she would have had as Raphael’s wife.
A knock on her apartment door sent her scrambling out of her seat on the couch. No one had rung in downstairs, requesting permission for entrance. Which meant it must be an employee of her brother’s building.
God bless Renzo for allowing her to hole up here. He might be angry with her for her choices, but at least he understood, in some ways.
He had never been very well behaved, after all.
She walked over to the door and opened it, then her heart fell into her feet. “Renzo isn’t here, if you’re looking for him.” She tried to keep her face straight as she stared into the dark, uncompromising gaze of Cristian Acosta.
He couldn’t know. He couldn’t. She refused to believe it.
Though, standing there, looking up at him, and those coal-black eyes, she wondered how she hadn’t known it was him the moment he’d walked into that ballroom.
He’d looked like Death come to collect then. And he looked like it now.
His black brows were locked together, as was his hard, square jaw. His lips, usually the softest-looking thing about him, were pressed into a grim line.
He filled the space, and he wasn’t even in it yet. So tall, so impossibly broad. He made her feel small. He made her feel weak.
He made her feel like he was looking straight through her.
That brief moment of hope was crushed beneath the weight of that stare. That knowing, intense stare. For just a second, she’d had freedom.
And now, there was Cristian.
“I am not,” he said, his tone hard, uncompromising. Like everything else about him.
“Well, did you come to congratulate me on my upcoming marriage? Because if so—”
“Quiet,” he said, brushing past her and into the apartment. “I am not here to play games with you. Were you ever going to tell me?”
“About...” Her throat was completely dry and excuses were swirling around her head like foxes chasing their tails.
“The baby,” he said.
“I... I don’t...”
“I know,” he said, his lip curling slightly. “I know that you were the one. And I know you found out that it was me, so do not stand there looking like a wounded innocent.”
She frowned. “I am not an innocent. As you have no doubt deduced.”
“There is no star in the East, so you must not be.”
She