Cavelli's Lost Heir. Lynn Raye Harris

really was her mother’s daughter.

      She could not afford the distraction of such thoughts. She had to focus. “What now?”

      He whirled on her, his uniform as crisp and perfect as if he hadn’t just been rolling on the floor with her. His royal bearing was absolute. She wondered that she’d never noticed it in the three days she’d spent with him in New Orleans.

      “You will call your friend and instruct her to turn over the child.”

      Lily shook her head. “Why? So you can marry your princess and raise my child with her? Not just no, but hell no.”

      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.”