Page 45 of King's Heir of Hate

“Tadeo, I don’t know—” she began.

“I cannot bear the thought of raising our child like that,” Tadeo continued, urgently. “I can’t imagine turning my son against his mother. I can’t imagine pretending that you’re not the reason I even know what love is.” He let out a rusty sort of laugh. “I fought so hard against it, Esme. I gave that fight my all. And yet every time, no matter how hard I fight, I come straight back to you.”

He found he was holding his breath then.

Esme gazed up at him, her hands in his and her eyes wide and solemn, and once again he wondered if he was too late. If he’d taken too long. If he’d lost her, after all.

Then he saw her smile, and it was as if she took all the stars from the sky and aimed them straight at him.

“You do,” she said softly. “And I want you to do that. I don’t think you ever had a safe space in your life, for all you have palaces and manor houses and servants, and royal compartments that could house a crowd.”

“The only fight I’m interested in,” Tadeo told her, intensely, “is fighting for you, my Esme. Even if the enemy I must fight is me.”

“I have an idea.” She moved closer to him and she pressed that heavy stomach of hers against him and looped her arms around his neck as best she could. She gazed up at him, and he felt like they made a perfect circle, there beneath the stars at last. The two of them, their foreheads touching. The baby they’d made pressed in between their bodies. “Why don’t we start over?”

“Can we do such a thing?” he asked, but he realized he was smiling.

In private, not for a camera or a political reason.

A real smile, for the first time since Boston.

“You will have to ask the king of this realm,” Esme told him, her smile wider. She ran her fingers through his hair. “He isverypowerful. He can do whatever he likes.”

“It sounds like you have an in with him.” Tadeo let that smile of his do what it liked. And her too. “I like your chances.”

She smiled up at him and then her smile faded as she traced her fingers over his face, as if she was learning his contours all over again.

“So do I,” she whispered. “So do I, my love.”

He captured her hand and held it to his cheek.

“I love you,” he told her, with all the solemnity and intensity of a vow made in cathedrals in the presence of most of Europe. Though it was better now. It was only them. “You were right. I have loved you since the moment we met, and I have loved you badly. All I can hope for is that you will let me spend the rest of our lives making it up to you.”

“I don’t need you to make anything up to me,” Esme told him, and there were tears on her face, but joy in her gaze. “All I need from you isyou, Tadeo. Because between us, we can do anything, whether it’s change the way we rule these kingdoms or love each other the way we deserve.”

“I want that,” he whispered. “Though I doubt I deserve—”

She put her hands on his mouth and stopped him. “We have wasted too much time to dwell in the past. We have a baby coming, and I want him to know us like this. In love. In harmony.” He kissed the fingers on his mouth and she smiled. “We can do it. Iwantto do it, Tadeo. With you or not at all.”

And from that day forward, because he was indeed the king of all he surveyed and particularly of this sheltered valley in a remote section of the Pyrenees, Xavier Tadeo Santiago, King of Bellaza, made it so.

Chapter Twelve

LIKE EVERYTHING ELSEhe had ever done, which was no surprise to Esme, Tadeo took to love as if it was something upon which he would be tested. And might fail at any point.

They did not sleep apart. Ever. He told her that he loved her as often as possible.

“Someday,” she said with a laugh, “you might even say that without sounding as if you’re worried that the words might bite you back.”

He was lying next to her in their bed that time. And he looked at her, his expression a mix of affront and astonishment.

“Loving is perilous,” he said. “For my heart. You will have to excuse me if it takes some getting used to.”

But he got used to it.

Because of course he did. The first thing he did was get rid of that monolithic desk from the king’s office. He did not explain why, though Esme had her suspicions. It was consigned to some far-off corner of the palace, never to cross the King’s eyesight again.

And in its place, Tadeo installed a lovely, wooden desk that caught the sun and gleamed in a way that reminded both of them of that marvelous old town house of his in Beacon Hill.