Page 6 of King's Heir of Hate

Because the Esme he had last seen five months ago had been lean and lithe and in some way resembled the ballet dancer she had once told him she would have liked to have become, in a different life.

She stood, the fabric fell, and she placed her hand on the shelf of the belly—her belly—that had swelled up to enormous size. A great deal as if she had a ball beneath her shirt, when, of course, she did not.

It was impossible. It was inconceivable.

It was a disaster of epic proportions and she wassmiling—

“About that divorce,” Esme said, as if they were discussing the weather. Or what to have the staff prepare for a snack. As if shewas not very obviouslypregnant. “I wonder if you might want to rethink.”

Chapter Two

ESME COULD ADMITthat she found the look on Tadeo’s face deeply satisfying, whatever that might have said about her as a person. She accepted that it likely said nothing good.

And yet there it was, just the same. Pure satisfaction, sweeping through her like a small, personal tsunami.

She had anticipated that this moment would please her when it came—and she’d known it would come eventually—but she had to admit that this far exceeded her expectations. Esme would not go so far as to say it made up for the past five months of self-recrimination, worry, and intense doubt, but it certainly felt like a gesture in that direction.

After all, she’d been expecting him for a long while now.

At first, she’d thought that he might come sooner. Right after that night in the palace, when the passion that he’d been denying for seven years had finally boiled over in that mess of grief and comfort…and what she thought was simply humanity at its most basic. What people did when they were still alive and someone they’d loved was dead.

But he didn’t, because he was made of ice when he wanted to be. So frigid it was a wonder flowers could even grow in this kingdom.

Then she’d been certain that he would make it happen at different times over the past few months. After he got back on his feet in the wake of the funeral. After he soothed the nation with his careful speeches from the iconic Bellazan throne room, promising his rule would be what they’d come to expect fromhis father—smooth and peaceful. After he figured out every last in and out of his new position, which shouldn’t have beentoooverwhelming or taxing for him, all things considered. Since he had been training for it since the day he was born.

It had taken her a long while to accept that he was really going to wait as long as possible to face what had happened that night. To come to the bitter conclusion that he had no intention of addressing it, only of divorcing her.

In the meantime, of course, she’d had other things to think about. More pressing things, as said things were growing inside her.

“How is this possible?” asked the man himself now, after a satisfyingly long while lookingstunned. The way a cartoon character looked when struck with a shovel, she rather thought. She’d never seen Tadeo look like that before. She would have said it was impossible.

But then, their entire history was studded with impossibilities, one after the next—so what was another one tossed on top?

Esme was distressed to find that he was still as offensively gorgeous as ever. He had not lost all of his hair. He had not shrunk down from his more than six feet. He had not lost that rangy, athletic physique of his that made it seem as if he spent significant hours of his life roaming about playing sports of one kind or another when she knew full well he did not. He was the king now and had previously been a very visible and involved crown prince. He could not be racing about playing football—soccer, when he’d been in the States—the way he had in his youth.

Sadly for her, he still possessed that chiseled male beauty and the most beautiful face she had ever seen on a man in her life. He had those remarkably blue eyes. That thick brown hair that wanted desperately to curl when he wasn’t being so stern andaustere. That impossibly perfect jaw with adimple, no less, on the rare occasions he smiled.

That dimple had been her undoing.

More than once.

There was no sign of it today. Tadeo was wearing one of his casual outfits, such as it was. Esme was in a soft pair of maternity jeans to hold her precious belly, but His Majesty preferred not to wear jeans at all. He found themdéclassé.

He had told her that shortly after their wedding as if she couldn’t remember him wearing them back in Boston. All the time.

Here in Bellaza he preferred dark trousers. They were actually cargo pants today, and clung lovingly to his unduly powerful thighs. He was wearing what she supposed was technically a sweatshirt, but was of course of such fine construction and made from such intensely exquisite fabric that it fell over his exquisite chest like cashmere.

Esme’s whole life would be completely different right now if this man had been even slightly unattractive.

She thought about this all the time.

If she had simply found him pleasant, if the conversation had been stilted that first night. If he hadn’t reached over, that wondering sort of smile on his beautiful face with thatdimplein evidence and that intensity in his blue gaze, then picked up her hand—

They would be different people. She would probably still be here, in this house of exile on the palace grounds, but she imagined she’d be resigned to it. And happier for it. Or they would have committed to one of those dreadfully common marriages of cold convenience, with separate rooms and scheduled copulation for the making of heirs, with a happy retreat into polite if distant companionship thereafter. Not unlike the marriage they’d had, really—except notably devoid ofall the seething tension that had always underscored even their most seemingly polite interactions.

Tadeo scowled at her. “Do you intend to answer my question, Esme?”

She ordered herself to stop thinking aboutcopulation. And his ruinous dimple. “I beg your pardon. I thought that was facetious at best.” She studied him. “How do you think it happened, Tadeo?”