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His answer left Hannah in no doubt that whatever he was planning, it certainly wasn’t seduction—and she was unprepared for the feeling of rejection which washed over her. Was he regretting ever having been intimate with her? she wondered. Probably. If she had been in his shoes wouldn’t she have felt the same way? Carefully, she folded her napkin—the way she’d seen countless guests do at the Granchester—and placed it on the table. But the first proper meal she’d had in days was actually making her feel stronger—and strength was what she needed right now. Trying not to be affected by the dark glitter of his eyes, she sat back in her chair.
?
??So,’ she said.
‘So?’ He raised his eyebrows at her questioningly.
Hannah’s foster father had been a gambler and she knew a bit about bargaining. She knew that in a situation like this, where the stakes were high, whoever broke first would lose, and who kept their nerve would win. But she suspected that there weren’t going to be any real winners or losers in this situation and, besides, she hadn’t come here to make demands of him. She didn’t want his money or a title, no matter what he might think. She’d come here to give him her momentous news in person and the rest was up to him. And wasn’t there something else? The only positive glimmer in his attitude towards her?
‘I suppose I should be grateful you haven’t demanded a paternity test,’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘I thought about it. I spent the hours between our meeting this afternoon and coming here this evening wondering whether I should ask the palace doctor to accompany me and have him test you.’
‘But you decided not to?’
His eyes glittered as he acknowledged her challenge. ‘I did.’
‘Might I ask why?’
He leaned back in his chair to study her. ‘I realised that a woman who had waited until she was twenty-five to take her first lover would be unlikely to take two within the space of a few months.’
There was a pause as she summoned up the courage to say it. ‘Yet you didn’t mention it at the time.’
‘Your virginity, you mean?’ he probed.
For all her newly acquired bravado, Hannah found herself blushing and, as a distraction, took a sip of the delicious sweet-sharp pink drink which she’d never tasted anywhere else. ‘Yes.’
‘What was I supposed to do? Exclaim with delirious joy?’ His lips curved into a mocking smile. ‘Or perhaps you expected me to be angry? To demand why you had waited for so long to have sex, and why you hadn’t told me?’ He shrugged his broad shoulders and his powerful muscles rippled beneath the bronze silk of his robes. ‘My ego would not have allowed me to ask such disingenuous questions and, besides, you are not the first virgin I have bedded.’
Oddly enough, that hurt—even though it infuriated Hannah that it should do. She told herself she shouldn’t allow herself to be hurt by a man who had never intended their liaison to be anything other than a one-night stand—and it was certainly not a good idea to start imagining the other women who had sighed with pleasure in his arms. ‘Anyway, that’s beside the point...’ she said, determined not to allow a dangerous wistfulness to creep into their negotiations.
His black gaze lasered into her as her words tailed off. ‘Which is?’
‘I need to know what kind of involvement you’d like in the baby’s life. If any,’ she added quickly, because she certainly wasn’t going to force him into something he didn’t want to do. And you can’t force him, she remembered. He’s a king. ‘To know how we’re going to deal with this situation.’
He drifted his fingertip around the rim of his crystal glass before lifting his gaze to hers and his face had assumed an almost cruel expression. ‘And what would you like to happen, Hannah?’ he questioned softly. ‘For me to marry you in a glittering ceremony and make you my Queen—is that your secret dream?’
Hannah didn’t react in the way she wanted to. In the way her seething hormones were urging her to. Years of keeping the peace were finally paying dividends so that she was able to produce a calm look in response to his arrogant statement.
‘Are you making the assumption that I would say yes to such a proposal?’ she questioned coolly.
It gave her an inordinate amount of pleasure to see him looking momentarily wrong-footed. And confused.
‘You’re trying to tell me you would refuse such an offer?’ he demanded.
And suddenly all Hannah’s determination to keep calm dissolved beneath his arrogant sense of certainty. ‘Too right I would,’ she said fervently. ‘I don’t really know you and at this moment, I’m not sure whether I even like you. We both probably want completely different things, so why would I marry you? I’ve had enough experience to realise that unless two people share a common goal, then marriage can be an out-and-out disaster.’
Kulal grew very still because, uncannily, she was echoing his own thoughts on the subject. He stared across the table at her. Had she guessed about his childhood? Pieced together the deliberately vague facts which were the only ones on record and somehow made sense of them? Stored that knowledge away as a point-scoring weapon to use when the time was right?
He sucked oxygen deep into his lungs. No. His parents’ marriage had been a secret to the rest of the world because in those days, the press had not been at liberty to report on rumours and hearsay. And although Kulal was regarded as a modern monarch, he was grateful for those historic restrictions. Even his mother’s death had been hushed up in the only way which had been acceptable at the time and if you buried something deep enough, you could guarantee it would never see the light of day. He swallowed, wanting something to distract him from the bitter memories which were darkening his mind, and so he did what for him was unthinkable. He asked Hannah about her past.
‘Your parents weren’t happy?’
She shook her head. ‘No.’
‘And where are they now?’ he said. ‘Are they going to make a dramatic appearance, demanding I do the right thing by you?’
Did she recognise that his questions were a tactical move to focus attention on her, not him? Was that why a shadow crossed her face and why her curvy little body suddenly tensed?
