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He offered her a bland smile. “A great many women assume they must be carrying my child, simply because they wish it to be so.”
Her brows lifted. “You being such a paragon of fatherhood and all.”
“I’m sure that’s the draw.” He inclined his head. “Unless and until a DNA test proves that you’re carrying my child, this can only be a theoretical conversation. A parade ofwhat-ifs,all destined to end in nothing.” Zeus shrugged with a wholly unaffected lack of concern. “I have always enjoyed these things.”
She eyed him. “How many children do you have, then?”
“Theoretical children any number of distraught women have claimed must be mine? Pick a number, then multiply it. Real children? Not a one.” He allowed himself a smile, perhaps a little more real than necessary. When he usually preferred to hide anything real. There was something about this woman—but he brushed that off. “Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that I do not partake in unprotected sex.”
Yet even as he said that, hadn’t he gotten a little too enthusiastic with Nina? He remembered that he had been...a little too intense. All of that fire had been such an unexpected wallop. There had been a little too much bathing in it. A little too much wishing that he hadn’t already set the wheels in motion that would end their encounter with a shower of flashbulbs.
Something in him seemed to roll over, then hum.
Almost like...anticipation.
He hardly recognized it.
“You may give me any tests you like,” she was saying with a dismissive wave of her hand. No tears. No caterwauling. None of the performance of pregnancy that he’d come to expect from this scene. “I’ve come to inform you of your impending fatherhood, and you may do with that information anything you wish.Summon your doctors and lab technicians at will. Oh, andcongratulations.”
Zeus wondered if his mask had slipped a little when she paused a moment, that dent between her brows returning. He made sure to look as bored as possible until she cleared her throat and carried on.
“I’llcatch you up on what happened after you invited the tabloids in.” She paused as if waiting for him to toss in an apology. He didn’t, of course. But something in him almost wanted to, and that was unnerving enough. “I was cast out of all royal circles.As this was, in fact, the goal I’ve been striving toward since Isabeau first took it upon herself to force me under her wing, I was quite pleased. Until...”
She only lifted a hand, indicating her belly. “I thought I was ill. Or perhaps detoxing from too long in Isabeau’s presence. Either way, it took me quite some time to understand what had happened to me.And even longer to accept it.”
“So long that any other alternatives were no longer available to you,” he said, smoothly enough, though he found—to his great surprise—that he had a certain distaste for the notion, as it involved this woman and this baby.
But Nina jerked back as if he’d slapped her.
“I’m an orphan,” she said matter-of-factly, though he could see far more emotion in her brown gaze, gone as dark as the bitterest coffee now. His favorite. “This baby is the only family I have.”
Something seemed to roar inside him then, shocking Zeus. And he had not been shocked by anything in...six long months. It reminded him a little too closely of that night they’d shared, the shock of all that heat where he’d expected an easy, forgettable pleasure.
Nina had come out of nowhere with a sucker punch yet again.
“I can’t say I had any particular intention of sharing this news with you,” Nina was saying. “I thought that perhaps I could simply live my life, as I always wanted, with no royal nonsense to consider.” She shrugged. “I’m afraid I know too much.”
“About royalty?” He nodded sagely. “A tragedy indeed.”
“One does not require a great deal of knowledge about royalty,” she shot back at him. “They rule things. The end. Everything you need to know about your average, run-of-the-mill member of any royal family can be summed up like so. It’s what makes them so presumptuous.”
Zeus could not deny that. What astounded him was that...he wanted to.
But Nina was still speaking. “No, what I know too much about is the tabloids. The paparazzi. Just because I’ve enjoyed six months to myself doesn’t mean my solitude will continue. Sooner or later, someone will remember me. Then they’ll all find me. And worse, my baby.”
She rubbed that belly of hers again, currently housed in a dress he suspected might possibly have been used as a circus tent. When he knew that her actual figure was so sweet and ripe that he found himself hungry even now. For he could see—what little of her he could truly see—that this pregnancy had ripened her further.
Zeus had the blistering notion that he actuallywantedher to be carrying his child. Hewantedthis ripeness to be his. All his.
He shoved that aside.
Because he couldn’t believe such a notion could cross his mind, much less bloom the way it seemed to be doing.
“Are you saying that the paparazzi have already found you?” he managed to ask past what amounted to a full-scale riot inside of him.
A riot her ripeness, so close to him, did not help.
“I don’t think they have, but who can say where a photographer with a nasty telephoto lens might lurk?” Again, that edgy smile. “The more my pregnancy shows, the more likely someone is to do the math. It will be worse once the baby comes.”
