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That was the sticking point that Emma found hardest to get past.
So, he hadn’t taken out the TRO, or even known about it.
He had broken up with her and made it impossible for her to reach him to tell him about her pregnancy.
He had left her vulnerable to Queen Crazy.
But he hadn’t broken his word where the contract was concerned. Maybe King Nikolai was right and she could trust Konstantin on some level. Oh, not as her family. Not even if she did eventually agree to marry him. But if he would sign a contract like the one she’d suggested, maybe she could trust he would be committed to sticking to its terms.
Konstantin had shown that when it came to putting his name on a document, her Prince took that seriously. When he made a legal commitment, he kept it.
Predictably, after his busy day, Mickey fell asleep halfway through the movie.
Emma stood to lift him, but Konstantin beat her to it. “Time for bed, I think.”
“We’ll both regret it if you don’t take him to the bathroom first.”
Konstantin did as she suggested, helping their sleepy son with a prosaic acceptance she would not have expected. They got him into his pajamas together and then tucked him into bed.
“What?” Konstantin asked as they came back into the living room.
She turned off the movie, wanting to talk without Mickey overhearing more than she wanted to finish a movie she loved, but had seen many times. “I just... You’re really good at that.”
“Am I? I worry that I’ll do something wrong and hurt him without meaning to.” Konstantin moved into her personal space.
Emma stepped back. “You’re a really natural father.”
“I had a good role model.” Konstantin gave her a challenging look as he sat on the middle of the couch, leaving the only spot beside him.
The armchair had been moved to make room for the bed and wasn’t ideal for sharing a conversation with someone on the sofa.
“Your father?” Emma bit the bullet and sat beside him, her body hugging the arm so their thighs did not touch.
Emma needed to focus for this conversation and she was fully aware that Konstantin in close proximity would not be conducive to that focus.
“Yes.” Konstantin relaxed against the sofa, laying his arm across the back, mere inches from her shoulders. “He was a king first, I always knew that, but he was a good father, interested in my brothers and me, involved in our lives from infancy.”
“How could you know that?”
“Dima is nearly eight years younger than me. I got to see my father with him as a baby. Nikolai has always been a hands-on older brother too. I let myself forget that when he became my sovereign,” he said, his expression introspective. “Both of them modeled what being a good father-slash-caretaker looked like.”
“I guess I thought you’d been raised mostly by nannies.”
“We had nursery staff, but my parents were always the last word in discipline and the first to give us the affection every child needs.”
“That’s why you’re so comfortable hugging and playing with Mickey.” Which had surprised Emma from the beginning.
As long as she’d known him, Konstantin had always kept a physical distance from others. It was like he walked around with an invisible barrier surrounding him.
When they were together, he’d invited her inside that barrier, touching her all the time. Which had been another reason she’d mistakenly thought she was special to him.
“The only people I have ever been comfortable touching are my family, and later you,” he said as if inside her brain and responding to her thoughts. “As I got older, a natural distance developed between me and my family.”
And he’d created a world’s worth of distance between him and her when he broke up with Emma.
“Or maybe once you lost your mom, you all sort of pulled into yourselves instead of relying on each other for comfort,” Emma mused, ignoring the obvious about their own lack of physical closeness.
Konstantin shrugged. “Perhaps. I was fifteen, and I wanted to accept her death like a man.”
