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CHAPTER TWO
HUFFINGOUTAdefiant gust of breath through clenched teeth, Beatrice refused to drop her gaze from the challenge she saw in the dark eyes of Dante Aristide Severin Velazquez, Crown Prince of San Macizo.
Her husband.
‘If only I could forget.’ Her mumble came with a resentful glare, at odds with the mood of their civilised divorce.
She never had really understood what a civilised divorce entailed, but she was pretty sure it did not entail having a night of passionate sex with your soon-to-be ex. But on the plus side, her peevish attitude did provide some sort of cover for her deep inner despair.
Everyone made bad choices, and she was no exception, but it sometimes felt that from the moment Dante had walked into her life the only sort of choices she’d made were of the bad variety—actually, disastrous!
She had always operated on the principle that your actions had consequences, and you lived with them. Or, in her case, you neatly plotted a course around them, or at least the more dangerous ones.
Then Dante happened and she forgot her philosophy; her navigation skills took a vacation. She didn’t so much forget as didn’t give a damn about the consequences. The primitive instincts that he had awoken in her were totally in charge. Instincts that had drowned out the warning bells that she had remained determinedly tone deaf to. Actually, last night there had been no bells, just a fierce need.
She had lifted her head and seen the reason why the crowded bar had fallen silent, and had felt a bone-deep desperation, much like any addict who found their drug of choice was close enough to smell. Dante was her addiction, the virus in her blood she had no antibody to.
Which made it seem as though she’d had no choice, but she had. She hadn’t sleepwalked into the situation. She had known what she was doing every step of the way. Admittedly she had not typed his name into a search engine when she’d accepted the offer of dinner, knowing that he wasn’t actually talking about a dinner. But you didn’t need a bio to see at one glance that he represented the sort of danger she had spent her adult life avoiding.
The idea of experiencing an attraction strong enough to make her share intimacy with a man she didn’t know had been a concept she had considered with a disbelieving smile, tinged, if she was honest, with smugness. But she’d had total confidence in her belief that any relationship she had would come from friendship and respect.
She’d slept with Dante that first night. She had been so determined to have that first night end the way she had imagined from the moment she had set eyes on him that she hadn’t told him that this…that he…was her first, in case it made him back away.
Her instincts there had been bang on because Dante had not been pleased by the discovery she was inexperienced, sternly telling her that virgins were not his thing and demanding an explanation.
It could have ended there—it should have—but it hadn’t, because she hadn’t wanted it to.
When she had retorted that she wasn’t a virgin any more so that was one obstacle gone she’d made him laugh, and he’d laughed again when she had explained that it hadn’t been a conscious choice. She hadn’t been waiting for the right man or anything, she simply wasn’t a particularly physical person.
They had spent the next three days and nights in bed disproving this theory. Nothing and no one had disturbed them in the penthouse with million-dollar views that she’d never even looked at, and Beatrice had savoured every hot, skin-peelingly perfect moment of the intimacy because she’d known this heaven wasn’t going to last. Dante had made that painfully clear.
He had left no room for misinterpretation when he’d explained that he was not into long-term relationships, or actually any sort of relationship at this point in his life.
Facts she’d already known, having finally typed his name into her phone’s search engine—even if a tenth of the women he was alleged to have slept with were actually real, it would be amazing that he found time to be so hands-on with the charitable foundation that he had founded.
It made a person wonder if he ever actually slept, except she knew he did. She had watched him and been utterly fascinated by the way the strong lines on his face relaxed in sleep, made him look younger and almost vulnerable in a way that made her conscious of an empty ache inside her.
There had been more than one occasion over that weekend when he had felt the need to drag her feet back to earth by reminding her.
‘This is just sex—you know that, right?’
The fantasy bubble she had spent the weekend in had ended when she’d opened her eyes and found him standing there, suited, booted and looking every inch the exclusive playboy prince who was always good for a headline.
She remembered fighting the self-respect-killing urge to run after him when he had stopped of his own volition, his long brown finger curled around the doorknob. She had managed a response as cool and offhand as his suggestion that they meet up in three weeks when commitments would be bringing him back to London.
By the time three weeks had come around things had changed, and the consequences of her actions had been impossible to ignore. Even without the multiple tests she’d known why she felt different; she’d known even without the blue line that she was pregnant.
She’d also known exactly how this next step was going to go, with a few gaps she’d left for his shocked, angry reaction. She had played the scene out in her head and, allowing for a few variations, she’d known exactly what she was going to say.
When she’d been buzzed into the building she’d still known what she was going to say, as she’d been escorted in the glass-fronted lift by a silent suited man.
She’d walked in, and she’d known not just what she was going to say but when she was going to say it. She’d allow herself their last night and then she would tell him.
In the event, the door had barely closed before she had blurted it out.
‘I’m pregnant and, yes, I know we…you were careful.’
She had a vague recollection of dodging his eyes, allowing her hair to act as a screen to hide her guilty blushes. The memory even now had the power to make her insides squirm.
