Royal Affair (6 page)

“I don't think it would be a hardship.”

“Maybe not right now when the blood is hot, but what about later? Marriage lasts a long time, especially with people living to be a hundred nowadays.”

“Let's get through the rest of this year before we worry about the next sixty or seventy,” Max suggested.

Chuck nodded. “She's smart and dedicated to her work. She's into educational technology systems. She apparently loves children and is concerned for them. That could be a powerful bond, bringing total literacy to Lantanya.”

“The educational king and queen.” Max smiled. “I like that. She already knows this is part of my plan for the kingdom.”

His friend gave him a level look. “But I think you must win her heart as well as her mind for the marriage to be all that's possible.”

“I must think of the country first.”

“Think of her and a lasting love. Perhaps the rest will follow,” Chuck advised solemnly.

Max chuckled. “My security advisor is now my advisor on matters of the heart.” He indicated the report lying on the table. “What else is happening in the kingdom by the sea?”

They discussed the functions of the tiny country, including the seized assets of the conspirators. Max was further disappointed upon learning his trusted half uncle had been stealing from the public funds.

When the reports were finished, he sat in silence, his mind going to Ivy and their brief time together. She had come to him so sweetly innocent, trust in her eyes as she'd given herself completely into his hands.

He'd needed that, he realized. Her purity as well as her passion. She was his, by Heaven, and she
must come to terms with that. It would soon be time to return home.

“I can give her until the end of the month,” he said aloud. “Today is the seventh. By the end of September, we must be wed and on our way home.”

“Then you'd better work fast,” Chuck told him.

What, Max wondered, would it take to convince Ivy that their futures were as bound together as the roots of the climbing roses that grew so profusely at his island home?

 

The doorbell rang just as Ivy checked the roasting chicken in the oven. It was golden brown and smelled great. She was also pleased to note that it didn't send her scurrying for the bathroom, hand over mouth.

Glancing at the person outlined against the noon sun, she refused to recognize the disappointment that the silhouette didn't belong to Max.

“Mother, how nice to see you,” she said, holding the door wide and leaving it open to the pleasant breeze.

She really was glad to see her mother. There were a hundred things she wanted to ask about babies and such. After all, Sheila had had four children and so should know everything Ivy needed to find out.

“I was at Henri's yesterday and heard several rumors, all of them about you,” her mother said, tossing her purse on the entrance hall table, no smile on her face. Due to cosmetic injections, there was no frown, either.

The questions evaporated from Ivy's mind. She assumed a pleasant expression and offered coffee or tea. “Or lunch if you prefer,” she said. “It'll be ready soon.”

Sheila sniffed delicately. “Roast chicken. It smells quite delicious. You're becoming very domestic, Ivy. Is it because you're pregnant?”

Ivy wasn't surprised at her mother's blunt manner. The older woman had little time to spend on her off-spring. “Your hair is lovely,” she said instead of answering the question. “That's a new style, isn't it?”

Sheila fluffed the ends of her hair. “Henri said it took ten years off. I think he's right. A person shouldn't get in a rut, I suppose.” She eyed Ivy's short curls. “You look like a six-year-old.”

It wasn't a compliment. Ivy held back the hot words that rushed to her tongue. Arguing with her mother did little good. Sheila heard only what she wanted.

Now she returned to her original line of thinking. “Are you expecting?”

“It would seem so,” Ivy said lightly. She went into the kitchen and prepared two glasses of iced tea, both with lemon, hers with a spoon of sugar, her mother's without. “Shall we sit on the patio?”

Without waiting, she went out the side door and sat at the glass-topped table. When her mother joined her, after making sure the sun wouldn't touch her skin, Ivy slumped into her chair and waited for the lecture.

It occurred to her that instead of enjoying her patio and the new furniture she'd gotten that spring, she mostly sat out there and argued with people, or listened to them tell her what she ought to do. She sipped the tea and waited for the diatribe to begin.

“Whatever were you thinking?” Sheila demanded, taking a seat after making sure the cushions were clean and wouldn't leave marks on her beige silk suit.

“Perhaps I wasn't.”

“Don't get smart,” her mother warned. “Get rid of it.”

Anger, so fierce it was all Ivy could do to control it, rolled over her. “I don't think so. I want the baby.”

Sheila studied her for a minute, her eyes narrowed. Ivy could almost hear the wheels turning in her mother's head.

“Whose is it?” Sheila asked.

“No one you know.”

“Do you know?” the other woman asked maliciously.

The question lanced into Ivy's heart. That magical night she'd thought she did, but the man she'd so foolishly fallen for hadn't existed. Max Hughes had been part of the dream, not reality.

“Well?” Sheila said.

“Yes, I know.”

At that moment, a car stopped at the end of her sidewalk. Ivy recognized Chuck Curland and re
turned his wave. Max got out and strode up the walk. He spotted her on the patio, waved, then gave her mother a glance, his keen gaze moving from mother to daughter, obviously interested.

Before Ivy could rise, he came in the front entrance and out onto the patio. “Don't get up,” he murmured, touching her lightly on the shoulder, leaving a trail of fire along her skin. He smiled at her mother. “I'm Max Hughes. You are Ivy's sister?”

“This is my mother, Sheila Crosby,” Ivy said as her mother preened the way she did whenever a handsome man paid her compliments.

He again looked from one to the other. “There is a resemblance. It is easy to see where Ivy got her beauty.”

Her mother looked a little startled, as if she'd never considered her daughter's looks a match for her own. She covered it well with a flirty little laugh. “Where did you meet this rogue?” she demanded of Ivy but never took her eyes off Max.

Max sat in the chair beside Ivy, his knee brushing her thigh as he did. “Ivy and I were business acquaintances first, then we became friends.”

Although his tone of voice didn't change, Ivy felt a sensual caress in the last word as if he'd stroked her while he spoke. Chill bumps rose on her upper arms.

“Shall I get you a wrap?” he inquired. He rubbed her left arm gently while his eyes delved into hers.

“No. Thanks.” Unable to hold that steady gaze,
she stared at a slow-moving bee working over a bed of mums along the patio edge.

“The bee hasn't long to store up food for the winter,” Max observed. “Nor have we much time.”

“Time for what?” Sheila demanded, obviously irritated at being left out of some secret conversation.

Ivy sent Max a pleading glance before watching the bee once more.

“She will have to know,” he said, his manner so gentle it brought the sting of tears to her eyes.

“Is he the father?” Sheila blurted out.

Max brought his head up sharply and gave her mother a look that shut her up on the spot. Ivy was amazed. He leaned close, his hair brushing her temple. “We will have to tell her sooner or later.”

“I already know about the baby,” Sheila informed him waspishly. “So does everyone in town.”

He grimaced at Ivy. “I'm sorry that you are being gossiped about. It was never my intent to embarrass you. Will you forgive me?”

Ivy's throat closed as he lifted her hand to his lips and planted a kiss on each knuckle, then simply held it against his thigh as he observed her.

“There's nothing to forgive,” she assured him with fatalistic calm coming over her. “People will gossip no matter what one does.”

“True,” he agreed. He turned to Sheila. “Ivy and I are expecting a child. In April.”

Sheila laid a hand to her chest, each perfectly
manicured nail glowing pearl pink against the silk. “Are you also expecting to marry?”

A dangerous glint came into Max's eyes at the sarcastic tone. “Yes,” he said, gazing at Ivy.

“No,” she corrected.

He stroked her cheek in that endearing way he had that made her want to melt into his arms. “We must, my love.”

My love.
He'd used that term before.
My love,
he'd murmured to her. Ivy wished he would say it again and that it was true. If she thought he loved her…

“The news of the child has leaked to my country,” he continued, now holding her hand pressed to his heart.

“Oh, no,” she whispered.

“But yes. My people will expect me to return with my bride and the mother of my child.”

“What?” Sheila said.

Max ignored her mother and looked deeply into Ivy's eyes. “Our son will be heir to the throne,” he said softly.

“What?”
Sheila gasped, her voice shrill.

“The child might be a girl,” Ivy told him.

“It matters not. The firstborn, male or female, inherits the crown.”

“Crown? What crown?” Sheila slapped her hand on the table to gain attention.

Neither Ivy nor Max glanced her way. “An illegitimate child inherits nothing,” Ivy said.

His hand tightened on hers. “Our child will not be a bastard,” he told her in a fierce murmur.

“I think I'm going to faint,” her mother said.

M
ax wanted to tell Sheila to take a hike, but he refrained. She was, after all, mother to Ivy, and would be grandmother to their children. “Please do not faint,” he said to her, putting on a teasing smile. “I have enough trouble dealing with your stubborn daughter without taking on more fainting women.”

“Well, really,” the mother huffed.

“Really,” he agreed equably, his gaze never leaving Ivy's set expression. “If you will excuse us, Mrs. Crosby, Ivy and I have matters to discuss and little time to do so.”

Ivy looked at him, aghast.

Apparently few people told her mother to get lost,
Max realized. He also knew Ivy didn't want to be alone with him. But he would persuade her otherwise. His blood warmed at the thought. He stood and with a gracious manner took Sheila's arm and guided her inside and toward the front door.

“I'm sure you understand,” he murmured for her ears alone. “Ivy is shy about her feelings and what happened between us.”

“Do you really intend to marry her?” Mrs. Crosby asked, looking somewhat dazed at the idea. “Ivy has no idea of what it takes to be part of a royal family.”

Max suppressed irritation. The mother evidently didn't realize how lovely her daughter was or how attractive Ivy's sweet innocence was next to the obvious charms of women such as her. It occurred to him that Sheila was similar in manner to most of the women he'd known all his life, those overconfident of their allure, jaded in their tastes and centered on their own pleasures.

“She is a very special person,” he said solemnly. “I think she will make an excellent queen—thoughtful and kind as well as beautiful and intelligent. That is more important than protocol and ritual, which she will easily learn. My people will love her.”

There. That should give Sheila something to chew on. He almost chuckled at her slack-jawed expression.

“Well,” she said. “How interesting.”

“I will call you as soon as things are settled be
tween Ivy and me,” he promised. “I hope that soon I will have the honor of calling you Mother Crosby.”

He held the door for her, then laughed softly to himself as Sheila obviously didn't know whether to be pleased or furious at his words. She sailed down the sidewalk like a ship in full battle gear and running before the wind.

When he turned, Ivy was standing inside the patio door. “That was a terrible thing to say,” she accused. “Now she'll have to have another face-lift or something to get over your referring to her as ‘Mother.'”

He laughed again and saw Ivy's mouth compress at the corners. Hunger surged through him. With her curls and baby blue eyes, she looked good enough to eat.

“It was rather funny, though, to see her reaction, don't you think?”

Going to Ivy, he cupped her face in his hands, noting how young and innocent she seemed, not nearly old enough to be the mother of his child. But he was glad she was.

She tried to glare at him, but the gleam in her eyes gave her away. He kissed her nose, then tickled her ribs with one hand while slipping the other behind her head to prevent her from drawing away.

Finally she couldn't hold the merriment in. Her laughter tinkled through the still room like wind chimes playing a fairy song. “You are terrible,” she finally scolded, but without heat.

“I know.” His voice dropped to a husky depth that
he couldn't disguise. “Ivy,” he said, an entreaty, did she but know it.

Her eyes widened slightly when she met his gaze. He couldn't suppress the desire that blazed in him or the intensity of the need. Slipping his hand from her side, he touched her hip, then pulled her close.

“Seven weeks without you is a long time,” he murmured, wanting her as he'd never wanted another woman. “Too long.”

He tasted her lips, her throat while she stood still, trying to resist the pull between them. He could have told her it couldn't be done. The attraction was like gravity, pulling them into each other's orbits like double stars circling each other.

Inhaling sharply as the hunger increased, he was filled with her scent. She smelled of roses that basked in the sun and were kissed by the sea air. A light, fragrant aroma of shampoo and cologne teased his senses and further fanned the flames that were raging deep inside him.

“Ivy,” he whispered, urging her closer still, tucking her slender body into his, curves and planes fitting as if made for each other.

“Max…”

Her voice trailed off in uncertainty. He felt her nipples bead against his chest as he rubbed seductively against her, letting her know the strength of his passion and reveling in her response.

“I want you,” he said in total honesty. “Now.”

Without pausing, he scooped her into his arms and carried her down the short hallway to her room. The bed was neatly made, but, standing her beside him, he quickly took care of that.

“This is not wise,” she said.

She tried to speak firmly, but her manner was so hesitant it made his heart somersault. The heat of desire bloomed in her cheeks. He knew her breasts would be flushed, too. “I need to see you. I have to.”

Before she could protest, he had the pale-blue knit top slipped over her head and tossed to a nearby chair. Her bra was disposed of as easily. He threw his shirt aside and shucked his slacks and briefs.

“Max,” she protested, but softly.

To him, it sounded like a plea, the same as that magical night, a plea for him to come to her.

The buttons of her slacks were no barrier to the rampant urgency that pounded through him. Although she continued murmuring protests, she let him strip those and her lacy briefs from her long, shapely legs.

Once he had them both naked, he again scooped her into his arms and settled on the bed with her in his lap. He piled the pillows against the headboard and half reclined, her body curled against him in a way he found endearing.

“I don't know how I've lived without you the past two months,” he told her, planting kisses all over her face, his hands fisted in her springy curls.

“Why didn't you come sooner?”

He took her lips in a long, satisfying kiss before answering. “I wanted to, but there were things I had to take care of. Events unfolded that had to be resolved.”

Shaking his head slightly, he fell silent, not willing to discuss betrayal and treason at this moment. He noticed his fingers trembled slightly as he brushed them through her hair. He hadn't felt this young and untried since his first experience with a woman during the freshman year at college.

“You make me feel like a newborn just trying the world on for size.” His smile admitted the foolishness of the thought, even though it was true.

Instead of mocking him, she touched his face, then finger combed his hair off his forehead. “Thank you for saying that. Since reading the tabloid, I've wondered about… Well, I wondered if you were acting that night, if it was a pretense. You must have had any number of women who wanted you and would never have refused you.”

“There was no one before you,” he told her. “No one who counted.”

Her eyes darkened, and she looked pensive. “Am I to believe that I count?”

The sadness in her expression hit him square in the chest. “Of course,” he chided. “You are the only woman who has conceived my child. I have never allowed that to occur with anyone else.”

She pushed herself upright. “We didn't mean for that to happen. It…it was an accident.”

Her breasts, with their delicate rosy points, were more than he could resist. “Was it?” he questioned, bending to her and taking one of the rosebuds into his mouth. “Was it?” he asked again, his voice becoming huskier yet.

A tremor rushed through her as he teased her nipple into a tighter bud, first one, then the other. He groaned as hunger played havoc with his control. His body wanted total ravishment without talk or foreplay.

More than that, something in him demanded that he claim her, make her see that she belonged to him and him alone. She'd given her innocence to him that night. Her trust had been a gift he would never forget.

Holding her locked in his embrace, he turned them so he was on top. With lips and hands and body, he stroked her, feeding her desire as well as his own. When she opened her lips to him, when she gasped and clung to him, arms and legs wrapping him in a hot embrace, when she began to move against him, he was elated.

“Now,” he murmured, finding her ready.

Rising on one arm, aware of her gaze, he entered her, merging them with nothing between them but the need they shared.

He kissed her a thousand times and caressed her to his heart's desire. She returned each caress, each kiss, until his senses were filled with her. Only her. When she cried out, he closed his eyes and held on, giving her every bit of pleasure that he could.

Her demands incited him past control as she writhed under him like a dancing flame. An incandescent glow filled his soul.

Together they sought the intense rhythm of release. Together they reached the bliss, her throaty cries a counterpoint to the deep groan of total satisfaction he found in her arms.

Seconds, minutes, eons passed while their breathing slowed to normal. He rested beside her, their bodies still intimately joined. Odd, but he didn't want to lose the connection with her, as if, in doing so, he might lose her.

Which was likely true.

They connected completely this way, but when the passion was spent, reason would intercede, making her wary of him as a man and possible lifetime mate. He would show her—

From the kitchen came the sound of a timer. He raised his head and looked at her to see if she knew what it was.

“Lunch is ready,” she said.

The statement seemed so ordinary and so very, very right that he laughed, causing them to separate. He cupped her face and kissed her rosy lips. “Shall we eat, then? I admit I'm hungry for food now that the other, more demanding hunger is satisfied.”

She wouldn't meet his eyes. “We shouldn't—”

He laid a finger over her mouth. “It was the best
thing I've ever known. I don't regret it, not now nor in the past when we shared the same magic moments.”

“If we hadn't met, if this—” she gestured toward her abdomen to indicate the pregnancy “—hadn't happened, where would you have looked for a bride?”

“It did happen, so we don't have to consider that.” He smiled to reassure her. “My security advisor assures me that an American heiress is quite acceptable.”

“We don't know each other.”

“Don't we?” he demanded, impatient with her qualms. “I think we knew each other very well.”

“That was physical.”

“The physical union of a man and woman is one of the foundations the world is built on.”

Ivy knew there must be one final argument, one supreme bit of logic she could employ that would refute for all time his determination on marriage. Before the thought had hardly formed, she knew she didn't want to find such an argument.

Despair gripped her. “I don't know
you,
Your Highness. The man I met in Lantanya was Max Hughes, businessman. With that man, I found a thousand things we shared in common. What do I share with a king?”

His eyes roamed over her, making her aware of her nakedness. She felt so exposed, in more ways than one, as he considered her question. She saw his chest rise, then fall as he expelled a heavy breath.

Sitting on the side of the bed, he took her hands.
“Even a king must be allowed his private moments. At those times he is only a man with a man's needs and desires, with a man's longing for a retreat from the world and its problems. For me, you are that retreat.”

His smile was solemn as she searched his face for the meaning behind the words. Was he sincere, or was this a ruse to get his way? He was a man of the world. He would have learned long ago the right words to use to bend another to his will.

“You want the child,” she began.

“Yes,” he said adamantly.

“And I come as part of the package.”

“A very lovely package.” He laid the tips of his fingers against her temples. “You Americans. You analyze everything to death. Can't you see that some things are meant to be?”

She shook her head.

“Stubborn,” he murmured, then continued. “The fate that brought us together and gave us that one sweet night as lovers was predestined. It was written in the stars. We as humans need only accept what the gods have decreed.”

Ivy wanted to believe him, but a lifetime of caution, of observing what people do, not what they say, made it too difficult to believe in kismet and fate and predestination.

“Perhaps, like Romeo and Juliet, it was a time that was never meant to be,” she told him.

The timer dinged again.

Rolling to the far side of the bed, she rose and rushed into the bathroom, closing the door to signify her wish to be alone, although she didn't lock it. After showering, she realized she'd forgotten clothing.

Wrapping the towel around her, she opened the door and peered out. The room was empty.

Going to the closet, she selected loose dark-beige slacks with a drawstring waist and a gold top with beige piping around the scoop neckline and raglan sleeves. She put on sunscreen, light makeup and coral lipstick. With brown loafers on her feet and gold hoops in her ears, she was ready to face the world.

Well, this little corner of it at any rate, she corrected, hearing Max in the kitchen. Her heart went into a swan dive before she could order it to straighten up.

His back was to her when she entered the room. His hair was damp, so he must have used the guest bath to shower. She watched him set the table, as competent at that as he was at everything else. Including making love.

No! She mustn't think about that.

The roasted chicken and the vegetables she'd cooked with it were on a platter in the center of the pale blue tablecloth he'd found in the sideboard. After folding two matching napkins so that they resembled flowers, he placed them in fluted champagne glasses by each plate.