Annie O'Neil - Claiming His Pregnant Princess

He pulled his fingers into tight fists and gave his thighs a quick drumming.

“Is this some sort of cruel game you’re playing, Beatrice?”

He pushed back in his chair and rose, no longer sure he could even look her in the eye.

“If you’re here to rub it in and make sure you made your impact, you can count me out.”

* * *

“Jamie! Wait!”

Bea’s voice sounded harsh to her own ears. As quickly as she’d reached out to stop Jamie from leaving she wished she’d rescinded the invitation, tightly wrapping her arms around herself to brace herself against the shards of ice coursing through her veins.

She’d betrayed too much by calling out to him. Jamie would know better than anyone that there had been pain in her voice. The ache of loss. But what was she going to do? Explain what a fool she’d been? That she’d gone and got herself pregnant at an IVF clinic in advance of her wedding so her family, the press and the whole of Italy could coo and smile over the Prince and the Principessa’s “honeymoon baby”?

She was the only one in the world who knew that her fiancé—her ex-fiancé—was infertile, apart from a doctor whose silence had been bought. She was surprised he’d even told her. Perhaps their family get-togethers had begun to rely a bit too heavily on talk of children running around the palazzo, in order to cover up the obvious fact that neither of them were very much in love.

Their one joint decision: an IVF baby. Keeping it as quiet as possible. A private clinic. More paid-off doctors and nurses. An anonymous donor.

The less anyone knew, the easier it had been to go ahead with it.

Her sole investment in a relationship she had known would never claim her heart. A child... A child who had been meant to bring some light into her life.

Now it just filled her with fear. Confirmation that she’d been a fool to agree to the plan. She no longer had the support of her family and, worse, she would be a single mother in a world where it was already tough enough to survive on her own.

It hadn’t felt that way when she’d been with Jamie. With him she’d felt...invincible.

Relief washed through her when Jamie sat down again, pressing his hips deeper into the chair, his back ramrod straight as he drained his water glass in one fluid draught before deigning to look her in the eye.

“I’m in trouble, Jamie.”

As quickly as he’d tried to leave, Jamie pulled his chair up close, knees wide so they flanked hers, fingers spread as he cupped her face in both his broad hands, searching her eyes for information.

“Are you hurt? Did he hurt you?”

No, but I hurt you.

He used an index finger to swipe at a couple of errant locks of hair so his access to her eyes was unfettered. Against his better judgment—she could see that in his eyes—he traced his finger along the contour of her jawline, coming to a halt, as he had so many times before, before gently cradling the length of her neck as if he were about to lean in and kiss her.

It was like rediscovering her senses all over again. As if part of her had died the day she’d told him she was returning home to marry another man.

She blinked away the rising swell of tears.

Part of her had died that day. The part that believed in love conquering all. The part that believed in destiny.

“Beatrice,” Jamie pressed. “Did he hurt you?”

I was a fool to have left you.

She shook her head, instantly feeling the loss of his touch when he dropped his hands, sat back in his chair and rammed them into his front pockets, as if trying to hide the fact that his long surgeon’s fingers were balled into tight fists. For the second time in as many minutes. Twice as many times as she’d ever seen him make the gesture before.

He’d aged in the years since she’d seen him last. Nothing severe, as if he’d been sick or a decade had passed, but he had changed. His was a proper grown-up male face now, instead of holding the hints of youth she had sometimes seen at the hospital, when he’d caught her looking at him and smiled.

It felt like a million years ago. Hard to believe it was just two short years since he’d been thirty-three and she twenty-eight.

“Just a young lass, you are,” he would say, and laugh whenever she whined about feeling old after a long shift. “Perfect for me,” he’d say, before dropping a surreptitious kiss on her forehead in one of the busy hospital corridors. They’d been little moments in heaven. Perfect.

She closed her eyes against the memory, gave them a rub, then forced herself to confront the present. It was all of her own making, so she might as well see it for what it was. Payback.

A painful price she knew she had to pay when all she really wanted was for him to love her again as he once had.

Impossible.

Sun-tanned crinkles fanned out from Jamie’s eyes, which she still wasn’t quite brave enough to meet. The straw gold of his hair was interwoven with a few threads of silver. At the temples, mostly. More than she thought a man of thirty-five should have.

But what would she know? When she grew her dyed hair out again it might all be gray after the level of stress she’d endured these past few weeks. It was a wonder she hadn’t lost the baby.

Her hands automatically crept to her stomach, one folding protectively over the other.

“Did he hurt you?” Jamie repeated, the air between them thick with untold truths.

“Only my pride,” she conceded. “He didn’t want me.”

The explanation came out as false, too chirpy. She hadn’t wanted Marco either. What she most likely really owed him was a thank-you letter.

“Can you believe it?” She put on a smile and grinned at the real love of her life, as if having her arranged marriage grind to a halt in front of some of Europe’s most elite families had been the silliest thing to have happened to her in years.

“He should be shot.”

“Jamie...” Bea shook her head. “Don’t be—” She huffed out a lungful of frustration, then unfolded her arms from their tight cinch across her chest, visible proof she was trying her best to be honest with him. Open. Vulnerable. “Mi scusi. I’m sorry. I don’t have any right to tell you what to feel.”

“You’re damn right you don’t,” he shot back, but with less venom than before.

Something in her gave. He deserved to vent whatever amount of spleen he needed to.

“Serves you right” was probably lurking there in his throat. Along with a bit of “now you know how it feels” followed by a splash of “what goes around comes around” as a chaser.

She deserved the venom—and more.

After a moment had passed, with each of them silently collecting their thoughts, Jamie reached across and took one of her hands in his, weaving their fingers together as naturally as if they’d never been apart.

A million tiny sparks lit up inside her. A sensation she’d never once felt with her ex-fiancé.

Obligation didn’t elicit rushes of desire. She’d learned that the hard way.

“Talk to me, Beatrice.”

His voice was gentle. Kind. His thumb rubbed along the back of her hand as his features softened, making it clear he was present—there just for her.

In that instant she felt he was back. The man she’d met and fallen in love with in the corridors of a busy inner-city hospital tucked way up in the North of England. Their entire worlds had been each other and medicine.

She vividly remembered the first time she’d seen him. So English! Male. He’d exuded...capability. So refreshing after a lifetime of worrying about etiquette and decorum and the thousands of other silly little things that had mattered to her mother and not one jot to her. Surviving finishing school had been down to Fran. Without her... She didn’t even want to think about it.