Kathryn Jensen - I Married A Prince

He fell back a step, observing her as if she were a rare animal, recently captured but not yet identified...and certainly not tamed.

“Out!” she screamed.

A piercing wail rose above her voice.

Oh, no, she thought. Not now, Cray. Why hadn’t she been more careful to keep her voice down?

Jacob turned toward the hallway, his eyebrows arched, questioning. “What’s that?”

Allison thought of a half dozen lies on the spot. It’s my sister’s child; I’m baby-sitting. That’s the neighbor’s baby. The TV is on in the bedroom. None of them worked.

“That’s my son,” she said finally. “Now, if you’ll leave, I’ll go and take care of him.”

Jacob scowled. “Why didn’t you tell me you were married?”

“I’m not.”

“I see.” He took a step back. Somewhere among the planes of his face, a hardness grew and solidified. “I should have known a pretty woman like you wouldn’t be alone for long.” His eyes wandered toward the hallway. “That doesn’t sound like an infant’s cry.”

“Cray is fifteen months old, if you must know,” she said without thinking. Immediately, she wished she hadn’t. The man wasn’t stupid.

“Fifteen months?”

She followed the tiny motions of his eyes, which grew faster by the second.

“I’d like you to leave now,” she said stiffly, desperate to get him out of the house, away from her son. She was having trouble breathing. “I have to get Cray settled down for the night. He hasn’t been feeling well.”

“Who is the father?” Jacob asked, his voice taut with emotion.

Allison leveled her sternest look at him. “That is none of your business. Go. Leave!”

The levels of emotion that crossed Jacob’s face were more frightening than any words he might have spoken. Instead of turning toward the door, he lurched forward, stopping inches from where she stood. His hands shot forward, vised her shoulders. He glared down at her, his eyes hot, bright chips of obsidian—blacker than black.

“I’ll leave after you tell me the name of the father.”

“Maybe I just don’t know.” She couldn’t help baiting him. He deserved it, didn’t he?

“I’m supposed to believe that around the time we were together, you were sleeping with a handful of other men, too?”

“Why not?” she challenged him. “I could have been.”

His hands tightened painfully on her shoulders. “You’re not that kind of woman.”

Cray was still crying from the back room, but no longer urgently.

“How would you know?” she said, her eyes falling away from his, despite her determination to give as good as she got. “You didn’t hang around long enough to get to know me.”

“I knew you well enough, Alli.” Jacob bent over her, capturing her eyes once more with his. “I knew you inside and out—every inch of your body, every corner of your sweet, generous soul.”

In one quick move, he released her shoulders but enclosed her in his arms. She could feel the heat of his body through their clothing. His lean, hard strength met her soft curves. He pressed her to him, and she could feel that he was aroused. Knowing that embarrassed her.

But not enough to make her struggle to be released. Some secret need or inner force kept her from fighting him. It had been so long, so very long since a man had held her. There had been a few dinners or group movie dates, arranged by Diane or one of her girlfriends. But she hadn’t encouraged a second meeting or allowed herself to be alone with a man. Now she realized how much she’d missed the intoxicating sensations that were rushing through her body.

Cray’s cries had turned to sleepy whimpers. She wished he’d let out a long, hearty scream to give her an excuse for breaking out of Jacob’s arms. She wished she had more willpower than she seemed to have at the moment. She wished...wished that Jacob would stop doing whatever it was he was doing.

His thumb stroked the side of her breast through her cotton sweater. Fiery tongues licked through her, making her knees feel weak. “Don’t do that,” she whispered.

“Tell me the name of the baby’s father?” Jacob said, his voice rumbling in his chest, vibrating against hers.

“I—I can’t.”

“You can’t. That’s different from you don’t know.”

Allison felt incapable of accomplishing anything more demanding than continuing to breathe in and out. And she wasn’t too sure she could keep that up for much longer. She was powerless to mold her thoughts into words.

“I can’t, Jay...Jacob...don’t make me...”

“Make you what?” His lips were less than an inch from hers. She could taste the spicy tang of his breath passing between them, smell subtle traces of male perspiration, feel a tension within his body that seemed to radiate through his skin and slip beneath hers.

She closed her eyes, steeling herself with a moment of darkness and silence, shutting herself off from him visually, although she felt him all around her.

“Jacob, he’s all I have. You left. Please stay away. I can’t deal with this.”

She felt all the strength rush out of the man. His hands dropped away from her and he stepped back. “My God,” he breathed. “He is my child.”

Her eyes flew open in sudden terror. “No! He’s mine, just mine and no one else’s.”

Jacob stared at her as if he still didn’t believe what he knew in his soul must be true. “Someone is that child’s father. Let me see him. I’ll know.”

“No!” she shouted. “Get out. Get out or I’ll call the police. I swear I will!”

He reached out for her, but she dodged away. A terror unlike any she’d ever experienced raced through her, blinding her to all thoughts but one. If Jacob was who he claimed to be—the man whose picture Diane had showed her in the newspaper—he had power and money enough to do anything he wished. Anything.

That included taking her child away from her, if he could prove he was Cray’s father. Until this moment, it hadn’t occurred to her that she might be in real danger of losing Cray. She’d believed all she had to fear was another bruising to her heart and pride.

This was worse, far worse.

“Listen to me, Alli,” Jacob begged in a hoarse whisper. “No one is going to hurt you or that baby. You have my word.”

Maybe it was because she heard a subtle undercurrent of fear in his voice that she felt comforted. She kept her distance but turned toward him. His dark eyes looked sad, confused. This was all new to him. As he stood there, he must have been absorbing the various concepts attached to fatherhood, one at a time, but very rapidly. She’d had fifteen months to become comfortable with being a mother.

Jacob spoke to her again, his voice uneven. “I’m not going to hurt you again. I’m sorry. I didn’t know...didn’t realize—” He let the unfinished thought go. He turned his head away as if uneasy with meeting her gaze. He blinked at the wall and held himself rigid in the middle of her living room unsure of which way to move, or whether he should move at all.

Allison reached out one hand and touched the arm of her couch. Slowly, she let herself down onto a lumpy cushion, then dropped her head into her hands. “If you mean what you say about not hurting me, you’ll leave now,” she whispered dully.

“Is that really what you want?”

“Haven’t I said so a dozen times?” she moaned. “Just go away...and don’t come back.”

She heard him pacing the carpet, cursing beneath this breath. She sensed him standing over her, studying her...and she kept her eyes closed, her palms pressed over her eyes, blocking him out as best she could, as she prayed he’d do what she asked.

But when the door closed with a faint, irrevocable click, Allison felt something fragile shatter inside of her.