Pregnant with a Royal Baby! (8 page)

He laughed. “You’re going to make an interesting princess.”

“Lucky for you, it’s only for a little over two years.”

He said, “Uh-huh,” and went back to reading his newspaper.

Ginny didn’t care. Their conversation proved that she could talk to the “nice” Dominic and not get carried away. They did not have to be best friends. But they did have to get along. They had to look good together in public. They needed to know enough about each other that their charade appeared to be real. And this morning it was clear they were succeeding.

If there was a little rumble in her heart about wasting her wedding, a beautiful wedding, on a fake marriage, she silenced it. She’d never imagined herself getting married. Living with her dad had scared her off that. She’d never allow herself to let her guard down with a man enough to get serious enough to get married. So this was her wedding. Her one shot at being a bride. She’d be a fool not to make it as perfect as she could.

At four o’clock that afternoon, Dom unexpectedly returned to the apartment. As they had the day before, Joshua and Sally sat on the sofa across from her. The photo arrays and designer lists were with them.

She faced the door with a smile. “I thought you had more glad-handing to do.”

He walked in and said, “I do. But I was the one who told Sally and Joshua to bring the designer lists up to you again. I wanted to make sure we were all on the same page.”

“They told me you said I wasn’t sure about the designer.” She bit her lip, not happy that something she’d told him had become an issue.

He caught her gaze. “I want you to be sure.”

The feeling whooshed through her again. The one that told her he was looking out for her because he was a nice guy. He might not love her. He might not even know her well enough to like her. But he was a nice enough guy that he wanted her to be happy.

“Okay.”

Even as she said that, the big double doors of Dominic’s apartment opened. “Ginny?”

Ginny’s head snapped up. “Mom?”

She blinked as she saw her tall, slim mother race into the sitting room from the echoing foyer. Wearing a tan pantsuit that the king probably would have loved for its dignity, she ran over to Ginny.

Ginny rose and was enfolded into her mom’s hug. After a long squeeze, she said, “Let me look at you!”

“Why aren’t you in school?”

“Dom called. He said you needed help with your gown.”

Her throat closed and tears welled in her eyes. This act of Dominic’s was a little more difficult to call the actions of a nice guy trying to keep her happy. Having her mother flown to Xaviera was so kind it made her chest tight.

“I don’t exactly need help. I just love your opinions.”

Her mom said, “Even better.” Then she faced Joshua and Sally, both of whom had risen. “And you must be Sally and Joshua.”

Sally bowed slightly. Joshua said, “She’s actually very clear about what she wants. I think she just needs your reassurance.”

“Joshua, Sally, this is my mother, Rose Jones.”

Ginny’s mom smiled broadly. Her pretty blond hair had a hint of pink in it, because—well, she was a Texas girl, who’d grown up dancing to the Beach Boys and riding horses, and that crazy part of her had no intention of dying. “Let me see the designers and the dresses.”

Joshua immediately handed over the photo array panels, but Ginny stepped away and slid around to the back of the couch where Dom stood.

He raised his eyebrows in question. “What?”

“You told my mom I needed help?”

He shook his head. “No, I called her and said I wanted you to be happy planning this wedding.”

The sweetness of the gesture filled her heart. “I would have been okay.”

“And the wedding would have looked fake.”

This time the reminder that he didn’t want the wedding to look fake didn’t go through her like a knife. It was their deal. He’d always been up-front about their deal.

The crazy feeling she got around nice Dom morphed into something soft and happy. “We’re going to have a beautiful wedding.”

He smiled. “Yes, we are.”

The air between them changed. For a few seconds, she debated springing to her tiptoes and hugging him, but that wasn’t really acceptable, either.

Holding his gaze, she took a step back, then another, suddenly realizing why she kept getting odd nudges. After decades of surface relationships that she’d ended before she even knew the guy she was involved with, she’d managed to never really know anyone, never get beyond platitudes. But planning a fake wedding? Living in the same apartment with Dom? Coconspirators to protect their child? She was getting to know him. And she liked him. A lot more than she’d ever liked any man.

And he’d warned her not to spin a fairy-tale fantasy because he didn’t want a marriage with emotion.

CHAPTER SIX

T
WO
DAYS
LATER
, Dom strode down the marble-floored hall to the double doors of his apartment. Since Rose had arrived, his home had become like a beehive. Where Ginny might be shy about creating a wardrobe, Rose had taken to the task as if she was born to it. Designers had been called in. Dresses and pants arrived for fittings. Two styles of wedding dresses had been chosen and Alfredo Larenzo, an Italian designer, had been hired to create them.

With a wince, he partially opened one of the two double doors, sticking his head in far enough to see into the living room. Which was, mercifully, empty. For a second, he hoped that Ginny and her mom had gone out for lunch, but his chest pinched. Since Rose had arrived, he’d also barely seen Ginny.

Not that he missed her. He didn’t really know her. They were in a fake situation. There was nothing to miss. The thing was, he liked seeing her. Usually, she was funny. After four-hour sessions in parliament, funny was welcome. So he didn’t miss her. He missed her silliness.

Comfortable with that assessment, he walked past the double sofas, over to the bar. When he turned to pour his Scotch, he saw the door to Ginny’s suite door was open. And there she stood, in little pink panties and a pink lace bra. A short man wearing spectacles and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows had a tape measure around her hips. Her mom stood with her back to the door, obviously supervising.

Dom stared. He’d forgotten how perfect she was. With full breasts, a sweet dip for a waist and hips that flared just enough for a man to run his hand along, she had what most men would consider a perfect figure.

The short, dark-haired guy raised the tape measure to her waist and Dom followed every movement of the man’s hands, remembering the smoothness of her shape, the silkiness of her skin. The tailor whipped the tape around and snapped the two ends together in the middle, right above her belly button and Dominic’s head tilted.

Right there...

Right below that perfect belly button...

Was his child.

His child
.

His hand went limp and the glass he was holding fell to the bar with a thump.

Ginny’s head snapped up and she turned to see him standing there, staring. Their eyes met. And it hit him for the very first time, not that she was pregnant, but that the baby she carried was
his
.

His baby.

He’d created a life.

Rose turned, saw him and walked to the door. “Sorry, Dom. Didn’t realize you were home.”

And she closed the door.

Dominic stared at it. The whole thing about the baby didn’t floor him as much as the realization that the baby was in Ginny’s stomach. In a few weeks that flat tummy of hers would be round. She’d gain weight. Be miserable. Probably grouchy. Her feet would swell. She’d be clumsy—in front of millions. And then she’d spend God knew how long in labor.

Because of his baby.

Ginny’s suite door opened and she walked out, tying the belt of a pink satin robe around her.

“Was there something you wanted?”

He stared at her, his chest tight, his mind numb. Up until that very moment he hadn’t really considered how much Ginny was doing for him. Oh, he understood the loss of her job, but he suddenly saw the other things—losing her friends, living away from her mom, stretching her tummy to unknown limits, changing everything.

For his baby.

“Dom?”

He shook his head to clear it. “Sorry. I’m taking a break and thought I’d come up and see if you’re ready for the formal dinner tonight with the ambassador.”

She angled her thumb behind her, pointing at her suite door. “That’s what the little guy with the moustache is doing. Final fitting for a dress Sally tells me your dad is going to have a fit over.”

A laugh bubbled up, but he squelched it. “You can’t always push my dad’s buttons.”

She shrugged. “I’m bored.”

His laughter died. “Really?”

“No! Absolutely not. I’m getting fitted for a billion dresses and three-point-five-million pair of jeans. I never realized how many clothes a princess was expected to have.”

“So you’re not bored?”

“No. I just have a style.” She shrugged and the pretty, shiny pink robe shifted over her sun-kissed shoulders.

He remembered biting those shoulders, nibbling her neck, rubbing his entire body over the length of her entire body.

“And, I swear, I’m not going overboard with sexy clothes. I’m just not going to dress like a grandma.”

He cleared his throat. “I get it about not wanting to dress like a grandma. But be careful.”

“You don’t think it’s time for someone to bring your dad into the twenty-first century?”

“If you can bring him in without the press having a field day, then give it your best shot.”

She smiled, turned and walked back to her room. He watched every swish of the satin over her round bottom.

“Dinner’s at eight, right?”

She called the question over her shoulder, her shiny yellow hair flowing to the middle of her back, accenting that curved waist that led to her perfect butt.

Dominic licked his suddenly dry lips. “Yes, eight. But we need to be in my dad’s quarters at seven so that we all arrive in the dining room together, long before the ambassador so we can greet him.”

“Piece of cake.”

She opened the door to her suite and walked inside, leaving him alone in the living room again.

He tugged his tie away from his throat. A year of celibacy with her was not going to be easy.

He threw back the shot of Scotch and returned to his office for a few hours of admin work. When he entered the apartment again, Ginny’s door was closed. He suspected she was getting ready for the dinner, so he went to his quarters, showered and put on the trousers and white shirt of his tux.

He managed the bow tie the way he could since he was eight, but the onyx-and-diamond cuff links, heirlooms with tricky catches, wouldn’t lock.

He looked at his door and smiled. For the first time in his life he had a woman. In his quarters. About to marry him. Why shouldn’t he take advantage?

Walking past the white sofas in the sitting room, he reminded himself that another man engaged to a gorgeous woman would find much better ways to take advantage of the situation, but he sought only help with cuff links. He was insane.

He knocked on her door.

“Yes.”

“It’s me, Dom.” He sucked in a breath, suddenly feeling like a teenager trying to ask a girl to a dance. Idiocy. He cleared his throat and strengthened his voice. “The cuff links I’m wearing were gifts from the ambassador we’re dining with tonight. They’d been in his family for a century. The clasps stick.”

Before he could finish, her door opened. She stood before him in a pale blue satin dress. Sleeveless—strapless—it should have given him a delightful view, but she wore a little lace thing over it—sort of a jacket, but not quite long enough.

Her hair had been put up, but not in the grandma hairdo. It was more like a long, silky, braided ponytail with flowers woven through it.

She lifted her pretty face and smiled at him. “Heirlooms, huh?”

He said, “Yes,” but his voice came out rusty again. Except this time he knew why he was dumbstruck. She wore almost no makeup, yet she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever met.

“Let me see.”

He held out his arm and she examined the cuff links that he’d slid through the buttonholes but hadn’t locked. She took the first in her nimble fingers, her face pinching in concentration, and something warm and wonderful swished through him.

He told himself it was nothing but attraction, but when she finished closing and locking the cuff links, she glanced up and smiled at him, and he realized how nice she was. It was no wonder she was so good with the children of her high school. She was just plain sweet.

And he was a pampered ruler. Somebody so accustomed to getting his own way that he’d persuaded her to marry him. It was for the best, of course, but that was his pathology. Even if it hadn’t been the best for Ginny, if it had been the best for his country, he would have tossed her feelings aside and worked things to his benefit anyway.

The warm, fuzzy feeling she inspired shifted into cold, hard steel. Because that’s who he really was, and even as much of a bastard as he could be, he didn’t want to hurt her.

Not after she was doing so much for him.

* * *

Dom and Ginny left their apartment at ten to seven. He was the picture of kingly gorgeousness in his black tux.

When she told him that, he cast a sideways glance at her. “Thank you. You look lovely, too.”

Not twenty minutes before they had shared a happy moment over his cuff links. Now he was cool and distant? It didn’t make any sense.

They walked to the elevator, which opened as soon as they arrived. Neither spoke as they stepped inside and Dom pushed the button for the second floor.

A guest of the palace, Ginny’s mom was invited to join them for dinner, and she waited for them in the second-floor lobby beside the elevator.

When they stepped out, she hugged Ginny. “Very pretty.”

Ginny displayed her newfound curtsy skills. “Thanks. Your outfit is gorgeous, too.”

Rose smoothed her hand along the soft beige satin. The king had offered the services of their clothier, and her pragmatic mom hadn’t had a qualm about using them. She had the tailor whip up a simple satin skirt and sequined top that sort of looked like a tank top. She’d swept her yellow and pink hair into a neat French twist. She looked simple, but elegant. More elegant than Ginny had ever seen her.