Crowned for My Royal Baby

  I had his child...

  But can I accept his crown?

  I’ll never forget the first time I saw Hercules Xenakis... He was more god than man. I couldn’t believe that a prince would want to know me. Though everything changed when I discovered I was pregnant...

  I was forced by the palace to keep our baby’s existence a secret, unaware that Hercules had no idea I was expecting his heir! Now he’s back—and ready to make me his bride. But this Cinderella story is only make-believe for the sake of our daughter. Or is it?

  New York Times Bestselling Author

  “Perhaps we should toast,” Hercules said, lifting his glass. “To our union.”

  I raised my glass, my eyes never leaving his. It was a challenge, and I was not going to back down. Because I had changed. I had become someone different, forged in steel, in the fires of the conflagration that had occurred between us.

  I had been a fool then. A girl easily wounded.

  “This is for Lily,” I said, more for myself than for him. “And our marriage is for Lily. It is not for us.”

  “Is that so?” he asked, his voice rough.

  “Yes,” I responded, pleased that I managed to keep my voice steady then.

  It was the fire that terrified me. But more than that... It was the hope.

  Because I could not seem to banish it no matter how much I tried.

  Maisey Yates is a New York Times bestselling author of more than seventy-five romance novels. She has a coffee habit she has no interest in kicking and a slight Pinterest addiction. She lives with her husband and children in the Pacific Northwest. When Maisey isn’t writing, she can be found singing in the grocery store, shopping for shoes online and probably not doing dishes. Check out her website, maiseyyates.com.

  Books by Maisey Yates

  Harlequin Presents

  His Forbidden Pregnant Princess

  Brides of Innocence

  The Spaniard’s Untouched Bride

  The Spaniard’s Stolen Bride

  Heirs Before Vows

  The Spaniard’s Pregnant Bride

  The Prince’s Pregnant Mistress

  The Italian’s Pregnant Virgin

  Once Upon a Seduction...

  The Prince’s Captive Virgin

  The Prince’s Stolen Virgin

  The Italian’s Pregnant Prisoner

  The Queen’s Baby Scandal

  Crowning His Convenient Princess

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.

  Maisey Yates

  Crowned for My Royal Baby

  To the librarians. And mine especially. At school and at the public library. You made sure I had books. Lots of books. All the books. If not for my love of reading, I’m sure I wouldn’t be writing. Thank you.

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  EXCERPT FROM THE GREEK'S PENNILESS CINDERELLA BY JULIA JAMES

  CHAPTER ONE

  Marissa

  I’LL NEVER FORGET the first time I saw Prince Hercules. A ridiculous name, and one more suited to a bronzed god than a man. The kind of god my father would have called a false one and told me to steer clear of.

  If he could only have known. He would have locked me in my room for the foreseeable future if he’d had any real idea of how fallible I was.

  Something in me must have known.

  Because Hercules immediately became a secret. Even when I watched him from a distance.

  Secrets were not allowed in my family because a secret meant that someone was concealing a truth. And if you were concealing a truth, it had to be because it was a sin.

  Hercules became sin for me very, very quickly.

  It was after church that first time. I had gone down to the water, as I often did on the small island of Medland, Massachusetts.

  It was summer, and the elite had already descended on the tiny town as they did every year. The influx of seasonal residents as welcome as they were overwhelming.

  The island ran on summer business, the money made during those months often necessarily hoarded through the rest of the year.

  The collection plates at my father’s church were certainly fuller during those weeks.

  And while I knew, even at sixteen, that the rush of people was necessary for the economy, I still found it overwhelming.

  And so I retreated, not to the most heaving parts of the beaches, but to private paths that beat through tall seagrass and down to rocky but tranquil shores that were far too rustic to attract the volume of visitors the vast stretches of sand did.

  On a Saturday it was difficult to find spaces that weren’t overrun, but I’d lived there all my life and barely knew anywhere else. I knew where I could find solitude if I wanted it.

  And that was where I first spotted him.

  He was standing in the waves, the water lapping at his knees, his pants rolled up, his shirt off.

  He was surrounded by people—women specifically—laughing and chatting, splashing each other. But he stood out, his face looking like it was carved from granite.

  His eyes reminded me of obsidian. The black glossy rock that both gave off light and consumed it all at once. I thought I could get lost in those eyes.

  In that darkness.

  I’d been taught to run from darkness, but there was a glow in his I couldn’t turn away from. I felt like I’d just discovered a creature I wasn’t allowed to know existed.

  He seemed lost in whatever his darkness was.

  Until one of the women touched his arm, and those features shifted into a smile that seemed to eclipse the sun. And I was suddenly overcome by a strange, bitter taste in my mouth that I’d never experienced before. It made my whole body feel tight and strange.

  I ran away.

  But the next day, I went back after church, and he was there. This time, not out in the water, but standing on the shore.

  And he saw me.

  “Are you going to stare all day?” he asked.

  “I wasn’t staring at you,” I replied. “I was simply taking in the view behind you.”

  “I saw you yesterday,” he said. “On the shore.” The way he said it made it clear he didn’t believe I was looking at anything but him. “You ran away.”

  “I knew my father would wonder where I was. You weren’t in church today?” I asked him. An inane question. I knew he wasn’t there. I would have noticed. Everyone would have.

  “No,” he said with a laugh. “I find my worship, such as it might be, is best conducted outside four walls. And you?”

  “My father is the pastor. I’ll get in trouble if I don’t go.”

  “And would you get in trouble if he found out you were here?”

  He was even more beautiful up close. His chest was covered then, thank God, or I probably would have expired on the spot. It was a weakness, I knew, the way that I looked at him. The way that I hungrily took in every inch of bronze skin that was on display. Just a wedge, where the fabric of his white shirt was separated.

  I knew that I was wicked.

  Like a sudden answer to my restlessne ss had locked into place and printed the definition in my brain.

  Wicked.

  It was evidenced in the way I feasted on every detail of his handsome, sculpted face. But I couldn’t help it, and for the first time, I didn’t want to.

  He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. That square, sharp jaw and compelling mouth, those dark, intense eyes.

  “Possibly,” I said. “I’m supposed to be careful about talking to... Well, most people who come here during the summer are very important. And also...of a certain sort of character.”

  “Whoremongers and the like?” he asked, a glint of humor in his eyes.

  I felt my cheeks heat. “I suppose so.”

  “Sadly, I’m both,” he said. “You should probably run away.”

  “Okay,” I said and instantly turned to flee, doing exactly as I was told, because I didn’t know another way to be.

  “Do you always do what people tell you to?” he asked me, stopping me in my tracks.

  “I... Yes.”

  “You should stop that. Figure out what you want.”

  “I’ll probably just get a job here. Get married.” Just mentioning that word in front of him made my insides feel jittery.

  He arched a brow. “But is it what you want?”

  He was looking at me so intently, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why a man such as him would look at a girl like me the way that he was.

  Of course, I didn’t exactly know what the look was. I had never spoken to a man I didn’t know from church. Not outside of exchanged pleasantries on a street. We didn’t even know each other.

  I didn’t know his name, and he didn’t know mine.

  He was an admitted whoremonger, and someone very important. And there I was, talking to him anyway. Feeling pinned to the spot by all that intensity.

  “I’ve never thought about it,” I finally admitted.

  “Do,” he said. “And get back to me.”

  I didn’t see him for the next few days, but I was consumed by schoolwork anyway. It was summer, but as I was homeschooled, my parents didn’t much acknowledge breaks. It was fine, because I was on the verge of graduating at sixteen, though to what end, I didn’t know. I had considered going away for a while on a mission, which was something that my parents heartily approved of.

  I went back to check on Saturday again to see if I could find the mystery man.

  I didn’t.

  But I did again, that next Sunday.

  “Have you thought about what you want?” he asked.

  I just stared at him blankly, because no, I hadn’t. I had thought about him. And that was it.

  That began a strange sort of friendship. We would talk by the seashore when he was alone. About everything and nothing. Not about ourselves, but the world.

  He’d been everywhere, and I’d been nowhere. We both found that fascinating.

  We didn’t exchange names. He gave me a seashell, and he told me that the way it swirled at the center reminded him of the way my hair curled. I put it in a box and hid it under my bed.

  When the summer ended, I couldn’t breathe.

  He was gone and the world was gray. It was silly to grieve over a man who was alive, but not with me. A man whose name I didn’t know.

  But I grieved all the same.

  Sometime in the middle of winter a photograph on the front page of a tabloid in the grocery store caught my eye—it was him. It was him with a beautiful woman on his arm and his name plastered right there on the newsprint, and I had to ask myself how I could be so stupid.

  I wasn’t one to pay attention to popular culture—in fact, my father expressly forbade it—and often I averted my eyes even when waiting in the checkout line, so there was a certain sort of sense in the fact that I hadn’t realized immediately who my seaside friend was.

  Not just someone important.

  A prince.

  Prince Hercules Xenakis of Pelion, one of the most renowned playboys in the entire world.

  That night I took the box out from under my bed and stared at the seashell, and I told myself I should get rid of it.

  He wouldn’t be coming back to the island—I was certain of it.

  I would never see him again. Our meeting—our friendship—had been a fluke, and what was more, I was sure that I meant nothing to him. I was a schoolgirl, a common one at that, and he was one of the most wealthy, desirable men on the planet.

  I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away.

  Summer rolled around, marking my birthday and marking the return of the seasonal residents.

  And there he was.

  Sunday afternoon.

  I told myself not to smile like a giddy fool when I saw him, but I did. And he smiled at me.

  “You’re still here,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets.

  “I live here. So it’s not truly that surprising. You came back,” I said. I looked away from him. “You’re a prince.”

  “Ah,” he said. “So you’ve discovered my secret.” He sounded regretful.

  I peered at him while still trying to keep my head tilted down. “I’m not sure how it can be a secret, given you are frequently on the cover of newspapers.”

  He touched me then. His fingertips brushed my chin, and I lifted my head, my eyes meeting his. The impact left me breathless. “Does that change things?”

  I was stunned. “Doesn’t it have to?”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “I knew I was a prince this whole time. And anyway, that you didn’t is part of why I liked spending time with you.”

  I held that close for the rest of the week.

  He liked me. He liked me because I didn’t know he was a prince, and he didn’t think I was a fool.

  That next week I told him my name. “Marissa,” I said. “Since I know yours.”

  “Yes, it’s quite a difficult name to use in conversation, don’t you think?”

  “I assume that’s helped by the fact that most people probably call you by an honorific.”

  “Indeed. But I would rather you did not.”

  “Hercules?” His name tasted strange on my lips, and not just because it was foreign.

  “Yes,” he said, smiling at me.

  “Then I will.”

  I knew he was older than me, richer than me, more experienced than me, impossible in every way. But in that moment, as his smile lit his face, I fell in love with him.

  He gave me another seashell, and I thought maybe he might feel something for me.

  When he went away that summer, I couldn’t help but follow the headlines about him. I made myself sick with them.

  Because there he was, with beautiful women on his arm, and if he felt for me even a fraction of what I did for him, there was no way that he would be with them. I bought an entertainment magazine with his picture on it, and I knew that if my father found it, I would be in trouble. I put it in the box with the seashells. I felt guilty, because now I had secrets.

  Now I didn’t do what I was told.

  I seemed to do things because of Hercules instead, and that was something entirely different.

  I finished school, but I didn’t want to go away on a mission trip, because he would be coming back. So I made an excuse about wanting a job, got one at a local coffeehouse called the Snowy Owl.

  And mostly, I lived for Sundays.

  Of course, nobody scheduled me to work on a Sunday, because my father would forbid that I do anything on the Sabbath.

  I didn’t care about that. I cared about him.

  “You’re back,” I said to him. First thing, just as I had done the year before.

  I was eighteen, and I burned with a strange kind of conviction in my chest, because I didn’t feel quite so helpless. Quite like there was such a barrier between us.

  Oh sure, there was the Prince thing. The fact that he spent the year dating supermodels and traveling around on private jets. But I was a woman now. And I felt like that had to mean something.

  “Of course.”

  “I’m glad,” I said.

  “So am I.”

  Then he reached out his hand and took hold of mine. “Shall we go for a walk?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  And for the first time, I held a man’s hand. His fingers were so warm, and it made my stomach turn over, made my heart feel like it was going to race right out of my chest. I looked at him, and he looked completely unaffected, but he still held on to me, and so I held on to that.

  He kissed me on one of those Sunday afternoons.

  My whole body felt like it would burst into flame. His lips were firm and sure on mine, and he was so impossibly beautiful.

  Every feeling he called up in me I had been taught to identify as a sin, but it was so beautiful, and part of him, and I couldn’t bring myself to turn away from it.

  So instead, I wrapped my arms around him and kissed him back. Parted my lips for him and allowed him to brush his tongue against mine.

  I allowed all kinds of things on those Sunday afternoons. For his touch to become more familiar. For the feeling of his body against mine to become the dearest and most precious thing in the world. All that hard, powerful muscle, gentled as he held me.

  I wanted to tell him he didn’t have to leash that strength. But I didn’t have the words for it. I didn’t have the vocabulary for what I wanted at all.

  “Can you meet me tonight?”

  It was near the end of summer when he asked me that, and I wanted to. Desperately. But I knew that I would get in so much trouble if I were caught.

  Do you always do what you’re told?

  That earlier question came back to haunt me. And no, I didn’t do what I was told. Not anymore. Not now.

  I lived for Hercules.

  It wasn’t about whether I might marry him and become a princess. I never thought about the future. I only thought about us, as we were, there on the beach. His life outside of that didn’t matter, and neither did mine.

  And so I made the decision to expand it. To push outside those isolated Sunday afternoons and see something more.