The Queen's Baby Scandal Read online

  “We make choices.”

  “Well, now I’m going to make a different one. As we are making a show of solidarity, I figure there will be no better way of doing that than appearing so grandly upon the world stage.”

  “I suppose so,” she returned.

  “You are mine,” he said. “And the world has only understood thus far, I think, that I might be yours. But they will understand after tonight.”

  She was his? But how did he mean that? And why did she want it to mean...? Why did she want it to have meaning?

  The way he made her feel when they were alone in the dark was a heady, sensual rush that affected not just her body but also her soul.

  It had nothing to do with performance and everything to do with... She didn’t know.

  She didn’t know, and she hated not knowing. “That sounds ominous,” she said, instead of any of the things she’d been thinking.

  His dark eyes caught and held hers, and didn’t let go. “You will understand too. After tonight. You will understand.”

  * * *

  Mauro was not one to question his own decision-making. He never had been. There had never been time for any such things. He was a man of action, by necessity. He had never been one to Monday morning quarterback the decisions he’d made to propel his life in the direction that he wanted it. He was questioning himself now. If only a bit.

  He was a headline the world over at the moment, and while in many ways he didn’t mind at all, in others...

  But he was set to beard the lion tonight.

  His father would be at this event. That was one of the many reasons he had avoided things like this in the past, as much as he tried to pretend otherwise. He had allowed his father’s presence to deter him from joining society in Italy for a number of years.

  He had always told himself it was because there was no point.

  He was not a man who dealt in galas, after all.

  He liked to appeal to the darker, more sensual side of the moneyed set in the world. Liked to gather in the blackness, carrying out sultry, libidinous acts in the shadows.

  He was going to have to work at changing the headlines. Not for himself, not even for Astrid, but for his child.

  He did not deserve to see his father only as a horror, who was also the son of one.

  He might not feel shame over what he was, but his child invariably would. And that would have to change.

  He straightened the cuffs on his jacket and looked toward the room in his penthouse that Astrid had secreted herself in earlier. He had forced the issue of being the one to choose her gown, and she had been put out with him, as she had a stylist who was in charge of selecting all of the dresses she wore for public appearance.

  Mauro had made the point—the excellent point, if he said so himself—that Astrid appearing in something a bit different would only support the narrative about their relationship being a defining one.

  The gown he had chosen, with the help of his assistant, was exactly what he wished to see his beautiful, curvy wife in, but now she seemed to be hiding out.

  “Astrid,” he said. “We are about to pass the point of being fashionably late.”

  The door cracked slightly. “Do you care?”

  “No. I like being fashionably late, because it makes people talk. But I thought you might care.”

  “I don’t think I can possibly go out in this.”

  “It is nothing compared to that white dress you wore the night you first seduced me.”

  “That was different,” she said archly. “I was not being photographed, and I was trying to seduce you.”

  “And tonight you are my wife. And we are in my part of the world, and I expect for you to present yourself in such a manner. I will wear any ceremonial dress that you require in your country. But you must indulge me here.”

  “Okay. So that is how it will work when we are in Italy, or when we are in Bjornland. But what about when we’re in... Holland?”

  “We will both wear wooden shoes. Now, show me the dress.”

  She opened the door all the way, and the tiger that he was barely keeping leashed inside him leaped forward.

  He no longer wanted to go out. Rather, he wanted to spend the entire evening exploring the ways in which that gown clung to her body.

  It was a burnished gold that set off a fire in her glossy red hair, the color picking up gold tones in that pale skin of hers, as well. It glimmered as it clung to each and every curve, the neckline a deep V that accentuated her lush body.

  “It is a bit much,” she said, breezing past him and moving to where her makeup bag was. She produced a tube of red lipstick, and applied it to her mouth, making her look even more of a siren than she had a moment before.

  He brought her up against his side, and guided her toward the door, her figure fitting more perfectly against his than he ever could’ve imagined.

  “When we come home,” he murmured, as they got into the elevator, “I greatly look forward to stripping this dress off you.”

  “What exactly are we doing?” she asked.

  “What do you mean? Right now, we are going to a gala.”

  “I mean... What are we doing? In private. Behind closed doors. Where we have no reason to be putting on a show. What are we doing? Because it was one thing when we had an arrangement, for the benefit of our son or daughter. It was one thing when we were putting on a show for the media. But this idea that we will spend our nights together... As if it’s just an assumed thing... I don’t understand the purpose of that.”

  He said nothing as they walked through the lobby of the spectacular apartment building he called his own. They were ushered into a limousine, and he took his seat right beside her, pressing his hand over the top of her small, soft one.

  “I don’t understand why we wouldn’t burn out any chemistry that exists between us. People are so prudish about sex and attraction, but it’s something that’s never made much sense to me.”

  “I don’t suppose it would. You used it as a commodity when you were young, but I did not. For me, it is about connection in some way, at the very least. It is inescapable as far as I’m concerned. I do not know of another way to see it. And I don’t wish to put us in the position where things would become acrimonious between us should you decide... Should you decide that you feel an attraction for another woman. And what will happen when we decide to separate? What then? As I see it, it can only go two ways. We must decide that it is temporary, and that we are business partners. Or we must decide it’s forever.”

  Forever.

  He had never thought of anything in those terms before. Mostly because he didn’t think very many steps ahead. He saw his goal, and he achieved it. And then he went on to the next. He enjoyed the excesses that he had at his disposal at any given time, with great relish. And he did nothing to concern himself with heavy things, things that pertained to the future. And she was asking him to choose. Nothing or forever.

  He was a man who had no issue being decisive. And yet, he found this was one question he could not answer with an instantaneous snap of his finger.

  Just another way in which this little queen confounded him.

  The car rolled up to the front of the beautiful, historic hotel that the gala was being held in. The white marble shone pale in the moonlight, a beacon of all that he had ever aspired to as a boy.

  And beside him there was Astrid.

  A woman of pale marble, who wasn’t cold to the touch, but warm and so very alive. So very enticing.

  “We will speak more after the gala.”

  “We will speak,” she said insistently. “I won’t have you drowning out my common sense with your temptation.”

  Temptation. He would happily show her some temptation, and give her a very solid display on why they did not need to make such a definitive bargain between them.


  He took hold of her hand, and pulled her forward, wrapping his arms around her and bringing her up onto his lap, so that she could feel the hardness and intensity that only she seemed to be able to create in him. And he kissed her. Not a slow tasting, but a fierce claiming. A promise. Of everything he was going to use to convince her that this heat between them needed to be thoroughly explored, and there would be no rationalizing that away on her part.

  After all, she was the one who had ignited this need inside him. All of this was her fault. And her daring to try and put up a barrier between them now was something he could not let stand.

  He cupped her face, taking the kiss deep, sliding his tongue against hers until he drew a fractured moan from her body. And then he pulled away.

  “Yes,” he said. “We will resume this discussion after the gala.”

  He opened the door to the limo, brushing past the driver, who was attempting to hold the door for them, and instead, held it open for Astrid before taking her arm and closing it behind them.

  “You shouldn’t try to do the poor man’s job for him,” Astrid said, clearly attempting to sound as healthy as possible and to seem unaffected by the kiss they had shared.

  “You are my wife,” he said. “I will be the one to hold the door for you. No other man need serve you.”

  “Very possessive for a man who isn’t sure what he wants.”

  They said nothing more, because then they reached the top of the steps, and were ushered inside, where they were announced grandly, and in a fashion that Mauro would have taken a great kind of satisfaction in under any other circumstances.

  He was here. Standing at the top, all these people he had looked up to all of his life, people who had kept him shut out of society, gazing up at him, as if he were the most important and powerful man in the room. Unlikely though he was, even without the inclusion of his new, royal bride.

  But she brought that blue-blooded element he could not manufacture on his own.

  She was carrying his child, a child who was the future ruler of a nation.

  Nothing could elevate him more.

  And yet, that wasn’t the primary focus of his thoughts.

  Mostly, he was thinking about her. Mostly, he was remembering the way her skin had felt beneath his hands.

  The way she had sighed and moaned when he had kissed her. A pang of resentment hit him in the chest. That she should have such power over him. Over this moment.

  He tightened his hold on her, her ultimatum ringing in his head.

  They made their way down the stairs, into the center of the tangled knot of crows masquerading as aristocracy. Black dresses on the reed-thin bodies of the women, black tuxes and ties on the men.

  Except for Astrid. Who was like liquid gold, shimmering before them all.

  A prize. That was what he had fashioned her into. And yet, no matter how much he repeated that to himself as they circulated the room, as they made readings to those around them, Astrid with her royal ease, and him entirely absent of such a thing, all he could think was that he had revealed himself in many ways by his choices tonight.

  Revealed the fact that he was not of the aristocracy, no matter that he shared half of his blood with it.

  Because no one else would have dressed their wife as such an obvious prize, only to flaunt her importance.

  And yet, she was beautiful. And she deserved to look as she did. As the most expensive, glorious woman in the room, and why should he have dressed her as anything else? Subtlety, he decided, might be best left to those born with money. He was not going to concern himself with it.

  That was when he saw him.

  Impossible to miss him. Broad shouldered, and taller than most of the men in the room, except for Mauro himself.

  Age had not stooped the man’s shoulders, and Mauro supposed that if he weren’t quite so enraged at the mere existence of him, he might appreciate what that said about his genetics.

  Instead, he only felt his stomach turned sour with the injustice of it all. Because his mother was dead and gone, and this man was able to stand tall, proud, well dressed and with his wife, as if he had not caused immeasurable pain over the course of years.

  As if nothing troubled his conscience at all.

  His eyes caught Mauro’s and held them, and he whispered something to the woman at his side, who nodded in dutiful obedience, and separated from her husband, moving off to a cluster of women standing next to a tray of champagne.

  Mauro gritted his teeth. “Well, it has been some time.”

  “Has it? I wasn’t sure if we had ever met,” his father returned.

  “We did. I was a child. You had me thrown straight back to the slum I came out of.”

  “Oh, was that you? It’s difficult for me to keep my slum bastards straight.”

  “And yet, you seem to know me well enough now.”

  “You’ve done well for yourself,” he said, casting an eye over Astrid.

  Mauro bitterly regretted involving her in this, the moment the old man’s eyes began to roam over her luxurious curves.

  Astrid, on the other hand, didn’t seem regretful in the least. Astrid faced his father head-on.

  “I’m Queen Astrid von Bjornland,” she said, her tone frosty, her shoulders straight. Her hold on him tight. “I do not believe we’ve met.”

  “Dominic Farenzi, Duke of San Isabella.”

  “I see. And you are connected to my husband through accident of birth?”

  She sounded perfectly civil, but he could sense she was feeling anything but.

  “Yes. I had the impression you were connected to my bastard son much the same way.”

  Her lips curved upward. “Oh, no. I chose him. I chose him quite deliberately to be the father of my child. My heir. Because he is perfect, and everything I could possibly want, from a genetic standpoint and otherwise.”

  “I didn’t realize the standards of perfection were lowered so.”

  “If this is the way that you expected you might leverage me and my status for your own personal benefit when you sought to announce your connection to my husband, you have badly miscalculated.”

  “You assumed it was about you? How very fascinating.”

  “I am queen of an entire nation. I assume many things are about me, and I’ve yet to be proven wrong.”

  “Is this what you have become?” his father asked. “Because at least when you were a boy you spoke for yourself. Now, you have this woman speaking for you.” He shook his head. “But then, I am not surprised. It is the only thing that gave you any relevance in the eyes of the media, and truly in the eyes of the world. One sin peddler is essentially the same as any other. You are not only uninteresting on your own, but unoriginal.”

  Mauro chuckled, and before he could grab hold of his composure, reached out and grabbed hold of his father’s throat. “I see. I’m very sorry that I failed to produce a surprise for you.” He chuckled. “But you should understand this. If you assume that you understand me, you will be bitterly disappointed. And if you think you can stand here and speak to my wife, speak about my wife, and face no repercussion, then you truly know nothing about me at all. I have done a great many things in my life that were rooted in calculation and self-service. But Astrid is mine. Mine. And unlike you, I keep what is mine. My child. My woman. You will not speak to her. You will not speak about her. You will not sell any more of your torrid stories to the press about my mother. If you do anything to cause Astrid harm, I will end you. Financially. Physically if I must. You could only lord things over me when I was a little boy who had need. You could only cow me, control me as long as you had more power than I did. The tide has shifted, Father. And now that I’ve made my position clear, all that’s left to do is for you to decide whether or not you want to push me. I would suggest that you don’t.”

  He released his hold on the old man, rag
e coursing through his body. And he felt Astrid’s calming touch on his shoulder. He looked at her, the red, foggy haze of his vision beginning to clear, and he saw that her expression was filled with concern. “Mauro...”

  “You reveal yourself,” his father said. “That you would stoop to physical threats. You might be able to put on a suit, earn money, spend money, but you will always be what you were born. The son of a whore.”

  “Push me any harder and I may be the son of a dead man.”

  “Oh, I have no doubt. I have no interest in pushing you. I’m just making it clear, whatever narrative you think is happening, it is blood that wins. Time and time again.”

  “You’re right about that,” Mauro said. “It is blood that wins out in the end. And when mine triumphs, you had best hope it’s not due to the fact that I spilled any of yours.” He looked over at Astrid, who had gone pale. “Come, cara. I think that our time at this event has lapsed.”

  He had no more time for this. Had no more desire to engage in such a farce. He was going to end the evening now, and he was going to end it exactly the way he had intended on ending it before this miserable farce had began. She would see who he was.

  He pulled her through the crowd, not caring that they had drawn curious stares. That they were now being subjected to scrutiny by all around them. He didn’t care. He was not a good man. He was not a civilized man. He was not one of them. If it had not been apparent before, then it was apparent now.

  He was Mauro Bianchi, and he was from the slums. If blood won out, then he was quite all right letting it show freely.

  He signaled his driver using his phone, and by the time they reached the front of the hotel, the limo was there waiting for them. He ushered her inside, and she said nothing. That was unusual, as Astrid typically had a comment, or a snarky aside. Right now she seemed to have nothing.

  Perhaps he truly had made her realize who he was. Made her realize what he was.

  Now, perhaps she would find it undeniable. “I’ve made my decision,” he said, once the limo began to move away from the hotel. “You’re mine. There will be no discussion about any alternatives.”