One Reckless Decision: Majesty, Mistress...Missing Heir / Katrakis's Last Mistress / Princess From the Past

Me, Jessa thought. You. But she said neither.

“I was…not myself,” she said instead. “I cried all the time. I was so lost.” It had been more than she could handle. The baby’s constant demands. The lack of sleep. The lack of help, even though her sister had tried. Had she not been so terribly, terribly depressed—near suicidal, perhaps…But she had been. There was no point in wishing. “And how could I be a good parent? The single decision I’d made that led to my being a parent in the first place had been…” Her voice trailed off, and her gaze flew to his.

“To get pregnant accidentally,” he finished for her, so matter-of-factly, so coldly. “With my child.”

“Yes.” Something shimmered between them, a kind of bond, though it was fragile and painful. Jessa forged on, determined to get the rest out at last. “And I had had all this time to read about you in the news, to watch you on the television, to really and truly see that nothing you had ever told me was true. That I’d made up our relationship in my head. That I was a silly girl with foolish dreams, not fit to be someone’s parent.”

He raked his hands through his hair, his expression unreadable. But he did not look away.

“Meanwhile,” she continued, her voice barely a thread of sound, “there were people with intact families already. People who had done everything right, made all the right choices, and just couldn’t have a baby. Why should Jeremy suffer just because his mother was a mess? How was that fair to him?”

“You gave him up for adoption,” Tariq said, sounding almost dazed. “You gave him away to strangers?”

“He deserved to have everything,” Jessa said fiercely, hating the emphasis he put on strangers—and not wanting to correct him. “Love, two adoring parents, a family. A real chance at a good life! Not…a devastated single mother who could barely take care of herself, much less him.”

Tariq did not speak, though Jessa could hear his ragged breathing and see the turmoil in his expression.

“I wanted him to be happy more than I wanted him to be happy with me,” she whispered.

“I thought…” Tariq stopped and rubbed his hands over his face. “I believed it was customary in an adoption to seek the permission of both parents.”

Jessa bit her lower lip and braced herself. “Jeremy has only one birth parent listed on his birth certificate,” she said quietly. “Me.”

Tariq simply looked at her, a deep anger that verged on a grief she recognized evident in the dark depths of his troubled gaze. Jessa raised her shoulders and then let them drop. Why should she feel guilty now? And yet she did. Because neither of them had had all the choices they should have had. Neither one of them was blameless.

“I saw no reason to claim a relationship to a king for a baby when I could not claim one myself,” she said.

Tariq’s gaze seemed to burn, but Jessa did not look away.

“I can almost understand why you did not inform me that you were pregnant,” he said after a long, tense moment. “Or I can try to understand this. But to give the child away? To give him to someone else without even allowing me to know that he existed in the first—”

“I tried to find you,” she cut in, her voice thick with emotion. “I went to the firm and begged them to contact you. I had no way to locate you!”

“No way to locate me?” He shook his head. Temper cracked like lightning in his eyes, his voice. “I am not exactly in hiding!”

“You have no idea, do you?” she asked, closing her eyes briefly. “I cannot even imagine how many young, single women must throw themselves at you. How many must tell tales to members of your staff, or your government officials, in a desperate bid for your attention. Why should I be treated any differently?” She shifted in her seat, wanting nothing more than to get up and run, end this uncomfortable conversation. Hadn’t she been running from it for ages? “It’s not possible to simply look you up in the phone book and give you a ring, Tariq. You must know that.”