A Mistake, A Prince and A Pregnancy

“Is there somewhere we can go and speak privately?” she asked, looking around the cavernous entryway. No doubt the house had a lot of private rooms where they could sit and talk. Of course, the idea of being in an enclosed space with a man she’d never met didn’t rank as a favorite for her. She was trained in self-defense and she had pepper spray on her key chain, but that didn’t mean she wanted to get in a situation where she would have to use either one. Especially since she had a feeling neither one would prove effective against Max Rossi.

“I don’t have a lot of time, Ms. Whitman.”

Anger flared through her. He didn’t have a lot of time? As if she had any spare moments just lying around. It was difficult for her to take any time off of work. Every case they handled was vitally important to the people involved. They were advocating for those who couldn’t advocate for themselves, and by taking the afternoon off to drive up here and talk to him she was leaving her clients in the lurch.

“I can assure you that my time is valuable, too, Mr. Rossi,” she said stiffly. “But I need to speak with you.”

“Then speak,” he said.

“I’m pregnant,” she said, wishing, even as she said the words, that she could call them back.

A muscle in his jaw ticked. “Am I meant to offer congratulations?”

“You’re the father.”

His dark eyes hardened. “You and I both know that isn’t possible. You may not keep a record of your lovers, Ms. Whitman, but I can assure you I’m not so promiscuous that I forget mine.”

Her face heated. “There are other ways to conceive a child than sexual intercourse, as you well know. When Melissa from ZoiLabs called she implied that I worked there but I’m a…I’m a client of theirs.”

He froze, his expression hardening like granite, his jaw tightening. “Let’s go into my office.”

She followed him through the large living area of the house and through a heavy oak door. His home office was massive, with high ceilings that were accented by rich, natural wood beams. One of the walls was made entirely of glass and overlooked the valley below. There was nothing as far as she could see but pristine nature. Beautiful. But the view was cold comfort in the situation.

“There was a mistake at the clinic,” she said, keeping her eyes trained on the mountains in the distance. “They weren’t going to tell me, but one of my friends works there and she felt I…that I had a right to know. I was given your donation by mistake and there was no log of your…of your genetic testing.”

“How is this possible?” he asked, pacing the room with long strides.

“I wasn’t offered a specific explanation. The nearest thing to an answer I got is that your sample was mixed up with the donor I had selected because your last names were similar. My intended donor was a Mr. Ross.”

Max gave her a hard look. “He was not your husband or boyfriend?”

“I don’t have a husband or a boyfriend. It was all meant to be done anonymously. But…” She took a shaky breath. “It isn’t that simple now.”

His lip curled. “Not so simple now that you’ve found out the ‘donor’ for your child is a wealthy man? Are you here to collect some kind of prenatal child support?”

Alison bristled. “That isn’t it at all! I’m sorry to have bothered you, I really am. I’m sure you didn’t expect the recipient of your donation to show up on your doorstep. But I need to know if you underwent genetic testing prior to using the clinic.”

“I didn’t leave a donation,” he said, his voice rough.

“You must have! She gave me your name. She said it was your sperm that was given to me by mistake.”

A muscle in his jaw tightened and she noticed him slowly squeezing his hands into fists and releasing them, as if in attempt to gain control over his temper. “I had a sperm sample at the clinic, but it was not meant for anonymous donation. It was for my wife. We were having trouble conceiving.”

“Oh.” Alison felt all of the blood drain from her face, leaving her light-headed and dizzy. Now she really wanted to turn and run away. She’d read horror stories in the paper about couples involved in mix-ups, and people losing their babies. She clamped a possessive hand over her stomach. The baby was still hers, even if this man was the biological father. She was still the mother. No judge would take a baby from a competent, loving mother. And Max’s wife wouldn’t want a baby that didn’t belong to her anyway. She couldn’t.

“I just…I just need to know…” She took a breath. “I’m a nonaffected carrier of Cystic Fibrosis. The donors are all screened for genetic disorders before they’re accepted. But your results weren’t in the file. Melissa knew that I was concerned and she was going to get me the information about you, only it wasn’t there.”

“That’s because I wasn’t a donor,” he said harshly.

“But have you been tested?” she asked, desperation clawing at her. She had to know. Watching her sister succumb to the disease in childhood had been the hardest thing Alison had ever endured. It had been the end of everything. Her family, her happiness. She had to know so that she could prepare herself for the worst. She wouldn’t terminate her pregnancy. No matter what, she wouldn’t do that. The memory of her sister, of that wonderful, short life, was far too dear to her to consider that. But she did need to know.

“I have not had that test done.”

She sank into the plush chair that was positioned in front of the desk, her knees unable to support her anymore. “You need to get it done,” she said. “Please. I need you to do it.”

Maximo examined the woman sitting in front of him, his heart pounding heavily in his chest. He hadn’t given a thought to the clinic in the past two years, not since Selena’s death. When he’d received the phone call from the employee at ZoiLabs he had assumed it pertained to his sperm sample. They had called shortly after the accident to ask him if they could discard it, but he’d ignored the voice mail message. At the time he simply hadn’t been able to deal with it. He hadn’t imagined that these might be the consequences.

Now he was going to be a father. It was the most amazing and terrifying moment he’d ever experienced. His gaze dropped to Alison’s flat stomach. She was so slender it was almost impossible to believe that she could be carrying his baby. His baby. A son or daughter.

He could easily see a vision of a dark-haired child, cradled in Alison Whitman’s arms as she looked down at the infant with a small, maternal smile on her face. The image filled him with longing so intense that his chest ached with it. He thought that he’d let that desire go, the desire for children. He thought he’d laid that dream to rest, alongside his wife.

But in one surreal moment all of those dreams had been made possible again. And in that very same moment he’d found out that his child might have serious health complications. His tightly controlled life was suddenly, definitely, out of his control. Everything that had seemed important five minutes ago was insignificant now, and everything that mattered to him rested in the womb of this stranger.

But he could get the test. Find out as soon as possible if there was a chance their baby might have the disease. Having something to do, something to hold on to, real action that he could take, helped anchor the whole situation to reality, allowed him to have some control back. It made it easier to believe that there really was a baby.

“I will have the test done right away,” he said. He hadn’t been planning on going back to Turan for another two weeks, but this took precedence. He would need to see his personal physician at the palace. He wouldn’t take any chances on having this made a spectacle by the press. They’d caused enough damage in his life. “And what are you planning if the test is positive?”

She looked down at her hands. They were delicate, feminine hands, void of jewelry and nail polish. It was far too easy to imagine how soft those hands would feel on his body, how pale they would look against the dark skin of his chest. A pang of lust hit him low in the gut. She was a beautiful woman; there was no denying that. Much less adorned than the type of woman he was accustomed to.

Her face had only the bare minimum of makeup, showing flawless ivory skin, her copper eyes left unenhanced by colored eyeshadow. Her full lips had just a bit of pale pink gloss on them that wouldn’t take long to kiss right off.

Her strawberry blond hair was straight, falling well past her shoulders, and it looked as if it would be soft to touch, not stiff with product. A man would be able to sift it through his fingers and watch it spill over his pillow. His stomach tightened further. It said a lot about how much neglect his libido had endured if he was capable of being aroused at this precise moment. And when had a woman ever appealed to him so immediately? When had lust grabbed him so hard? Never in his recent memory, that was certain. Guilt, usually easy to ignore after living with it for so long, gnawed at him, harder and more insistent than usual.

“I’m keeping the baby no matter what,” she said slowly, raising her eyes to meet his. “I just need to be prepared.”

Something about the way she said that she was keeping the baby, as if he, the child’s father, had no place in its life, caused a torrent of hot, possessive anger to flood through him. It was so intense that it momentarily blotted out the lust that had just been firing through his veins.

“The baby isn’t yours. The baby is ours,” he said.

“But…but you and your wife…”

He froze, realizing suddenly that she didn’t know who he was. It didn’t seem possible. Her face betrayed nothing, not a hint of recognition or foreknowledge concerning what he was about to say. If she did know who he was, she was a world-class actress.

“My wife died two years ago.”

Those exotic eyes widened and her mouth dropped. “I’m…I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Melissa didn’t tell me that. She didn’t tell me anything about you but your name.”

“Usually that’s enough,” he said ruefully.

“But then…you don’t think I’m going to give you my baby?”

“Our baby,” he growled. “As much mine as yours. Assuming of course that you’re actually the mother and it wasn’t some other woman who donated genetic material.”

“No. It’s my baby. Biologically. I was artificially inseminated.” She lowered her gaze. “This was my third attempt. I didn’t get pregnant the first two times.”

“And you are certain it was my sample that took?”

“They were all your samples.” She pursed her lips. “They made the mistake months ago. They only realized after the last time. The time that was successful.”