Carrying The King's Pride

King Gregorios shut his eyes. When he opened them again, a fierce determination burned in their depths. “Idas will never get what he wants.”

An answering fury stirred to life inside of him. “He will never take Akathinia. But if he is behind Athamos’s death, he will pay for it.”

“It was no accident,” his father bit out. “Idas and his son want to provoke us into a conflict so they can use it as an excuse to swallow us up to cover their own inadequacies.”

He was well aware of the reason Carnelia wanted Akathinia back in the fold, but he sought to keep a rational head. “The grudge between Athamos and Kostas has been going on for years. We need the facts.”

The king’s mouth curled. “Kostas is his father’s errand boy.”

Nik raked a hand through his hair. “The Carnelian military is twice the size of ours. Akathinia is prospering, but we cannot match what they have built up, even to defend ourselves.”

His father nodded. “We have made an economic alliance with the Agiero family to acquire the resources we need. Athamos was to marry the Countess of Agiero to tie the two families together. The announcement was imminent.”

His head reeled. A marriage had been in the works while Athamos had been carrying on an affair with another woman? Why had his brother not mentioned it to him?

His father fixed his steely blue gaze on him. “I will never rule again. You will marry the countess once you are coronated king. Cement the alliance.”

He swallowed hard, all of it too much to process. His father’s gaze sharpened on his face. “You must be a leader now, Nikandros. As strong as your brother was. The time has come to step up to your responsibilities.”

His responsibilities? Hadn’t he been bankrolling this nation with his work in New York? Hadn’t he made Akathinia the talk of the Mediterranean—the place to visit—where almost every one of his people had a job? Antagonism heated his skin. What had it taken, five, six sentences for his father to start drawing comparisons between him and his brother? Unfavorable comparisons.

His father and Athamos had always been in lockstep, their philosophies on life and ruling at polar opposites of his own. He was progressive, rooted in his experiences abroad; they remained stuck in the past, preferring to cling to outdated tradition.

He had always been the afterthought. The prince embedded in New York, quietly building the fortunes of his country while his father and brother took the credit.

His desire to make peace with his father faded on a surge of antagonism. Always it was like this.

The machine at the side of the bed started beeping. Nik lifted a wary eye to it. “You must rest,” he told his father. “You are weak. You need to recuperate.”

His father sank back against the pillows and closed his eyes. Nik released his hand and stood up. To battle the enemy was one thing. Locking horns with his father another campaign entirely. The latter could prove to be a far more stubborn, drawn-out war of wills.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_74b34927-8891-5a58-a397-8b4077b0415b)

SOFÍ A WAS CONSCIOUS of the fact that chocolate was emotional gratification of the highest level, emotional gratification that would dissipate as rapidly as it left her bloodstream. But since nothing else was working, she was giving it her best shot.

In the weeks following her final assignation with Nik she’d promised herself she would move on. She’d been fairly successful at it, throwing herself into her work at the boutique and interviewing for a new staff member—what she considered the silver lining of her and Nik’s split—the knowledge that she did, indeed, need to pursue her dream, now not later. But somehow, after all their weeks of keeping their relationship out of the public eye, a photographer had documented her and Nik’s departure from Natalia’s benefit. Had immortalized their final adieu.

Putting the whole thing behind her had become an exercise in futility. Which would all have been bad enough, if the rumors of Nik’s pending engagement to the Countess of Agiero hadn’t added fuel to the fire. The press were having a field day comparing her to the stately countess. If she heard herself described as the fiery temptress of Latin descent versus the icy, cool aristocrat Nik was about to marry one more time, she was going to start living up to her nickname.

Tearing the paper off the bar of dark European chocolate she’d purchased at the corner store, she shoved a piece in her mouth and began the walk back to the boutique.

She was also hurt, she acknowledged. That Nik was to be engaged to a woman weeks after their own affair had ended stung. That she was just that forgettable. Her rational brain told her there were political factors behind it given the countess’s powerful family, but Vittoria Agiero’s stunning beauty was a kick in the ribs. As was the fact she was a blue-blooded aristocrat whom Sofía would be more likely to dress than ever rub elbows with.

She tore off another piece of chocolate and popped it in her mouth. Emotional gratification had never tasted so good. Not when her mixed cauldron of emotions also included her sorrow for Nik. Her heart went out to him for what he was going through. She wanted to be there to comfort him in the storm he was facing. And how crazy was that, because he’d made it clear he didn’t want her.

Still, it made her heart ache to look at the photos from his brother’s funeral, from his coronation day, which had taken place a month after Athamos’s death. He had looked stone-faced through all of it, devoid of emotion. But she knew it was all a cover for a man who carried his feelings bottled up inside of him.

Katharine gave the chocolate bar in her hand a wry look as Sofía made her way through the chime-enabled doors of the boutique.

“That’s one a day this week. You going to let him ruin your figure along with everything else?”

Sofía scowled at the woman who’d been her best friend since design school. “This has nothing to do with him. I was too hungry to wait for lunch.”

Katharine hung the dress she was holding on a hanger. “I think you have depression hunger. The to hell with it kind.”

“I’m also starving.” Sofía set the chocolate bar down on the counter and reached for the bottle of water she’d stashed behind the register. “Like nauseous hungry if I don’t eat lately. It must be the exercise.”

She’d been sweating it out in a fitness class every night to take the place of her dates with Nik. It was definitely helping her figure, despite the chocolate.

Katharine gave her a funny look. “You know what that sounds like, right?”

Sofía blinked. Blanched. “Oh, no. It couldn’t be. We were always careful. Obsessively careful.”

Katharine shrugged. “I’ve just never seen you eat junk food.”

A customer popped out of the fitting room at the back of the store. Her partner went to assist her. Sofía put the bottle down on the counter, a jittery feeling running through her. There was no way she was pregnant. She was on birth control.

She pulled her phone from her purse and checked the calendar. The blood drained from her face. Dear God. She was late. She hadn’t even noticed given the insanity of her life of late.

“Back in a minute,” she blurted to Katharine, grabbing her purse and hightailing it out the door. There was only one way to dispel the impossibility of what was running through her head.

At the drugstore, she snatched two pregnancy tests from the shelf, paid for them and flew back to the boutique, where she locked herself in the bathroom and administered them. Two solid blue plus signs later she stood looking at a disaster in the making.

“Sofía...” Katharine banged on the door. “Are you okay?”

“Fine.”

Katharine’s tone was grim. “Open up.”

She opened the door. Held up the stick.

Katharine’s face dropped. “Did you do more than one?”

Her head bobbed up and down.

“Okay,” her friend said slowly, “This is what we’re going to do. You’re going to remain calm until you see your doctor. Then you can panic.”

Except seeing her doctor the following morning only triple confirmed what she already knew. She was pregnant. And no amount of denial or panic was going to change it.

* * *

Nik lifted his gaze from the seemingly endless document recapping plans for the immediate expansion of the armed forces, his eyes having glazed over ten minutes ago. Undoubtedly it was a complex, tightly timed schedule on how the government should move forward, but he failed to see how it required fifty pages to bring him up to speed. He’d gotten the gist by page five.

Exhaling deeply, his gaze slid to the pile of newspapers on his desk. Admittedly, part of his distraction might have to do with the picture of Sofía on the front page of the society section of one of the New York papers, her face turned down as she left her apartment. Beautiful Sofía Trumped by a Countess Licks Her Wounds blared the headline.

Aside from being patently untrue—spirited Sofía could never be found lacking versus his chilly soon-to-be fiancée—the racy headlines weren’t helping his merger with the Agiero family. Although when it came to Vittoria, it was hard to tell if it was just her stiff demeanor or that her nose was, in fact, out of joint. He had dined with her three times now and was actually wondering how he was going to psyche himself up to bed her. Beautiful she might be; engaging and personable she was not.

Unfortunately, he and the countess were announcing their engagement next week and his choice of who to bed would be forever taken away from him. As it had been with everything else.