ONE MOMENT ARES was standing straight up, looking one of his past indulgences in the face.
He’d laughed, of course. What could he do but laugh?
Because the truth was, Ares hadn’t forgotten her. He hadn’t forgotten the way her gray eyes had lit up when she’d looked at him. He hadn’t forgotten her smile, shy and delighted in turn. And he certainly hadn’t forgotten her taste.
He might even have toyed with the notion of what it would be like to seek her out for another taste, now and again over the past few months—
The next moment he was on the ground, and it took him a moment to understand that the Combe heir had punched him.
Hard.
Not only that, he’d chosen to do so in full view of the paparazzi, all of whom swooped in closer like the locusts they were at the sight. They took picture after picture and held up cameras to record every last detail of the Crown Prince of Atilia’s inelegant sprawl across the wet grass in the middle of a funeral.
Ares glared up at the man who had laid him out. He wanted—badly—to respond in kind, but restrained himself. Because he might not want to be king, but he was still a prince, whether he liked it or not. And princes did not swing on bereaved commoners, no matter the provocation. Moreover, he preferred to control the stories that appeared about him, especially when the press on his father was so dire these days.
He couldn’t change the fact this man had hit him. But he could opt not to react in a manner that would only make it all worse.
He climbed back to his feet far more gracefully than he’d gone down. He brushed himself off, his gaze on the man scowling at him in case he started swinging again, then put his hand to his lip. When he drew it away, he noted darkly that there was blood.
Because of course there was blood.
Because everything was about his damned blood. Hadn’t his father told him so a thousand times before Ares had turned seven?
Ares noticed movement in his periphery and held up his hand before his security detail handled the situation in a manner that would only make it worse. He glared at the Combe heir, whose name he hadn’t bothered to learn as he’d run over his notes on his way here today.
That seemed like a significant oversight, in retrospect.
“You understand that I am the Crown Prince of Atilia, do you not?” he asked coolly instead. “Attacking me is considered an act of war.”
“That doesn’t frighten me,” the other man retorted.
“What should frighten both of you is that this entire conversation is being recorded,” Pia hissed at the pair of them.
And that was the thing. He could remember her name. Pia.
Such a little name when she had hit him with a good deal more force than her brother had just now.
And the hits kept coming today.
A closer look showed Ares what he should have noticed from the start. That she’d thickened around the middle. And she was a tiny thing—easy enough, if a man had a decent imagination and the necessary strength, to pick up and move around as he liked, and Ares certainly had liked—and her bump was clearly noticeable. Huge, in fact.
It was very clearly...exactly what it was.
But what it could not be was his.
“I have never in my life had unprotected sex,” Ares said with as much regal hauteur as he could manage.
The Combe heir looked enraged. Pia only shook her head, her gaze darting around to their audience before returning to her brother.
“If you two want to roll about in the dirt, flinging your toxic masculinity about like bad cologne, I cannot stop you,” she said, half under her breath. “But I refuse to become fodder for the tabloids for the first time in my life because of your bad decisions.”
And she turned around and marched off, as if it wasn’t already too late.
When Ares looked around he could see the speculation on every face within view. Because there had been a punch, and now Pia was leaving, and it didn’t take a mathematician to put her belly and him together.
But it was impossible.
“I suggest you follow my sister up to the house,” her brother growled at him.
“Or you will do what?” Ares asked, every inch of him the product of at least a millennia of royal breeding. “Punch something again? You do not tell me where I go or do not, Mr. Combe.”
“Watch me.”
Ares laughed again, more for the benefit of their audience than because he found any of this funny. Or even tolerable.
And then, because he couldn’t see another option, he turned and made his way up the long drive that led from the family plot toward the big, hulking house that sat there at the top of the hill. But he took his time, chatting merrily with other guests, as if he was at a party instead of a funeral. As if he didn’t have what he suspected was the beginnings of a fat lip.
And as if he hadn’t been accused of impregnating a woman by her overprotective older brother, in full view of too many cameras.
He could leave, he knew. No one would keep him here, no matter what Pia’s brother imagined. His security detail would whisk him away at a moment’s notice.
But Pia’s condition was not his doing—could not be his doing—and he felt compelled to make that clear.
He walked inside the manor house, wondering, not for the first time, how it was these northern Europeans could tolerate their stuffy, dark houses. The palaces of Atilia were built to celebrate the islands they graced. The sea was all around, and invited in, so it murmured through every archway. It was there, shimmering, just around every corner.
He asked after Pia in the grand entryway and was shown into the sort of library that made him think of all the headmasters’ offices he’d found himself in during his school days. Usually en route to his latest expulsion.
She was standing at the window, staring out at the miserable British countryside, wet and cold. But what he noticed was her back was too straight.
And he didn’t know why she would claim that he was the one who’d impregnated her, but it was hard to remember that as he looked at her from behind.
Because he remembered that night.
It had been their second round, or perhaps their third. He had woken to find her standing by the window, wrapped in a sheet from the thoroughly destroyed bed, her fingers against the glass. Manhattan had gleamed and glittered all around. Ares had gone to her as if drawn there by some kind of magnet. He’d brushed aside the weight of her dark, silken hair and put his mouth to the nape of her neck.
He could still remember the heated, broken sound she’d made. Just as he could remember the chill of the glass beneath his palm when he’d braced himself there and taken her from behind—
He shook himself out of that now. Especially when his body responded with as much enthusiasm as he remembered from that night.
“I’m not the father of your baby,” he said, his voice grittier than it should have been when he knew he hadn’t done this.
“When I realized I was pregnant, I tried to find you, of course.” Pia didn’t turn around. She stayed where she was, her back to him and her arms crossed above her swollen belly. He couldn’t stop staring at it, as if he’d never seen a pregnant woman before. “It’s a decent thing to do, after all. But no matter who I asked, which was its own embarrassment, no one could remember any ‘Eric’ at that party.”
“And because I lied about my name, you think it appropriate to lie yourself? About something far more serious?”
She let out a small sound, like a sigh, but she still didn’t turn to face him.
“When I couldn’t find anyone by the name of Eric, I thought that was fair enough. Not ideal, but fine. I would do it by myself. As women have been doing since the dawn of time. But that’s easier to make yourself believe when no one knows. When you haven’t yet told your whole family that yes, you had a one-night stand in New York City. And you don’t know the name of the man you had that one-night stand with. But guess what? You’re pregnant by him anyway.”
“It is not my baby.”
“But I withstood the shame,” she said, her shoulders shifting. Straightening. “I’m figuring out how to withstand it, anyway. I never expected to see you again.”
“Clearly not.” Ares could hear the darkness in his voice. The fury. “Or you would not dare tell such a lie.”
She turned then, and her face was calm. Serene, even. That was like a slap.
Until he noticed the way her gray eyes burned.
“And the funny thing about shame is that I keep thinking there must be a maximum amount any one person can bear,” she told him. “I keep thinking I must be full up. But no. I never am.”
Something twisted in him at that, but Ares ignored it.
“You cannot wander around telling people that you’re having my child,” he thundered at her. “This doesn’t seem to be penetrating. It’s morally questionable at best, no matter who the man is. But if you claim you carry my child, what you are announcing is that you are, in fact, carrying the heir to the Atilian throne. Do you realize what that means?”
Pia looked pale. “Why would I realize that—or anything about you? I didn’t know who you were until fifteen minutes ago. Much less that you were a prince. Are a prince. A prince, for God’s sake.”
A man who had renounced his claim to a throne should not have found the way she said that so...confronting.
Ares pushed on. “Now you know. You need to retract your claim. Immediately.”
“Are you denying that we slept together?” she asked, her voice shaky.
“We did very little sleeping, as I recall. But I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
“I’ve only ever slept with one man,” she threw out there. “You.”
Or so it seemed to Ares as it sat there, bristling in the center of the library floor.
The implications of that statement roared in him.
But Pia was still talking. “If you are not the father, we have a far larger problem on our hands.” She even smiled, which made the roaring in him worse. “Shall I contact the Vatican to notify them of the second immaculate conception? Or will you?”
Ares stared back at her as that scathing question hung in the air between them, too, joining in with all the rest of the noise. The roar of it. And it wasn’t until that moment that he realized that for all he liked to think of himself as an independent creature, in no way beholden to crown or kingdom unless he wanted to be, he really was a prince straight through.
Because he was wholly unaccustomed to being addressed in such a manner.
It had never occurred to him before this moment how very few people in his life dared address him with anything but the utmost respect. Yet today he had been punched in the face. And was now being spoken to in a manner he could only call flippant.
Pia swallowed as he stared at her, and then wrung her hands in a manner that suggested she was not, perhaps, as sanguine as she appeared.
Ares didn’t much like what it said about him that he found that...almost comforting.
“Happily,” she said in a low voice, “it doesn’t matter whether you believe me or not. There is a selection of tests to choose from to determine paternity, both before and after birth.”
“It is not a question of whether or not I believe you.”
“I’m not sure I blame you,” she said, as if he hadn’t spoken. Another new experience for Ares. Especially as she sounded as if she was attempting to be generous. “I can see how such a thing would be difficult to believe if I was...like you.”
Ares’s brow rose and he suspected he looked like all those pictures of his lofty, patrician, infinitely regal ancestors. “Like me?”
“I doubt you remember the particulars of our night. Or me. And why would you? You must have such adventures all the time.”
He might have been caught on the back foot since he’d arrived in Yorkshire this afternoon, but he wasn’t foolish enough to answer that question.
“Here is what I don’t understand,” he said instead, as a sort of low, heated pounding started up in his chest, then arrowed out into his limbs. His sex. “You claim you were innocent before that night. Why? You’re not a child.”
“Do children prize chastity? Or is it their natural state?”
“I could not say if they prize it or do not,” he growled. “I know I never did. I shrugged it off at the first opportunity. I was under the impression that was the entire purpose of the boarding schools I attended.” He prowled toward her, keeping his eyes fast on hers. “Were you locked away in a convent, Pia?”
Something like humor flashed across her face. “Yes.”
That startled him. He came to a stop before her. “An actual convent? Complete with nuns?”
“Of course with nuns. It couldn’t very well be a convent without nuns, could it?”
“What on earth were you doing in a convent?”
She looked wry. “Protecting and defending my honor and holding fast to my chastity, of course. What else?”
“And what? The moment you walked through the convent doors into the big, bad world, you decided the time was ripe to rid yourself of that pesky hymen? With the first man you laid eyes upon?”
He ignored the other thing in him, dark and male, that didn’t like that idea. Because Ares was not accustomed to being any man, indistinguishable from the rest. Notable only because he was male.
“First I went to finishing school,” Pia said, and for all that her eyes were too big, and her face was pale, Ares noticed that she didn’t back down. “There I learned excruciatingly important things. A bit of political science and economics to pepper my banquet conversation, and how best to talk about books to make myself seem important and intellectual, yet approachable. I learned how to dance graciously, as befits a hostess and guest at any gathering. I learned the various degrees of curtsies, and when to employ them. I was meant to be a kind of weapon, you understand.”
“I do not understand.” But he was too close to her now. He couldn’t seem to pull his eyes away from her. There was not one part of him that wanted to, for that matter, and he remembered that magnetic pull, that night. How could it still affect him? “But I’m feeling the effects of your bombshell, nonetheless.”
“I graduated six months ago,” Pia said quietly, her chin lifting as she held his gaze. “My friends and I decided to take a trip to New York to celebrate. One of my friends knew the person who was throwing that particular party. And there you were. See? There’s nothing nefarious.”
“Save the fact that I have had what I could only term an epic amount of sex in my lifetime, cara,” he said, almost drawling the words. “But no one has ever turned up claiming I left them pregnant.”
“I didn’t actually ‘turn up.’ You did. Here. At my father’s funeral.” Her gray eyes glittered. “But by all means, let’s brush that aside and continue to talk about your feelings.”
“It is not a question of feelings,” he said, through his teeth. “It is a question of what is possible and what is not.”
She lifted a shoulder, then dropped it. “There is only one possible way I could have gotten pregnant. Because there was only the one night. And only the one man.”
“But I do not—”
“Please.” Those big, gray eyes implored him, though the hand she held up was rather more of a demand. “There’s no point arguing about this. Why don’t you give me your details and I’ll arrange a test. No point discussing it further until then, is there?”
“Pia. You cannot imagine that I will simply wander off into the ether, can you?” He didn’t know what possessed him. One moment he merely stood there a foot or so away from her. And in the next, his hands were on her delicate shoulders, holding her there as if she’d tried to walk away. When he should have wanted that. “Or is that what you want me to do?”
A strange expression moved over her face, darkening her eyes. That wry twist to her lips was back, and deeper this time.
“That’s a question you need to ask yourself, I think,” she said softly. “In the absence of a test, who’s to say who the father is? I certainly won’t say a thing, no matter who asks.”
That dropped through Ares like a stone. A heavy weight, sharp and cold and jagged, sinking deep inside him.
He could turn around and leave, right now. His lip would heal. The tabloids would speculate, but then, they always did. If he didn’t feed them, surely the stories would die away.
And he could carry on as he’d always intended. As he’d planned.
But despite himself, he thought of his mother.
Of how disappointed she would be in him if she were here.
Nothing had been more important to the queen than her family. Him. All she had ever wanted for him was a wife. A child.
He could shrug off his father’s obsession with bloodlines without a second thought, and had. He’d shrugged off his father as easily.
But never his mother.
Never.
He realized his hands were still wrapped around Pia’s shoulders. Her head was tipped back, and that belly of hers was between them.
And he wanted nothing to do with this. He wanted to turn back time, refuse to come to this funeral, or go back further and make sure he was nowhere near that party in Manhattan that night.
Even if that would have meant missing out on that taste of her that haunted him still, loathe as he was to admit it.
“There are two things you must know about me,” he told her gruffly, as if he was making vows. “First, I have no intention of marrying. My father, the king, would love nothing more than to knock me out of the line of succession entirely. And I have done my best to help him with that, as it is preferable to playing his little games. And second, but just as important, I had no intention of ever having children.”
“Is this the royal version of congratulations?” she asked, but her voice quivered. He could feel it inside him, like shame. “It needs a little work.”
“I want no part of this,” he told her, dark and sure. “But I will do my duty. One way or another.”
Ares wasn’t sure what he meant by that. All he could seem to concentrate on was that he’d moved too close to her without meaning to. His mouth hovered worryingly close to hers. He could so easily tilt himself forward and help himself to those lips of hers, impossibly sweet and soft and right there—
But Pia twisted her shoulders and stepped back, out of his grip. He could have held her fast, and knew full well he shouldn’t have felt a sense of heroism that he hadn’t. And then he felt something far worse crawl through him as her hands went to cover her belly.
As if she was protecting her child from him.
His child, if what she said was true.
“I haven’t asked you for anything,” she said, very distinctly. Quiet, but sure. “Including your reluctant, begrudging sense of duty, thank you very much.”
The door behind them opened, and Ares turned, astonished that anyone would dare interrupt him.
It was a day for astonishment, it seemed.
“Your Highness,” the head of his security detail said, bowing his head apologetically. “I’m afraid there is a situation with the paparazzi. We must go.”