Page 28 of Pregnant By the Wrong Prince

Lia took a deep breath and moved over to the magnificent four-poster bed that stood against one wall. Opposite were windows that gave a view out over the mountains, the sharp, black shapes softened by the falling snow. Everything was white and silent.

The room itself was thickly carpeted in a dark charcoal, the walls a warm neutral white, nothing that would compete with the glory of the view. It might have felt cold if not for the rugs on the floor and the black fur thrown over the bed.

She paused beside the bed, looking down at the clothing that had also been thrown over it. A pair of cosy soft grey sweatpants and a dark blue hoodie. They looked huge.

Lia reached out and touched the fabric of the hoodie. It felt as soft as it looked.

These were his, weren’t they?

Lia stood at the window of her bedroom that overlooked the famous gardens of the palace. It was early, but she’d woken up and hadn’t been able to get back to sleep.

She’d looked out to see what kind of day it was supposed to be since her mother had told her that she was having riding lessons today; Matias liked to ride apparently so she would have to learn. And she’d seen a dark figure running down one of the long paths.

It was cold, nearly winter, and the figure wore long, dark sweat pants and a dark hoodie. He was jogging, not fast, but not slow, and she could tell already by the presence of the guards that kept pace with him that it was the Regent.

Her heart beat faster.

She hadn’t met him yet—she hadn’t been important enough for an introduction—but she would. Once her father brought up the subject of her prospective engagement to Matias, of course.

Meanwhile, ever since he’d arrived at the palace, she’d been fascinated with him. She’d read everything published on the web about him, all the gossip columns and business pages.

The Spanish Bastard, the media had dubbed him. A shark, they said. A financial genius who’d built a global, multi-billion-dollar company from the seed of one small finance company in Barcelona, in just a few short years. A dangerous man, cold and calculating, who now ran Santa Castelia as efficiently as one of his own companies.

People were wary of him and with good reason. He was ruthless. And he was everything the media said about him, at least according to her father. But he also had a strong moral code, which was why Gian had brought him to Santa Castelia to rule. He’d included Matias in his decision making, teaching him about the business of ruling, and she’d once personally watched as the child of one of the palace staff had mistakenly run into him one day out in the grounds. Everyone had held their breath, waiting to see what he’d do, since if he’d been Carlos he wouldhave punished both the child and the parent. But all he’d done was pick the child up, checked to see if he was okay, then set him on his feet, and had gone on with the meeting he was in the middle of as if nothing had happened.

A hard man, they said, and he was. But he wasn’t cruel. He wasn’t his father and that, if nothing else, proved it.

Lia watched him jog around and around the perimeter of the gardens, fascinated by the fluid way he moved. Easy and loose, with a long, loping stride.

Then finally when he stopped, right by her window, he tugged the hoodie off and over his head, revealing the hard, muscular lines of his torso, clearly outlined by the T-shirt he wore underneath.

Every time she’d seen him, he’d been in one of his meticulously tailored dark suits, but now he was in sweatpants and a T-shirt that clung to every line, showing off the carved musculature of his wide shoulders and powerful chest, the dips and hollows of his abs.

Her breath caught.

He wasn’t built like a businessman. He was built like a warrior.

She’d only just turned eighteen and was sheltered. Her life revolving around her schooling and the lessons in queenship that her parents had insisted on. Men—boys—had never factored into anything she did. And why would they? She was promised to only one man and that man was Matias.

Except Matias wasn’t a man, not yet. He was a boy and it had never been so obvious until this moment. Where she realised that Matias had never made her breath catch the way it did just now. She’d never wanted to look at him the way she wanted to look at Rafael Navarro. Never wanted to see what his chest looked like underneath the fabric of his T-shirt, never wanted to touch...

Lia shivered, memory tightening its grip. The first awakening of her sexuality and not for the man she should have wanted, but for a man so forbidden she shouldn’t have been looking at him that way at all.

But she had.

She’d been naive, thinking that looking wasn’t a crime. Not realising the power of her own obsession with him or understanding the feelings he’d awakened in her.

Her life was so curtailed, everything she did needing her parents’ approval first. Her friendships were monitored, every activity needing to be signed off, and it had been dull. So dull. There had been no excitement in her life, nothing new.

He had been the first person she’d met who’d felt dangerous and exciting and she’d wanted more of him.

And now you have more and you’re baulking.

Lia abruptly shrugged out of her wedding gown, gathering the soft, heavy folds and laying it carefully on the bed. Then she picked up the sweatpants and hoodie and went over to another door near the bed that led into an en-suite bathroom.

Tiled in pristine white, the room felt open and airy, the floor warm beneath her icy feet. She stood in front of the mirror and discarded her veil, the diamond circlet and all the pins holding her hair in place. Her makeup had run, her eyes looking shadowed and black, her cheeks pale.

Her mother would be appalled to see her like this. She’d always hated Lia’s wilder side, especially the adventures she’d had in the woods behind the palace gardens, climbing the trees and making forts, and playing illicit games of war with some of the other palace children.

---