Claiming His Pregnant Princess

by Annie O'Neil

  Even the tiny part of her that was still a dreamer didn’t stretch that far.

  “Does your...?” Jamie stopped, swallowed, then began again. “Does he know?”

  Bea nodded her head—yes. It was the single blessing she had in this scenario. That man would never be able to lay claim to her child.

  But would any other man?

  Would Jamie?

  “How long have you known?”

  She sucked in a deep breath. That was a much harder question to answer. Obviously the treatment had given her more than a ballpark date, but something in her had lit up within days—too early for a test but she had just known.

  “A couple of months. More...” She was past telling white lies now. All she wanted to know was that her baby was going to be all right.

  Just tell him.

  Tell him everything.

  “I’m guessing you fainted because of lack of food. A bit of dehydration. Sometimes a low iron count can contribute. Have you been taking supplements?”

  She nodded. She had. Of course she had. Everything had been done by the book except reducing stress and making sure she always had a snack in hand. But it wasn’t as if anyone had anticipated the bus crash. She’d just have to be more careful in the future.

  Jamie crossed the room again and tugged open a drawer. He pulled out a little bag of almonds and held them up. “You should keep some snacks on you. At all times. Nuts, cheese, apples... There are all sorts of healthy tidbits you can keep without much bother. It’s a bit early, but have you been tested for gestational diabetes?”

  Shamefully, she hadn’t. Whenever she thought about the baby she thought about the absurd mess she was in, and went right back to not thinking about it.

  “I must’ve been out a long time,” she said finally. “To get back here and not even notice.”

  “You were.” Jamie nodded, his brows cinching together as if he were trying to piece together the bits of puzzle he’d only just been handed. “We got you into an ambulance straightaway. Sometimes when low blood pressure and a handful of other factors collide, fainting is the body’s way of rebooting itself. Though it’s not like you need explanations about what’s happening...”

  “I’m human as well as a doctor,” she said softly. “It’s always good to have reminders. An outside eye.”

  To have you.

  Jamie let the words hang there between them without responding.

  Bea pressed her back teeth together. It was time to face facts. She was still wearing the khaki pedal pushers she’d had on earlier. There was no telltale wetness between her legs that might indicate that things had gone horribly wrong.

  “I didn’t take the place of any of the children?”

  “No.” Jamie sat down on the stool he’d pulled up to Bea’s bedside, his eyes on the monitors as he answered. “Most of the children were treated on-site. Those who needed extra care, like Ryan, were flown to Milan. It’s easier to get blood supplies there, specialized surgeons, that sort of thing...”

  Beatrice couldn’t help it. Now that she knew she hadn’t elbowed some poor child out of critical transport to a hospital, she blurted out the question she hadn’t yet dared to ask. “Is the baby all right?”

  “A full exam hasn’t been done yet, but if it’s miscarriage you’re worried about, you can rest easy. I’ve listened for a heartbeat. Your baby is alive and well.”

  He sat down on the stool he’d pulled up to her bedside so that they were at eye level. He ran his finger along the rim of her water glass.

  Beatrice watched as that finger, long and assured, wound its way along the glass’s edge, skidding up and over the area where her lips had touched it. Whether it was a conscious act or not, it stung.

  And yet...he had kissed her. Although it was so long ago now it almost felt like a dream.

  “Right!” He clapped his hands together. A bit loudly for the small exam room, but it wasn’t as if they were having the most casual of exchanges. “How about we take a look together, then?”

  * * *

  Of all the moments Jamie had imagined having with Beatrice, it had never been this.

  Giving her an ultrasound scan for a baby that wasn’t his.

  “Let’s get some more water in you. If you can get this whole glass down, we’ll be able to see it—your baby—better.”

  She nodded and started drinking.

  He turned to get the screen in place, gather the equipment, willing the years of medical training he’d gone through to kick into action. Enable him to take an emotional step back as he once again turned toward the woman he’d thought he would one day call his wife and apply gel to her belly.

  Now that she had unbuttoned her top and shifted her trousers down below her womb, he could see the gentle bump beginning to form. Fighting the urge to reach out and touch it, to lay his fingers wide along the expanse of the soft bulge, Jamie forced himself to rerun the past few weeks like a film on fast-forward.

  All the bits of discordant information were coming together now.

  Beatrice looking beautifully aglow one moment...gray or near green the next.

  The light shadows below her eyes he knew he’d seen more than once... He’d written them off as postwedding stress, but now that he knew she was pregnant...

  Everything was out of whack.

  “I’m just going to put some gel on.”

  “It’s going to feel cold.”

  They spoke simultaneously, then laughed. One of those awkward laughs when the jolt of connection reminded a soul just how distanced they’d become from the person they loved. Jamie looked away before he could double-check, but he was fairly certain Beatrice was fighting back tears.

  Everything in him longed to pull her into his arms. Comfort her. Hold her. Touch her. Kiss her as he had on that very first day. But how could he now that she was pregnant with that man’s baby?

  Ba-bum. Ba-bum. Ba-bum.

  “You hear that?” He kept his eyes solidly on the screen, but despite the strongest will in the universe he felt emotion well up inside him. Beatrice was going to have a child. A beautiful...

  “I’m just taking some measurements, here.”

  “Twelve weeks,” she volunteered through the fingers she was pressing to her lips. “It’s been about twelve weeks.”

  The date put the baby’s conception date somewhere right around the wedding date. Too close for it to have been a shotgun wedding.

  He swallowed away the grim thought. Beatrice might have left him for another man, but he knew in his heart that she never would have cheated on him. On anyone. This child would be Marco’s.

  “The measurements look good. The baby’s about seventy millimeters. A good length.”

  “Tall?”

  “Not overly—but you’re tall. The baby’s bound to inherit some of your traits.”

  Her ex-fiancé was tall, as well. Not that he’d spent any time reading the tabloids. Not much anyway.

  “Oh, Jamie. Look!” Beatrice’s gaze was all unicorns and rainbows as she gazed upon the screen. “She’s perfect.”

  “Or he,” Jamie added. It was still a bit early to tell. Maybe two more months. The tail end of Beatrice’s contract.

  Beatrice was taking no notice of him, waving to the baby. “Hi, there, little girl,” she kept repeating. Then to Jamie, more solidly, “She’s a little girl. I can tell.”

  She lifted her hands and moved to caress her belly, only to remember the gel. She pulled them back, accidentally knocking Jamie’s arm away from her stomach, and the image dropped from the screen.

  “Oh, no! Bring it back! Sorry—please. Per favore. Just one more look.”

  When he turned to look at Beatrice both her hands were covering her mouth, and the tears were trickling freely down and along her cheeks as
she took in the fully formed image of her child. All the tiny infant’s organs were up and running at this point. Muscles, limbs and bones were in place. Beatrice was showing all the telltale signs of a parent who didn’t care one way or the other if a child was a boy or a girl. She was just a mother, thrilled to discover her baby was healthy.

  “Do you have plans to tell the father how the baby is doing?”

  He didn’t know who was more shocked by the question. Himself or Beatrice.

  * * *

  “I—” Bea looked to the black-and-white image on the screen again, then back to Jamie. “He doesn’t want anything to do with the child.”

  “He—he what?”

  “He didn’t—ugh!” She scrubbed her hands through her hair. “When I called off the wedding he told me I could do what I liked with the baby.”

  Saying it out loud made her shiver at the coldness of his words. It was a life!

  “But—” Jamie shook his head, visibly trying to put the facts in order. “What a coward.” Disdain took over where disbelief had creased his features.

  “We did it so it would appear to be a honeymoon baby.”

  The look of pure disbelief was back. Jamie shot it at her and it made her raise her hands to protest, then drop them as if anvils had suddenly fallen into them. “Calling the wedding off wasn’t a scenario I had envisioned having to prepare for.”

  Jamie shook his head, obviously at a total loss for words. She didn’t blame him. If she was hearing the same thing from a friend... Well, if it was a friend in similar shoes, from a similar background... She’d heard worse. Much worse.

  “I know this isn’t how things are normally done—”

  “Certainly not where I’m from,” Jamie intoned.

  A surge of indignation shot through her. “That’s not fair. I’ve never judged where you’ve come from. Not in that way.”

  “You must’ve judged it to an extent. Decided it—decided I—wasn’t good enough for you.”

  All the words drained from Bea’s arsenal. “Is that what you think?”

  “I think a lot of things, Beatrice, and not one of them involves you getting yourself knocked up by someone who doesn’t have the backbone to step up and give a name to his child.”

  Bea was still reeling from his turn of phrase. “Knocked up?”

  It sounded so coarse. Crude, even, the way he’d put it. She might have stooped low to a lot of things, but she had done everything for a reason.

  “How dare you? I did this—all of this—for my family. Obligation. Duty...” One of her hands pounded into her open one as she continued. “That’s how one ‘steps up’ in a family like mine.”

  For a mother like hers, you upheld tradition. Even when it came at a price.

  Jamie took a final glimpse at the image on the screen, then turned to her, his expression an active tempest. The calm of his voice was so still and steady it almost frightened her.

  “Beatrice, I don’t think I should be involved in this any longer. Perhaps you can find a local obstetrician...?”

  “No.” She reached out to Jamie as he dropped the scanning wand on the tray next to the monitor and turned away from her. “If the press find out about this they’ll have a field day.”

  “I’m afraid that’s really not my concern.”

  The words landed in her chest like daggers.

  “But you—” She stopped herself when she saw his shoulders stiffen and he took another step away from her.

  She had no right to ask him for his help.

  “This isn’t my battle to fight,” he said finally, after he’d cleaned his hands and thrown away the paper towels.

  He was right. Of course he was right. But something deep inside her wanted to fight this out until there wasn’t the tiniest shred of possibility.

  Now that he knew everything...

  But he didn’t know everything. That was the point.

  And wasn’t his strong reaction because he was feeling the same things she was? Being together. Working together. Having a scan of her baby—

  Screech!

  Okay. Deep breath. She knew she must be coming across as an absolute screwball now, but the Jamie she knew and loved—

  She still loved him. And when you loved someone...did you let them go free or fight?

  You fought until there was no choice but to let him go.

  “Why did you kiss me?” Bea pushed herself up and looked him straight in the eye. She had to know. Had he felt anything close to the full-on fireworks display she had when their lips had touched for the first time in two years...? Had he felt the magic when physical sensation had melded with powerful emotions and those two forces had joined together?

  It had been pure seraphic bliss.

  Jamie didn’t seem to be taking the same rose-tinted journey down memory lane that she was. Thunder and lightning crashed across his features, rendering his face implacable.

  “Everything was different then! I wouldn’t have kissed you if I’d known.”

  “What? So it was all right to kiss me when you thought I was just a runaway bride?”

  “You’re going to be a mother.” He turned away to yank some more paper towels from the dispenser.

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “Really?” Jamie wheeled on her, eyes flaring with indignation. “Because I don’t believe you have the remotest idea what I’m thinking.”

  “I have a rough idea,” she whispered, no longer able to hold his gaze.

  Everything in her longed to run away from this moment. Find another village, another country, another continent to hide away in. But hiding could only last so long. She had a truth to face up to, and until she did she didn’t deserve to be a mother, let alone have an ounce of Jamie’s respect.

  If the last few weeks had taught her anything, it was that hiding the truth from Jamie—no matter how hard she tried—was an impossibility. He was the beacon that drew it from her. Demanded it of her. He was her true north and she owed him an honest answer.

  She stretched her arms out toward him, knowing he wouldn’t fall into them as she ached for him to do, but at least the gesture would speak a thousand words she couldn’t voice.

  Jamie shook his head, refusing to move any closer.

  “How can you have even the slightest idea of what I am thinking, Beatrice? Your life... You’ve made decisions that took away any right to know what I’m thinking.”

  “Those decisions had nothing to do with how I felt about you, though.”

  “How could they not?” He spread his arms out wide and looked around the room, as if there were a crowd assembled in a courtroom. A jury keen to pass judgment one way or the other. “You left me, Beatrice. Left me to marry another man. Now, I’m sorry it didn’t pan out the way you envisioned it, but you’re pregnant by another man and, like it or not, he’s going to be part of your future.”

  “But I’m not.”

  Jamie gave his head a sharp shake, his hands latching onto his hips. “What do you mean you’re not? We saw the baby. Alive and kicking.” He pointed to the scan where the black-and-white image remained. “Whose is it if not his?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Bea’s chest nearly exploded with relief. She’d said it. Said it and it nothing had happened. Well, nothing yet anyway, because Jamie’s jaw was twitching and she knew what that meant. He had something to say, but he was going to wait until he was ready so that whatever it was would come out with surgical precision.

  Before he leapt to any other conclusions she began explaining. She told him everything. About her ex-fiancé’s infertility. The high expectations for a honeymoon baby. The demand for a male heir to the Rodolfo name. Their agreement for her to have the IVF treatment. The moment she’d walked away after discovering his infidelity
.

  Despite the gravity of the situation, she burst out laughing. “Isn’t it hilarious that she’s going to be a girl?”

  “We’re not going to know that for another eight weeks.”

  * * *

  “We?”

  The word hung between them like an offer of something more.

  Everything in him fought to return Beatrice’s smile.

  We.

  Two little letters.

  Far too much history.

  Though she didn’t move, he heard the word again.

  It ran over and over in his mind, as if he was trying to extract every ounce of meaning he could from the moment.

  Her voice was full of hope. Hell! He could see it in her beautiful brown eyes. Trace it through the flush pinking up her cheeks, its heat adding even more red to her full lips.

  But what was she asking of him? To forget the past? Forget that she had chosen her family and another man over him? The thought riled him.

  Family, eh?

  That wasn’t how family worked where he came from.

  After all his family had done for him—the sacrifices they had made—he would have a hard time telling them where to go if they didn’t approve of the woman he loved. Maybe...

  No. This was an entirely different scenario now. Perhaps Beatrice was good old-fashioned scared. He was a familiar entity, and she didn’t want to go through this alone. But another man’s child? A stranger’s?

  The way this whole crazy story was unfurling, Jamie couldn’t help but think Beatrice was a stranger to him now. The woman he’d known wouldn’t have done any of those things. It was time she owned up to her behavior. Accepted some responsibility.

  “I think you should try to find the father,” he said finally, after the silence became unbearable.

  Beatrice threw him an odd look. “He’s anonymous.”

  “What?” Confusion rained through him like nails. “Did aliens come down to earth, abduct the Beatrice I knew and once truly loved and replace her with you?”