King Size

by Lexi Whitlow

  Dr. Papadopoulos cocks his head to the side, slowing, then stopping with the wand in place. I hear a loud who-whosh-who-whosh-who-whosh come from the monitor. “Hear that?” the doctor asks.

  We both nod.

  “I’d say nine or ten weeks along,” he says, answering Owen’s question.

  Oh shit!

  Owen looks down at me with question in his eyes. He’s doing the math in his head.

  “Paris,” I say, as stunned as he is. We did sort of go out of our way to be reckless.

  “Look closely,” the doctor says, pointing to a tiny image on the screen.

  Owen leans in, squinting.

  “See here,” he says, his fingers moving across the screen as he speaks. “This is a head. And this is also a head. And here is a pair of legs. And here is another pair of legs. Tiny hands here.”

  “Oh shit,” Owen croons.

  Twins?

  He looks down at me, disbelief coloring his face. “Twins,” he says. “Oh good Lord.”

  He returns his attention to the doctor and the image on the small screen. “You can’t tell what sex they are, can you?”

  Dr. Papadopoulos shakes his head. “Maybe by next week. Certainly in two weeks, if everything goes normally.”

  He holds the wand steady and hits a button on the machine. An instant later, a digital printout appears with the ultrasound images fixed on it.

  “Oh, please print another,” I beg. “We need two!”

  He prints another, handing both to me, smiling. “I hope this is good news?” he says, wiping the gel from my abdomen with a clean towel.

  “It’s unexpected,” Owen says, squeezing my hand. “But good news. They’re healthy?”

  The doctor nods. “Appears so. The young mother-to-be needs to eat healthy food and drink much more water. We talked about it earlier before you came in, but I’m making it your responsibility to see to it, too. No alcohol. No raw seafood.”

  He offers his hand, helping me to sit up. “As soon as you’re home, make an appointment with a trusted OBGYN and follow his or her instructions to the letter. If you have any problems or concerns while you’re on holiday, call me day or night.”

  He hands both me and Owen a card with his numbers and email address, along with a bottle of prenatal vitamins. “You’re all done,” he says.

  The doctor shows us out to the waiting room where Owen pays the bill and I stand waiting, stunned, trying to think what it means to be carrying twins under normal circumstances, much less this weird arrangement Owen and I have contrived.

  Twins complicate things. Being pregnant at all right now complicates things. Being ten weeks pregnant makes everything incredibly awkward.

  Oh. Shit.

  The drive back to the airport is quiet. Owen holds my hand but has almost nothing to say. He looks as if he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. He’s grim, lost in thought.

  The flight home is the same. Initially, I chalk it up to the presence of Duncan and the other members of our security detail, but it gradually dawns on me that he could have closed the limo window to speak privately with me on the way to the airport. Once on the jet, the detail is in the rear cabin while we sit alone up front.

  This pregnancy presents Owen with too many complex problems to handle at once. To begin with, moving the wedding up will cause a scandal even before the pregnancy is announced. Then there’s the fact that the babies will come far too early to be able to pass off as incidental early delivery. Then there’s the issue of twins: two children cannot inherit a single crown. There can be only one crowned prince, which would pit our children against one another from the first day they’re born.

  I’ve heard Owen describe how he felt as the “spare,” always in the shadow of his brother. At least his brother was older—imagine if they’d been identical in every regard except for the luck of which one was delivered a moment or two before the other.

  Owen’s already been made acting king. His succession to the throne is a closed matter, and he doesn’t need a fiancée any longer. He doesn’t need me or the royal mess I’ve just brought into his already demanding, complicated world.

  His silence speaks volumes. He’s thinking of ways to send me back where I came from.

  Before the jet lands in Mykonos, my heart is slowly breaking. It’s breaking for myself and the feelings I’ve developed for Owen, for the dreams I was finally allowing myself to entertain about a life we might have together. And it’s breaking for these two fragile beings inside me, babies whose father sees them as complications, as scandal, as threats to his long-fought-for position. If these babies never know a father who loves them, that’s the most heartbreaking thing of all.

  All that said, if I really do love Owen—and now I know I do—I must do what’s best for him. If these two inconvenient little lives threaten him, then I must give him up, because I’ll never give them up.

  16

  Owen

  The tabloids will savage Norah. They’ll cast her as careless—or worse: a conniving upstart with pretensions to the throne. The scandal will be massive. Unmarried, pregnant, carrying the king’s twins. Twins! Two children, identical in every way, but only one “crowned.” The other a matching spare.

  The situation is awful. It’s enough to threaten the whole monarchy and tear our nascent family apart. There’s an element in Anglesey society now who think we’re an expensive anachronism. They’ve been rattling the sabers of constitutional democracy for decades, and this will give them just enough fuel to fire a revolution.

  I can’t let it happen. My cousin David wanted the job. He can have it. Mother will be crushed, but so be it. I love Norah, and I wouldn’t do anything to make our children grow up to hate one another.

  Abdication is the only rational solution.

  We’d have to leave the country and resign our citizenship. There’s no way David would permit me—and especially my children—to stay. I can move some money around so that financing our lives afterward won’t be an issue. The problem is where to go. Norah’s family in Charleston would welcome us. I can’t imagine living in the United States, but I may not have a lot of options. It’s difficult to emigrate anywhere these days without years of petitions and paperwork filings. We’re going to need to move fast. At least if we’re married, the United States will take me provisionally and I can begin the process of obtaining permanent resident status.

  “I know you have a lot on your mind, but I’ve come to talk.”

  I turn. Norah’s standing in the doorway. I’ve been sitting under the canopy by the pool with a glass of whiskey in my hand, just watching the blue Aegean Sea, lost in thought.

  I hold out my free hand. “Yeah, we should probably talk about what to do,” I say, urging her toward me.

  She takes a step toward me, but doesn’t take my hand. She’s wearing an odd expression, with her arms crossed over her chest defensively. “I know what you’re thinking,” she says. “And I understand.”

  Really? Good. I was afraid she’d be upset.

  “I’ll forget about the contract. I don’t need any money. I don’t even care about the money. I thank you for taking care of my mom and dad. I wish I could repay that, but…”

  “Norah, what in God’s name are you talking about?” I interrupt her sharply. This has the sound of a leaving conversation. She’s wearing the look of a woman about to leave.

  “It’s too much scandal. It’s too many things at once,” she says. “I know how hard you fought to get the crown, and how fragile your hold on it is. I… we… we won’t be the cause of more scandal. Just help me get back to Charleston. Back to my family.”

  “You’re out of your mind,” I pronounce, then take a long shot of the brown liquor in my glass. “Maybe it’s the hormones surging through your system. I’ve heard that women get weirdly irrational when they’re pregnant.”

  Norah just stares at me, fighting what look like tears trying to pool in her beautiful eyes.

  I stand and
go to her, encircling her in my arms, holding her tight. “You’re not going anywhere without me,” I say, speaking into her hair. “Our kids are going to know their father loves them.”

  In a moment, Norah is hugging me back as tight as she can and bawling like a baby into my chest. Her sobs heave against me. Her tears soak through my shirt, dampening my chest.

  “Oh, baby. Please don’t cry,” I urge her. “There’s nothing to cry about. No matter what happens, we’re in this together.”

  This only brings on another round of fathomless sobs.

  “Shhhh,” I soothe, stroking her hair, holding her, rocking her in my arms. I’ve never had a woman cry in my arms. I’ve never made a woman cry at all, though I’ve made plenty of them angry as hell. This is different. It’s terrible. “Shhhh, please baby. I love you so much. Please don’t cry.”

  More sobs follow, but in a few moments she settles down, just heaving hot breaths into me.

  I pull her back to my lounge chair, hauling her onto my lap, still in my arms, still stroking her hair and her hand. “It’s going to be okay,” I tell her. “I have a plan that’ll make it all work out and avoid unnecessary scandal.”

  Norah looks up at me, her eyes bloodshot, lids swollen and red. Her nose is snotty and swollen, too. I mop it with my sleeve, then tuck a wild lock of straying hair behind her ear.

  “I was never meant to be king,” I remind Norah. “I’m not really cut out for it. And clearly, I’m probably not going to be the traditionalists’ choice if they get wind of this.”

  Norah’s eyes grow wide. A furrow digs deep between her brows. “No, Owen,” she says.

  “My cousin David would…”

  “Your cousin David is a creep and would become a tyrant. You can’t quit!”

  “Norah, the papers will have a field day with this. They’ll blame you. They’ll say awful things. They’ll call our children bastards. They’ll…”

  “Screw the papers,” Norah spits, scrambling out of my lap. The sobs are gone, and the fight has returned to her. All the fire is coming back into those icy blue eyes. “The papers can say whatever they want. It doesn’t change the fact that you’re the king and these babies are your children. If anyone needs proof, I’ll happily submit to a paternity test.”

  She scowls at the notion of me quitting. “People get pregnant by accident every day. It’s only a crushing scandal to people who don’t live in the real world. If we don’t treat the babies like a scandal, and don’t allow anyone else to, then the only ones scandalized are the uptight toadies of an anachronistic enterprise that’s needed an overhaul for the better part of a century.”

  She almost stamps her feet. “I say we proudly announce the happy news the very first chance we get, tradition be damned. If anyone fails to congratulate us, you can exile them to Paraguay, too.”

  I shouldn’t laugh, but I can’t help it: Norah makes me laugh. She’s found a way to turn this catastrophe into an opportunity for long-needed modernization of how the monarchy behaves and what the people should expect of it. She doesn’t care for rules and traditions that make no sense, whereas I’ve been raised to accept them just because.

  “I’ll tell you one more thing, too,” Norah says. “There’s no reason in the world that a pair of twins can’t share the title of crown princes, and no reason they can’t be co-regents. Two heads are always better than one. This way they can be partners, supporting one another, instead of lifelong competitors.”

  She’s astonishingly creative in her solutions. I need to give her a cabinet position; I bet she could manage to get some stuff done while knocking a few old crony heads into the current century.

  “That will be my first royal edict,” I say. “That solves the biggest problem I’ve been pondering all day.”

  “Maybe we should hold back news of the fact that we’ve got twins until after the edict? Just so no one gets ahead of us.”

  I laugh. “We’ll see,” I say, then urge her back to my lap. Once she’s settled, I kiss her cheek. “The first person we tell anything to is my mother. She’s going to have a meltdown. But she’s a strategic genius who personally invented the idea of turning a scandal into an opportunity for gaining the public’s sympathy and using the political capital to effect change on an unchanging system. Once she gets over the initial shock, she’s our best ally.”

  I’m counting on it. My mother is a royal pain and a diva, but she’s also the People’s Princess, and my biggest cheerleader.

  Norah and I head up to the roof at sunset, watching the magic like we did before. I take her hand in mine as the glowing orange disk takes its plunge below the waterline, sad that the light show is over.

  “Think of all the billions of people who’ve watched the sun set just like that, since the first of us stood upright,” Norah muses, peering into the violet twilight. She turns to me, smiling slyly. “Stone-aged men and women, watching the sun slip beneath the waves, then taking each other’s hands and wandering off into the darkness to make babies together. We’re all the same.”

  She’s right, of course. The only thing that’s changed about humanity is we’ve managed to complicate life so profoundly with nonsense that matters a lot less than a stunning sunset.

  “Come here,” I urge Norah, begging her onto my lap. “I need to see what you’re prattling on about. I think it might involve something more than just holding hands.”

  When I’ve got her on my lap, her legs spread around my hips, I let my hands admire her contours, tracing her curves, feeling her soft places under curious fingertips. Her eyes, shadowed in the darkness, reveal nothing to me. Her silhouette against the Milky Way sky reveals the most beautiful women I’ve ever beheld.

  Sometimes I want to hold her like a baby, and sometimes I want to rock her easily beneath me. Tonight, knowing she’s carrying my children, knowing I put them inside her and she’s determined to protect them and bear them, I’m so inexplicably compelled with pride and possessive lust, I have no words for what I feel.

  Men are fragile creatures. We walk the Earth trying to convince ourselves and others that we’re alpha beasts, but we’re just frightened creatures beating our chests, howling at the moon. When a woman like Norah comes into our world, we’re humbled, and heated, and determined to somehow catch her attention long enough to make an impression.

  And sometimes we do.

  I want to mark her, to claim her like she claimed me that night in Paris. I press my lips against hers, sucking hungrily, feeling her heartbeat lift and skip under my fingertips at her throat. My tongue presses in, exploring while my hand binds her hair in a knot between her shoulder blades, tilting her head back just so, so I can invade her more completely.

  Breathless, overheated, I pull her closer against me, feeling her heat, bringing a sweat to my skin that begs for relief from clothing.

  “We need to take this to the bedroom,” Norah whispers, heaving hot breaths against my neck. “No more public displays. No more exhibitions for prying cameras.”

  She’s right. There’s no telling who’s floating around out on the sea, with a long lens and nighttime optics.

  17

  Norah

  Owen backs me onto the bed, peeling my clothes off, casting them aside as we go. He tugs his shirt off before pushing me down onto soft, downy sheets, then stalks in over me like a hungry lion. “You’re so fucking beautiful,” he breathes, lips and teeth grazing my breasts. “And more perfect than I deserve.”

  This is like Paris with the tables turned. He’s taking the lead and ramping it up to a level of intoxicating heat that’s unexpected and ridiculously sexy.

  “I want you to come for me,” Owen says, his voice graveled with lust as he slips inside me, shoving in deep, filling me with instant, shuddering pleasure. “I want you to come crying my name while we do this.”

  His palms circle my ass, fingers digging in hard as he pulls me tight against him. I’m on top, but he’s in total control. He sets the pace, his hands commanding my movem
ents. I’m on his lap, straddling him, face-to-face as his eyes bore into mine.

  “God, you feel so fucking good,” he heaves, his mouth slacking open. “You own me.”

  He says that, but in this moment of pure, animal heat, I’m pretty sure it’s Owen who owns me.

  Without warning he flips me onto my back, roughly kicking my knees apart. A second later he’s inside me again, hauling in with long, precision-timed strokes, his cock teasing parts of my sensitive anatomy that I wasn’t previously aware of.

  My orgasms come in breaking waves, a tsunami of flooding pleasure as I cry against his neck, my gripping fingers bruising the backs of his arms. “Oh God, Owen, oh…” I whimper, tears forming in the corners of my eyes, dripping down.

  “That’s it, Duchess,” Owen heaves breathlessly, driving himself into me without mercy. “Call my name.”

  An hour later, I’m still calling his name again and again, crying in time with his cries.

  “Agh… ah… Norah… oh fuck… baby…fucking hell.” He slumps deflated against me, melting into the sheets, completely spent, lungs heaving for air.

  A few minutes later, just as I’m about to drift into an exhausted sleep, Owen’s hand falls to my belly, enclosing it in his protective shield. He snuggles against me, pulling me close. “Take care, babies,” he mumbles against my neck, smiling sleepily. “That was your mum and da making love—fucking. That’s how you came to be, you little princes.”

  A few moments later Owen sleeps, snoring sweetly. I follow not long after, threading my fingers into his.

  Owen’s taken to heart the doctor’s instructions concerning my diet. Hummus and flatbread have been replaced by sizzling lamb kebabs cooked outside over open flames, quinoa tabbouleh, and tomato-rich ratatouille. Olives are still permitted because they’re loaded with iron, but garbanzos have taken a back seat to lentils and black beans, which the cook says are high in iron and other nutrients. I’m inundated with a tsunami of spinach and a variety of cheeses high in calcium to ensure my bones remain strong. My only permitted beverage is artesian well water, which I’m allowed to sweeten with local honey and flavor with lime or lemon.