by Maisey Yates
His expression remained bland. “You’re hardly the first woman I’ve had on a desk.”
She swallowed hard, blinking back more tears. She had made the right choice. She knew she had. Had he yelled at her, had he screamed, had he said that he hated her too, she might have wondered. But those black, flat, soulless eyes didn’t lie. He felt nothing. He was indifferent, even in this moment.
Tabitha had heard it said that hate was like murder. But she knew differently. It was indifference that killed. And with his, Kairos had left her mortally wounded.
“I wish you luck in your search for a more suitable wife, Your Highness,” she said.
Then she walked out of the door, out of his life.
CHAPTER THREE
“WHERE IS YOUR WIFE, Kairos?”
Prince Andres, Kairos’s younger reformed rake of a brother, walked into Kairos’s office. There was still glass on the floor from where Tabitha had shattered it two days ago. Still a dark stain where the scotch had splashed itself over the wallpaper.
All of it shouted the story of what had happened the night Tabitha had left. At least, it shouted at Kairos. Every time he walked in.
It was nearly as loud as his damned conscience.
I feel nothing.
A lie. Of course it was a lie. She had stripped him down. Reduced him to nothing more than need, desperate, clawing need.
Another woman walking away from him. Threatening to leave him there alone. Empty. While his pride bled out of him, leaving him with nothing.
He couldn’t allow that, not again. So he’d said he felt nothing. And now she was gone.
“Why? What have you heard?” Kairos asked, not bothering to explain the glass, even when Andres’s eyes connected with the mess.
“Nothing much. Zara tells me Tabitha called to see if I could find out if you were using your penthouse anytime soon. I wondered why on earth my brother’s wife would be stooping to subterfuge to find out the actions of her own husband.”
Kairos ground his teeth together, his eyes on the shards of glass.
I feel nothing for you.
If only that were true. He was...he didn’t even know what to call the emotions rioting through him. Emotions were...weak and soft in his estimation, and that was not what he felt.
He was beyond rage. Beyond betrayal. She was his wife. He had brought her up from the lowest of positions, made her a queen, and she had the audacity to betray him.
“No explanation, Kairos?”
Kairos looked up at his brother. “She probably wants to go shopping without fear of retribution.”
“Right. Are the coffers of Petras so empty she has to worry about your wrath? Or is her shoe closet merely so full.”
Kairos had no idea what her closet looked like. He never looked farther than her bed when he was in her room. “She left me,” he said, his tone hard, the words like acid on his tongue.
Andres had the decency to look shocked. Surprising, because Andres was rarely shocked and he was never decent. “Tabitha left you?”
“Yes,” he ground out.
“Tabitha, who barely frowns in public for fear it might ignite a scandal?”
Kairos dragged his hand over his face. “That is the only Tabitha I know of.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Neither do I,” Kairos said, his voice a growl.
He paced across the office, to the place where the remains of that glass of scotch rested. It reminded him of the remnants left behind after an accident on the highway. One of the many similarities the past few days bore to a car crash.
I hate you.
He closed his eyes against the pain that lashed at him. What had he done to make his wife hate him? Had he not given her everything?
A baby. She wanted a baby.
Yes, he had failed her there. But dammit all, he’d given her a palace. Some women couldn’t be pleased.
“What the hell did you do?”
“I was perhaps too generous,” Kairos said, his tone hard. “I gave her too much freedom. Perhaps the weight of her diamond-encrusted crown was a bit heavy.”
“You don’t know,” Andres said, his tone incredulous.
“Of course I bloody don’t. I had no idea she was unhappy.” The lie was heavy on his chest.
You knew. You didn’t know how to fix it.
“I know I haven’t been married very long...”
“A week, Andres. If you begin handing out marital advice before the ink is dry on your license, I will reopen the dungeons just for you.”
“Perhaps if you’d opened the dungeons for Tabitha she wouldn’t have left you.”
“I am not going to keep my own wife prisoner.” But dear God, it was tempting.
Andres arched a brow. “That isn’t what I meant.”
Heat streaked along Kairos’s veins, and he thought again of that last night here in his office. Of the way she’d felt in his arms. His cool ice queen suddenly transformed into a living flame...
I hate you.
“We do not have that sort of relationship,” Kairos said, his voice stiff.
Andres chuckled, the sound grating against Kairos’s nerves. “Maybe that’s your problem.”
“Everything is not about sex.”
Andres shrugged. “It absolutely is. But you may cling to your illusions if you must.”
“What do you want, Andres?”
“To see if you’re okay.”
He spread his arms wide. “Am I dead and buried?”
His brother arched a brow. “No. But your wife is gone.”
Kairos gritted his teeth. “And?”
“Do you intend to get a new one?”
He would have to. There was no other alternative. Though the prospect filled him with nothing but dread. Still, even now, he wanted no one else. No one but Tabitha.
And now that he’d tasted the heat that had always shimmered between them as a tantalizing promise, never before fulfilled...
Forgetting her would not be so easy.
“I do not want a new one,” he said.
“Then you have to go and claim the old one, I suppose.”
Kairos offered his brother a glare. “Worry about your life, I’ll worry about mine.” He paused for a moment, staring again at that pile of broken glass. The only thing that remained of his marriage. “I will not hold her prisoner. If Tabitha wants a divorce, she can have her damn divorce.”
* * *
Tabitha hadn’t seen Kairos in four weeks. Four weeks of staring at blank spaces, eyes dry, unable to find any tears. She hadn’t cried. Not since that single tear had fallen in his office. Not since she’d told him how much she hated him—and meant it—with every piece of herself. She had not cried.
Why would you cry for a husband that you hated? Why would you cry for a husband who felt nothing for you?
It made no sense. And so, she hadn’t cried. Tabitha was nothing if not sensible. Even when she came to divorce, it seemed.
She was slightly less sensible when it came to other things. Which was why it had taken her a full week of being late for her to make her way to the doctor. She had no choice but to use the doctor she had always used. She didn’t want to, didn’t want to be at risk by going to a doctor who was employed by the royal family. But her only other alternative was going to one she had no relationship with. One she had no trust in at all. News of her and Kairos’s divorce had already hit the papers, and it was headline news. If she went to an ob-gyn now, everything would explode. She couldn’t risk it. So she was risking this. She swallowed hard, her hands shaking as she sat on the exam table. Her blood had already been drawn, and now she was just waiting for the results.
She had waited so long to come to the doctor because she wa
s often late. Her period never started on time. For years upon years every time she had been late she’d held out hope. Hope that this time it wasn’t just her cycle being fickle. Hope that it might actually be a baby.
It was never a baby. Never.
But it had been a full week, and still nothing. And she couldn’t overlook the fact that she and Kairos had had unprotected sex.
Nothing unusual there, though. They always had. For five years they’d had unprotected sex, and there had been no baby. The universe was not that cruel. How could God ignore her prayers for five long years, and answer them at the worst possible moment?
It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be.
For the first time, when the doctor walked back into the room, her expression unreadable, Tabitha hoped for the no. She needed it. Needed to hear that the test was negative.
She knew now that she couldn’t live with Kairos. It was confirmed. She couldn’t make it work with him. He didn’t care for her. And she...she felt far too much for him. She could not live like that. She simply couldn’t.
“Queen Tabitha,” Dr. Anderson said, her words slow. “I had hoped that King Kairos might have accompanied you today.”
“If you read the paper at all, then you know that he and I are going through a divorce. I saw no reason to include him in this visit.” The doctor looked down and Tabitha’s stomach sank. A no was an easy answer to give. A no certainly didn’t require Kairos’s presence.
“Yes, I do know about the divorce,” the doctor said. “All members of royal staff had been briefed, of course.”
“Then you know why he isn’t here.”
“Forgive me for asking, my queen,” the doctor said. “But if you are in fact carrying a child, is it his?”
“If I am? You’ve seen the test results. Don’t play this game with me. Do not play games with me. I’ve had enough.”
“It’s just that...”
“This is my test. It has nothing to do with him. My entire life does not revolve around him.” Tabitha knew she was beginning to get a bit hysterical. “I left him. I left him so that he wasn’t at the center of everything I did. We don’t need to bring him into this.”
“The test is positive, my queen. I feel that under other circumstances congratulations would be in order,” Dr. Anderson said, her tone void of expression.
Before this, before the divorce proceedings, Dr. Anderson had always been friendly, warm. She was decidedly cool now.
A King Kairos loyalist, clearly. But Dr. Anderson didn’t have to live with him.
“Oh.” Tabitha felt light-headed. She felt like she was going to collapse. She was thankful for the table she was seated on. Had she been standing, she would have slipped from consciousness immediately.
“Based on the dates you have given me I would estimate that you are...”
“I know exactly how far along I am,” Tabitha said.
Flashes of that night burst into her mind’s eye. Kairos putting her up on the desk, thrusting into her hard and fast. Spilling himself inside of her as they both lost themselves to their pleasure. Yes, there was no doubt in her mind as to when she had conceived. January 1.
The beginning of the New Year. What was supposed to be the start of her new beginning.
And all she had was a chain shackling her to Kairos now that she had finally decided to walk out the door and take her freedom.
Of course this was happening now. When she’d released hold of her control. Her inhibitions. There were reasons she’d kept herself on a short leash for so many years. She’d always suspected she couldn’t be trusted. That she would break things if she was ever allowed to act without careful thought and consideration.
She’d been right to distrust herself.
She balled her hands into fists and pressed them against her eyes.
“Are you all right?” Dr. Anderson asked.
“Does it look like I’m all right?” Tabitha asked.
“It’s only that...is it the king’s baby?”
Rage fired through Tabitha then. “It is my baby. That’s about all I can process at the moment.”
Dr. Anderson hesitated. “It’s only that I want to be certain that I didn’t overstep.”
As those words left the doctor’s mouth, the door to the exam room burst open. Tabitha looked up, her heart slamming hard against her sternum. There was Kairos. Standing in the doorway, looking like a fallen angel, rage emanating from him.
“Leave us,” he said to the doctor.
“Of course, Your Highness.”
The doctor scurried out of the room, eagerly doing Kairos’s bidding. Tabitha could only sit there, dazed. She supposed that there was no such thing as doctor-patient confidentiality when the king was involved.
She turned to face her nearly ex-husband—who was looking at her as though she were the lowest and vilest of creatures. As if he had any right. As if he had the right to judge her. After what he had said. After what he had done.
“What’s the matter, Kairos?” she asked, schooling her expression into one of absolute calm and stillness. It was her specialty. After years of hiding her true feelings behind a mask for public consumption, she went about it with as much ease as breathing.
“It seems I’m about to be a father.” He moved nearer to her, his dark eyes blazing. Any blankness, any calm he had presented the night she had left him standing in his office was gone now. He was all emotion now. He was vibrating with it.
“You’re making an awfully big assumption.”
He slammed his hands down on the counter by the exam table. “Do not toy with me, Tabitha. We both know it’s my child.”
“Except that you don’t. Because you can’t know that. You haven’t seen me in weeks. I didn’t go to your bed for months before our last time together.” Heartbreak made her cruel. She’d had no idea. She’d never been heartbroken before him.
“I am the only man you have ever been with. You and I both know that. You were a virgin when I had you the first time. I sincerely doubt you went out and found the first lover available to you just after leaving my arms.”
She swallowed hard, her hands trembling. “You say that as though you know me. We both know that you don’t. We both know that you feel nothing for me.”
“In this moment, I find I feel quite a lot.”
“I’ve only just found out. It isn’t as though I was keeping a secret from you. Where exactly do you get off coming in here, playing the part of caveman?”
“You were going to keep it from me. The doctor called me. If you knew you were coming to the doctor to get a pregnancy test, why didn’t you include me?”
“Because,” she said, looking at the wall beyond him, “that’s the beauty of divorce. I don’t have to include you in my life. I get to go on as an individual. Not as one half of the world’s most dysfunctional couple. I would have told you. I was hardly going to keep this from you. If for no other reason than that the press would never let me.”
“How very honorable of you. You would let me in on my impending fatherhood based on what the media would allow you to keep secret. Tell me, would you allow them to announce it to me via headline?”
“That sounds about right considering the level of communication we’ve always had. Honestly, I haven’t much noticed the absence of you in the past four weeks. It was pretty much standard to our entire marriage. Sex once a month with no talking in between.”
“Still your poisonous tongue for a moment, my queen. We have a serious issue to deal with here.”
“There is no issue,” she said, her hand going protectively to her stomach. “And there is no dealing with it. What’s done is done.”
“What exactly did you think I was suggesting?” His dark features contorted with horror. With anger. “You cannot seriously think I would suggest you get
rid of our child. Just because you and I are experiencing difficult circumstances at the moment—”
“No. That isn’t what I thought you meant. And what do you mean difficult circumstances? We are not undergoing difficult circumstances. If anything, we’re experiencing some of the best circumstances we’ve had in years. We aren’t together anymore, Kairos. That’s what we both need.”
“Not now. There will be no discussion of it.”
She stood up, feeling dizzy. “The hell there won’t be. I am not your property. I can divorce you if I choose, discussion or not.”
“Can you? I am king of Petras.”
“And I am an American citizen.”
“In addition to being a citizen of Petras.”
“I will happily chuck my Petran passport into the river. As long as it will get you off my back.”
“We are not having this discussion here,” he said through clenched teeth. “Get dressed. We’re leaving.”
“I have a car.”
“Oh, yes, my driver that you’re still using. From the house that I own that you are currently living in.”
“I will sort things out later,” she said, stinging heat lashing her cheekbones. It was humiliating to have him bring up the fact she was dependent on him to not be homeless at the moment. Particularly since she had made such a big deal out of knowing she would get nothing from him after the divorce. But still, he wasn’t using his apartment in town, nor was he using the car and driver that were headquartered there. So he could hardly deny her the use of them. Well, he could. But he wasn’t, so she was taking advantage.
“Oh, I sent your driver home. The only driver currently here is mine. You are leaving with me. Now.”
He stood there, his arms folded across his broad chest, his dark eyes glued to her.
“Don’t look at me. I have to get dressed.”
“It is nothing I haven’t seen, agape.”
She treated him to her iciest glare. “Rarely.”
The biting word hung between them and she felt some guilt over it. Truly, the state of their sex life was partly her fault. If not mostly her fault. But having him touch her out of duty... It had certainly started to wear on her.