Читать книгу Carrying A King's Child - Katherine Garbera - Страница 9

Three

Key West was a tourist town and there was no getting around that. The atmosphere was laid back and everyone had a sort of hungover look. There was something about being on the edge of the ocean that inspired indulgence in sun, sand and drinks.

Emily sat on the front porch of her flamingo-pink and white cottage with her feet propped on the railing, desperately needing to absorb that laid-back attitude. She’d left Miami and Rafe behind. She’d done what she’d set out to do, namely tell him he was going to be a father. That had gone well—differently than she’d expected, but the end result was the same. She was back here.

Alone.

“Em. Your mom asked me stop by,” Harry said as he walked around the side of the house.

He was tall, at least six five, and wore middle age well. His reddish-blond hair had thinned a little but was still thick enough, and he wore it cut short in a military style. His beard was equal parts red, blond and gray, and he had an easy smile. He was the closest thing she had to a dad. So she was glad to see him.

“Why?” Emily asked. Though she knew why her mom had sent Harry. If anyone could make her forget her troubles it was the jovial bar owner.

“She thought you might need some company. She’s on her way back to port but won’t be here until tonight.”

Emily sighed. “I don’t really want any company.”

“Figured you might say that, so I brought you a cup of decaf and a blueberry bagel. We can both sit here and eat and pretend we’re alone.”

Decaf.

Seemed like a little thing, but she always drank full-on caffeine. Now she knew that her mom had spilled the beans about her being preggers. Harry handed her a bakery bag from Key Koffee with the bagel and the coffee.

“You know?”

“I know. It was that slick guy from South Beach, right?”

She tipped her head back and closed her eyes. “He’s not that slick.”

Harry laughed. “They never are. Talk to me, kiddo. Do I need to take my .45 and head to Miami?”

She opened her eyes and lifted her head. “You would have made a really good dad,” she said, smiling at him.

“I think I have been to you,” he reminded her.

“You have. But no to the .45. Besides, you’d have to fly to Europe to find him.”

Harry took a bite out of his everything bagel and settled down on the top step, turning sideways with his back against the railing to face her.

“Europe? He seemed American to me,” Harry said.

“He’s Rafael Montoro IV. Part of...I’m not sure what to call him. But his family was royalty in a tiny Mediterranean country called Alma. They were kicked out decades ago but now they want them back. He’s the oldest son and heir apparent to the newly restored monarchy.”

“Complicates things, doesn’t it?” Harry said.

“You have no idea,” she said. “But I didn’t expect him to do anything when I gave him the news. You know?”

Harry took a sip of his coffee and then gave her one of those wise looks of his that she hated. He knew when she was lying, especially to herself.

“Okay, fine, I wanted him to be, like, we’ll do this together. Instead, I got...he was sweet but clearly torn. He can’t let his family down. And he and I only had one weekend together, Harry.”

“Sometimes that’s all it takes,” he said.

“It wasn’t enough for the guy who fathered me,” she said. “Please don’t tell Mom I said that. But really, that complicates everything. I’ve always thought I was okay with the fact that I don’t know who he was, but this baby...” She put her hands on her stomach. “It’s making me realize I’m not.”

Harry didn’t say anything. And after a few minutes Emily looked away from him and back to the foot traffic on the street near her house. What could he say? He was her substitute dad who’d stepped up when he didn’t have to. Harry must have thought that she was making a mess where there didn’t need to be one.

“I get it, kiddo. It’s hard to not want the best for your baby. We all do that,” he said. “Try to fix the problems in our past so that our kids don’t have to experience them.”

“Did you do that for Rita and Danny?” she asked. Harry had two kids who were both more than fifteen years older than her and lived in Chicago. They came down for two weeks each spring to visit Harry.

“I tried. But I ended up making my own mistakes and they have done the same. It’s all a part of being human,” he said.

“I’m getting Zen Harry this morning,” she said. But his positive attitude helped take her mind off Rafe and the sadness she’d been feeling.

It wasn’t that she’d expected anything else from him, but that she’d wanted something more. She shook her head as she realized that what she’d wanted was to be wanted.

For him to want to stay with her.

It was unrealistic, but a girl could dream.

“Well, I do have all this wonderful advice and no one to share it with,” Harry said with a wink. “You’ll be okay, kiddo. You’ll make decisions and choices and some of them are going to be fabulous and others you’re going to regret. But I do know one thing.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“You’re going to love that baby of yours, and in the end that’s all that really matters.”

“You think so?”

“I do. Your own mom did that for you. Look how you turned out,” he said.

“Not bad,” she admitted. She liked her life. She could have followed her mom into a similar career—she was a marine biologist—but Emily liked being on the land and not out at sea. She had a degree in hotel and restaurant management and one day hoped to open her own place. She knew she had a good life, but a part of her still missed Rafe.

Another part of her knew she just missed the idea of Rafe. So far every time they’d been together they’d ended up in bed. It wasn’t as if he was even a friend.

She wanted that picture-perfect family that she kept in her head. She wanted that for this baby she was carrying. She didn’t want her child to have the piecemeal family that she did. No matter that she loved her mom and Harry fiercely. For her child she wanted more.

And being the bastard of a European king probably wasn’t what her child would want. She was going to have to be very protective. Raise the baby to know its own strength and place in the world.

She noticed Harry watching her, realized she wasn’t alone and that made the loneliness she felt when she thought of Rafe a little less painful.

* * *

Alma was breathtakingly beautiful. The island was surrounded by sparkling blue seas and old world charm seemed to imbue every building. They’d landed at a private air field and were driving to the royal palace in the urban capital of Del Sol.

Rafe had heard there was a lively nightclub scene and before Emily’s visit had sort of thought of checking it out. But now that he had the dual mantle of monarchy and fatherhood hanging over him, he figured he should rethink that.

Del Sol was even more striking than the black and white photos he’d seen in the albums his tia Isabella kept. While there were modern buildings dotted throughout the city many of the old buildings remained. Tia Isabella had been a young woman when she’d been forced to flee Alma with the rest of their family. When Rafe and his siblings and cousin had been growing up they’d been entertained by her stories. Tia Isabella had spent a lot of time talking about the old days and what it had been like to grow up on Alma. But Rafe thought he understood why his grandfather hadn’t talked that much about it. Rafe would have been sad to leave this homeland, too.

As the royal motorcade made its way into Del Sol, Alma’s capital, people on the streets craned their necks to get a glimpse of the Montoros. Rafe was used to a certain level of fame and notoriety in Miami, but not this. There he was one of the jet-set Montoros. The young generation who worked hard and played harder.

Here he was the future monarch. He’d be the face of Alma to the world. And while his ego was sort of jazzed about that, another part of him wasn’t.

“Maybe you should put the window down and do that princess wave,” his sister Bella said with a sparkle in her blue eyes. Their father and the rest of their party were in a separate vehicle.

“Princess wave? That’s more your cup of tea,” he said. “Maybe I’ll throw up the peace sign.”

She giggled. He’d always been close to his little sister, and making her laugh helped him to relax.

Bella looked like a fairy-tale princess with her pretty blond hair. Not anything like Emily. He wondered what Emily would think of Alma. It was an island not that unlike her hometown of Key West, but the laid-back attitude in the Keys was a world away from this charming European nation.

For a country that had been ruled by a dictator for decades, the people in the streets seemed happy and prosperous and the buildings were clean and well-maintained. Rafe didn’t see any signs of financial ruin. But economic danger lurked whenever there was a change of regime. And if there was one thing he was good at, it was making money.

But would the government here listen to him?

To be honest he wasn’t the kind of person to negotiate for what he wanted. That was one of the reasons Montoro Enterprises had thrived under his leadership. He made bold decisions. Sometimes they didn’t pay off, but most of the time they did.

“You okay?” Bella asked.

He started to shrug it off. There was no way he was going to mention Emily or the fact that she was pregnant to his sister. Not until he had a chance to figure it out for himself. But the family stuff was also getting to him, especially how Juan Carlos was going really crazy about protocol and proper image and all that.

“This return to Alma is throwing me,” he admitted to her.

“How?” she asked. “You’ve always handled whatever the family has dished out. This will be no different. Pretend you’re the CEO of the country.”

As if. Being the king was a “name only” position. No power. Maybe that was why he hesitated to fully embrace it. He was a man of action. Not a figurehead.

“Good suggestion,” he said, glancing out the window as they approached the castle. Surrounded by glittering blue water on three sides, it rose from the land like a sand castle at the beach. He groaned.

“What?”

“I was hoping the castle would be in disrepair.”

“Why?”

“So I could hate it.”

Bella laughed again. “I love it. It’s everything I thought it would be,” she said.

“What if there’s not a hopping club scene? Will you still love it then?” he asked. Bella liked to party. Hell, they all did. They hadn’t been raised to assume the throne. They were all more likely to show up in the tabloids in a compromising position than on the society pages at a formal tea. The closer he got to the throne the less sure he was that he wanted to be there.

He felt Bella’s hand on his shoulder. “You’re going to be fine. I think you’ll make a great king.”

“Why? I’m not sure at all.”

“You’ve been a great big brother and always ensured our family’s place in business and in society.”

“Business is easy. I understand that world,” Rafe countered.

“I never thought the day would come when you’d admit that you aren’t sure of yourself,” she said, taking her phone from her handbag.

“What are you doing?”

“Texting Gabe that you have feet of clay.”

“He already knows that.”

“We all do,” Bella said. “Why are you acting like you are just figuring it out?”

“I’m going to be a king, Bella. It’s making me nutty,” he said.

“You weren’t as thrown by it a week ago,” she said. “What happened yesterday to make you delay your flight?”

Nothing.

Everything.

Something that could change the man he was. If he let it.

“Business. Running Montoro Enterprises does take a lot of time,” he said.

The car pulled to a stop and an attendant in full livery came to open the door for them. Bella climbed out first but looked back at Rafe.

“Lying to me is one thing. You can keep your secrets if you want to,” she said. “But I hope you aren’t lying to yourself.”

He followed her out of the car, and the warm Mediterranean air swept around him. She had a point. He knew in his gut that this didn’t feel right. He should be in Miami with Emily. He missed her.

The porte-cochere led to an inner brick-lined courtyard. There was a fountain underneath a statue of Rafe’s great-grandfather Rafael I. He was surprised it hadn’t been torn down when the dictator had taken over. Bella stopped walking and spun around on her heel, taking in the beauty of the palace.

For the first time he felt a sense of his royal lineage settling over him. If their family hadn’t been forced to flee he would have grown up in this palace. His memories would be of this place that smelled wonderfully of jasmine and lavender. Where was the scent coming from?

His father came up beside him and put his hand on his shoulder not saying a word. Something passed between them. An emotion that Rafe didn’t want to define. But Alma became real to him. In a way that it hadn’t been before. In Miami it had been easy to say he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be king but seeing this palace—he felt the history. And he sort of understood Juan Carlos’s perspective for once. Rafe didn’t want to let down their family line.

If Alma wanted the Montoros back on the throne than Rafe would have to put aside the feelings he felt stirring for Emily and figure out how to be their king.

That surprised him. He hadn’t expected to feel this torn. He was isolated from the rest of his family who seemed to think this return to royalty was just the thing they needed. They were all caught up in being back in the homeland. But as much as he felt swept up in the majesty of their return to Alma he knew he was still trying to figure out where home really was.

* * *

Emily worked the closing shift at Harry’s and walked home at 2:00 a.m. Key West wasn’t like the mean streets of Miami, but she moved quickly and kept her eyes open for danger. It was something she’d teach her kid.

She was starting to find her bearings with this pregnancy more and more as each day passed. Being a mom was going to take some getting used to, but as her own mom had said, she had nine months to make the adjustment.

Her cell phone vibrated in the pocket of her jeans and she reached back to pull it out. Glancing at the screen, she saw it was an international call. She only knew one person who was traveling internationally right now. She did some quick math and figured out that it was early morning in Alma.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Red. Figured you’d be getting off work. Please tell me I didn’t wake you.” Sure enough, it was Rafe.

“You’d think you’d be more careful about disturbing a pregnant woman’s rest,” she teased. She didn’t want to admit it but she’d missed him. Three days. That was all it had been since she’d seen him, but it had felt like a lifetime. His voice was deep and resonated in her ear, making her feel warm all over.

“Well, maybe I did call the bar earlier to determine if you were working tonight,” he admitted.

That sounded like Rafe. He was a man who left little to chance. “What can I do for you?”

“How are you feeling?” he asked. “How’s Florida?”

“I’m feeling fine,” she said. “I have had a little bit of morning sickness, and it’s not just limited to mornings. I’ve been getting sick midafternoon.”

She saw her house at the end of the lane and got her keys out. She’d left the porch lights on and it looked so welcoming. The only thing that would be better was if Rafe was waiting for her. And to be honest, as he talked to her on the phone, it was almost as if he was there with her.

“Makes sense since that’s when you wake up,” he said. “Is there anything you can do to help that?”

“No,” she said. “It’s not too bad. How’s Alma?”

“Nice. You’d like it. It’s all sand and sea for as far as the eye can see and quaint little villages. Not as laid back as Key West but still nice.”

“Any places to go paddleboarding?”

“Not yet. Why, do you think you’d move here and start a business?” he asked.

It was the closest he’d come to suggesting that she be near him in the future, and she felt numb even contemplating it. She had her own plans to open a restaurant around the corner from Harry’s. Not to be Rafe’s hidden mistress in some far-off European country.

“Not at all. I’ve got a place picked out for my future restaurant,” she said.

“Is that what you want to do?”

Once again she realized how little they actually knew of each other’s lives.

“Well, I can’t be a bartender forever.”

“I guess not. Tell me about your dreams,” he said.

She thought she heard the sound of footsteps on a tiled floor on his end. “Where are you?”

“Not ready to share that much with me?” he asked, countering her evasion.

In a way she wished they were playing a game. It would make everything easier. She could concentrate on winning and not really have to think about the emotions. But the truth was she was tired and still a little unsure of what she was doing. Sure, just hearing Rafe’s voice made her feel not so alone. But she didn’t want to allow herself to become dependent on him.

Not to turn her life into one big sob story, but usually when she started to feel comfortable with someone they left. It wasn’t that they abandoned her, just moved on and left her to her independent self. Even her mom and Harry. And she didn’t want that with Rafe.

“Nope. I want to hear about Alma. I read a little online yesterday. Seems like the change of regime is going to have a big impact on the economy. I know you are good at making money. Is that why they chose you and your family to come back and lead the country?” she asked.

“Our family ruled the country before the coup that installed the late dictator, Tantaberra. That’s why we were chosen. But my parents are divorced so Dad, who would be next in line, can’t assume the throne. They want someone with the right pedigree and the right reputation.”

“Um...I’m guessing if they found out about me that could put a wrench in things.”

“Possibly. I’m not going to deny you exist, Emily.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Would I be on the phone with you if I didn’t care?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “We’re strangers.”

“Who are about to be parents to a baby,” he said. “Let’s get to know each other. And while we have half the world between us maybe I can talk to you without being distracted by your body and that sexy way you tilt your head to the side. You always make me forget everything except wanting to get you naked.”

Her breath caught as she sank down into the big armchair where Rafe had sat the one time he’d been to her place. They’d made love in the chair and she felt closer to him now. She tucked her leg up underneath her and let those memories wash over her.

“Red? You still there?”

“Yes. Dammit, now you’ve got me thinking about you naked.”

“Good. My evil plan worked,” he said. “Tell me something about yourself.”

“What?”

“Anything. I want to know the woman who’s going to be the mother of my child.”

She thought about her life. It was ordinary: nothing too tragic, nothing too exciting. But it was hers. “When I was six I thought if I spent enough time in the ocean I’d turn into a mermaid. My mom’s a marine biologist and we were living on her research vessel, The Sea Spirit. She made me a bikini top out of shells and sent me off every day to swim.”

“I’m glad you didn’t turn into a mermaid,” he said with a quiet laugh.

They talked on the phone until Emily started drifting to sleep. She knew she should hang up, but she didn’t want to break the connection. Didn’t want to wake up without Rafe.

“Red?”

“Yes?”

“I wish I was there to tuck you into bed,” he said.

“Me, too,” she admitted. Then she opened her eyes as she realized that she was starting to need him.

“Good night, Rafe,” she said, hanging up the phone before she could do anything stupid like ask him what he’d wanted to be as a boy. Or to come back to Key West.