Page 19 of Royally Knocked Up (Princes of Passion #1)

ENZO

I ’m going to be a father.

No. He wasn’t going to be a father. Biologically maybe that kid was his, but in no other way.

And it would have been different, Enzo thought, if anything between Hailey and himself had ever been real.

It would have been so different if that were the case.

But it hadn’t been real. She had lied to him the entire time.

She was probably still lying. She had probably never intended to tell him that she was pregnant.

If she’d wanted to tell him that, she could have done so right away, but she hadn’t.

No, he thought, if she hadn’t been caught in her lie, she probably would have gone back to the States without ever owning up to a thing, and he would never have known.

Not that he wanted to know any of this. He felt like such a fool. How could he have allowed himself to believe he was in love with this woman? How could he have stood before his father and claimed that his feelings for her were real? He had never been so humiliated in all his life.

This will just confirm to my father that everything he has ever thought about me is correct , he thought miserably.

It will just prove to him that I’m irresponsible, that I can’t be trusted to make good decisions.

And the worst part of all is that I have to consider the fact that he might be right.

If I had any sense at all, I would never have gotten involved with Hailey.

I certainly wouldn’t have allowed myself to believe that I was in love with her!

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and texted Luca. What’s going on tonight?

The response came quickly. I thought you weren’t free until after the coronation?

The hell with the coronation.

Luca started and stopped typing several times, and Enzo was sure he was worried about that response. Maybe he would insist on some kind of heart-to-heart. Enzo hoped not. The last thing he wanted right now was to get stuck talking about his feelings.

But Luca could always be counted upon. Come by my place. We’ll go out.

Enzo knew that he shouldn’t.

He also knew that he no longer cared. He no longer felt as though it mattered what his father thought of him — he didn’t need the man’s approval.

He would live the life he wanted. He had tried to live according to what the crown wanted from him, and just look how that had turned out.

The result couldn’t possibly have been any worse.

So he was done trying. He was going to live as he liked from now on, and his father would just have to deal with that.

Really, he should be thanking me on bended knee. This could have been a huge scandal for him to deal with — his son’s baby with an un-vetted American woman! Now he can just give her some money and make the whole thing disappear quietly.

He wondered whether that was what Hailey had wanted all along. If she had come here to do a job, maybe she had seen an opportunity to earn herself a little bonus. Maybe she had realized that by getting pregnant, she would be able to make the crown pay her to go away.

It made him feel sick to even think such a thing. How could that be true of Hailey, the woman he had come to know and care so much about? She couldn’t have done that.

But he didn’t know her. That was the whole problem.

He wanted to believe that she was who he had thought she was, but it would have been irresponsible and foolish to put his faith in that.

She had been lying to him the whole time.

Nothing she had ever told him had been true — it had all been a part of her con, designed to win his trust when she knew perfectly well that she didn’t deserve to have it.

“I’m glad you were able to come out tonight,” Luca said happily as he and Enzo took seats at their favorite bar. “I didn’t think I was going to see you again until after the coronation — and maybe not even then, given the leash your father likes to keep you on.”

“Oh, stop it.” Enzo couldn’t keep a scowl off his face. “I’m not on a leash.”

“I’m not trying to be rude,” Luca said. “But he does control you. I mean, be honest, that’s why you were off at the resort, right?

He wanted you out of town until the coronation.

That’s why you’re coming back now — because you need to be here while he assumes the throne.

I just thought for sure that he’d forbid you from doing anything fun. ”

“He doesn’t have the power to forbid me.”

“Sure he does,” Luca said. “He’s the king.”

“Not yet,” Enzo said. “Right now, he’s only the acting king.”

“I don’t think that would stop him from trying to order you around, though,” Luca said. “And he’s powerful enough to issue threats.”

“He is the reason I went out to Vista Piccola,” Enzo conceded. “He didn’t want me around. You had it right.”

“I kept thinking you were going to ask me to break you out.”

“I thought about it,” Luca told him. “But every time I was about to pull the trigger, something held me back. I guess I thought that maybe if I went along with what my father wanted for once, when I got back, he would actually respect me. But I should have known that was foolish.”

“Uh-oh. Something happen between the two of you?”

“We got into it again, as usual,” Enzo said. “It’s not a big deal. But I think I’ve learned my lesson about trying to impress him. It’s impossible to do, so why should I bother?”

“That’s more like it,” Luca said heartily. “Glad to hear you’ve finally come to your senses. I say we drink in celebration!”

He signaled the bartender, who came over, and ordered a whole row of shots for the two of them. Lifting the first one, he grinned. “To giving up on our fathers’ expectations for us.”

“You’re drinking to that as well?”

“Oh, yeah. For sure. My father can’t get enough of pushing me into his business ventures. Every other day, he’s offering me some job.”

“And you don’t want to take them? I thought you liked the idea of working for your father,” Enzo said. He’d always had the impression that Luca thought it was a perk to be able to get a job at his father’s company, not to have to seek out employment on his own.

But Luca rolled his eyes. “Why would I want to spend day after day in board meetings or worrying about profit margins? Would you want to do that? I can’t think of anything more boring.”

“So then, what do you want to do?” Enzo asked.

Luca picked up another shot and lifted it. “I don’t know,” he said.

Enzo took a shot as well and threw it back.

His head was beginning to feel pleasantly foggy, and the sharp anguish that had settled over him upon hearing about Hailey’s deception felt as if it had happened to someone else.

That was a blessed relief. “You’ve got to do something,” he said.

“I mean, you can’t just spend your life in bars. ”

“Oh, for God’s sake — did your father tell you that?”

Enzo scowled. “Don’t be rude.”

“Sorry. It’s just that I’m not used to you talking like this. Usually you’d be the first one to chime in about how annoying our fathers’ expectations are. Now you’re telling me to get a job?”

“I’m not telling you to do anything. I’m just saying that if you don’t want to work for your father, you must have something else in mind.”

Luca laughed. “I just want to enjoy life,” he said. “I guess, if I could do whatever I wanted, I’d go out on my yacht and live there. I’d bring a bunch of friends and invite a lot of women. I mean, that sounds like a pretty good time, right?”

“Living on a boat with a bunch of random women? You don’t see yourself ever settling down?”

Luca stared at him. “What happened to you at that resort?” he asked. “Settling down? Why would I want to do that?”

Enzo’s head spun. On one hand, he knew that this was exactly the way he and Luca had always spoken to each other. They had always talked about life as something that was to be enjoyed, first and foremost. Anything that felt like responsibility was best avoided.

But now, when he thought of his friend’s fantasy life, all he could think was that it made no sense. It was no way to live. Spending day after day, night after night, with a bunch of random women? Women who meant nothing at all to you?

It wasn’t real, what Hailey and I had. I shouldn’t long for it.

No, it hadn’t been real. He knew that. But it had felt like something real, and that feeling had changed the way Enzo thought about the world. If it was possible to have something so special with a woman, he realized, that was what he wanted. One-night stands weren’t going to satisfy him anymore.

But what if it wasn’t possible to have something like what he’d believed he had had with Hailey?

He had never experienced that kind of bond with another person before, and to discover that it wasn’t actually special and rare, the way he had believed it to be, was heartbreaking.

What if he had been set up to crave something he would never actually be able to find?

The thought was crushing. He picked up a third shot and drank it down, followed by a fourth.

Luca was watching him closely. “Are you all right?”

“Sure,” Enzo said gruffly. “Fine. Why?”

“You’re going at those shots pretty hard.”

“We came out to have fun, didn’t we?”

“Sure,” Luca said. “But you don’t look like you’re having that good of a time, truth be told, Enzo.”

A half-truth would have to suffice. There was simply no way he was going to confess his feelings for Hailey to his friend.

Luca was a good person, but Enzo saw now that he would never understand this.

If he found out that Enzo had gotten someone pregnant, he would probably just say it was a lucky thing she hadn’t turned out to want a serious commitment.

Enzo thought he might lose his mind if he had to try to conceive of Hailey’s deception as good luck for him.

“I got into it with my father,” he said. “That’s all it is.”

“Well, let’s cut loose,” Luca said. “You’ll feel better with a few more of those in you, I think.”

“Yeah, that’s the idea.” Enzo took another shot. “You’d better order some more.”

“Now it’s a party.” Luca’s tone was delighted. “I haven’t spent time with you in far too long, Enzo. We need to make sure we don’t let that kind of time go by again. I don’t have as much fun with anybody else as I do with you. You know how to have a good time.”

He pushed another shot to Enzo.

Enzo knew that he should slow down. He should split these up with a glass of water, maybe some bar nuts. He should give them time to take effect, so he could see how drunk he was before continuing.

But all he could think of was the fact that Hailey’s name no longer made him feel sick to his stomach.

He could think of her — for now — without wanting to crawl into bed and pull the blankets up over his head, without wanting to get in a car and drive over to her hotel and come up with words to explain to her just how much she had hurt him.

He could think of the child he knew she was carrying as something abstract — a story that was almost funny — instead of as the worst betrayal he had ever suffered in his life.

He threw back the shot and smiled at Luca. “I wouldn’t worry,” he said. “After the way things went between my father and I today, he’s going to have his work cut out if he ever wants me to worry about making a good impression on the family again.”

“Hear, hear,” Luca said happily, raising a shot of his own. “Maybe we can get someone to shoot pictures of us tonight. Get into some magazine and really stick it to them.”

Enzo knew that he would regret it in the morning if he were to do something like that.

But right now, the idea sounded great.

“You’re on,” he said, and grabbed another drink.