Page 13 of Twins For His Majesty (Royally Tempted #1)

T HE CITY GLITTERED beneath them, an impressive panorama of ancient buildings with golden lights making it look like something from a fairy tale.

The moon, full, round and shiny, was high in the sky, bathing them in a lustrous light.

The terrace of his apartment in the palace overlooked a private rose garden, and the flowers were heavy with blooms, filling the air with a sweet fragrance.

Or perhaps that was the night-flowering jasmine vine that scrambled up the side of the palace and across the stone balustrades?

The table had been set for two, decorated with candles and flowers, like some kind of romantic restaurant.

Romance, though, was the last thing on either of their minds.

Phoebe had changed into a pair of jeans and a tee-shirt—as Octavio had unceremoniously announced, all her worldly possessions had indeed been invasively handled by his staff and brought to the palace shortly after she’d returned.

Though it hadn’t been the fault of any of his security team, she couldn’t help but glare at them as they carried her goods into the luxurious suite and began to unpack.

‘I can do that myself!’ she’d exclaimed with heat in her cheeks.

How could she ever get used to living like this? Phoebe wasn’t someone who wanted another person to do her bidding. She wasn’t comfortable with the idea of being waited on. She’d taken care of herself—and then her mother—for as long as she could remember.

Dinner was no different. The moment she sat down, a servant appeared to place a napkin across her lap, and another poured sparkling water into her glass, while a third explained the meal to them.

Octavio barely batted an eyelid, showing how ordinary this was for him.

Though she doubted he’d shared a meal with a pregnant ex-lover at the palace before.

He gestured to the food. ‘What would you like?’

Her eyes dropped to the dishes. They all looked excellent, but her stomach was too twisty to think of eating.

She glanced at the line of servants across the terrace.

‘I thought you wanted to talk,’ she said between clenched teeth, her lips forced into an approximation of a smile for the benefit of their audience.

He arched a brow in silent enquiry, so she blinked sideways more obviously, indicating the staff.

‘Ah.’ Octavio nodded once, then turned to the uniformed group. ‘Leave us.’

Two simple words and they began to file away in a perfectly formed line.

‘Better?’

Her lips pulled to the side. ‘Marginally, but that’s not saying much.’

He didn’t respond. ‘Tell me, how did your thinking go?’

She swallowed past a lump in her throat, reached for her drink and took a sip. ‘I don’t want to marry you.’

His eyes flashed to hers, so she lifted a hand to forestall anything he might say.

‘But I understand why you feel it’s necessary.’

He was silent.

Phoebe looped a finger around a clump of hair, twisting it over her shoulder as she searched for the right words.

‘I don’t want to do this alone.’ She bit into her lip.

‘I mean, I don’t particularly want to do it with you either, but I have to admit, there’s something appealing about knowing I’ll have support.

Even if it’s just this.’ She gestured to the palace.

‘I mean, not having to worry about paying rent and buying food and getting a job when the babies are still young…’

‘You would never have to worry about any of these things,’ he confirmed slowly.

She massaged her lip with her teeth. ‘My mother was alone. Money was always tight. It’s hard.

I’ve seen it, I’ve lived it. I know it’s not exactly the best reason to agree to marry someone, but at the same time, it’s not the worst reason.

You can offer our babies something I never could.

I don’t think it would be right to turn my back on that. ’

He sat back in his chair, watching her without speaking.

‘And if you weren’t the King, I’d fight you on the necessity of marriage. Lots of people raise kids together and don’t get married. We could work out a way to do exactly that.’

‘For me, that is not possible.’

‘I just said I understand that,’ she replied sharply.

He took a sip of his water.

‘So, let’s talk about it.’ Her voice was tentative, thoughtful.

‘Aren’t we doing precisely that?’

She shook her head. ‘I mean our wedding, our marriage. Talk to me about how it would all work.’

‘The wedding is not something you need to think about. The palace would organise everything. You only need to show up, repeat the right lines, sign on the dotted line and it’s done.’

Her heart turned cold. ‘Wow. That’s every little girl’s dream right there.’

‘Did you dream of a big white wedding, Phoebe?’ he asked, and the question lacked the acerbity she’d become used to from him.

‘I—’ Once upon a time she had. Her eyes flitted sideways. ‘Is it possible that my personal life isn’t going to end up in the tabloids?’

‘Not even remotely possible, no.’

‘So you might as well hear it from me. I was engaged.’

Surprise flashed across his features. ‘That’s not ideal, but we can cope.’

‘Okay, for starters, that’s incredibly hypocritical, given that up until a couple of hours ago you were also planning to marry someone else. And secondly…it gets worse.’

He made a noise that might have been a garbled half-laugh and might have been a groan. ‘Of course it does. Go on.’

‘My fiancé was married to someone else.’ Her voice was so calm, so cold, even though she was telling him something that had shattered her into a billion tiny pieces. ‘They had two babies during the three years we were together. I had no idea, obviously.’

He swore softly under his breath, his eyes scanning hers, and for a moment—the briefest of moments—he was human again, not some angry royal automaton trying to manoeuvre her into a cold marriage of convenience.

‘You really didn’t know?’

She stared at him, aghast. ‘Do you honestly need to ask that?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know you. I thought I did, but this—’ He gestured to her stomach.

She angled her face away, frustration coursing through her. ‘How dare you?’

‘I’ll take that as a no.’

‘I had absolutely no idea. I thought he loved me. I was planning the damned wedding.’ She shivered. ‘I thought I’d found my Prince Charming, and my life was finally, finally going to work out. I was wrong.’ Another shiver.

She didn’t see the emotions that flitted across his face, nor the way a hand tightened into a fist in his lap.

‘How did you find out?’

‘That doesn’t matter. It’s not likely to come out.’

‘Does anyone else know?’

‘Well, my ex, for one.’

‘He’s not likely to reveal this to anyone. Who else?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t tell anyone the reason we broke up, but I told people we were engaged. So that’s probably going to get out there, and after that, it’s not hard to unpick the rest of it. God, I should probably tell him this first, so he has time to prepare his wife.’

‘You are seriously thinking of how to mitigate that bastard’s inconvenience after what he did to you?’

‘Not for his sake, but for his wife’s. She was just as innocent as I was.’

He swore. ‘Ignore them. They don’t matter to you. If his wife wakes up and realises what he’s like, then he will have to deal with it, and she’ll be better off.’

Phoebe’s stomach swirled.

‘What else?’ His voice was gruff.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Is there anything else I should know? Anything that will hit the papers and read like a scandal?’

‘Anything else that makes me a liability, you mean?’ she enquired sharply, and then sighed. ‘This is so far from what you imagined, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

Her heart dropped. ‘I bet you wish we’d never met.’

She’d said the words flippantly, but the longer the silence stretched between them, the more she realised she needed him to contradict her. She needed him to reassure her.

And he did, finally, but not as Phoebe wanted. ‘I’ll never wish that. For a long time, the order of succession has plagued me, and now this. Within months, two legitimate heirs will be born. Believe it or not, apart from having to sort out some logistics, this is good news for me.’

It was nothing to do with Phoebe and it was nothing to do with their babies as people, it was all about the power-brokering and importance of an heir to the King.

‘Great,’ she said, the word dripping with sarcasm. ‘Well, that’s pretty much the only scandal in my life. Everything else has been squeaky clean. But you were right that day… I’m definitely not someone who’s been groomed in any way whatsoever to become a queen.’

‘We can take care of that. You’ll undertake lessons here—in protocol, history, languages, politics. By the time the babies arrive, you’ll be every bit as regal as if you were born a princess.’

Her heart was heavy with hurt.

She wasn’t good enough for him. He wasn’t the kind of man to take her, just as she was.

He wanted to change her, to improve her, to make her more suitable for him and this role.

She’d been a cleaner and he’d used her for sex, he’d propositioned her for more sex, and now he was trying to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse.

He was expecting her to play a part, to sell this.

At least, that’s what it felt like to Phoebe.

She tried not to show how offended she was, but she knew her eyes were likely awash with pain. If he saw it, he didn’t say anything to ease the feeling.

‘I have two press releases to show you.’

She went very still. Octavio pulled a couple of pieces of paper from his pocket and slid them across the table. Phoebe picked them up and read the first one: