“He’s closer in age to me than you are.” She had no idea if she had anything in common with the preschool teacher, or not. Emma hadn’t allowed him to get close enough to find out. Even as a friend.
“Mishka has grandparents, an aunt, two uncles. We will bring them all into his life. I promise you.”
“But he should have had other people all along.”
“Stop this. Emma, your tears...no.” Kon sounded nearly panicked. “You will stop crying and worrying about the past. Mishka is a well-adjusted, happy child. Stop beating yourself up.”
She’d never heard him less than fully confident. Emma would have laughed at him instructing her to stop crying if she could have.
He was so arrogant and so very clearly out of his depth right then.
“But look how he is looking to you for reassurance now.” It shamed her to admit, but that still hurt.
“Because you have allowed it. Your love for our son has enabled you to see beyond my monumental mistakes and allow me into his life. You gave him a father and now he has both of us to give him security, but only because your generous heart made that possible.”
Konstantin did not know if he was saying the right things. He only knew he could not stand to see his Emma hurting like this.
He wasn’t such an oblivious fool that he did not see how hard it was for her to share their son with him. Emma and Mikhail had been their own little family since his birth. Konstantin fully expected his son to go through some adjustments learning to share his mom’s attention and affection as well.
But Konstantin was up to the task.
He was in regular contact with not only his family, but also Mikhail’s counselor, seeking advice. Only no wise words could prepare him for this moment when the woman he wanted to be his wife cried in his arms because she thought she hadn’t been a good enough single mom.
“You have been strong when Mishka needed strength. You gave him tenderness when he needed it. He lacked for nothing, do you hear me?” Konstantin willed her to believe him.
A watery laugh erupted from her and she gave him a wry look, no less effective for the tears standing in her beautiful blue eyes. “Just because you say it doesn’t make it so.”
“I am sure it does. I am a prince, if you did not know it.”
Another choky laugh sounded. “I know it.”
He considered those two moments of shaky laughter some of his best work.
Her fingers kneaded his chest in what he was sure was unconscious movement without any of the sexual intentions his body was reading into the action.
No thoughts of football stats or spreadsheet formulas could cool the ardor growing in Konstantin’s body. He had craved this woman since the moment she walked out of his life. That it had been at his insistence did not matter.
No woman he had been with since had ever fulfilled that craving, or made him miss Emma any less.
She shifted in his lap and then stilled. “Kon?”
She could not know how much pleasure he derived by her calling him Kon like she used to. He wasn’t about to point it out either.
Contrary woman that she was, she would probably make herself stop doing it.
“Ignore it. I cannot control my body’s base reaction to you, but that does not mean I have to act on it.” He was no hormonal adolescent.
Tension that had nothing to do with Emma’s meltdown thrummed between them. Heated sexual desire charged the air around them so much he would not have been surprised to see actual sparks.
“That’s not what you used to say.” Her beautiful blue eyes were filled with feminine mystery.
Which only added to the ardent need growing in him to have her back in his bed, but even more important, she was no longer crying.
“I was an ass, pressing you into a physical relationship you weren’t ready for. I’m sorry.” It was an apology long overdue.
“No apology needed. For that anyway. Make no mistake, I was ready for it.” She pressed her fingertip to his lips when he went to interrupt. “Listen, Kon, I may not have been ready for what came after, but I wanted you every bit as much as you wanted me.”
“I knew what was coming, but you did not.”