Cora looked terrible. Despite her assertion that she was fine, she was pale and she was slim and the spark that he’d come to think of as so uniquely her was nowhere to be seen.
He had no idea what he’d wanted to achieve by bullying her into coming with him, but he had about six hours in which to work it out. By the time they landed in Baljaha, he needed some kind of explanation. For his mother, his people, his government—for the world.
But Samir was resolute: Cora Xenakis would marry him, for the sake of his heir. There was no alternative now.
“You saidyou were on the pill.”
About forty minutes after take off, Samir spoke the first words of their flight, and they were impossible to see as anything other than accusatory. “I am.”
“Then—,”
“It’s not perfect. Besides, if the dates my obstetrician gave me are accurate, this more than likely happened on our first night together, when you used protection and I was definitely on contraception.”
He frowned. “So you are now seventeen weeks pregnant?”
She closed her eyes, trying not to remember that first night and how perfect it had been. “Yes.” She looked over his shoulder.
“You do notlookseventeen weeks pregnant.”
“Every pregnancylooksdifferent,” she repeated the obstetrician’s words but with a withering tone.
“To a degree, but surely by now—,”
She gave him an exasperated look then stood, fingers shaking as she caught the excess fabric of her dress and bunched it at her sides, so rather than draping forgivingly over her curves, it showed the change in her shape. Unmistakably, there was the rounding of her stomach and the fullness of her breasts.
Samir’s eyes were locked to her mid-section, his features impossible to read, but he was transfixed.
His concentration had the unfortunate side effect of making her blood simmer and she wasn’t about to be drawn down that path again, so she sat quickly, huffing out a breath.
“Proof enough for you, Your Highness?” And because going on the attack felt far better than the alternative, she continued, “Do you seriously think I’d be deranged enough to lie? To make up a pregnancy? Becausethis,”she gestured to him, and the airplane, “is my idea of fun?”
“Careful, Cora. That sounded awfully close to you saying you loathe me.”
“Oh, you’re going to kiss me every time I express a negative opinion of you? Then you might as well lock your lips to mine for the next three days, Buster, because I’m nowhere near done.”
“That can be arranged.”
She sat up straighter. “No.” She glared at him. “Don’t be such a jerk.”
He glared right back and then, much to Cora’s annoyance, he laughed. “A jerk? That is something I haveneverbeen called.”
“Not that you’re aware of,” she muttered, crossing her arms over her chest. It was a mistake. When she darted a glance in Samir’s general direction, he was staring at her mid-section again, eyes tracing the line of her breasts and then her stomach in a way that made breathing a totally foreign concept.
He looked at her as though he’d never seen anything or anyone more beautiful or more compelling. He stared as though it was physically impossible to look away.
“When did you find out?” He asked, finally, his voice hoarse, his eyes lifting, slowly, to her face.
She swallowed past a lump in her throat, emotions overpowering her. “About a month ago.”
He nodded, assimilating that information. “How?”
“I did a pregnancy test.”
“Why?”
“Because I felt sick.”
“How sick?”