She turned back toward the dining room as she spoke, prepared to return to the beautiful breakfast that Rafida had laid out for her, when the older woman reached out to take her hand and stop her.
“I don’t think you want to go back in there, Princess.”
Frowning at the title—she’d tried to get Rafida to stop calling her that—Rita said, “Of course I do. Whatever is going on with me is my problem, not breakfast’s. Your food looks delicious as ever.”
A smile growing on her face, Rafida shook her head. “Not a problem, a pregnancy. I’m no doctor, but I’m certain when I say that you’re going to have a baby.”
For a moment nothing processed. Rita didn’t breathe. No thoughts crossed her mind. No maternal warnings, voices or images rushed in to guide or provide understanding.
Just a moment of utter blankness.
But like the disappearance of the shoreline before a tsunami, the silence was no reprieve but a dire warning of the wave to come.
There came a rumbling and roaring in her veins and ears, the sound of the abrupt transforming of the very landscape of her life.
Thoughts whipped around in her mind like whirlwinds, further churning the already-roiling incoming tide.
Her husband had gotten her pregnant.
At her side, Rafida beamed, her reaction the standard and congratulatory joy for an expecting newly married couple.
Like nails on a chalkboard, it raked against Rita’s nerves.
She and Jag were not a joyfully married young couple.
Rafida has to be aware of that, Rita thought crossly. She saw them interact—ornot, rather.
There was no way she could be as deeply embedded into their household as she was and not know that it was purely business beneath their romantic facade.
Her husband’s absolute lack of meaningful feeling toward her had to be obvious for anyone who had eyes to see.
And this was the same man she was going to have a child with.
That she was married to.
She had given up her anonymity and her country for the chance to change the world but instead she wound up pregnant, abroad and alone.
And she didn’t even know where her husband was.
She was thousands of miles away from her home base and now she had become responsible for another being’s life—a being whose father had already made it clear that he didn’t want things getting awkward between them.
With the emerging development of her pregnancy, there was no way to prevent things from getting extremely awkward.
They were going to have a baby.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ITWAS2:00A.M.when Jag returned to the palace, walking the halls quietly on his way to the room that was his to sleep in had he ever decided to.
In the two months that had passed since he’d made love to Rita, he had become such an expert at keeping busy that he had finally hit a wall in which he had nothing more to do. Pregnancy was not his concern—she would have surely cared about a condom had that been a possibility—but the experience nonetheless harried his every spare minute as if he were a young man worried about getting a girl in a bad situation. He’d used that energy to drive his recent efficiency until that well ran dry, too.
Considering all of the follow-up necessary for an event as large as the exhibition, and everything that was needed to take down a corrupt king, he should have felt triumphant.
Instead, it had only further complicated matters.
He had nothing left to distract himself with. And with nothing left to distract him, his mind invariably returned to Rita.
And tonight, he returned in person. But only to sleep beneath the same roof. He would not sleep with her again. He had tasted her forbidden fruit once and was already struggling with withdrawals. Twice and he would surely go past the point of no return.