His face contracted. “I told you I’m more traditional than you think I am. Not that I want you to give up your career, but I want the whole nine yards, Angel.” When she shook her head, not understanding the reference, he explained, “I want the whole picture. Marriage. Children.”
Angelina caught her breath. Alec wanted children? With her? She had never thought of having children before—children weren’t compatible with the life she’d chosen for herself—and the sudden yearning for a child with Alec’s warm, brown eyes slammed into her from nowhere.
All at once she remembered the look Queen Juliana had given her in the spring when the queen had been expecting her baby and Angelina had made some off-the-cuff remark about never having children of her own. At the time, she hadn’t understood the expression of...was it amusement on the queen’s face? Not exactly. More like her friend knew something Angelina didn’t know, and was humoring her by not saying anything. Not contradicting Angelina’s assertion that her life was perfect just as it was.
Now she understood that expression, and the thoughts behind it. Now it made sense. Because the queen had known that because Angelina had never loved a man, she’d never had the chance to feel this way before. Hadn’t understood.
She did now.
She didn’t need children to complete her, just as she didn’t need a man to complete her. That wasn’t it at all. She hadn’t lied to Alec when she’d told him she’d been happy before he’d come along. Her life had been rewarding. Fulfilling. Enough to make her reasonably content. There were things she would have changed—Caterina, her parents—but not the lack of a man in her life.
That is the key, she realized now—she hadn’t missed having a man in her life because she hadn’t known what she was missing. But now there was Alec, and everything was different, including her. Now the desire for Alec’s child rolled through her like an incoming tide. Inevitable. Not just any man’s child. Only Alec’s, because she loved him and wanted to give him the gift of immortality his child would bring...if he wanted it, too. And incredibly, it seemed, he did.
She touched Alec’s face with a hand that didn’t tremble. “Yes,” she told him, sure in a way she didn’t stop to question.
But Alec did. “Angel, are you sure? Your job—at some point you wouldn’t be able to continue doing it if you get pregnant. I know how much it means to you, and you’re already fighting prejudice here because you’re a woman. If you were pregnant, there’s no way they’d let you—”
She placed her fingers over his lips, stopping his words. “At some point, I could no longer be a bodyguard anyway,” she told him firmly. “As we age, our reflexes slow. Our minds may stay sharp, but that split-second difference in reaction time could be critical to the person we are guarding. I accepted that a long time ago. I am twenty-nine. I told myself I would be a bodyguard only as long as I could stay in peak physical condition. Only that long and no longer. Then I would do something else. Yes, I love my job. But ten years from now...who knows if I will even make it that long?”
She smiled at him. Not a tremulous smile. A smile that conveyed rock-solid assurance in what she was doing. “I have a law degree. Did I ever tell you that? I was a junior prosecutor, but not for long, because when the king ascended the throne, he threw open the gates to something I had long dreamed of but never thought to attain—service to my country in the Zakharian National Forces.
“Then I was tapped for the queen’s security detail. Dream followed dream, and my life was full. But I knew someday I would return to the law—that was always my long-term plan. I would still be serving my country as a prosecutor, and there would be great job satisfaction in bringing evildoers to justice.”
She placed her hands around his face. “It will just be a little sooner than I originally planned, because now there is you, and the life I want to share with you. A life that includes your child.” Her eyes held his, willing him to understand, to believe. “Not just any man’s child, Alec. Yours. Can you understand the difference?”
His eyes were suddenly damp, but he blinked the moisture away. “I can understand the difference,” he told her in the deep voice that never failed to move her. “Because I feel the same way.”
Then he was holding her in a crushing embrace, an embrace she returned. Her heart was full—so full she couldn’t believe she was the same Angelina Mateja who three months ago had never known what love between a man and a woman could be. Who three months ago thought her life was complete. Who three months ago would have scorned to think she would ever give up what she had for something else. Something better. Far, far better. Not trading her job for Alec, but trading her life without him for a life with him.