For Duty's Sake by Lucy Monroe Page A

We’re hours too early for dinner.”
    She swallowed convulsively on the word dinner.
    â€œNo, we are at your apartment building. I originally had planned to give you time to get ready for our date.”
    â€œMore like, you intended to seduce me before dinner and hoped to cement the romantic proposal over dessert.” The words should have been mocking, but she merely sounded resigned.
    â€œYou think you know me.” She was wrong. On the proposal over dessert part.
    He’d planned to woo her in person for two weeks before popping the question, so to speak.
    â€œWhat?” she asked. “It would have been a good plan, if unsuccessful.”
    â€œYou do not think I could seduce you?”
    â€œI’m positive you could. Even feeling like my stomach is a jumping board for little green men right now, but I still wouldn’t have said yes to your proposal.”
    â€œBut you will now, because of the pregnancy.”
    â€œNeither of us has a choice. This baby deserves better than to be shunted to the side as the unacknowledged offspring to a future king.”
    â€œI would never refuse to acknowledge my child.”
    â€œYou know what I mean.”
    â€œNo, in fact, I do not.”
    â€œNever mind. This arguing is making me even more nauseated than usual.”
    The sickly pallor to her skin lent truth to her claim. He mentally shook himself. Now was not the time for recriminations. What was done, was done.
    He had been right earlier; she clearly needed taking care of.
    â€œThen we will not argue.”
    â€œThank you.” She sighed again, letting her eyes close as she seemed to concentrate on her breathing.
    When the driver opened the door, Zahir wasted no time exiting and then leaning back inside to help Angele alight from the car. Once she’d cleared the vehicle, he bent and lifted her into his arms.
    She gasped. “What are you doing?”
    Flashbulbs went off and he knew this picture would show up in the media sooner than later.
    â€œI am caring for you. You clearly need looking after.”
    â€œThe papers are going to have a field day with speculation accompanying those shots.”
    â€œThey’ll have more than enough juicy tidbits of truth to publish over the next weeks.”
    â€œWe’re not going public with the…” She looked around and closed her mouth.
    He carried her toward the building allowing his bodyguard to go inside first and the rest of the detail to bring up their rear. “These things have a way of making it to the light. Better to announce the happy event than scramble to respond when some tabloid does.”
    She let her head fall onto his shoulder. “I don’t want to.”
    â€œWe will talk about it later,” he said in his newly formed determination not to cause her stress with further disagreements.
    Â 
    Angele sat at the bistro-style table in her kitchen and watched with bemusement as Zahir efficiently prepared a pot of peppermint tea.
    â€œYou are awfully comfortable in the kitchen for a Crown Prince,” she observed, happy to focus on anything but recent revelations.
    She’d done a lot of facing reality and growing up over the past weeks. Realizing she was pregnant at all, but much less with the probable heir to the Zohrian throne, was all the catalyst she’d needed to shed the last of her naiveté. She’d been shocked by her own joy, even in the face of all this pregnancy would mean.
    Like she’d told Zahir, the baby came first, but more than that, she already loved her child and always would.
    Angele would do what needed doing to make sure her child’s life was all it should be, but that didn’t mean she wanted to talk about it right then. She was just starting to feel something other than nauseated.
    Zahir shrugged as he finished pouring the boiling water through the infuser into the teapot. “According to my mother, the inability to do something as basic as