“How did you know I have a headache?” She looked up at him curiously, and Bryan nearly drowned in her enormous gray eyes.
“You were holding your head. How is your stomach?”
“Upset,” she admitted. “I’m not sure if it’s stress or from the drugs.”
“Dammit,” Bryan growled as he strode into the kitchen to get her something for her nausea. No doubt the place was stocked with everything imaginable except for anything that would help them escape. “They knew if they brought you here that I’d have to marry you.”
By kidnapping Shea and bringing her here, his father and Simon could announce her as his chosen…an obvious choice since they’d already had a daughter together. How the hell had Simon known when he hadn’t even found out about Hayden? Bryan was burning with anger. Just the fact that his father had put Shea’s life in danger — not to mention his daughter’s — made him want to strike out at his own sire.
“Excuse me? I’m not marrying you. I hardly know you,” Shea shot back at him.
Bryan came back a few minutes later with a fresh glass of juice and some pills for her stomach. “You don’t have a choice now.” He lifted a brow at her arrogantly. “And we’re connected on a very intimate level, Shea.” She’d had his child for God’s sake. Bryan still couldn’t quite seem to process that fact.
Shea glared at him as she downed the pills and juice he handed her. “I always have choices. I learned that the hard way.”
“Not if you want to keep our daughter safe.” He heaved a sigh as he seated himself in the recliner across from her, completely unconcerned about sitting down on the expensive furniture, even though he was still dressed in his filthy work clothes. “We’re both trapped.”
“What do you mean? Where are we?” Shea asked him anxiously.
“We’re locked in a special tower palace guest room.”
“We’re in the palace?” She sounded horrified. “And this is how you usually treat your guests?”
Only the special ones who we don’t want put in bad accommodations, but who we need confined for a time for political reasons.
“It’s a room we use for visitors who need to be…temporarily detained. We haven’t had much opportunity to use it for the last few centuries. I think my brothers and I spent more time here than any guests. If we were fighting, or had done something that merited punishment, we were confined here when we were young.” They’d made up quickly so they could have their freedom again. Usually a visit to the tower room had bonded them together again to work on getting freed as soon as possible.
“Your father locked you and your brothers up?” Shea asked in a troubled voice.
Bryan shrugged. “As you can see, it isn’t exactly a prison, and it wasn’t much of a hardship to be here. Our confinements didn’t generally last very long. Nanny Moira hated it when any of us were locked in the tower room, and she generally had us out within a few hours.”
“Tell me why we’re here now,” she insisted urgently.
“My guess is because my father wants us to agree to marry. He and Simon both know I can’t let you go now. The Arcano would kill any woman who spurned me.” He didn’t bother to add that he wouldn’t let her go anyway. Not when he knew she’d had his child, an offspring he hadn’t even known about. He admitted to himself silently that his unwillingness to let her go wasn’t solely about his daughter.
I have a daughter, a beautiful child who I don’t even know.
He wasn’t letting Shea take his daughter anywhere, and Shea wasn’t leaving. He’d just found her again. Hayden would take her rightful place as a princess of Rubare Collina, and Shea would become his princess bride. Strangely, those thoughts pleased him enormously.
“That doesn’t make sense to me.”
Bryan proceeded to explain the antiquated customs of his country’s secret feudal society, the history, and the predicament they were in now. He watched Shea’s incredulous expression as he explained why they had to marry.
“This…Arcano society would hurt me and my daughter if I refuse to marry you?” she asked, shaking her head as though she didn’t believe what he was saying.
“Yes.” Bryan hadn’t sugarcoated the details of the danger she and Hayden were in right now. The only thing he’d held back was that she needed to declare her love for him and her loyalty to Rubare Collina in front of Xander, their father, Simon and a few other high-ranking officials to satisfy the Arcano now that there was no council. He’d find a way around that. Xander would swear that she had done the deed. Bryan was certain that his eldest brother knew nothing about what his father and Simon were doing right now.
“That’s crazy. We spent one evening and one night together, a one night stand. You left me before I even woke up the next morning. I never saw you again.” Her voice was angry, but contained a hint of pain.
Bryan frowned at her, wondering if she was still hurt because she assumed he’d never sought her out again. He knew he’d certainly been devastated when he’d found her gone. “I looked for you, Shea. I got an urgent message from my brother telling me to come home because my father was ill. He had pneumonia and was bedridden, but he eventually recovered. I came back to New York a little more than two months later, and you were gone.” He didn’t share how heartbroken he’d been when he’d found she was no longer attending classes in New York, nor had he been able to get any information on where she’d gone. “I didn’t even know your last name. I couldn’t trace where you’d gone.” He’d cursed himself many times in the last five years for not getting at least the smallest amount of information about her, but he’d left in a hurry because he was distracted, worried about his father.
“You came back looking for me?” Her gray eyes grew wide.
He nodded sharply.
“I couldn’t stay in New York. I was on scholarships, but I still couldn’t afford to go to school and support a child. When I found out I was pregnant, I moved back home to Michigan.”
Bryan heard sorrow in her voice. “What happened there?”
“My parents wanted nothing to do with me once they found out I was pregnant. They wanted me to terminate the pregnancy and go back to school. When I told them I couldn’t do it, they washed their hands of me. I had to move out and find a job.” Shea paused and took a shaky breath before continuing. “Do you know how difficult it is to find a job at all without many skills, much less find a job when you’re pregnant?”
“So you had to flaunt your body in this…club? It was the only job you could get?” Bryan was angry, but not at Shea. She had been young, only a junior in college. He’d unknowingly left her all alone to deal with the repercussions of her unexpected pregnancy. He couldn’t help but be proud of her strength, for doing whatever she had to in order to take care of their daughter.
“I finally got a job in a law office as a receptionist. Liz, one of the female attorneys, was brave enough to give a pregnant woman a chance. I’m her secretary now. The club waitressing is a night job to help me pay expenses. My day job doesn’t pay much, but I like it,” Shea said defensively, tugging on the tiny skirt as though it might suddenly lengthen to cover her exposed legs.
&n
bsp; Bryan surveyed the stubborn tilt of her chin and her gray eyes just daring him to say something negative about her extra job. Really…he couldn’t, even though he hated it. Shea was doing what she had to do to survive. He hadn’t been there for her and their daughter, and he hated himself for that. “Men wanted you, propositioned you?” It was inevitable if she dressed like that to work. She was beautiful.
“Yes,” she answered stoically. “But I’ve never taken any of them up on it.”
“Why?” he asked curiously, certain she could have wound many men around her finger, gotten all the money she needed. He’d give much of his fortune to her just for one more night with her himself.
“I’ve only ever given myself to one man, and I did it because I wanted to. I’m not ashamed of what happened the night Hayden was conceived. But I would be ashamed if I shared something like that with a man for money. I couldn’t do it.”
Bryan swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the lump in his throat. She still didn’t regret that night with him? Even after the hard times and work it had caused her? She hadn’t known he was rich, or that he was a prince. She’d just wanted him, which had been one of the many things that made being with Shea the most extraordinary night of his life. “But you lost your dream of being a lawyer. You couldn’t finish school.”
She shot him a defiant look. “I got Hayden, and I wouldn’t trade having her for anything in the world. I’ll finish school someday.”
“You can finish here. We have superior universities and an excellent law school,” Bryan told her huskily. “I’m so sorry, Shea — sorry that you were alone, sorry that I couldn’t find you, and I’m sorry you had our daughter alone without anyone to help you.” He hesitated before he added, “But you’re not alone anymore. We’ll marry as soon as we’re released from this damn tower.”
“And if I refuse? What then? You kill me?” she asked sarcastically. “I want to take my daughter home. I don’t need to marry you. We’ve done fine on our own for years.”
Bryan shook his head, realizing Shea still didn’t understand the gravity of the situation, even though he’d done his best to explain something he didn’t completely comprehend himself. “The Arcano will try to kill us both, and Hayden will be caught in the crossfire. It doesn’t matter where you go, they’ll find you now that you and Hayden have been discovered. We will marry, Shea.”
