Flicka nodded. “I know.”
“You do?”
“I’ve lived with a walking target my whole life. Wulfram was always prepared to die. Every day, he raised me like it was our last day together. You’re acting the same way.”
Raphael sucked in a deep breath and said, “I knowyou want to get pregnant because you think Pierre will leave you alone, but I might not be around. I don’t want to leave you with a child to raise without me. It’s the only thing that would make this worse.”
She leaned in and whispered, nearly against his lips, “It’s not just to make Pierre leave me alone. It’s because I want to have a child with you. I know what’s going on. You’re looking atthe world with that same dark fatalism that Wulf has borne his entire life. I know what that looks like, and I know how it feels. I’ve always been a target, too, as no one has allowed me to forget for even one minute. Between my mother and Wulfram and you, I have been aware that the world has always been gunning for me. I don’t want to live that way anymore.”
“This is different,” Raphael argued.“This is a specific threat.”
She shook her head, but she was smiling. “Every day is a specific threat. Every day, the jackal might walk out of the crowd and find my back with his bullets.”
“But there’s a reason,” he said.
Flicka squeezed his hands. “Wulfie has finally looked up from the grave under his feet. He fell in love with Rae, and he married her. They’re having a baby as if nothing inthe world will ever go wrong. He’s really alive, and he’sliving.You saw him when we were atSchloss Southwestern.He’s happy for the first time in his life, not desperate. He’s fighting death instead of walking into it, because he has something to live for.”
“But I might not make it out,” he said. “I don’t want to make it worse.”
Flicka said, “We’re all going to die someday, but not today.If anything were to happen to you, I want to raise our child. I want to know them and love them, even if I have to do it alone. I want them in my life.”
Her words jolted straight to his heart.
Raphael dropped her hands and stepped forward. He slid one of his hands around her waist, the tiny beads of her wedding gown rough against his palm, and he cupped her satiny cheek with the other beforefinger-combing her silken hair behind her ear to stall for time so his throat would open.
She said, “I love you, and I want to have our child.”
Pain creased Raphael’s chest. His eyes burned.
He forced words through his throat. “Your child would be beautiful, and brilliant, and have your dark green eyes and your devious talent for escape.”
She smiled. “Our child will be tall, and strong, andhonorable, and as pure as the alpine snow. They’ll be a Swiss hero who could earn a mountaineering badge and rescue people who were in mortal danger. They’ll be protective of the people they love, and they’ll live a long, happy life.”
“As long as they aren’t in finance,” Raphael murmured to her. “Tell them to stay away from Geneva Trust. Tell them not to listen to my father, even if it seemslike the only way. Tell them to listen to their mother because she’s the strongest and wisest person I’ve ever known, so they’ll live a long, happy life.”
Flicka’s eyes fluttered closed, and her lips parted.
Raphael ducked his head and brushed his lips over hers, a first kiss to start the night.
Her lithe body melted against his, soothing the pain in his heart.
He pulled her closer and wovehis fingers into her hair, feeling every moment.
If this was their last night together or if Raphael did die sometime soon, he wanted to treasure their little time left, and he wanted the night they conceived their child to be as beautiful as his wife.
He fit his mouth to hers and caressed her with his lips and tongue until her body moved in his arms, and then he carried her to the bedroom inthe hotel suite.
Her weight in his strong arms was nothing, but her body warmed his chest through his dark suit. He laid her down on the bed and climbed in beside her.
The brightness in her green eyes was already turning misty with longing, and he held himself back from stripping off her clothes and taking her right there.
She touched his cheek. “You look so serious.”
He said, “I have alwaysloved you.”
“I know, Raphael.”
“When you were little, I was your protector.” He felt himself smile at her, though he was breathless. “When you insisted that I look at you that night in London, I loved you as a man loves a woman from that very first night, from that very first kiss. I want you to know I have always loved you.”
