Naming… A boy to be named. His boy. Hisson. All Gabriel seemed to hear now was a high-pitched whistle in his ears.
“Do you need a paper bag?” Evelyne asked. When he stared over at her in confusion, she shrugged. “I saw this funny old TV show where someone hyperventilated into a paper bag.”
“I am not hyperventilating,” he ground out.
“Close.”
“Evelyne, this is a mist—”
“Do not finish that sentence,” she said fiercely, skirting the counter and stalking toward him. “I will not have anything bad said about my child.Ever. He will be loved and treated with kindness. Always. And he will never, ever, notoncebe made to feel as though he was a mistake. He will never be a mistake to me, no matter how you feel about it.”
Gabriel wanted to tell her it was impossible to ensure a child wasalwaystreated with love and kindness, but she looked so fierce, with her arm curved around her belly. In a strange, blinding moment he knew she would be a good mother. She would protect the child—their child—in all the ways she had not been protectedandall the ways she had.
And what would he be?
A father. He did not know how to wrap his head around this. His life had been nothing but skating the surface of anything so important asfatherhoodsince he’d been eighteen. Only Evelyne had taken him back under dangerous old waters.
The things he would do for her without a second thought, the violence he would enact throughout the world to keep her safe. Perhaps he would never turn it on her, on their child, but he had the potential to be an echo of King Enzo all the same. Areminder.
What would a child do to him? What would that kind of love and devotion create inside him?
It was terrifying. Overwhelming. He needed to somehow keep this…separate.
Why was she always overwhelming him when he hadlearnedfor years to fight against anything that might wave over him and crush him?
But he looked at her and felt endlessly crushed. Not just by thischild.
How could she be more beautiful than when he’d left her? How could the obsession run so deep that cold turkey had not staved off this destructive need? She waspregnant, ripe with child, and he wanted to touch every inch of her, hear her pant his name again.
Which was no doubt incredibly inappropriate. Obsession and destructive need. He could not be destructive with a child’s life at stake. He needed to focus on the practicalities. On what must be done.
Nother.
“I have a plane waiting, Evelyne. If there is anything you want or need, I will collect it for you. But we must hurry.”
She cocked her head, studying him. He couldn’t possibly read her mind. Didn’t want to, atall.
“I can get my own things. Pregnancy is not fragility.” But she did not make a move to get her things. She continued to study him and went back to eating her sandwich. When she finally spoke, the question was one that he was trying to avoid thinking about.
“What do you think Alexandre will say?”
Gabriel could not begin to guess. There would be no approval, no celebrations, certainly, even if he somehow fixed this so Alexandre did not know about the six-month abandonment. Alex would notapprove.
So Gabriel had to find some way to ensure it. Practicalities. Legalities. He was good at both these things. They were part of his job. How could he use his expertise to make this all right?
The only way Alexandre would even begin to accept this were if certain…legalities were in place. It was not what Gabriel wanted, but he would have to make it work somehow.
Without destroying them all.
“If we take the personal out of it, you are the princess. A baby out of wedlock will be frowned upon,” he said, knowing he sounded stiff and not being able to do anything about it. “Not just by Alexandre, but by the kingdom as a whole.”
“Are you suggesting we marry, Gabriel?”
She said it like a joke.
It wasn’t a joke. “I am not suggesting. I am stating that we will be married, Evelyne. Now, in fact. Before we return to Alis.”
Evelyne stood stock-still, watching him as he moved into action. He disappeared and returned with a laptop bag. He pulled out the computer, sat at her kitchen table and began to…work.
