Page 26 of His Highness's Hidden Heir

Vijay was already starting to catch her, but Magnus reacted in a flash, stepping out to gather her crumpling form. If she’d gained any weight since the last time he’d held her, he didn’t feel it. So much adrenaline was firing through his veins, he could have lifted her over his head and carried her across the continent. She felt no heavier than a long winter coat draped limply over his arms.

“I told you to let me warn her,” Vijay snapped, as Magnus carried her to the sofa. “I’ll get someone.”

“You were taking too long,” Magnus muttered, but the door was already closing.

Patience was not in his wheelhouse. That’s why Magnus had insisted on accompanying Vijay to this clinic. When he’d heard the murmur of her voice beyond the door, he had wanted the answers he’d come here for.

He hadn’t meant to startle her so badly she fainted. He forgot sometimes that he was such a big man. She was tall and lean, but flexible and strong. He had remembered her as assertive and surprisingly adept at rolling with punches.

In his mind, he’d begun to believe she was using this pregnancy as a form of extortion. By the time they’d landed in Zurich, he’d worked himself into seeing her as a threat and arrived ready to fight.

She was pregnant, though. Delicate? As he lifted her head to adjust the cushion beneath it, he noted the soft curve of her cheek, the shadows beneath her eyes.

“Lexi?” He hitched his hip beside hers and set two fingers in her throat where her pulse was strong, if uneven. She was breathing, but her lips were colorless. Her hand was lax when he picked it up.

The door opened and a fresh surge of protectiveness had him standing to face the intruder.

It was a woman in a white lab coat with a stethoscope hung around her neck. Vijay came in behind her and closed the door.

“I’m Dr. Rivera. Can you tell me what happened?” She barely looked at Magnus as she brushed him aside and gave Lexi’s sternum a rub. “Lexi?”

Lexi winced and twitched away from the light that the doctor shone into her eyes.

“It’s Dr. Rivera, Lexi. Are you in pain?”

“No,” she murmured, blinking her eyes open. “What hap—Oh.” She saw Magnus and turned her face to the back of the couch.

“Do you want me to ask these men to leave?” Dr. Rivera asked.

“How many are there?” Lexi looked around, then said sullenly to Vijay, “Are you planning to ambush me with anyone else? My brother? My dead father, perhaps?”

“Don’t be angry with Vijay.” Magnus stayed behind the doctor where he could see that color was returning to her lips. “I wanted to see you and didn’t give him a choice.”

“I’m not giving you a choice, either.” Dr. Rivera straightened and looped her stethoscope behind her neck. “Stay here while I get a wheelchair. I want you in an exam room while we check a few things. Oxygen, glucose. We’ll put the fetal heart monitor on you, to be sure everything is as it should be. No stress please, gentlemen.”

“I apologize, Ms. Alexander,” Vijay said as the doctor left. “This wasn’t how I wanted to handle this. At all.” He glowered at Magnus.

“Leave us,” Magnus said.

No one ever defied him, but Vijay folded his arms and said, “Ms. Alexander?”

“It’s fine. I was going to ask you today if you could contact him for me.” Her voice was quiet and heavy.

As the door closed behind Vijay, Lexi started to sit up.

Magnus pressed her shoulder into the sofa cushion. “The doctor said don’t move.”

“I can sit up.” She tried to brush his hand off her, but he only caught it, keeping the weight of his fingertips against the hollow of her shoulder.

He was still unsettled by her faint. Her cool hand twitched in his grip before she twisted it free. Her brow flexed and she bit her bottom lip, gaze skating toward the back of the sofa again.

Reluctantly, he straightened so they were no longer touching.

“Why did you want to speak to me?” he asked.

Lexi released a humorless choke and looked toward the basketball that was her waistline.

“Mine.” It wasn’t really a question. It was more something that washed through him like a visceral sensation.

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