Page 27 of Pregnant After One Forbidden Night

She followed the flow of the architecture around a bend and partial wall to step into a home chef’s wonderland.

Like the bedroom she had woken up in, the enormous chef’s kitchen faced out toward the cliffs, with a wall of windows providing a panoramic view from pretty much every potential cooking and preparation area.

An enormous kitchen island dominated the center of the room, situated in front of a massive range and oven that were equipped with a restaurant hood.

The sink was sunken into the island and everywhere else was clear, open counter space—miles of it, in fact. The glossy marble was thick and ivory colored with a subtle beige pattern. None of the standard countertop appliances one might expect marred the clean expanse. She suspected that they existed in abundance, however, but were merely hidden amongst the myriad of unique custom cabinets.

As incredible as it was, however, what struck her most about the grandiose kitchen was that it was made to be cooked in. It wasn’t a showpiece, and it wasn’t a sterile professional workspace tucked away from view where the staff worked like in many of the homes of the super-wealthy she had visited in service to the queen.

This kitchen was meant to be the place where the people who called the place home gathered and created memories.

It was the height of luxury, and yet it was also somehow normal—wholesome, even—and to find it right smack-dab in the middle of the home of one of Cyrano’s wealthiest aristocrats and oldest families... Jenna would not have expected it.

Even more astounding, Sebastian leaned against the counter, fingers deftly typing something into his phone.

In the kitchen’s morning light, which was extensive and bright since this room—like all the others she had been inside—had floor-to-ceiling panoramic landscape windows, he looked fresh and handsome. Certainly nothing like the kind of man who might sneak into your room and ask you to run away from home. Nor did he particularly look like the kind of man who might ask you to make love with him in a library.

Instead, he was tan and tall and green-eyed, his blond hair tidy, his jeans and button-up relaxed despite the fact that everything he wore was perfectly tailored to his long, lean frame. He was stunning and wealthy in equal measure—the kind of man who could look impeccably put together with almost no effort—but here in his own kitchen he was approachable, just a regular man somehow, as if this were an ordinary morning and she were just now joining him for breakfast after spending extra time luxuriating in bed.

The vision her eyes presented was all a lie, though. It had to be. The aura of normalcy that clung to him, the way that coming upon him in the morning felt more comfortable than even returning to her own childhood home—none of that coincided with the enigmatic denizen she knew from the city.

But she didn’t really know him at all, did she?

She was going to have to get that through her head before she did something even more foolish than she already had with him. Coming with him had been about getting to know the father of her child, not falling for a man she’d had no business being with in the first place. And certainly not on the first day.

Shaking her head, she chastised herself mentally.

He looked about as normal as Adonis masquerading as a human man, and the sense of comfort and rightness was just her hormones and desires switching on at the sight of a man she was obviously infatuated with.

A mother didn’t let those kinds of urges guide her, though. Particularly not when the man in question wanted everything his way and was good at making it happen.

Armed with the reminder, she dared look again.

His jeans were a dark wash and at their base, his high-quality leather work boots looked supple from use and care.

She had never seen him in jeans and boots.

Did wealthy city people wear jeans and boots? Only eight weeks from living in the palace and it seemed she couldn’t remember any of the wealthy people she had ever seen.

There was only Sebastian.

His shirt was a buttery-soft green flannel, a shade darker than his jaded dragon eyes.

All but the top button of his shirt were closed. There was nothing seductive about the shirt, and yet her mouth watered. His unexpectedly muscled forearms felt indecent, revealed by his rolled-up sleeves.

She sucked in an audible breath, her resolutions forgotten in the face of the full power of him in the light of day.

He looked up from the device in his hand.

Their eyes locked and the jolt of electricity and understanding was as bad as it always was, worse even.

Attraction was not what lived between them. The word was too soft and flirty. Whatever it was that existed between them was thick and demanding and relentless. They hooked into one another and squeezed and tangled like ivy until she was sure they would both be lost in a vortex of green.

He stole her breath, her body instantly coming alive, making her wish she’d chosen something else besides the airy dress to wear—twelve layers of something else.

The same intensity of need burned in his stare, perhaps ever greater now than it had that day in the library, the dangerous green orbs dancing with the shapes of all the dirty things it was clear he still wanted to do to her.

Searching for the frayed strands of her intentions with no luck and irritated by everything delicious and fascinating about him, she snapped, “Good morning.”

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