Page 12 of The Prince's Pregnant Secretary

He handed her the water, watched her drink it. She murmured a thank-you, handed him back the glass, then frowned as he pressed the test into her hand. He hadn’t thought it possible for her face to turn any paler, but any color she’d regained disappeared as her eyes widened before flying up to meet his gaze.

His face settled into what Clara had once called his “ice mask.” Frozen, she’d said, like his features had been carved from granite by the devil.

“You lied to me. So,” he said as he sat down on the ottoman in front of the chair and put his hands on the armrests, caging her in, “we need to make some decisions, Miss Stephenson.”

She swallowed hard but didn’t look away. He despised the flicker of admiration in his chest. She didn’t deserve anything right now but his anger.

“Like what?” she finally asked.

He smiled, the gesture anything but pleasant.

“Like when we should get married.”

CHAPTER FOUR

CLARASTAREDATALARIC.

Did he just say “married”?

“What?”

“Married.”

Yes, he did.

She blinked a couple of times, her brain grasping for a response. It finally settled on, “Why?”

His icy smile disappeared, replaced by a quelling glance that all but shouted how foolish she was for not immediately realizing where he was going with this.

“You’re carrying the heir to the Linnaean throne.”

Her eyes drifted back down to the test. Over twelve hours had passed since her suspicions had been confirmed, and it still didn’t seem real. She’d caught herself glancing at her reflection more than once as she’d moved throughout the day. But no matter how many times she’d looked, her belly had remained flat, her body showing no outward signs that a child was growing inside her.

“And?”

Alaric’s muscles tightened, the material of his suit sleeves stretching across his biceps.

“And I will be damned before I allow my child to be born out of wedlock and see his or her legacy tainted by scandal.”

The words whipped out and slashed at her with the viciousness of a dagger. She barely kept her expression smooth. Alaric knew of her former marriage, was aware that her husband had perished in a car accident. But aside from her former in-laws, who had no desire to see the truth come to light, the details of her horrendous marriage and that horrific night had died with Miles.

Still, that word never failed to make her inwardly flinch.

Scandal.

Her mother-in-law had screeched it at Clara in the bedroom adjoining Miles’s master suite in his luxury penthouse, full of expensive paintings and sculptures that didn’t go with anything but had signaled loudly to all visitors that someone with money and culture resided there. Temperance Clemont had looked the opposite of cultured as she’d threatened Clara with lawsuits, jail and other horrific consequences, including “a scandal she’d never live down,” for not saving her son.

Temperance had at least been partially right. Clara had done what she’d done too many times with Miles—let her own fears stop her from doing the right thing. In this case, stop Miles from getting behind the wheel after he’d had so much to drink he’d barely been able to stand up.

But Temperance’s accusations, that Clara had somehow orchestrated the event to get to Miles’s money...that had been going too far. It had only been because she managed to snag a copy of the police report, the one proving that Miles had been drunk, before Temperance had had it buried that she had any leverage against her mother-in-law and her oil baron husband, Stanley. After she’d returned Temperance’s threats with some of her own, they’d slipped away to one of their oceanside mansions and left her finally, blissfully alone.

Except for the sick feeling that developed in the pit of her stomach whenever she heard that word. That it was being flung at her by the father of her child made it ten times worse.

“Marriage is not the answer.”

Alaric blinked. Had she surprised him? The possibility that he had expected her to thank him and quickly agree to turn her life, and that of the baby’s, over to him chased away her nausea.

“It is the only answer, Clara.”

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