THEIR_VIRGIN_PRINCESS (33 page)

Cooper shook his head. “That’s going to be hard since she’s
pregnant.”

When had Cooper figured that out?

Lan’s jaw dropped. His eyes bugged out. “Lea’s pregnant? How
the fuck did that happen?”

Cooper shook his head. “Okay, let’s talk about eggs and
sperm. When three boys love a girl very much…”

Dane stopped Cooper in his tracks. “This is serious, Coop.
She really was trying to send us away.”

Cooper shook his head. “She hasn’t changed her mind. The
press is just freaking her out.”

Lan’s calm broke, and a hopeless look filled his eyes. “I
caused this, didn’t I? I don’t know anything about this royal shit. I’ll just
screw everything up. I almost did in Koror. I love her, man. I never loved
anyone before, but I love her so damn much. I don’t want to wreck her life. And
I don’t see what we can do. If she won’t marry us, we can’t force her.”

Cooper’s eyes narrowed. “No, but the sheikh can. I read up a
little on their laws, and I bet Dane did, too. The sheikh can force members of
his family to marry if he deems it critical to either state or familial
relations. Alea being pregnant and unwed in this part of the world would be a
huge scandal that could rock this palace. Shit, Dane. Did you pull him into
this?”

Yeah, that was where he’d probably screwed up. “She didn’t
leave me a choice since she went to Tal without talking to us first. I’m not
going to be eliminated from our child’s life. And she needs us, too.”

Lan stood a little taller. “Damn straight she does. I can
learn the press stuff. I’ll take a class or something. ‘Learning How to Not
Pound a Fuckwad 101.’ Sign me up.”

“I can’t wait to see your notes from that class, Lan.”
Cooper turned back to Dane. “You were right to bring Tal into this. She’s
stubborn as hell. This way she can’t refuse and tell herself she’s doing it all
for us. I think she would have fought to protect us, even if it hurt her.”

Knowing Cooper and Lan were standing beside him gave him great
strength. “I couldn’t let her go into this alone, but I’m worried that she
won’t accept us now. We can force her to marry us, but we can’t make her like
it. Damn it, Coop, she’s had all her choices taken away before. I hate to be
the man who does that to her again. How the hell did she find out about how bad
the press has gotten? I tried to protect her from it. I didn’t want her to know
what was going on with our families. How are your folks faring in all this?”

Cooper was the one with something to lose. Dane couldn’t
care less if the press inconvenienced his father, but Cooper was still close to
his family, and he’d heard the press had been harassing them.

A low laugh escaped Cooper’s throat. “Are you kidding? Have you
met Colorado ranchers before? My momma met those reporters at the gate with a
shotgun in her hands, and my brothers decided it would be fun to drive the herd
their way. Said they’d never seen a bunch of city folks run so fast. And they
want to be invited to the wedding so the guest list could get big, but I can’t
let Momma down. Not just because she’s already bought a dress, but also because
she still scares me a little.”

There was a long laugh, and Dane looked back at Tal, who was
walking toward them. He’d been so grim before, but now there was a light in his
eyes. “Rest assured, Cooper, that your family is more than welcome here. I
can’t wait to meet them.”

Cooper reached out and shook Tal’s hand. “I thank you for
that. And when the time comes, I’ll consult with the kitchen staff because my
parents don’t eat anything that hasn’t been fried and smothered in gravy. Now,
do you happen to know if you have a battering ram handy because I suspect our
fiancée is currently barricading herself in her suite as we speak.”

“I have some climbing equipment. I can scale the balcony.
The doors into her room are about half glass. I can cut through it and be in
the room in about a minute and a half,” Lan said with utter confidence. He
shrugged a little when he noticed everyone was staring at him. “I think about
things at night. Do you really think she’s going to lock us out?”

“I do not believe so,” Tal said. “I think the possibility of
her pregnancy has made Alea rethink her position.”

So she knew she needed a father for her baby. It wasn’t all
he wanted from her, but a step in the right direction. He still had to wonder
if she would always resent him for forcing the marriage. Would he always be
just another man who bent her to his will?

“She asked to start seeing the counselor again.” Tal was
practically beaming.

“She wants to talk about her captivity?” Dane had tried
every sneaky trick in the book to get her to open up. He wanted it to be him
she talked to. He was a selfish bastard, but he was also deeply in love. He
would take what he could get.

Fuck.
He would
take her any way he could and pray that he could make her love him. He’d
started their relationship with the firm belief that she’d have to take him as
he was because he couldn’t change. But now he realized that he would. He
refused to be another man who controlled her. All his life he’d needed that
control, craved it, but he needed her more. He needed to be a husband and
father more than he needed to be a Dom.

“If you gentlemen would care to join us? We’ve got everything
set up and we’ve found some interesting information,” Riley said.

Dane joined his partners and walked into the conference
room, the knot still in his gut.

* * * *

Alea sat on the sofa in her living room, looking out the
window as night began to fall. Pinks and oranges lit up the sky, and she took
it in, feeling more settled than she had in years. All the time she’d been held
in that horrible brothel, she’d wanted to come back to this place, to this
room. When she’d made it home, she locked herself in for days at a time,
refusing all company. She’d sat in this room time and time again, looking for
safety and peace and finding none because rooms themselves didn’t bring such
gifts.

People did. Love did. She’d been looking for something
around her that could fix her when, all along, the power to heal had been deep
inside her. Asking Tal to call the counselor had been a decision that only she
could make. A decision to really live. A decision to be brave. She could be
hurt again. Or her men could be hurt. The people she loved could die. Life had
no guarantees.

But she could control allowing herself to love, to build a
future and to fight for it. She could choose to face whatever future came with
Dane, Cooper, and Landon, as well as the babies they had. She could choose to
love them and be the best wife and mother possible.

And it was certain now. The doctor had just left. She was
pregnant.

She took a long breath and waited. How long would their
meeting take? She knew she could probably walk in and take part, but she didn’t
want to sit across the table from Dane with all that nastiness between them
unresolved, and the last thing she wanted to do was have the discussion in
front of her cousins and the investigators. She had already put Dane in that
position once. She wouldn’t do it again.

She would be patient and wait until she could close them off
from the world and tell them—all three of them—how she felt. She would share
how scared she was. She would tell them how wrong she’d been to try to cut them
out because now she knew that a family faced things together even when it hurt.
Her job wasn’t to shield them. It was to stand beside them, to hold hands and
weather all the storms.

She would tell them she loved them so much.

“Princess?” Her temporary guard had opened the door to her
living area. He stepped through, looking young and so very serious.

“Yes?”

The guard bowed slightly in deference to her. He seemed
deeply solicitous toward females. As they had moved through the palace, he had
been courteous to every female they had encountered. It had endeared the young
man to her.

“There’s a man here to see you. He’s your cousin’s husband,
Oliver Thurston-Hughes. I’ve made sure he doesn’t have any weapons. Should I
tell him to go?”

Oliver was here? She winced a little. She was going to have
to apologize for destroying his plane. She doubted it would have crashed if she
hadn’t been in it. Oliver’s family was ridiculously wealthy, but they would
miss a plane. “No, not at all. Please show him in.”

“Should I stay with you?” the guard asked.

Alea shook her head. Her rooms were the only place she was
going to be allowed any privacy for a while. She wasn’t going to give it up.
“No, I’m fine. He’s family.”

Oliver walked through, his face a dull red. He was a little
disheveled, his normally perfect suit lacking a tie and his dress shirt
slightly wrinkled. “Lea, thank goodness you’re all right.”

She tried to give him her best smile, but he wasn’t the man
she really wanted to see. “It’s good to see you, Oliver.”

“Is everything all right? The guard was rather thorough in
his pat down.” Oliver smoothed down his shirt.

She didn’t want to explain that there was very likely still
some crazy person out there who seemed to want her dead. “Everything’s fine. I
think Tal is just a little touchy right now. Now why are you here? Have you
been here the whole time?”

“We went back home for a bit, but Talib asked Yasmin to come
back to the palace once the horrible news reports began. I don’t know what that
terrible girl thinks she’s going to get out of this.”

She led him back to the sitting area. “Brittany? I’m sure
she thinks she’ll either get some closure or some money for her side of the
story.”

“I think we should sue her. Yasmin has been representing the
family on some news channels. I’ll be honest, I’m rather worried she enjoys the
fame a bit much.”

Yas had always enjoyed attention. She’d done some crazy
things to get it. Alea had hoped she was over that.

Oliver was suddenly invading her space, hugging her close.
“God, I can’t tell you how happy I am. I was heartbroken. Lea, you were on my
plane when it crashed. That was supposed to be me and Yasmin. I can’t tell you
how hard it’s been knowing I caused this.”

Alea tried to politely put some distance between them while
reassuring him. “Oliver, this was about me. I’m the one they’re trying to
kill.”

He shook his head, stepping back. “No. I don’t think so.
We’ve been working with your investigators. It’s why we came back here a few
days ago. My brother got an e-mail after the plane went down. It said they
wanted to take down all of the aristocracy, that our time was done. Yasmin was
so upset by it that my brother gave her half a million pounds to upgrade
security in all the homes and at the building where the charity is housed. How
can we ever make it up to you? I shouldn’t have allowed you to traipse off like
that.”

Allowed it? Something was tickling at the back of her mind.
“I’m fine, Oliver. And I think it worked out for the best. If you and Yas had
been on that plane, I doubt you would have survived.”

“I doubt it, too. How exactly did you manage to escape? When
I heard the plane went down over a remote part of the Pacific, I was sure you
would drown. Or if you managed to survive the crash, you would likely die of
exposure.”

She shivered a little knowing how close she’d come. It was
funny, even afterward she hadn’t had bad dreams about the crash. She’d trusted
her men implicitly. She’d never really thought she would die. “We got on quite
well, actually.”

“You don’t know how many nights I sat up thinking about all
the ways you could have died. I dreamed about sharks a lot. It’s a bloody
miracle you’re alive.” His voice shook a bit.

“Well, I had three former special ops guys in my corner.
They’re kind of amazing.” They had been calm and cool, thinking only of saving
her. “They weren’t about to let me die.”

“One of them had to have known how to fly a plane, thank
goodness. According to the news, the pilot killed himself and poisoned you.”

“I think we were lucky. The pilot wasn’t counting on four of
us splitting the wine. The sedative wasn’t as effective as it could have been
if it had just been me.”

“Or me and Yasmin.” He turned his face to her, a grim
expression darkening his eyes. “You have to know how much I’ve always cared for
you.”

She was not going there. “I’ve always liked you too, Oliver.
But I certainly know that I’m never going to drink that particular brand of
wine again. What was the name?
Vallee
d’Harmonie
. I did not find it harmonious.”

Of course, she wouldn’t be drinking anything for a while. At
least nine months. And breast feeding time. She would want that. She would want
to hold her baby, rocking and feeding the precious bundle of joy. She could
imagine one of her men would bring the baby to her and they would talk quietly
while she nursed. That would be harmonious.

“What?”

Alea looked up, pulled from her thoughts. “I’m sorry?”

“What was the wine?” Oliver leaned forward, his body a study
in tension. “What did you call the wine?”

What had she said? “I might not remember it right. It was a
red. I just briefly looked at the bottle, but it translated to ‘Harmony
Valley.’ I’ve never heard of the vineyard before.”

His face went white. “Oh, god.”

“What? Oliver, are you all right?” His hands started to
shake.

“You haven’t heard of the vineyard because the wine isn’t on
the market yet. It’s one of my family’s new ventures. We had the first batch
brought in the week before the crash. I had it shipped out here because we were
going to gift it to your cousins for Piper’s coronation.”

“Maybe she put it on the plane as a surprise for you and the
pilot used it because it was convenient.” That had to be it. Except the hostess
had said that the pilot had brought it on board.