Expecting the Prince's Baby. Rebecca Winters

to come back to the palace with no wife to greet him. His loneliness had to be exquisite and her heart ached for him.

      * * *

      After receiving an urgent message from his father that couldn’t have come at a worse moment, Vincenzo had been given another reason to visit Abby. As he rounded the corner to her suite, he saw Angelina leaving the apartment with the dinner tray.

      Angelina was Abby’s personal bodyguard, hired to keep an eye on Abby, virtually waiting on her. She was the one who fed Vincenzo information on a daily basis when he couldn’t be there himself. He stopped her so he could lift the cover. Abby had only eaten a small portion of her dinner. That wasn’t good. He put the cover back and thanked her before knocking on the door.

      “Yes, Angelina?”

      He opened it and walked through until he found Abby in the den, where he could see her at the desk working on her computer in her sweats and a cotton top. The lamp afforded the only light in the room, gilding the silvery-gold hair she must have just shampooed. He could smell the strong peach fragrance. It fell to her shoulders in a cloud.

      Instead of the attorney-like persona she generally presented, she reminded Vincenzo of the lovely teenager who’d once flitted about the palace grounds on her long legs.

      “Abby?”

      She turned a face to him filled with the kind of sorrow he’d seen after her mother had died. “Your Highness,” she whispered, obviously shocked to see him. A glint of purple showed through her tear-glazed blue eyes. She studied him for a long moment. “It’s good to see you again.”

      Because of the extreme delicacy of their unique situation, it frustrated him that she’d addressed him that way, yet he could find no fault in her.

      “Call me Vincenzo when the staff isn’t around. That’s what you used to shout at me when you were running around the gardens years ago.”

      “Children are known to get away with murder.”

      “So are surrogate mothers.” There was something about being with Abby. “After such a long trip, I can’t tell you how much I’ve been looking forward to talking to you in person.”

      “You look like you’re feeling better.”

      Though he appreciated her words, he wished he could say the same about her. “What’s wrong? I noticed you hardly ate your dinner. Are you ill?”

      “No, no. Not at all.” Abby got up from the chair, rubbing the palms of her hands against the sides of womanly hips. To his chagrin the gesture drew his attention to her figure. “Please don’t think that finding me in this state has anything to do with the baby.”

      “That relieves me, but I’m still worried about you. Anything troubling you bothers me.”

      She let out a sigh. “After I watched your live television appearance a little while ago, they replayed a segment of the funeral. I shouldn’t have watched it.” Her gaze searched his eyes. “Your suffering was so terrible back then. I can’t even imagine it.”

      Diavolo. The media never let up. “To say I was in shock wouldn’t have begun to cover my state of mind,” he said.

      Abby hugged her arms to her chest, once again drawing his attention to her slender waist. So far the only proof that she was pregnant came from a blood test. She studied him for a moment. “Michelina loved you so much, she was willing to do anything to give you a baby. I daresay not every husband has had that kind of love from his spouse. It’s something you’ll always be able to cherish.”

      If he could just get past his guilt over the unhappy state of their marriage. His inability to return Michelina’s affection the way she’d wanted weighed him down, but he appreciated Abby’s words.

      Little did Abby know how right she was. In public his wife had made no secret of her affection for him and he’d tried to return it to keep up the myth of a love match. But in private Vincenzo had cared for her the way he did a friend. She’d pushed so hard at the end to try surrogacy in order to save their marriage, he’d finally agreed to consider it.

      Needing to change the subject, he said, “Why don’t you sit down while we talk?”

      “Thank you.” She did as he asked.

      He subsided into another of the chairs by her desk. “How are you really feeling?”

      “Fine.”

      “Rest assured that during my trip I insisted on being given a daily report on your progress. It always came back ‘fine.’”

      “It doesn’t surprise me you checked. Something tells me you’re a helicopter father already,” she quipped.

      “If you mean I’m interested to the point of driving you crazy with questions, I’m afraid I’m guilty. Since you and I have known each other from the time you were twelve, it helps me to know I can have the inside track on the guardian of my baby. Dr. DeLuca said your blood pressure went up at the time of the funeral, but it’s back to normal and he promises me you’re in excellent health.”

      Abby had a teasing look in her eye. “They say only your doctor knows for sure, but never forget he’s a man and has no clue.”

      Laughter broke from Vincenzo’s lips. It felt good to laugh. He couldn’t remember the last time it had happened. “I’ll bear that in mind.”

      “So what does the crown prince’s personal physician have to say about the state of the expectant father?”

      He smiled. “I was disgustingly healthy at my last checkup.”

      “That’s good news for your baby, who hopes to enjoy a long, rich life with his or her daddy.”

      Daddy was what he’d heard Abby call her father from the beginning. The two of them had the sort of close relationship any parent would envy. Vincenzo intended to be the kind of wonderful father his own had been.

      “You’re veering off the subject. I told you I want the unvarnished truth about your condition,” he persisted.

      “Unvarnished?” she said with a sudden hint of a smile that broke through to light up his insides. “Well. Let me see. I’m a lot sleepier lately, feel bloated and have finally been hit with the mal di mare.”

      The Italian expression for sea sickness. Trust Abby to come up with something clever. They both chuckled.

      “Dr. DeLuca has given me medicine for that and says it will all pass. Then in the seventh month I’ll get tired again.”

      “Has he been hovering as you feared?”

      “Actually no. I check in at the clinic once a week before going to work. He says everything looks good and I’m right on schedule. Can you believe your baby is only one-fifth of an inch long?”

      “That big?” he teased. Though it really was incredible, he found it astounding she was pregnant with a part of him. He wished he could shut off his awareness of her. Michelina’s death had changed their world.

      Vincenzo suspected Abby was also having to deal with the fact that the two of them were now forced to get through this pregnancy without his wife. No doubt she felt some guilt, too, because they were treading new ground neither of them could have imagined when they’d had the procedure done.

      A laugh escaped her lips. “It’s in the developmental stage. He gave me two identical booklets. This one is for you. Anatomy 101 for beginner fathers.”

      Abby...

      She reached in the desk drawer and handed it to him. The title said The Ten Stages of Pregnancy at a Glance.

      “Why ten, not nine?”

      “A woman wrote it and knows these things.”

      He appreciated her little jokes more than she could imagine. Her normally lighthearted disposition was a balm to his soul. Vincenzo thumbed through the booklet