Her eyes widened. ‘Your apartment?’
‘So you can think.’
‘I…can think at my place.’
‘Impossible.’
‘What?’
‘You live here now.’
Her jaw dropped at his heavy-handed presumptuousness. ‘Octavio, perhaps you’re forgetting that I am my own person with an ability to make my own choices in life?’
‘I’m not forgetting that.’
‘Then stop acting like a bull in a china shop. I’m going back to my apartment where I can thinkclearly.’
‘Your apartment is now empty.’
Her heart twisted. ‘What?’ The whisper was barely audible.
‘My security guards have brought your things here. Or rather, they’re in the process of bringing them.’
She glared at him, utterly infuriated. ‘You had no right to do that.’
‘You’re going to marry me, and soon. The sooner the better, in terms of your acceptance by the people of Castilona.’
‘I’m not going to marry you,’ she shouted, her heart racing at the very thought.
‘Then you’re going to stay here until the babies are born. After that, you may do what you want. It would make things a hell of a lot easier for me, and our children, if you would at least marry me before then, though. Castilonian succession laws are somewhat outdated, you see.’
The colour faded from her skin. She could feel it seeping from her, like tea might stain a mug of boiled water. ‘Stop doing that.’
He arched a brow.
‘I’m going to be wherever my babies are.’
‘Our babies are heirs to the throne of Castilona. They’re going to be here.’ He enunciated every word of that last sentence with perfect gravity.
Her heart sank to her toes. His proposal seemed almost inevitable, and she hated that. She hatedhimfor that. But she also felt something else—something a little like relief. Even though she was furious with Octavio, what he was offering was the kind of safety net she couldn’t have imagined, at least materially.
All of Phoebe’s life, she’d watched her mother struggle and worry and fret. Money had always been tight, and Phoebe had known her mother had wanted, so badly, to give Phoebe more than she could. She’d wanted her little girl to have so much more, but they’d never been able to afford anything, and in the end, Phoebe had left school at sixteen to get a job, to help pay the rent. When her mother had died, Phoebe had been just seventeen, and everything had fallen apart. No wonder Christopher had been able to draw her into his web so easily. She’d been so alone and so intensely vulnerable, floundering with no idea where she was going in life. He’d come along and swept her up, all handsome and charismatic, and she’d believed his act: hook, line and sinker.
At least Octavio wasn’t lying to her. He wasn’t trying to charm her into this marriage. Heck, he could have kissed her and got her to agree to just about any damned thing he wanted. But he was laying it all out—what he needed, what he would do if she didn’t agree, and what she’d get in exchange.
Yet it still felt like a pathway lined with danger for Phoebe. After all, he held all the cards in this scenario, and she held none. ‘I need to think,’ she muttered, barely looking at him.
‘Then go and think. We’ll discuss it further over dinner.’
A shiver ran the length of her spine, because that wasn’t an invitation.
‘Fine.’ She stalked towards him now, her back ramrod straight. ‘I hope you know what a bastard you’re being.’
He glared back at her, his eyes like coal. ‘As opposed to you, who decided to hide this pregnancy from me?’
Her lips parted on a swell of outrage but tears sparkled in her eyes because he had a point. She didn’t have any interest in seeing things his way, but if she had wanted to, she could understand how angry he must have been at her. ‘Oh, go to hell,’ she snapped, stalking from the room and wishing she never had to see him again.
Go to hell? Go to hell? Did she have any idea that he had been plunged into that very state this afternoon?
