Marrying Her Royal Enemy by Jennifer Hayward Page B

her lungs. Spicy aftershave with a rich, dark undertone that was all Kostas, pure carnal male.
    She handed him her glass to refill. The brush of his fingers against hers transferred his masculine heat, amplifying her awareness of him.
    Seriously, Stella. She searched for an innocuous subject. “I had the interior designer come by this morning. I can’t live in this mausoleum one minute longer. He’s going to have some plans to us next week.”
    “Good.” He handed the glass back to her. “Can he start in the master suite? Perhaps he could have it finished by the wedding?”
    When she would move in there with him, share his bed , sometimes in an intimate fashion. Her stomach curled in on itself. “Might be possible.” She chewed on her lip. “He was wondering about a nursery. Do we want it connected to our suite?”
    “Yes. I want our children to be close in case they have a nightmare or they need us.”
    Children— plural . She swallowed. “How many children are you planning for us to have?”
    “More than one. Maybe three? Four?”
    “Four?” That would require much baby-making , particularly if it didn’t happen right away.
    His mouth kicked up at one corner. “I want lots of kids, Stella. And not because I want to turn you into a broodmare . Because I never had siblings...because I never want our children to feel the isolation I once did.”
    A vise closed around her chest. She couldn’t get his pain out of her head—the childhood he’d led, how destructive it must have been to his soul... It had haunted her as she’d stared at the damn creepy shadows at night trying to sleep.
    “How did you cope?” she asked huskily. “I keep thinking about you by yourself. You were only twelve when your grandmother died. How did the world even make sense?”
    He cradled his glass against his chest. “I retreated into myself. I lived in my own little world. My grandmother kept pulling me out, engaging me, forcing me to find a sense of self. She knew I would need that strength when she was gone.”
    She wrapped her arms around herself and hugged tight. “She was a popular queen from what I remember.”
    “Both her and my grandfather, King Pelias, were very popular, benevolent monarchs of the people—not the ambitious, controlling rulers of the past. Unfortunately, my grandfather’s ill health took him very young and my father became king perhaps sooner than he should have. It was up to my grandmother to guide my father then, but after my mother died, he became unreachable. She began coaching me instead. Every night when I went to visit her, she taught me the principles of what she believed in, what being a good ruler meant—that they were of the people, not over the people.”
    “And what you learned at school, during your time in the West, the philosophies you developed, were grounded in what she had taught you.”
    “Yes.”
    She pressed her palms to her cheeks, remembering the loneliness she’d felt. Imagining it ten times worse because there would also be fear . Her gaze rested on him; so stoic, resolute, like he always was. “It was so much for a child to absorb. To understand .”
    A hint of emotion flickered in his dark eyes. “She told me whenever I lost my way, when I harbored doubts about which direction to go, to always remember to be a force of good. That I would be afforded great power, but with that came the responsibility to use it wisely. That if I was strong and followed my heart, I would not fail.”
    A wave of emotion swept over her, tightening her throat, spurring a wet heat at the back of her eyes. To be so brave, to carry his grandmother’s wisdom with him throughout his life and somehow manage not to be consumed by the force his father had been, struck her as remarkable. Extraordinary. But it also illuminated her own shortcomings. Whereas Kostas had been defined by his duty, she had spurned hers, acting out in her need to have someone acknowledge the pain and isolation she had felt.