Chapter One
Maddie stared at the little white stick and tried to make sense of what she was seeing. First of all, peeing on a tiny, absorbent piece of cotton attached to a plastic wand was disgusting. She had never imagined herself having to do such a thing. She was Madison Castillo, fabulous music agent and talent scout. She knew all of the movers and shakers in New York City, for goodness sake! How could a silly plastic applicator wand with a plus sign slow down someone like her?
A plus sign! Oh. My. God!
“Pregnant.”
She had to say the word out loud just to make herself believe it was true. Of course, she wanted to follow that word with a whole string of expletives she’d learned back on her aunt’s ranch in Texas, but that wasn’t going to change anything.
Giving into her redheaded temper, she threw the stupid applicator wand at the mirror and began pacing energetic circles in her bathroom. Her Greenwich Village apartment was a good size. It actually afforded her the opportunity to pace! That was huge! She was a big deal. How could she have been so careless? How had this happened?
Maddie abruptly stopped walking and put both hands flat on the sink top. She stared into the mirror and tried not to freak out. It was so obvious! Six weeks ago she had met the most amazing guy at a local club. He’d told her that his name was Alex. She’d gone back to his hotel room, and the two of them had had the most amazing sex. In fact, the sex had been so good that Maddie hadn’t been with anyone since. She just hadn’t met anyone who interested her. But the thing that made Alex memorable for all the wrong reasons was that the man was so vigorous in bed that the condom had broken.
“Oh God,” she moaned. The two of them had even laughed about it! How stupid could she be?
Sure, she was on the pill, but Maddie’s schedule was nuts! She couldn’t count the number of times in a month that she had forgotten to take her birth control. And apparently Alex was virile enough that her half-assed birth control efforts had failed completely, which left her in quite a precarious situation.
Maddie gazed at her reflection and tried to imagine what she might look like all fat and swollen in the last trimester of pregnancy. She’d seen her cousins when they were pregnant. Maddie hadn’t had any interest in following in their footsteps. They were back in Texas, living the lives of suburban soccer moms in Dallas. That was not the way Maddie wanted her life to be! She loved New York! She loved her clients, and she loved knowing that she could walk into any club in the city and people would immediately know her. She was not just another redhead in Dallas. Here in New York she mattered.
There was no way in hell she was giving that up.
***
ALEXANDER MAXIMOVICH STEPANOV—distant heir to the Imperial Throne of Russia—waited patiently for the limo to come to a complete stop in front of the Trump Tower Hotel. He was particularly fond of this hotel. In fact, he was excessively fond of New York in general. He loved the nightlife and the vibrancy of the city. Americans were so different from the people of his native Moscow. They were unapologetic and demanding of their due in life. It was exciting!
The limo stopped, and one of the hotel’s concierge staff opened his door. Alex stepped out onto the sidewalk and straightened his suit jacket. A cool wind brushed his cheeks. He especially loved this city in the fall. Moscow would already be buried in snow. There, icy winds whipped through a body and left no hint of warmth behind. Here in New York there was a promise of the brutal northeastern winter to come, but there was still a hint of summer. It left him feeling almost melancholy.
“Mr. Stepanov, sir.” A hotel manager bowed from the waist. “We have your usual suite ready. Your baggage has already been transferred to your room. Is there anything else you require?”
“Ah, New York is delightful this time of year, is it not?”
Alex grimaced as his cousin Yuri approached from the other side of the limo. He and Yuri were in New York with a small army of personal assistants to tie up an international business matter for one of Alex’s import/export companies. Yuri had not been Alex’s first choice of travelling companion, but his mother had been most insistent.
“I need to go over some notes before the meeting,” Alex murmured. Turning on his heel, he left Yuri standing beneath the hotel’s stylish portico and entered the building alone.
“Alexander!” someone shouted. “Look over here!”
Alex sighed. The one downfall of being in New York was the paparazzi’s fascination with what they often referred to as “Russian royalty.” Yuri was already smiling broadly and waving. His cousin reached out and snagged Alex’s shoulder.
“Give them a photo, Alexei!” Yuri urged. “It’s good for business.”
Alex sighed and paused before entering the building. The hotel staff was already poised to keep the photographers out of the lobby should they decide to make a bid to continue to harass one of the hotel’s VIPs after he had entered the hotel. Alex turned and allowed the photographer to snap more than a few photographs. The flash was blinding. Alex’s eyes burned and smarted as the brilliant flash left him feeling a strange sensation of vertigo.
“Enough,” Alex grunted.
He turned and stalked into the hotel. He hated publicity and notoriety. He wanted a quiet life away from the ridiculousness of his family’s bloody history. There were no more tsars in Russia. The Romanov family had been deposed in a most brutal and finalistic fashion. It was time to move on from such things, and Alex was more than ready to do so.
***
MADDIE FLIPPED THROUGH celebrity gossip blogs on her laptop just to give herself something to do. It was part of her job to find out what the media was saying about her clients and to make sure the information qualified as publicity. She didn’t even bother with the designation between good or bad publicity anymore. In America, gossip reigned and there was no such thing as bad publicity.
“Ohmigod,” she muttered.
Some local photographer had gotten a photograph of a man entering the Trump Tower Hotel just this afternoon. He was tall with a swarthy complexion, black wavy hair, and the most incredible facial structure. The photo was sort of grainy, and the image didn’t do justice to the brooding quality of the man’s dark eyes, but Maddie knew it was Alex.
“Fate.” The word rolled off her tongue before she could even fathom the possibilities.
She looked down at her plain black yoga pants and oversized gray sweatshirt. There was no way she could possibly go confront Alex looking like this. She needed to be perfect. After all, if this stupid gossip blog was right, she had managed to get herself knocked up by the heir presumptive to the nonexistent Russian throne.
“Clothes. Clothes. Clothes.”
Maddie leaped up from the sofa and slammed the lid shut on her laptop. She had thrown her long red hair up into a messy bun, and there were a couple of pens stabbed through the mess. She looked like hell, and thanks to this pregnancy scare, she was kind of feeling worse. But if she was going to go talk to Alex, she needed to look like a queen.
She threw open her closet and started digging. She needed something classic, not slutty. Maybe that Givenchy she’d found on sale? And maybe those black kitten heels that made her legs look a million miles long?
Digging into her wardrobe with gusto, Maddie set out to make herself irresistible. This wasn’t just a man. It wasn’t even just a broken condom. This was the best sex of her life—at least to date. If she wanted to make him sweat, she needed to work for it.
Maddie froze in the act of pulling her dress off the hanger. She sank down onto her bed and stared at the floor. She was going to go confront Alex. About what? What did she even want? Money for an abortion? She had that. She didn’t really need financial help. Did she just want him to acknowledge that he was the father of her child?
“Ugh!” she groaned. Flopping back on the bed, she flung her arm over her eyes and tried not to freak out. “What am I doing?”
At some point, she was going to have to figure out what she wanted. Like in the next ten minutes. Because she could not approach a guy like Alex and just start pointing the finger without even knowing what she was pointing for.
***
ALEX LOOKED UP from the paperwork scattered across the dining table of his suite. Yuri had been ordered to leave him alone. What did the man want now?
Yuri shifted from foot to foot. His expression could only be described as sly. “Alexei, there is a woman downstairs requesting an audience.”
“Tell her I’m busy.”
“She said you would remember her from your last visit.” Yuri gazed at Alex in open speculation. “Her name is Maddie.”
Alex froze. He struggled not to react. It would do no good for Yuri to suspect that Maddie was anything more than a woman he’d slept with on his last visit to New York. Maddie would have to be just another American woman who had thrown herself at the Russian prince. That was how Alex had to play this unless he wanted Yuri reporting something back to Alex’s mother that would be sure to cause Alex no end of trouble with the termagant.
“Have someone tell her that I’ll meet her down in the hotel lounge when I have a moment,” Alex finally said with an exaggerated air of casualness. “I believe I remember her.”
“A delightful piece of ass then?” Yuri actually rubbed his hands together. “The bellboy said she’s quite a looker.”
“If I remember her, then yes. I suppose she was rather nice looking.” Alex ground his teeth together and tried to remember that throttling Yuri would serve no purpose.
Maddie had the body of a goddess and the personality of an imp. She was strong, confident, and had a terrific sense of humor. They had laughed and joked just as much as they’d enjoyed their time in bed together. The woman was a wildcat between the sheets. Alex had had scratch marks on his chest and shoulders afterwards, and he’d loved every second of it.
Yuri disappeared, and Alex forced himself to wait five minutes. Ten minutes. Finally, after fifteen minutes he gathered up his papers and neatly packed away his business materials into his briefcase. He took his time even though he wanted to bolt through the door. He pulled on his suit jacket and painfully straightened the lapels. He turned his cufflinks in the right direction and then ran his fingers through his hair. Not that any of this mattered. He shouldn’t be worrying about how he looked. A night with Maddie had been fun, but there was no future in it. No matter how much he might want that sort of future for himself.
Alex exited the suite and sauntered to the elevator. He took his time, an endeavor aided by the fact that it took what felt like a million years to get from his suite to the ground floor where the hotel lounge was located. Finally, the elevator dinged and Alex exited.
A short walk and he was inside the lounge. He nodded to the hostess and headed for the bar. He spotted Maddie almost immediately. He half suspected that every man in the room had noticed her already. She was dressed in a form fitting, slinky black dress and heels. Her legs were long and shapely, and her athletic body was round in all the right places. The woman was gorgeous. Perhaps not in a voluptuous way, but there was strength and confidence in the way she carried herself that went a long way toward making her a bombshell. Of course, there was also her dark red hair. The waves falling over her shoulders reminded him immediately of what it looked like to see all that hair spread across a pillow or to feel it tickling his belly as she sucked his cock.
Alex took a breath and shuddered. This was not the time to lose control. Maddie was sitting tensely on a barstool drinking something he could not decipher. When Alex had known her six weeks ago, she had been a wine drinker. Now the nearly clear liquid in her glass bubbled and frothed as she stirred it vigorously with a straw.
“Hello, Maddie.”
“Alex.” She turned to face him and took a deep breath. “I came to see you because I’m pregnant.”
Alex fell back a step. It felt as though he’d been gut punched. Of all the things she could have said to him, this one wasn’t just shocking. It was life altering.