Crowned for his christma.., p.1
Crowned for His Christmas Baby, page 1
“It may shock you, Eloise, but your misery is not actually my goal. What I want is my child.”
“Why?”
“Is it not the most natural thing in the world to want your child?”
She stared at him. “You and I both know that it is not.”
“Eloise...”
“No. I know that I don’t have a lot of power here, but I have had so little choice in my life, Vincenzo. Surely you must want more than to hide me away in this place. Surely I deserve more than that.”
“What is it you want?” he asked.
It came to her in a moment, because the truth was, it would be...a wonderful thing for her child to know its father.
It was only her fears of that palace, of that life, that truly held her back.
“Make me a beautiful Christmas there at the palace. Show me that there’s something there other than what I remember. Other than that dreadful...awful empty feeling that I always get in the palace. Show me that there can be more.”
Pregnant Princesses
When passionate nights lead to unexpected heirs!
Vincenzo, Rafael, Zeus and Jahangir are princes bound for life by their ruthless quests to rebel against their tyrannical fathers. But their plans will be outrageously upended when forbidden nights with forbidden princesses leave them facing the most shocking of consequences...and convenient marriages that spark much more than scandal!
Read Vincenzo and Eloise’s story in
Crowned for His Christmas Baby by Maisey Yates
Available now!
Read Rafael and Amalia’s story in
Pregnant by the Wrong Prince
by Jackie Ashenden
Read Zeus and Nina’s story in
The Scandal That Made Her His Queen
by Caitlin Crews
And look out for Jag and Rita’s story
by Marcella Bell
Coming soon!
Maisey Yates
Crowned for His Christmas Baby
Maisey Yates is a New York Times bestselling author of over one hundred romance novels. Whether she’s writing strong, hardworking cowboys, dissolute princes or multigenerational family stories, she loves getting lost in fictional worlds. An avid knitter with a dangerous yarn addiction and an aversion to housework, Maisey lives with her husband and three kids in rural Oregon. Check out her website, maiseyyates.com.
Books by Maisey Yates
Harlequin Presents
Crowned for My Royal Baby
Once Upon a Seduction...
The Prince’s Captive Virgin
The Prince’s Stolen Virgin
The Italian’s Pregnant Prisoner
The Queen’s Baby Scandal
Crowning His Convenient Princess
The Heirs of Liri
His Majesty’s Forbidden Temptation
A Bride for the Lost King
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
To Megan, Jackie and Marcella—what’s better than alpha heroes? Alpha heroes that you get to write with your friends.
Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
EXCERPT FROM THE GREEK SECRET SHE CARRIES BY PIPPA ROSCOE
PROLOGUE
THEY WERE THE most notorious, shocking, dissolute group of rakes to ever grace the hallowed halls of Oxford. And given the school’s illustrious and rather lengthy history, that was truly saying something.
Of course neither Prince Vincenzo Moretti, heir to the throne of Arista, nor his friends, Sheikh Jahangir Hassan Umar Al Hayat, Prince Zeus and Rafael Navarro, bastard child of a king of Santa Castelia, would ever say it themselves.
There was no need.
Their reputations preceded them.
With great pomp and circumstance. From the mouths of men who envied them, wishing only to find themselves ensconced in the afterglow of their power, as if it might give them even the tiniest bit of access to the women that they enjoyed, or the excess that they acquired with the snap of a finger.
And of course, from the women.
The women who declared themselves ruined for all other men, who sighed wistfully about the pleasure they had experienced at their royal hands and would never experience again.
For surely, no man alive could match the prowess of these ruthless royals.
And they could not. Vincenzo himself had no qualms about basking in the benefits of such a reputation.
Of course, his father believed that he would put on the public face required of him for all the world to see. All the while, seeking his own pleasure and lining his own pockets, as their people lived in spartan circumstances.
Vincenzo had begun to combat that with the establishment of many charities, using covert networks he had created outside of his country to bring money in that his father could not touch. Money that appeared to be foreign aid that he would keep his hands off in the name of keeping relations strong between other nations.
But that was not Vincenzo’s only plan. No. He was playing a long game. He could not move, not now. His mother’s health—mentally and physically—was fragile. Especially after the scandal three years ago that had rocked Arista. After...
Eloise.
He refused to dwell on her.
He would not.
The destruction of the monarchy would end his mother. And he could not bear that. He would protect his mother. No matter what.
His mother had loved the palace once—and Arista. And the one thing she enjoyed still in life was her role as Queen. He could not let her see what he would do to the royal family. The royal line.
For he would not produce an heir. Never. He refused. He would not carry on the royal line of Arista. He would allow his country to change hands. To go into the hands of the people. And he would make sure that his father knew this before his death. This legacy... It was the only thing his father cared for.
And Vincenzo would see it destroyed.
Yes, his reputation as a notorious, shocking, dissolute rake was truly one that would make even the hardest of harlots clutch their pearls. But if they knew what he really was, if they knew what he truly intended to do... They would expire from the shock.
“A toast,” he said, looking around the room that served as their clubhouse, where they conducted their meetings—all of them already earning their own money hand over fist, carving their own place in the world apart from the legacies of their dubious fathers. “To being unexpected.”
“It could be argued,” Rafael said, “that your rebellion might be seen as deeply expected.”
“It will never be expected by our fathers. Who are far too prideful to think that anyone could surprise them in the least. But I have no trouble playing a long game.”
“No indeed,” Zeus said, looking down into his glass of scotch. “But I think, my friend, that you will find I am not a patient man. I prefer the game short. Hard and brutal.”
“I’m all for brutality. But I find brutality is much more effective when meted out strategically.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t strategic,” Zeus said, grinning broadly. “I said I wasn’t patient.” He lifted a shoulder. “Brutality now. Brutality later. Brutality all around.” He waved a laconic hand and settled more deeply into his resolute lounging position.
“I admire your thinking,” Jag said, one leg thrown out in front of him, his arm slung over the back of the couch. He elevated casual disdain to high art.
“For my part, I intend to let my father’s kingdom...” Vincenzo swirled the glass and watched the amber liquid spin, an aromatic tornado. He lifted the scotch to his lips. “I will not produce an heir. Ever.”
“How nice for me that it is not expected,” Rafael said. “As a bastard, it is my younger legitimate brother who will inherit control of the kingdom, and the concern of carrying on the line is his. Not mine.”
“My father cares so greatly for the reputation of our country,” Jag said. “My greatest delight would be to find a woman he would see as desperately unsuitable.”
“Only one woman?” Zeus asked. “I myself intend to acquire an entire stable of them. But no heir. Never that.”
“A toast to that,” Vincenzo amended. “To unsuitable women, revenge served hot or cold and to never falling in line.”
CHAPTER ONE
ELOISE ST. GEORGE did not feel merry or bright. The snow falling outside felt like an assault, as did the roaring fire, beautiful evergreen garland and cheery Christmas tunes. Yet she was responsible for it all—save the snow. A resolute rebellion against the depression that was threatening to swallow her whole.
Christmas Eve.
She was without a Christmas tree. Since it was still back in Arista. With him.
She had hung garlands, wreaths and other hallmarks of cheer. She had baked cookies and decorated t
She had made Christmas a happy time for herself all these years, in defiance of her upbringing. She’d always been happy to celebrate it alone, in her historic stone house in Virginia, which could not be more picturesque.
But alone felt... Alone this year. Truly, deeply.
With all the snow piled outside, she’d managed to get Skerret, her foundling cat, to finally come inside from the cold.
The little gray creature was curled up by the red brick fireplace in a contented ball, purring.
It should be wonderful.
It wasn’t.
She put her hand down on her rounded stomach.
It would have been wonderful. If not for Vincenzo Moretti.
And the fact she was currently carrying the heir he had vowed to never create.
Seven months earlier...
This was the address he had been given, but Prince Vincenzo Moretti could not reconcile the crumbling manor before him with the woman he knew Eloise St. George to be. He remembered her vividly.
She had lived at the palace from the time she was six years old, and he had found her disruptive. He was four years her senior and at ten he had been deeply serious. He had also suspected that her presence was emblematic of something that was wrong in the palace. He had been correct.
Her mother had come to the palace to be his father’s mistress. He didn’t advertise that, of course. Not the Upright and Honorable King Giovanni Moretti. He gave her an official job title to conceal her real purpose. But even at ten, Vincenzo knew.
He could see it in the decline in his mother’s health.
He had resented Eloise at first. Had seen her as the mascot of his father’s perfidy and her mother’s sins.
But reluctantly, slowly, over the years she had become his... Friend.
A shock for an arrogant princeling who had never befriended anyone in his life.
Then he’d gone off to university and met Rafael, Zeus and Jag. And when he’d returned home...
Eloise had been a woman. And things had taken a turn.
He’d found her beautiful. Captivating. She’d seemed fragile and still so innocent. But when she’d... When she had told him she wanted him, he’d turned her away. Out of deference to her youth, her innocence.
Because she had not chosen life in the palace. Had not chosen a life where she was forced to know him and he’d felt that she should... Go and experience life and men she had chosen.
But her true colors had been revealed after. Not innocent. Not his friend.
Not...
It did not matter except in the way she might be useful to him now.
The way that she might enhance his plan.
His father had been involved in one scandal. Only ever one.
Eloise.
She had become the symbol of an old man’s folly. A man who could never have resisted the wiles of an eighteen-year-old beauty hell-bent on seduction.
His father’s only sin.
While publicly, Vincenzo committed many.
For all the world to see, Vincenzo was a disappointment. A man who glutted himself on every indulgence available, a man who engaged openly in the kinds of behavior his father engaged in privately.
But in secret, it was Vincenzo who was saving Arista, and they would never know it until after his father died.
But he would not save it in the manner his old man wished. For he would not produce an heir. He would let the monarchy burn.
And he would be all the gladder for it.
His father was an old man now. And it was time to begin dismantling his legacy. His facade. For he wished to do it where his father could still see. Exposing his financial malfeasance and his mistreatment of his wife. The beloved Queen of Arista.
His poor mother had been... Disgraced in the end.
His father had told the country she’d fallen into a depression and had blamed a weak spirit.
Not his own actions of course.
His father had damaged his mother’s legacy, and Vincenzo would destroy the King’s.
And it began here. Though he had not expected this ramshackle collection of stones with ivy climbing up the side of it. Nor had he expected the crooked wrought iron gate with honeysuckle wound through the spires.
Eloise St. George he would’ve expected to live in an ultramodern flat paid for by her latest conquest. Somewhere near clubs and shopping and all the other vices her kind enjoyed. But not this. This place out in the middle of nowhere. Clearly, he had seen that it was near nothing when he had looked it up on the map, but he had expected something grander.
Or that perhaps she had built her own row of shops that had not yet appeared in the mapping program. For he could hardly imagine the girl that he’d known moldering away in the countryside. Least of all in a place like this.
He pushed open the gate, which creaked and caught on a vine that grew out of the cobbled walk.
It was a hazard, this place. He slammed the gate shut, though it did not close all the way, and he strode up the walk, careful not to catch his foot on any of the uneven stones. Nature, it seemed, had taken over this place. There were hedges, large trees wrapped in creeping vines. Most of the garden was shaded, with sun, golden as it was in mid-May, breaking through each time the breeze twisted the leaves.
It was hot. Far too hot for the bespoke suit that he was wearing, but it was not in his nature to yield to the elements. He preferred to force them to bend to him.
Why she had chosen to make her escape here in this rather rural corner of the United States he did not know. It made no earthly sense to him. Which in and of itself was a mystery, because Eloise should be simple. Her mother certainly had been. And as far as he’d been able to tell, Eloise was the same.
Her mother, protected by her title of Personal Assistant had spent lavishly and lorded her position over the household staff.
And Eloise, he had been certain, was driven by much the same things. He might have believed she was different once.
But he’d learned.
Yes. Eloise was no different than her mother. Which was why he was confident that he could enlist her services. Either through blackmail or bribery. It did not matter to him which.
He stood at the front door, blue with a cheerful wreath hung at the center. He could not imagine Eloise taking the time to hang a wreath at the center of her door.
She must have staff to see to such things.
Perhaps that was the piece he was missing.
Perhaps this was where her protector had installed her. Within a close enough proximity for his pleasure, but far enough away perhaps that she would not interact with his wife and children.
Yes. Eloise was exactly the sort of woman who would play mistress to a wealthy married man.
It would suit her. She had the cheekbones for it. Among other things.
He rang the doorbell. And there was no response.
Perhaps she was out.
He took a step off the path and around to the side of the house, checking for signs of life.
It was not a terribly secure property, and if nothing else, perhaps he would let himself in and see what information he could gather about Eloise and her current situation.
When he went around the side of the house, he heard a small sound.
It was... Humming.
Tuneless, rather terrible humming.
He paused and listened. He could not make out what the tune was, as it was just so sporadic and tone-deaf.
But there was something strangely charming about the cheer that seemed injected into the sound. And that was deeply strange as he could not remember being charmed by much of anything, least of all something cheerful. Not in his entire life.
When he rounded the corner, he was shocked by what he saw. The back of the most luscious figure he had seen in... He could not remember how long. The woman was bent over, working on something in the garden, and the trousers that she was wearing conformed to her ass in an extremely pleasing way. She stood, and he saw that the woman had wide hips, a narrow waist, and he was terribly hungry to see the front of her.
His second thought was that he had the wrong house. Because the Eloise he knew had that sort of gaunt, haunted look that her mother had, the hungry look of a woman who cared more to be attractive in photographs than in person. More angles than curves.
