“I trust you have everything you need.” Kostya had come in behind her. “If there’s anything you’re missing, don’t hesitate to let me know.”
“I won’t.” She turned and shook Kostya’s hand. “It was so nice to meet you. And thank you for the tour of the palace.”
Kostya shot Artur a look. “There’s much more than meets the eye,” he said, then excused himself.
Artur had seen...everything, though his mind could hardly process it. When Amy had turned to shake Kostya’s hand, the baby bump had been unmistakable. The cut of the sheath dress, which was clearly made for a pregnant woman, made it obvious. She wasn’t hiding anything.
He realized he was still standing there with his mouth open. Amy blushed, holding her head up high. “Yes. The baby is yours. I’ve been trying to contact you, but there’s no way to reach you without having to explain a million different things to a million different people, and I didn’t want the news—”
Artur caught his breath. “What do you mean the baby is mine?”
Amy turned a darker shade of red. “I thought you—when you looked at me like that, I thought you must have done the math.”
The laugh that tore out of his throat sounded a little wild, even to him. “I was still processing the sight, honestly. I thought maybe you’d gotten married. Or had already been married when we—”
“I would never do that,” insisted Amy. “No way. Go home with another man if I was—no.” She took a big breath in and let it out. “Look. It’s—it’s your baby. I tried to tell you when I first found out, but getting ahold of the royal family for personal news is next to impossible.”
Artur’s head spun. “You could have...called. You could have emailed.”
Amy gave him a skeptical look. “You know that your email is vetted, right? I couldn’t just send some cryptic message to your public address.”
Come to think of it, Artur did know this. It was only that he didn’t much bother with checking the email. It was a kind of public letterbox, and occasionally one of the palace staff brought some message or other to his attention. He assumed it was the same with his brothers. The email addresses only existed so that the people of Stolvenia felt like they had direct access, when in fact it wasn’t direct at all. “I did know that. I’m only—” He ran a hand through his hair.
?
?I didn’t want to take the chance that this information might get leaked. And it seemed wrong to leverage my connection to the firm and go through palace staff.” She bit her lip. “It took me by surprise, too.”
“Well, I—” Artur didn’t know what to say. He knew what kinds of things men said in the movies, when a woman came to tell them she was pregnant with their baby. But this was no movie. This was real life, stark and cold as it ever was.
“You don’t have to say anything now.” Amy came farther into the office, walking briskly around where Artur stood and stepping behind the desk. She pulled the chair out and sat down. “I’m here to do a job.” She folded her hands on top of the desk. “Getting to tell you this news in person is...just a bonus. I’m glad you know—but now we can put it behind us. It doesn’t have to be an issue going forward.”
He came to the other side of the desk and sat down across from her, woodenly, as if he was sitting down for a meeting with Kostya or Zia. His mind was still struggling to sort out what she’d said, as if she’d put the words in front of him in the form of a complicated puzzle. One by one, they clicked into place...and then he found his voice.
“Hold on. I’m not about to just put this behind us. For better or for worse, I’m involved now.” When she was sitting down, Artur could only see the top of her bump, but there it was. It was real. She was pregnant, and it was his. “I’ve made a baby with you. It doesn’t get much more involved than that.”
Something about her expression changed, and it took him a moment to realize what it was. She’d clearly gone from personal news mode to professional mode.
“You’ve got enough problems as it is,” Amy said briskly, opening a folder in front of her on the desk and scanning the sheet on top. “Now is not the time to add the complication of an unexpected pregnancy resulting from a one-night stand. We’re not even in a relationship. Can you imagine the headlines?” She snapped the folder shut and looked back up at him.
Artur didn’t care about the headlines, he cared about real life. “There have always been headlines. There will always be headlines. But this is the situation we’re in. You’re the PR professional. Can’t you find a...positive way to spin it?”
She shot him a look that was so sharp it almost broke his skin. “I’m not spinning a baby. The baby will be kept out of this, as far as I’m concerned. Out of the public eye. Out of the spotlight.”
Artur snorted. “You think as the public face of my team, you’re going to be out of the spotlight? The child has no chance of being kept in the shadows either, if that’s what you were thinking. A royal baby has to step into the public eye sooner or later.”
“My child will be given the choice when they’re old enough to decide that for themselves.” Amy’s voice was absolutely firm. “I’m not putting anyone in any kind of spotlight until they’re ready. Until they’re willing.” She dropped a hand to rest protectively on her bump, and something about the motion made Artur realize that repeated insistence wasn’t likely to get him anywhere on this. However, he knew a thing or two about living life as a member of the royal family. Things didn’t stay swept under the rug, no matter how much a person wanted them to. He and his brothers had learned to cope with this in their own way, and the baby in Amy’s belly would have to learn to cope with it, too.
For now, the only thing he could do was back off. “All right,” he said, knowing even as he said it that he wasn’t conceding this argument.
Amy looked down at the surface of her desk. “I’m sorry,” she said finally. “I shouldn’t have—that wasn’t professional. I need to be professional. We—both need to keep this professional.”
Artur didn’t see how that was going to happen. Nothing of a more personal nature had ever happened to him in his life, and it had to be the same for Amy. After all, she was the one who was pregnant. But perhaps this wasn’t the moment to argue that point.
“I’m here to help you,” Amy went on. “It’s my job to make sure that things go smoothly for you and, by extension, for the rest of the royal family.” She met his eyes, and he saw a fiery sincerity there. “I want us to work together on that.” She worried her lip between her teeth. “And we have...plenty of time to figure out the baby stuff, too.”
That, at least, helped him to relax, at least a little. Artur suspected his head might never clear fully from learning this news, but at least this meeting could continue on without any more bombshells. He hoped. “I’d like that,” he said, giving her a smile that she returned with only a moment’s hesitation. “We can...put a pin in this conversation, if you will.” He allowed himself one more glance at her bump, then vowed to focus firmly on the PR matters at hand and nothing else.
“So.” Amy flipped through a couple of pages in the folder with a brisk snap snap snap . “I had some ideas for how we could modify the existing PR strategy—”