for a second. I’d been expecting him to argue with me, to ask how I knew it was his. I’d been expecting him to be displeased at the idea of being a father.
I’d thought it might ruin our happy little moment of having found each other again.
Instead, he seemed…
Excited.
“Thank God you’re okay,” he finally said, moving back so we could actually look at each other again. He glanced down, hesitant, and gently placed one shaky hand on my belly. Then he looked up at me, his own eyes shining with tears. “We’re going to have a baby?” he asked in a whisper.
I nodded, almost too surprised at this reaction to speak. When I found my voice, though, I said, “It’s still very early, so I don’t know the sex or anything but… yes.”
He pulled me into his arms and crushed me to him, his body shaking still, and though I was surprised, at first, before long, it occurred to me that maybe I shouldn’t have been.
This was a man who had traveled halfway across the world because he’d thought I sounded strange over the phone. I wasn’t positive, but I was starting to think it meant even more than I’d realized.
I was starting to think that he was a man who took family—and those you pulled into your inner circle—very, very seriously. And it just might be that he included me—and our baby—in that circle.
And if that was true, then I was going to fall even more deeply in love with him.
Chapter 21
Erika
“You’re telling me you don’t know what a zoo is,” I said, almost too surprised to even get the words out—and so close to laughing that I almost couldn’t speak at all.
Francisco held both hands up, shaking his head, his own lips twitching with the start of laughter as well. “That is not what I said. I said I’ve never seen zoos like what the US has,” he clarified.
That wasn’t at all what he’d said. But I was willing to let that slide in favor of my next point.
“So what, exactly, are the zoos in Tarana like?”
He gave me a noncommittal shrug, like he was about to tell me something he didn’t truly believe. “We have just one, in Orlo. Our nation, you know, is not as rich or large as yours.”
Okay, well I had absolutely zero doubt that that was true. But that didn’t mean he’d never seen a zoo before. Surely.
“And you’re the prince of the country,” I said. “Doesn’t that mean that you’ve actually been to that zoo? Like… isn’t that in the job description? As a royal, you have to go see the things your country has to offer, or something?”
Francisco actually laughed at that. “Believe it or not, being part of the royal family doesn’t mean you have to go see all the tourist attractions in the country. Though…” He grew serious and leaned toward me a bit. “If I do decide to see them, I do get in for free. Which, I guess, is a perk.”
I just shook my head at him. “So you’ve never seen a zoo, because in all the time you’ve been traveling the world, you’ve just never taken the time to do it? Well, that changes today. Get dressed. We’re going to Lincoln Park.”
I got out of bed myself and headed for my closet. Because I’d been in my pajamas since Francisco had returned—well, mostly naked, honestly, with him doing dirty and wonderful things to my body—and if we were going to the zoo, which we obviously had to, I probably needed to put on real clothes.
Two hours later, and two days after he suddenly appeared at my door, we were standing in Lincoln Park and staring at the enormous concrete monument that marked the entry to one of the oldest zoos in the US.
Francisco turned his eyes from the sign to the walkway beyond it, his face both amazed and somewhat… shocked.
“This entire place is for animals?” he asked.
I nodded, grinning. “That’s what ‘zoo’ means, you know.”
He reached out and poked me in the ribs, making me squirm, and then took my hand.
“Then I suppose we’d best get on with the tour,” he said. “As it seems we have quite a bit of walking to do.”
We strolled forward, hand in hand and laughing like we were just any other couple in Chicago on a Monday morning. Hell, for anyone who saw us, I guessed we probably would look just like anyone else.
A tall, gorgeous man with what