REALITY REARED ITS ugly head as soon as Lancaster heard the helicopters. Those were his men, and they were coming for him.
And for Sophie.
His first thought was that he had to protect her. If his men saw the flowers in her hair, saw any kind of coziness between Lancaster and her, they would jump to those conclusions that men were famous for jumping to.
It was not questions of Lancaster’s conduct as a professional that worried him. He did not want what had happened between him and Sophie left open to rough conjecture.
He felt he would probably kill the first man who slid him—or her—a sly look of knowing. Kill the man who clapped him on the back in wordless, brotherly congratulation over his conquest.
This is what he got for letting things slip out of his control. This is what he got for surrendering to the chemistry that had sizzled between them almost from the day they had met.
Spontaneous combustion was not what Sophie deserved.
A tryst in a rustic cabin in the hills was not what she deserved.
How could he have done this to her? She deserved talk of what the future held for them before those things that had unfolded between them had unfolded, while they had both been clearheaded. How could they make any clearheaded decisions now? Everything would be clouded, from this day forward, by this day, when they had played like carefree children, but enjoyed the very adult passion that burned white hot between them.
He had gone along with her. Fallen under her enchantment. Live for the moment. No future and no past.
But it was a fantasy. There was a future and there was a past. His past threw shadows forward onto any future she was looking for.
And now both of them were going to have to deal with the consequences of jumping into something without thinking it through.
An awful, awful thought hit him. And yet, the feeling it gave him was not awful at all. It filled him with the oddest feeling of warmth, even while it increased his need to protect her. They were nearly back at the cabin.
“Is there any chance that you—” He didn’t finish the sentence, but he was sure it was crystal clear what he was asking. When his question was met with silence, he stopped and looked back at her.
She had stopped dead in her tracks. She glared at him. If looks could kill a man, he would be six feet under.
“Are you worried about another woman trapping you, Lancaster?”
Lancaster. Not Connal. The change made him feel bereft, even as he could not let her know that.
He was worried about her, not himself. He couldn’t believe she would throw the history he had trusted her with in his face, but he didn’t let the wound show.
“I’m just asking a question,” he said, his voice carefully flat.
“Well, if you were so concerned about that, you should have asked it yesterday,” she snapped.
Truer words than that had rarely been spoken.
The sound of the helicopters was deafening. They were going to land in the clearing around the cabin.
In Lancaster’s world, there was one attribute in a man, or a woman, that mattered more than any other. And that attribute was honor.
And he had just taken hers from her.
Stripped her of her honor by playing around with her as if there was nothing at stake. As if they could just have a day of endless summer together with no consequences. And what did that say of his own honor?
“Sophie,” he said, his voice too loud, trying to be heard over the deafening throbbing of the chopper blades, “I’m sorry.”
From the look on her face—utter devastation, quickly masked with pride—it occurred to him that somehow, he had stumbled on exactly the wrong thing to say.
Well, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t warned her he was not exactly a master of sensitivity around women.
But that sounded like an excuse in his own mind, and he despised himself even more for trying to foist any of the responsibility for what had happened onto her. He was 100 percent responsible.
The helicopter landed, and things happened fast. They were on it and airborne within minutes. He was sucked seamlessly back into his world, on a bench seat, trusted comrades on both sides of him, being briefed about the storm devastation on the island and the progress of repairing damage.
He felt a sigh of relief. No one seemed to suspect anything untoward had happened between him and Sophie.
He glanced up at her.
She was sitting on the opposite bench, alone, the seats on either side of her deliberately left empty. Her chin was tilted upward and her face was pale and proud. She did not look toward him.
When he looked at her, he felt the most incredible rush.
It deafened him to whatever the man beside him was saying. It felt as if his whole world was a tunnel that led to her.
He was pretty sure he had never experienced this particular feeling before: longing, hunger, tenderness, protectiveness, desire.
Love.
He recognized it only because he had experienced elements of it once before, in its purest form. With his son.
He stared at her.
It was as if a current passed between them, as if she could sense him looking. She turned and looked back at him, holding his gaze steadily.
It felt as if the breath was leaving his chest.
And with great relief, he knew what to do. He knew how to make this thing right. But was he brave enough to do it?
The helicopter was lowering down to the helipad at the palace. He saw her holding back, waiting for everyone else to disembark. He waited, too.
“Sophie,” he said, his voice low, “I have to catch up on some things. But I’ll come by and see you tonight.”
The look she gave him was withering. “Don’t bother,” she said, and marched away, her nose in the air.
He watched her go, dumbfounded. And then he found a smile tickling his lips. Nothing with her would ever, ever go quite as he planned it, and for someone who loved control as much as him, how could that be anything but a good thing?
* * *
It had been the hardest thing she had ever said! Sophie thought. When he had said he would come see her, she had wanted to collapse against him, scream yes, beg him to make it soon.
Because of the need inside her.
The need to be with him in every way a woman could be with a man. Her need to hold him and explore him and know him.
For the first time in her life, she understood need. Real need. Not want. But need like a mother must feel to be with her baby and need like someone starving must have for food, and need like a dying person must have to make all that was wrong right.
But all that need just made her weak when she needed to be strong.
He’d already had one woman who had nearly suffocated him with her neediness. Sophie would not be another!
He had made it clear, by his reaction to the arrival of his men in their clearing, that he regretted every single thing that unfolded between them.
And so even though her need sobbed within her to beg him, she knew the truth. You could not beg another person to love you.
And you could not go to a man like Lancaster filled with need.
Hadn’t he helped her recognize this in herself? That she went for a type? That she had an overwhelming need to be protected, to be with someone who made her feel safe in a world that could turn dangerous in the blink of an eye?
She entered the palace.
“I’m so glad you’re safe,” one of the staff members told her. “You’ve had a wee adventure, I understand.”
A wee adventure.
“The princess wants to see you.”
She did not want to see Maddie right now. In this state of exhaustion, her heart in pieces, Maddie of all people would see right through her.
“Could you please tell her I’ll see her tomorrow?”
The staff member looked appalled. “Just for a moment? I think she just needs to make sure you’re all right.”
See? Sophie chided herself. Self-centered as always. Go let her know you are all right. Without burdening her.
She entered Maddie’s suite and then the bedroom. Maddie was sitting up in bed, reading a book. She glanced up and Sophie stared at her. Her friend, despite being in bed, despite being sick a dozen times a day, looked so darned well.
Maddie was radiant. Sophie, thinking about Connal chasing her around the kitchen snapping that towel at her, understood that radiance more than she ever had.
Maddie was a woman who loved and was loved in return.
It made Sophie ache with quiet joy for her friend, and sorrow for herself.
“Are you okay?” Maddie asked. “I heard you were stranded. With Lancaster, which reduced my worry, in one way, and made it worse in another.”
“Oh, we were fine,” Sophie said breezily.
Maddie looked at her closely. “Oh, Soph.”
And at those words, Sophie’s attempt at a brave front dissolved. She burst into tears. And flew into her friend’s open arms.
“I have to leave,” she finally said. “I can’t stay here, Maddie. Nothing has changed. No, that is not true. Everything has changed. For the worse.”
She stopped just short of confessing that she loved him more than ever, that she felt as if she could die for loving him. She stopped short of confessing the troubling truth that she felt her need to feel protected would eventually suffocate any feelings he had for her.
How could she risk running into him now? How could she ever look at him again, without feeling his hands on her, his lips branding her, without thinking of the way his head tilted when he laughed, or the way sweat gilded his muscles when he cut wood?
She could not share a world with him. It was that simple. And that hard.
“What happened?” Maddie asked, wide-eyed.
She couldn’t tell her the whole truth. “Things just got out of hand,” she fudged uneasily.
“Out of hand? Like that out of hand? Lancaster?” Maddie asked, incredulous that Lancaster had lost his legendary self-control.
“It’s just more of the same, Maddie,” Sophie said sadly. “I’m wild for him, and I think he finds it all just an amusement at best, and an embarrassment at worst. The idea that his men might figure out something had happened between us mortified him.”
“Something happened between you?” Maddie asked. “Like that happened between you?”
“Maddie, please. I’m not a child. He certainly isn’t a child. We’re two consenting adults, and we…er…consented. But I can’t be running into him, fearing running into him. I can’t stay here one more day. Maybe not even one more hour.”
Other people, other friends, might have encouraged her to wait, to take a breath, to think things through. But Maddie, thankfully, understood immediately and completely. And Maddie was one of the few people on this island with the power to get things done fast. She could order up a plane.
“I’ll arrange it right away,” Maddie said. “Come back in an hour and I’ll have all the details for you.”
“Thank you, Maddie.”
“I remember what it is to leave this island with a broken heart, Sophie.”
Only you got a happy ending, Sophie thought.
But when she came back in an hour, both Edward and Maddie were there. Edward did most of the talking.
“There’s a threat against me?” Sophie asked, skeptically. “That’s ridiculous.”
Except, when he explained it to her, it wasn’t ridiculous. It had a kind of diabolical brilliance to it.
Still, Sophie felt lied to in every possible way. She had been brought to Havenhurst under a pretext of helping her friend.
Lancaster had known she was being lied to. He might have even instigated the lie. For her own good, of course, because he knew what was good for everyone. All. The. Time.
The awareness of the threat made Sophie feel that feeling that had been a part of her since the attack on her mother.
The world was not safe. It was scary. Unpredictable and bad things could happen.
But, in that awareness, something brand-new occurred to her.
She had to be able to rely on herself. She had to trust that somewhere in her she had the courage, the instinct, the heart to protect herself from the danger that was inherent to living life. She had continually looked outside herself. To a man. Now, suddenly, it seemed imperative that she find her own bravery.
She did not want to cause Maddie any undue stress. But how could her staying also not cause stress? With such raw divisions in the household? With tension between her and Lancaster palpable in the air?
And one thing she was not going to do? Stay here trapped in a bunch of lies. Of course, there was no way to get on—or off—this island without Lancaster knowing. That’s why she was here. Because he was in control of everything. Not that he’d had the decency to tell her that.
Even though there had been lots of opportunities. Never once in the past few days, as they had bared their souls—and an unfortunate amount of other things, too—to each other, had he said, Lass, there is something I must tell you.
There was no escaping from Havenhurst. Except Maddie had done it once. Sophie wondered if she could ask her how. But suddenly she knew.
When you were in trouble, there was a certain kind of man you could call. The kind of man she had always been drawn to.
Lancaster was one of them, but he was out of the question.
The other one was her Uncle Kettle.
And that would solve two problems with one stone. Because if Maddie knew she was with Kettle, she would not worry about her either. After she got free of Havenhurst, then Sophie would uncover her own brave heart. She swore it, a vow to herself.