“ANAIS, HONEY, HE’S HERE, and he’s brought the whole brigade with him.”
Anais sucked in a deep breath and rose from the least comfortable and least wrinkle-inducing chair in her living room, and smoothed her hands over the pretty white eyelet lace dress she’d purchased yesterday for today’s outing with Quinn. “Do I look okay? I feel silly, wearing such a dress for a walk in the park.”
“You always look beautiful, and the sandals make it a little more sensible.”
“All that’s missing is a big floppy hat and oversized glasses,” she joked and leaned over to hug the worry out of her mother.
The squeeze she got in return bolstered her courage. It had only taken three days of constantly weighing Quinn’s proposal to decide there were more pros than cons. Mom’s worry was what finally made her come around. She couldn’t run again. Mom deserved to have her and her sister in her life. If the heart condition had frightened Anais enough to go to Philip for help, she’d find the courage to do whatever she had to do to stay.
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. We can leave. Any country would be lucky to have a talented, caring doctor come to them.”
“I know, Mom.” She kissed her mother’s cheek, glad she’d kept her big list of reasons to herself. Mom’s heart reacted badly to stress; the situation already worried her enough she’d been popping in and out of rhythm since the press first showed up on their doorstep.
It would all be worth it to stay and keep her healthy; no matter what Mom said about leaving together, this was her home.
As long as Quinn could take care of Wayne.
“It’s going to be okay. Things might still change, but you know Quinn’s never been cruel to me. I’m going to play it by ear. You’re not going to have to leave home or Aunt Helen. Try not to worry, okay?”
She made some sound that both affirmed her intention to not worry while highlighting her disbelief that Anais thought it was possible not to.
The bell rang, Anais smoothed her hands over the cheerful princess dress again, and paused by the entrance table to eye the velvet box there. She still hadn’t opened it, and couldn’t even say why. After grabbing a small matching handbag, she carefully picked up the box as if it were rigged to explode, put it into her bag, and stepped out of the house and into Quinn.
Without missing a beat, he kissed her cheek and took her hand in his left, the usual way they’d held hands. “You look beautiful. I think I’m underdressed.”
Threats last time, charm today. And she’d ignore the heart flip that happened when he’d kissed her. The threat didn’t need to be forgotten; it was a reminder why she had to go with the flow until he caught up with her on the only sensible, peaceful way their lives could go. The one where he dumped her this time, and the media lost interest.
She stepped back far enough to get a look at him. The gray slacks he wore were obviously made for the man, crisp and lightweight but still tailored. His white button-down sat open at the collar, revealing the thick masculine neck that…said as much about his transition from boy to man as anything could. He’d gone from slim and lithe to broad and strong, and the definition in his neck made it clear to her how the rest of his body would reflect this strength.
“You look great.” She didn’t comment on his freshly shaved jaw, the curls starting in the thick brown hair that had grown out of the neat military cut he would have worn since enlisting. Ignore that too; she didn’t need reminding of the boyish, carefree fop she’d always delighted in running her fingers through.
“Somehow that didn’t sound like a compliment,” he murmured, then looked at their joined hands, paused a beat, a measuring slant to his brow, then let go with his damaged hand and switched sides to link five fingers with her own.
“Why did you just switch sides?”
He squeezed her fingers with his whole hand and gave a little tug toward the cars, answering quietly. “It looks better, draws attention away from the imperfect, messy parts. And I thought you might prefer it.”
“You seriously think I feel revulsion for your injury?” She could buy him wanting things to appear perfect—a walk through the city’s largest green space on a sunny summer afternoon would yield photos of some kind—but his suggestion she’d feel disdain over his missing fingers made her stomach turn heavy and she couldn’t keep the annoyance at bay. “I work with amputees—”
“I didn’t soften the situation for you when I told you,” he cut in, his voice staying low despite there being no one near enough to hear them. She had to remind herself he’d probably never considered how she’d faced his injury. He continued when they’d settled in the back seat, “I did for everyone else. Only you, me and Ben know how that went. The rest of the world, including the current and future king, believe the fingers cleanly came off and we just had to bandage it up and carry on.”
Talking about it hurt. So did thinking about it.
Unable to stop herself, Anais reached for his left hand and clasped it in both of hers, suddenly needing him to really know that the only negative she felt about it was that he’d gone through it and that her ring had probably made it worse. “You don’t trust me, so why did you tell me a truth you don’t want known?”
“Anger.” He turned his hand in hers and gripped, strong but not hard, dexterous control as good as she could hope for anyone. “You were too calm, and inside I was boiling.”
She’d looked calm? Every part of her had been shaking, but maybe fear and regret could be hidden better than rage. Arguing her state at the time wouldn’t do anything for them, so she just let silence fall as he gave orders to the driver and the black sedan entourage pulled onto the quiet street.
He’d hurt, and he’d wanted to hurt her too so he’d lashed out, lending weight to the notion he could strike at her again if she refused him now.
Where could this kind of marriage leave them in ten years? After children? After their volatile passion had run its course?
There’d been no one since him, and he’d said the same. Seven years of celibacy was a long time. Felt like some version of love, maybe…if he truly could become involved, if he was going to help with Wayne because he wanted her safe more than the idea of it ruining his plan to undo that black mark that divorce left on his royal record.
She retrieved the ring from her handbag and handed the box to him. “Should I wear this?”
“Do you like it?” Quinn asked, a tone in his voice hinting how important it was for her to say yes. “If you’d prefer a different ring…we can make that happen.”
“I haven’t looked at it,” she admitted, keeping her hand flat for him with the box sitting on her palm until he took it.
Whatever he thought about that, he opened the box and presented the ring to her.
Anais had expected ostentatious, to feel self-conscious about the size of the stone—Quinn’s way always involved big gestures—but she hadn’t expected to feel. Or the way the air became so thin.
She hadn’t expected a blue-green stone, hadn’t even known such a stone existed. Large, yes, but not horrifying. And there were two additional but smaller princess-cut diamonds flanking it in a platinum band so delicate it didn’t look strong enough to support the gems.
Heartbreakingly beautiful.
“It matches your eyes,” he offered softly, and the ring bomb went off as he plucked it from the velvet pillows and slid it onto her finger.
Eyes burning, she took a slow breath then clamped her mouth shut to stop her lower lip trembling.
A beautiful ring shouldn’t make this harder; she wasn’t that person. She’d never cared about that stuff.
Another breath as she felt her hand fist, keeping the ring from moving, keeping her from gazing at it as if she were star-struck. “Sapphire?”
Please be a sapphire.
“Alexandrite.”
A stone she hadn’t even heard of. Probably magnificently rare and jimmied off some ancient crown or necklace, one bit of the family jewels to show how serious he was.
“New?”
“Seven years old.” He turned her chin toward him, leaned in and kissed her mouth lightly; again her lip trembled. “Can I infer you like it?”
“Seven years?”
“It was an anniversary present.”
Pow.
“It’s beautiful.” She swallowed, cursing herself for how dejected she sounded over being given a magnificent ring.
He’d kept it the whole time. He’d picked it out when they were still together. An engagement ring, for the engagement they’d never had.
Damn him.
The weight of it all drowned out everything ricocheting through her mind, and Quinn let her drift into silence until they got to the park. He kept her hand; his thumb brushed her finger, slightly moving the ring this way and that, playing havoc with her emotions.
No threats, just charm, sweetness and romance. She’d almost prefer the angry man who’d trapped her into this arrangement to this shimmer of who she’d fallen so hard for that she’d let herself live in the fantasy that she could ever fit into his world. She’d found a place in the medical world, more than she’d ever found anywhere, including where she’d grown up and those first seventeen years of never fitting in.
The car pulled into the park and Quinn helped her from the back. Taking his place again on her left where he could hold her ringed hand in his whole hand, guiding her down a cobblestone path through the trees ringing a large meadow and central pond.
The security detail walked several meters behind, close enough to respond quickly in case of emergency, but far enough for a modicum of privacy. About the same distance ahead of them, another couple walked, blissfully unaware through the cool afternoon shade of the silver birch trees.
“Have you had any luck tracking down Wayne?” She opted for a shorthand, normalized manner to ask about the bane of her adult existence. The horrified delight she still felt from the ring needed countering.
“Yes, but I haven’t met with him yet,” Quinn answered, his voice so quiet and sedate she had to look at him to work out whether to attach positive or negative meaning to his words.
Nothing. Just calm.
“Have you contacted him?”
“Not yet.” He released her hand, stepped around to the side he preferred and wrapped his arm around her waist instead, anchoring her to him.
In the cool shade, his body pressed heat against her skin. No, not heat. Warmth. A sense of security despite the lack of movement on Wayne. “Why not?”
“He’s not in a position to cause damage right now. We have some time.”
“How do you know?”
“He’s incarcerated,” Quinn answered, the calm in his voice fracturing briefly with a note of disdain. “Solitary confinement for another few days. He attacked a guard.”
Jail? That shouldn’t shock her. Blackmail wasn’t the man’s only crime. “What did the police get him for?”
Giving a minor alcohol?
Inappropriate contact with a minor?
Talking a drunken teen into nudie shots?
Even though Anais knew she was smart, she’d still had her thinking corrupted by the desire to belong somewhere…to someone. So her crime was worse than other girls he’d just tricked. She’d known better and done it anyway.
“I’m having his record sent over tonight but, with what I’ve learned, he sounds like a great guy. Do me a favor and don’t tell me how you ever dated with someone like that.”
Dated. They’d never dated. The implication caused her to bristle, even though she was supposed to want Quinn to be coming to exactly this kind of conclusion—the one that would lead to him thinking her not suitable for the royal family.
This was her opening to tell him the truth—pathetic and tired after a childhood of bullying and verbal abuse, she’d walked herself right off the cliff and was still falling. To point out the way it mirrored her decision-making when she and Quinn had eloped. Willful ignorance, ridiculous self-deception.
“We’ve all been stupid teenagers once.”
The words refused to come.
“Once I know what he’s been convicted of, and if there has been any previous incarceration, I’ll know how to approach him.”
All sensible. And surprisingly proactive, but too new a character trait to trust. “Please keep me in the loop. I need to be involved in this. To know what’s going on.”
“I’m handling it.” He didn’t sound angry, even leaned over to brush his lips against her temple. The couple ahead of them had finally noticed who walked behind them and now had a cellphone out. “You wanted me to help with it before.”
“I did. I do,” she whispered, smiling at the couple, still several meters away, then leaned up to kiss his cheek in return. Because it felt as if he’d kissed her head as part of his PR thing. “I trust you to handle it. It’s just been eating at me for so long; being afraid of it, of him, is hard-wired.”
The quiet confession earned her a longer look, a spike of irritation in his eyes. “I’ll fix it. I’m used to storming barriers.” This should be seen as a romantic walk with sweet touches, and she really hoped the cameras didn’t pick up the quiet, tense conversation. All they needed was a video to deal with.
Another group of people approached from the park’s other path, and the couple who’d been filming stepped to the side to allow them to pass.
With the path about to become narrower, Anais pressed against him, trying to edge Quinn off the walk with her to make way, but his arm firmed at her waist and he held her to the center.
“We need to move,” she whispered, and he shook his head, lifting the whole hand he’d earlier freed and waved at the people.
The group stepped off the path, and Quinn continued forward. “People are used to a kind of deference, and even if it feels strange to me too it’s tradition and I try to keep it up. You’ll have to get used to things again.”
“It feels rude,” she muttered, her smile faltering for the first time since they’d reached the wide open public space. “I’m no different to them. I think putting myself into that false headspace is part of why I struggled so much with the title. I hate being called Princess.”
“Next time we’ll move to the side, and you’ll see what happens. The smoothest way of handling things is the traditional route here, doing what people expect. Like this. Courting. The Sip. The wedding.”
“It’s not really a wedding. We’re still married.”
“But we never had a proper wedding. This will be a fresh start for us. Starting over, and doing it how we should’ve before. It’s a wedding.”
Pick your battles, dummy.
As the path opened to a wide meadow, he steered them to the east where she now saw a small table and servers hovered nearby. Lunch in the park. Let it never be said he didn’t know how to put on a show. Maybe he was right.
“Shouldn’t fairy tales have picnics on the ground with red gingham blankets?”
“We can sit on the ground if you want, but you’re the one in the white dress.” The charm and smile returned. “Ben met with the designers for a prosthesis this week. Even met with the vascular surgeon. Hasn’t agreed to surgery, but he’s listening.”
“How did you manage it?” She went with the subject change. Ben was her patient too and she’d been failing to get him to consider a prosthesis for a month. “Did he hit you with RoboCop jokes?”
He pulled out her chair. “He hit me with much worse. I just have better ammunition to fight back.”
The afternoon sun warmed her shoulders and she let her eyes track over the park as he settled opposite her and the servers began to fuss, filling glasses with juice and water, presenting dishes of fruit, cheese, and little meat pastries. No wine. He remembered that too.
More sweetness and consideration. Fighting for Ben. Fighting for her?
Looking at him got hard.
She shifted her gaze toward the pond and, set against the green water, maybe thirty meters from where they sat, he stood.
A shock of ice shot through her and she heard Quinn urgently saying her name.
Lanky, tall, gaunt of face, shaggy brown hair, and a deep corded scar across his right cheek.
It was happening.
A glass of water shot off the table and Anais saw it, but barely had enough control of her shaking hands to latch on to Quinn’s closest arm. “It’s him.”
* * *
Quinn let her glass fall, gaze fixed on Anais’s bloodless face. Even her forever pink lips looked like chalk, but the violent tremble in her hands on his arm just made it worse.
Her fear summoned his; needles of awareness assaulted the back of his neck and he felt himself tensing, readying for a fight.
She’d said him.
“Him?” he echoed, following her gaze to a man loitering some distance away.
Ratliffe?
Couldn’t be. He was rotting in solitary in prison an hour from the capital as of two hours ago.
Quinn forced himself to relax and waved off the approaching security team. He didn’t even know what Ratliffe looked like yet but, even if he had, he was too distant to see much aside from generalities. Tall. Overly thin. In need of a haircut, a shave, and a tee shirt without a hole in it.
“It’s him,” she said again, then looked at him, then back at the security people. Quinn shook his head at them again. “How did he know we’d be here?”
“It’s not him, Anais.” Shifting from fighting mode to being gently protective, he disengaged her clutching hands to take them both in his own. “He’s in solitary, remember? That’s not him.”
“It’s him.”
The fear rolling off her made him doubt for a few seconds but, unless the man was an escape artist, it wasn’t him. “I’ll go see.”
“No!” She squawked the word, causing people nearby to look in their direction. Even someone who didn’t know her wouldn’t be able to mistake her panic.
“I’ll take Mr. Potts with me.” He gestured toward the leader of his security detail and, after rising, obstructed her view of the man until she looked up at him.
She’d said she hated it when he distracted her from her fears, but it was the only way he knew how to divert her when she got overwhelmed. But it also helped him.
He tilted her chin up and brushed his lips over hers, increasing the strength of his kiss until she kissed him back, even just briefly. “I’ll just double-check, okay? You stay here. If it’s him, I’ll handle it. I promise.”
It wasn’t him, but he needed her to calm down. Talking about the man who’d tormented and blackmailed her had just made this fear materialize with the first person who looked passingly similar from a distance. Once he’d made sure she’d feel better.
He just wouldn’t tell her he hadn’t seen Ratliffe’s photo yet.
* * *
By the end of the weekend, Quinn had come to understand the depth of Anais’s fear over the photos and how the specter of Wayne haunted her.
Their outing in the park had generated the photos and videos online he’d hoped for, but his quiet, but admittedly strange, conversation with the man she’d mistaken for Ratliffe overshadowed their success. He’d been cordial and, despite his confusion, had produced identification when requested. He’d even been polite when Quinn had brought him to Anais for introductions, and through the embarrassment that had brought color back to her cheeks and sent her apologizing profusely—something she hadn’t yet done with him.
At the charity brunch they’d attended late the following morning, he hadn’t even needed to question the server she’d also mistakenly thought was Ratliffe. By then, he’d seen the man’s file and had his mugshot on his phone to show her quietly, without causing a scene.
The most important thing for him to do with regard to their relationship had been to sort this situation out before anything else.
So now, nearing midnight on Tuesday evening, he knocked on Anais’s door.
“What happened?” she whispered the second she opened the door, one hand shooting out to grab his arm and drag him inside before locking up.
She’d been asleep when he’d called to tell her he was coming, and her hair was delightfully messed up, but the pink silky gown and robe she wore took the majority of his attention. The low light in the room only accentuated the way the silk draped from her breasts and skimmed her waist. God, she looked good in it. He’d had a mission…
“I wanted to tell you tonight, as soon as it was done.”
“So, tell me.” She kept her voice low, pulled the short silky robe tighter around her, and went to perch on the sofa. “Stop dragging it out. Did something happen?”
He followed the conversation better once she stopped moving around and stopped jiggling. “I got the…”
The word video almost flew, but he checked himself in time. She’d never once mentioned a video to him—just pictures—and they scared her beyond reason alone. If she found out there was actual footage…
“You got the pictures?” she filled in, still speaking in low, but now frenzied tones.
“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “And he’s gone.”
“What do you mean, he’s gone?” She kept her voice low. “Is he dead?”
He finally found the wherewithal to look the room over and make sure his mother-in-law wasn’t downstairs with them, and her question solidified. Dead?
“For God’s sake, I didn’t kill him.”
* * *
The sudden exasperation in Quinn’s voice had Anais flipping on the table lamp to better see him.
Lines she’d never noticed creased between his brows, evidence of a great deal of recent scowling. He looked tired. Exhausted, really. She patted the sofa cushion beside her and looked up at him. “Sit with me. I’ll stop interrupting so you can tell me.”
He more fell into the sofa than sat and, as soon as he’d settled, reached for her and tugged until she rested against his side. “I arranged early release from his grand larceny sentence; he was escorted with guards to the palace for a long talk, and made a deal that ended with me having the blackmail material, him without access to retrieve any copies and then out of the country with a tidy sum of money.”
Before his words had a chance to settle, he’d upped the ante by dragging her into his lap.
Intimate and gentle despite his haggard appearance, he wrapped one arm around her waist and rested the other hand on her bare knee, thumb stroking in a leisurely way.
Distracting.
He sounded so certain that Wayne was out of their lives—that it was over. “What…?”
“I’ve spent the whole day with a loathsome man for you; do I not deserve a little bit of cuddling?”
The cheeky tone and lopsided grin were impossible not to return, and Anais felt herself smiling despite the subject of only seconds before. She propped her elbow on his shoulder and let her fingers scratch through the short, thick curling hair atop his head. “Is that how it works?”
He tilted his head into her hand and closed his eyes, but his hand stroked up her thigh and back, leaving those happy tingles racing over her skin. But his certainty was convincing, especially when it became clear how much he’d actually done.
“I don’t know what to say,” she whispered, feeling relief so palpable that this whole endeavor suddenly seemed possible. Or at least less terrifying. “You look tired.”
“Long day,” he confirmed, and opened his eyes, his hand still stroking up and down her thigh. He wanted to stay.
More. She wanted it too. “You could sleep here.”
It took a lot to make the offer, so when he removed her hand from his hair and sketched a rueful smile she’d already started bracing herself for rejection.
“The sofa looks comfortable, but I’d rather a bed.”
Since they’d met again, there had been kisses of all description—angry, overwhelming, gentle, sweet, tender—and all initiated by him. But she wanted to kiss him, even if it might not convince him she meant him to stay for more than sleep. She wanted her mouth tender from the day’s growth of scratchy beard; she wanted that delicious burn all over her. She wanted to finally see the man’s body that time and service had given him. He’d somehow managed to stay dressed that time in her office.
He hadn’t stopped touching her, so she followed the will of her pounding heart and brushed her lips lightly against his. “I meant upstairs.”
The way his fingers curled into her thigh and the uptick in his breathing said he wanted that too, but, as she tilted her head to deepen the kiss, he pulled back, regret in his eyes. “Is this gratitude?”
“Grat—?” She stopped and shook her head, leaning back to look at him. “No. It’s not gratitude.”
“Did you finally accept that I love you?” he asked, then flopped his head back, eyes closing. “Please say that’s it, because I want to stay.”
He couldn’t be happy with progress; he wanted everything when he wanted it.
She didn’t want to talk about this, not right now. “I know you care, but why does this have to be about love? It wasn’t about love in my office. That was hate sex.”
“That wasn’t hate sex.” He lifted his head sharply, instantly annoyed, but his hands stayed gentle, as if he’d willed them to be so, even while putting her off his lap.
His reaction shocked her almost as much as the grief she felt at losing the cage of his arms and the solid heat beneath her. But when he scooted an entire cushion away, that shock turned into grief. “What else would you call it?”
“Years of agony.”
His bitter, disbelieving laugh robbed her of anything else to say. It took everything to keep the burning in her eyes from pouring salty rivers.
“What’s it going to take? Do you think I half-violated a citizen’s rights and kicked him out of the country because I just kind of like you and really like what’s between your legs?”
Still no words came, even when he rose and stomped for the door.
“So that you can’t be further confused, I’ll make it clear. When you accept why I’m doing all this, I’ll go upstairs with you. That’s it.”
Love. She knew what he meant.
If she said what he wanted to hear, it would just be because she wanted him to stay and stop looking at her like that.
Even if it was exactly how he should look at her—shock and bitterness that meant he was reconsidering this foolish idea.
“Did you look at the photos?”
“That’s what you want to know?” He shook his head, jaw gritted as he closed his eyes for long, stuttering heartbeats. “I saw enough to confirm it was you. That’s it.”
Which should’ve made her feel a little better, but didn’t. “Where are they?”
“Penthouse safe. You can have them after the wedding.” The smile he gave her was all teeth, sharp and unhappy. “Think of it as the world’s most messed-up wedding gift.”
“More blackmail to marry you? Is that an act of love?”
“Collateral,” he corrected. “If you love someone, set them free? I’m supposed to just let you go? Because you said you wanted me to fight for you. You can’t have it both ways.”