by Dani Collins
“This isn’t at all how I imagined things turning out for you,” her mother murmured.
She seemed surprised that the words had escaped her and glanced toward the kitchen, where the noise and staff were well contained beyond a small service pantry.
Tiffany set down her glass and linked her fingers together, subtly bracing for reaction as she admitted, “I think it might have come to this eventually. I didn’t love Paulie. Not in a way that would have kept us together forever.”
“I know,” Barbara sighed.
“You did?”
Her mother’s perfectly coiffed head tilted in acknowledgement. “Not until you started up with that Bregnovian fellow, but once I saw the lengths you were willing to go for him, I realized you and Paulie never stood a chance. I should have seen it from the outset, but it would have been so convenient, Tiffany.”
She sputtered a laugh at that. “Yeah, well, the situation with Ryzard was more convenience on his part. You were right about that much.” Deep angst threatened to rise up and squeeze her in its clawed grip.
“Is that true? He seemed so protective of you. Still does.”
“I think that’s his nature,” Tiffany said shakily, finding it really hard to hold on to her control. “He was so supportive, made me feel so good about myself, but when it came down to it he said he didn’t need me or my connections. He—” Her voice broke, but she had to say it aloud so she could get over it and move on. “He doesn’t love me.”
“But you love him.”
Through blurred eyes, Tiffany saw her mother’s hand cover her own. The gesture was bittersweet and made her think of all the times her mother had held her hand through her recovery. Through her whole life. She was the wrong person to be mad at.
“I shouldn’t have pushed you away so much lately,” she husked.
“Shush. Your brother did it when he was eleven. I’ve been lucky enough to keep you close this long. I’m just glad I can be here for you when you need me.”
“Are you going to tell me there’s plenty more fish in the sea?”
“I’d like to, but there are so few worth reeling in,” her mother bemoaned, making Tiffany chortle past her tears. “It’s so good to see you smiling again,” her mother added with her own misty smile.
She didn’t know how often Tiffany cried. How she combed for news and photos of Ryzard, how she quietly kept tally of the countries recognizing him. She was doing exactly that one afternoon before going into a meeting, getting her fix to get her through one more day without him, when she came across a horrifying update.
Coal Mine Explosion in Northern Bregnovia, Dozens Unaccounted For, one hour ago.
Leaping to her feet, she shouted for her assistant.
* * *
Even though sabotage was not suspected, it was war conditions all over again. Ryzard could hardly bear it, but quick response on the recovery effort was critical. There was no time to ask the fates why his country should suffer this way. No way to reassure his people that they could live without fear. There were only feet on the ground, hands digging into the rubble, people trying to save people into the night.
Dark was receding, exhaustion setting in and spirits low when a throaty drone began climbing on the air. The latest batch of survivors, many badly burned, had just left on what aircraft he’d been able to muster on short notice. They hadn’t had time to drop and be back so soon. That didn’t bode well.
Squinting into the silver horizon, he saw what looked like an invasion, and his heart stopped. Then the hospital crosses on the underbellies of three of the helicopters became visible and he relaxed. Someone asked if the Red Cross was finally here. He had no idea. His phone was charging in the one small shack that had a power generator for electricity.
Jerking his chin at someone to greet and direct them, he threw himself back into the work at hand.
Sixteen hours later, he was knee-deep in rubble, numb and almost asleep on his feet, losing the light, when his eye—and half-dead libido—was caught unexpectedly by a pair of skintight jeans tucked into knee-high black boots. A blond ponytail swung against the back of a black leather jacket as the woman nodded at whomever she was speaking to.
He was seeing things. He clambered across to her, swaying on his feet as he pulled her around by a rather despondent grip on her arm, distantly surprised to catch at a solid person and still not believing his eyes, even when he saw the familiar patch of color on the side of her face.
“You’re real,” he said dumbly.
She smiled tenderly and set a hand against his cheek. Her touch was surprisingly warm, making him aware how cold he was. How utterly empty and frozen he’d been for weeks.
“All I could think was that no country would be equipped for this many burn injuries. We have a triage set up. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m sending the victims with their families to whoever can take them.”
He couldn’t speak, could only string clumsy arms around her and drag her into him. Closing his eyes, he drank in the sweet, familiar scent of her hair.
Tiffany ran soothing hands over him, feeling the chill on his skin beneath his shirt, trying to ease the shudders rippling through his muscles. He was heavy, leaning into her, beyond exhausted.
“Come with me,” she urged, dragging him stumbling across the trampled yard to the tent where cots and coffee were on hand for the rescuers.
His arm was deadweight across her shoulders. When he sat, he pulled her into his lap.
“You need to sleep,” she insisted as she tried to extricate herself.
He said something in Bregnovian, voice jagged and broken. He snugged her closer, his hold unbreakable.
Not that she really wanted to get away. It felt so good to be near him. He was grimy and sweaty, but he was Ryzard. She blinked damp eyes where he was keeping her face trapped against his chest, surrounded in his personal scent.
“You need to lie down, Ryzard. You’re not even speaking English.”
He brought her with him so the cot groaned beneath them. When she tried to rise, he threw a pinning leg across her and tangled his fingers in her hair. “Don’t leave,” he murmured and the lights went out. He became a lead blanket upon her.
Since she was jet-lagged and had been on her feet for hours, she relaxed and dozed until activity around them woke her. Then she managed to climb free of his tentacle-like hold and carry on with the rescue effort. The trapped miners had been reached and the final victims would need transport.
* * *
Ryzard woke thinking he’d dreamed her, but the jacket draped across his chest told him he wasn’t crazy. She was here, somewhere.
Coffee in one hand, jacket in his other, he went in search and found her trying to comfort an anxious wife as an injured miner was packaged into a helicopter. The woman clutched a baby and had a redheaded boy by the hand, and Tiffany held a matching toddler on her hip.
“Oh, Ryzard,” she said when he draped her jacket over her shoulders, “Please tell her I’m sure her husband will live. The burns are bad, but they didn’t find internal injuries. I’ve lost my translator and she’s so upset.”
Together they reassured the woman and made arrangements for her to catch up with her husband at the burn unit in Paris.
Calm settled as everyone was accounted for. There was a longer journey ahead to bring the mine back into operation, but the immediate crisis was over. Tiffany stifled a yawn as she thanked people and gave them final directions for breaking down the field hospital they’d erected.
“I can’t thank you enough for this,” Ryzard said.
“When you’re part of a club, you pitch in to help your fellow members when they need it, right?”
She was being her cheeky self, but he wasn’t in a frame of mind to take this gesture so lightheartedly.
“I’m being sinc
ere, Tiffany. I hope your motives were not that superficial.”
She sobered. “I told you last night that this struck close to home for me. But I don’t suppose you remember, being pretty much sleepwalking at the time.”
Was it only empathy for fellow burn victims that had brought her here? He flinched, wondering where he got off imagining she could have deeper feelings for him when he’d pushed her from his life the way he had.
“Hey, Tiff,” some flyboy called across. “You catching a lift in my bird or...?”
“Oh, um—”
Ryzard cut her off before she could answer. “You’ll come to Gizela with me.”
“Will I,” she said in the tone she used when she thought he was being arrogant, but he only cared that she acquiesced. He did not care for the way she hugged the pilot and kissed his cheek, thanking him for his help.
Ryzard lifted his brows in query when she turned from her goodbye.
“He grew up with Paulie and my brother. I’ve known him forever,” she defended. “We needed pilots so I called him.”
It was petty and ungrateful to think, we didn’t need them that badly, but he was still short on sleep and deeply deprived of her. His willingness to share her, especially when he was so uncertain how long he’d have her, was nil.
His own transport arrived. They fell asleep against each other in the back of the 4x4 for the jostling four-hour drive back to Gizela.
* * *
The palace looked better than ever, Tiffany noted when she woke in front of it. Its exterior was no longer pockmarked by bullet holes and the broken stones were gone, giving the grounds a sense of openness and welcome. Inside, she went straight up the stairs next to Ryzard, both anxious for a shower. They parted at the top and she went to her room, where, he had assured her, everything she’d left was still there.
She wasn’t sure what it meant. A dozen times she’d thought about asking for the items to be shipped, but she’d been afraid that contacting him would be the first step toward falling back down the rabbit hole into his world. Or it would have been final closure, something she hadn’t been ready for. Had he felt the same? Because he could have had the things shipped to her at any time.
The not knowing hung like a veil over the situation, making her wonder if she was being silly and desperate when she dressed for his flag salutation, or respectful and supportive. He wouldn’t have brought her here if he didn’t want her here, she told herself, but she faltered when they met at the top of the stairs.
He wore his white shirt, black suit and presidential sash. His jaw was freshly shaved and sharply defined by tension as he took in her houndstooth skirt and matching wool jacket. “You don’t have to,” he said for the second time.
She almost took him at his word, almost let herself believe that he only wanted her, didn’t need her, but his eyes gave him away. They weren’t flat green. They burned gold. As if he was taking in treasure. As if she said she wasn’t ready, he would wait until she was.
“I want to,” she assured him, wondering if she was being an imaginative fool. Why would she want to do this? Pride of place, she guessed. It made her feel good to be with him no matter what he was doing. She admired him as a man and took great joy in watching him rise to his position.
Outside, it was blustery and tasting of an early-fall storm with spits of rain in the gusting wind. Leaves chased across grass and their clothes rippled as they walked to the pole. The flag snapped its green and blue stripes as he made his pledge and saluted it.
A burst of applause made them both turn to the crowd gathered at the gate. It was a deeper gathering than Tiffany had seen any other time. Hundreds maybe. A fresh rush of pride welled in her.
“Your predecessor wouldn’t have cut up his hands freeing trapped miners,” she said, picking up his scabbed hand. It was so roughened and abused, she instinctively lifted it to her lips.
The cheering swelled, making her pull back from touching him. “Sorry. That was dumb.”
“No, they liked it. They’re here for you as much as me. They know what you did for us.” He faced the crowd and indicated her with a sweep of his hand and a bow of his head.
His people reacted with incendiary passion, waving flags and holding up children.
“They’re thanking you, Tiffany.” He lifted her hand to his own lips, and another roar went up.
They stood there a long time, hands linked, waving at the crowd. No one walked away. They waited for her and Ryzard to go in first.
“Are you crying?” he asked as they entered the big drawing room. It was such a stunning room with its gorgeous nineteenth-century furniture and view overlooking the sea, but she still wasn’t comfortable in it.
Averting her gaze from Luiza’s portrait, she swiped at her cheeks. “That was very moving. I didn’t expect it. I had the impression they thought of me as an interloper.” Now she couldn’t help straying a glance at Luiza, as if the woman might be eavesdropping.
For a long moment he didn’t say anything, only looked at the portrait with the same tortured expression she’d seen on him before, when his feelings for Luiza were too close to the surface.
She looked away, respecting his need for time to pull himself together, but taking a hit of despair over it, too.
“It’s my fault you felt that way,” he said in a low, grave voice. “But please try to understand what she meant to me. Luiza made me see that Bregnovia is my home. That if I fought for it and made it ours, mine—” he set his fist over the place where her name was inked forever “—I would always belong here. That was deeply meaningful after so many years of being rootless and displaced.”
She nodded, unable to speak because she did understand and felt for him.
“I needed her love after losing my parents. I would have shut down otherwise. Become an instrument of war.”
Instead of a leader who had retained his humanity. It was one of the qualities she admired most in him, so she could hardly begrudge the woman who’d kept his heart intact through the horrors of battle and loss.
“When I lost her, I couldn’t let myself become embittered and filled with hatred. It would have gone against everything she helped me become, but I couldn’t face another loss like it. The vulnerability of loving again, knowing the emotional pain of grief if something were to happen... It terrifies me, Tiffany.”
He said it so plainly, never faltering even when he was exposing his deepest fear.
She wanted to look to the ceiling to contain the tears gathering to sting her eyes. It killed her to hear that he couldn’t give up his heart, but she couldn’t look away from him.
“It’s okay. I admire her, too,” she managed. Her voice scraped her throat with emotion, but she was being sincere. “I wish I’d met her. She had amazing willpower. I wouldn’t have had the guts to do what she did.”
“Guts.” The harsh sound he made was halfway between a laugh and a choke of deep anguish. “Luiza had ideals. Now she is our martyr and a symbol of our sacrifice and loss. I would do her a disservice to forget or dismiss that, but it doesn’t make you an interloper for living where she died, Tiffany. She had a vision. When I look at you, I see reality. Our reality. Scarred by tragedy, but so beautiful. So strong and determined to carry on.”
His tender look of regard had its usual effect of striking like an unexpected punch into her solar plexus, making her breath rush out. She had to cover her lips to still them from trembling.
“I don’t like comparing you. It’s disrespectful to both of you, but you’re right. You and Luiza are very different. You wouldn’t have killed yourself. Given the same situation, you would fight with everything in you to stay alive until I came for you, no matter what happened. That’s who you are. Your courage astounds me.”
He ran his hand down his face only to reveal an expression of profound regret.
&n
bsp; “When I sent you away, all I could think was that I didn’t want to risk the pain of loss again. And did you crawl back in your cave even though I’d hurt you? No. You went on with your life without me, and I was so hurt and so proud at the same time.”
She lowered her head, touched beyond measure, and saw a teardrop land on the hardwood. She swiped at her numb cheek, finding it wet. “Thank you for the flowers.”
“The flowers were an apology. You made me feel like a coward, refusing to embrace love when it’s as precious as life. I wanted to come to you and to hell with your Customs and Immigration, but I had to finish my obligation to Luiza first. I’ve done that. Official announcements will be made later in the week. I have the votes I need.”
“Oh, Ryzard, that’s wonderful!” She was elated for him, but still reeling from his mention of embracing love. Did that mean...? She searched his inscrutable expression.
“After the last few days, this country needs good news.” He sighed and rocked back on his heels, regarding her. “It also means the worst is over for a time when it comes to state functions. I won’t run in the next election. Could you live with two more years of being in the public eye, knowing it would be temporary?”
“What?” Her nails cut into her palms as she tried to stay grounded, not leaping too high on what he was saying. Not reading too deep. Definitely not wanting to hold him back in any way. “Ryzard, you are Bregnovia. It’s barely on its feet. You can’t hand it over to someone else so soon. I couldn’t live with myself if all this stability you’ve fought for crumbled.”
“I don’t want to wait that long to marry you, draga. I ache every night and barely get through my days. I need you.”
“You do?” Her voice hitched and stayed awfully small, but the world around her seemed to expand in one pulse beat, stealing the oxygen and filling the air with sparks. “You really want to marry me? Me?”
“You. Not the daughter of the next American president, not Davis and Holbrook, not the woman who charms heads of state without even trying. You.”
