by Alice Ward
My heart was pounding, my blood roaring as I burst into the sunshine, inhaling deeply of the cool, sixty-degree air. Green and blue surrounded me, dotted with the reds and pinks of roses my mother favored.
I had no time to take it all in as a hand encircled my bicep, halting me from going down the steps. I was yanked around to face the man in front of me.
His nostrils flared. “Test me, Princess. I shall keep count, and on our wedding night, I’ll exact my revenge.”
“I won’t marry you.” My voice was low, but I was proud that it didn’t tremble.
He laughed. “You are, in nearly every sense of the term, practically already married to me now. The contracts are signed. In this moment, you belong to me. The wedding ceremony is only a detail. If I chose, I could plant my seed in your belly tonight as you lay strapped to my bed. Do you not understand yet? Your father assured me that you were intelligent. Was he mistaken?”
Strapped?
The peripheral of my vision was growing cloudy, and I unlocked my knees before I passed out. “No. I don’t understand. Why me?”
His dark gaze traveled over my face and down my body. “Why not you? I’ve yet to include a blonde in my family. Our combination of traits will be interesting, don’t you think?”
“But I don’t want to marry,” I argued. “You or anyone else. Wouldn’t you be happier with a willing bride? Someone who loved…” My voice cracked, and I cleared my throat. “Someone who loved you and you loved in return?”
He sighed. “My princess, fear is more powerful than love.” He extended his elbow, offering me his arm as he had done earlier, his dark gaze nearly penetrating me. “I will not be rejected. If you do so again…” his eyes went to the sharp stone steps, “you may lose your balance, find yourself in tragic circumstances. Do you not yet understand the power I yield over you now?”
I gasped. “You wouldn’t.”
His arm snaked out until it lay across my back, his hand circling my bicep. His body was hot against my side as the nail of his thumb dug through the lace and into my skin. He stepped forward, taking me with him, until we were on the edge of the top step, the toes of my shoes extending over the side. “Would you like to wager on that?”
Unable to stop myself, I looked down. Below me, twenty marble steps gleamed in the morning sun. Basins of flowers edged the bottom. Luxurious cars sat at rest in the circular driveway beyond where I stood.
There would be witnesses, I knew. I also knew it wouldn’t matter.
My mother would grieve for me. My father would be upset, but only as much as he would mourn a lost asset.
Life would move on, and the prince would select another blonde bride, if blonde was still his preference at that time. He would sire more children, rule with an iron fist. He wouldn’t be punished because my death would be ruled an accident.
For a moment, I saw myself falling, head and limbs cracking against the hard stone.
It wouldn’t be so bad, would it? Pain, yes, but only for a few moments. If I was lucky, my neck might even snap early in the fall, giving me merciful release before I completed the descent.
Closing my eyes, I leaned forward. I’d take my fate into my own hands.
The hand tightened on my arm, and I pulled heavily against it. “Let me go,” I whispered.
“No.” A second hand wrapped around me, and I was pulled backward. “Your fate rests with me.”
I opened my eyes and gazed out onto the Mediterranean, then over to the guards, who averted their eyes. That was my answer.
This was my fate.
I shivered and allowed Prince Vitalievich to lead me down the steps, to stroll through the gardens at a leisurely pace as he explained where we’d live, explained his household rules. His expectations. His needs.
To anyone watching, it was a casual conversation of two people getting to know one another.
The princess and her prince.
But I knew better.
We were captive and captor.
CHAPTER TWO
Xander
“Would you wrap and overnight this for me?”
My personal assistant nodded. “Yes, of course.” Joyce smiled as she picked up the large stuffed puppy with long floppy ears, a small charm bracelet encircling its wrist. “This is so cute. Kenzie will love it.”
As I watched Joyce examine each charm closely, I wished I could be in California tomorrow when my daughter officially turned four years old. I wished she could sit on my lap, wished I was able to watch her tiny fingers rip the paper away from her present. Wished I could clasp it around her wrist.
“You okay?”
Joyce had reported to me the past six years but had worked for my father since before I was born, so I’d essentially known her all my life. Taking over the role of Chief Executive Officer of Armstrong International from my retiring father had been easy with Joyce at my right hand.
It had been strange at first, asking someone who’d acted as a quasi-mom to do things like send packages or type up reports, but Joyce thrived on staying busy and often complained if I passed work down to other assistants or interns. And Joyce’s evil eye could be as deadly as my father’s, so she had no trouble keeping me in line.
Joyce was a gem, who knew the company in and out. By now, she could have moved up much further in the ranks. Hell, she could practically run the entire place on her own. But she didn’t want to. She was content just where she was, at least that was what she told me often enough.
I met Joyce’s gaze. “Yeah. I just…” I stroked the soft fur of the stuffed dog.
“You just miss them,” she finished for me. Her voice was gentle. She missed them too. She’d been a quasi-grandmother since both of my children had been born. “I understand.”
And I knew she did.
“Yeah. I should have never let them move away.”
Joyce lifted her brow. “And exactly what choice did you have?”
The truth was… I had plenty of them, I knew.
I could have tried harder to make Danielle happy. I could have given up my role in the company for my kids. I could have been less selfish, more in touch with the needs of my family.
But at the time, I thought it would be okay when my ex-wife said she was moving to California to marry her punk rocker of a boyfriend. Her soulmate, she called him. I didn’t hate her, after all.
Not exactly.
How could I blame her for seeking out happiness with someone else since I was apparently a “cold hearted bastard” who was like “sleeping with a snowman every night.”
She wasn’t wrong.
Plus, I had a damn airplane, after all. When she told me of the move, I’d envisioned me jetting across the country to see them all the time. I’d envisioned me opening up a Los Angeles office. I had clearly seen us being able to make this work.
What I hadn’t foreseen was Danielle changing so much since the move. I hadn’t foreseen her erratic behavior. I hadn’t foreseen the change in the kids, the way my son went from looking at me like I was a hero to looking at me like I was the villain in some Hollywood movie.
“I need to find myself,” Danielle told me when Kenzie was barely two. Finding herself had involved hours at the spa or yoga studio while a nanny took care of the kids. Finding herself meant solo trips to Europe and the Caribbean. Finding herself meant finding someone else.
I found out about them when Joyce had dropped a copy of a tabloid on my desk, her eyes filled with anger and worry.
There she was on the cover. My wife… kissing a stringy haired, skinny dude in leather pants, a nasty looking nose ring the only thing between them.
The thing was… I hadn’t been that upset. Maybe that was the cold-hearted bastard in me. Or maybe it was because I hadn’t loved her. Had never really loved her. And maybe what I’d felt more than anything was relief that she was the one to move on.
We’d been divorced for over a year now, separated longer than that. If we were honest with each other, we should have never
married in the first place, and we probably wouldn’t have if she hadn’t gotten pregnant.
God, I remembered that day as if it were unfolding before me. Danielle had called, telling me that she needed to see me after class. I was only months away from getting my MBA while she was still working on her undergraduate degree at Columbia.
“We need to talk.”
I remembered thinking at the time that “we need to talk” had to be the four worst words in existence. I’d been wrong.
“I think I’m pregnant.”
Those four words had knocked my life out of its orbit, or least sent it on a spiraling detour.
When the pregnancy had been confirmed, and Danielle insisted on keeping the baby, I strapped my balls on tight, got down on one knee, and proposed.
We both tried to make it work, at least I thought we did. I finished my MBA even when Danielle decided to drop out to focus on our family. Focus on filling the new home I bought with my trust fund with expensive furniture and art.
And she had been a good mother at first. When Kylian was born, she’d nursed him with a look of awe in her eyes that had convinced me that everything would be all right. But by the time he was three, we were fighting all the time. No. She was fighting. I was ignoring. I was turning into the snowman she accused me of being.
We had been on the verge of divorce when she announced she was pregnant again. That had been our biggest fight. We hadn’t slept in the same bed together in weeks when she dropped that bit of news on me.
“Remember that night after the Stewart’s party?” Danielle asked me.
Shit. Yes. I did remember. I remembered Dani getting drunk off her ass. I hadn’t been exactly sober either. The door to the limo had barely closed when she was climbing on my lap, fumbling with my pants and her skirts. It hadn’t lasted long.
But I’d convinced myself it had lasted long enough. After all, only one of those suckers needed to get through. And the window of opportunity had been right.
Then Kenzie had been born, and all doubts of her paternity fled when her little hand had wrapped around my finger, her deep blue eyes blinking up at me.
I looked at the emerald stone on the charm bracelet. Kenzie’s birthstone. A May baby. A springtime baby. A “we’ll make it work” baby.
It hadn’t worked.
Danielle had found Jet Ford and jetted away, taking my kids with her. And I hadn’t stopped her.
Damn, I sucked as a human. As a father. As a man.
“I asked the LA housekeeping staff to stock the fridge,” Joyce said, breaking through my haze of thoughts.
When Danielle moved, I bought an apartment there, one not far from where they lived. It made sense to have a more comfortable and familiar place to keep the kids when I visited.
“Thanks.” I met her gaze, the wrinkles like parentheses on each side of her otherwise smooth face. “I appreciate it.”
She nodded and headed toward the door, stuffed dog and bracelet in her arms. “Anything else you need?”
“Yeah. When the gift is wrapped, will you bring it to me?” I glanced at the clock. “I want to FaceTime Kenz, tease her a little.”
Joyce smiled. “Of course.” The smile slid from her face and she looked at me seriously. “You’re a good father.”
My heart squeezed because I knew the truth. I wasn’t.
Sure, I was good when I was with them, but that wasn’t often enough.
The door clicked softly behind Joyce as she left me to my thoughts. I wasn’t always this morbid or self-deprecating, and I wasn’t completely sure why I was feeling that way now.
I picked up the picture of Kylian and Kenzie from my desk. I’d snapped it at Disney on my last visit. Kenzie was smiling brightly while Kylian just looked annoyed and bored.
“A guilt vacation,” as Danielle called it. She would also call the charm bracelet a “guilt gift” as well as anything else I bought the kids. Nothing I ever did was good enough, and if it was good enough, I was doing it for selfish reasons, according to my ex.
Maybe she was right and everything I did was based on guilt. It was hard to tell anymore.
Guilt or simple obligation. After all, I’d taken over the helm of Armstrong International, even when it was the last thing I’d wanted to do. Business hadn’t been my dream, but here I was, sitting behind this desk for sixteen hours a day.
I swiped a thumb over Kylian’s face then set the photograph down on the corner of my desk.
Scrubbing my face with my hands, I scratched at the beard that was getting a little too long, a reminder that I needed a haircut and trim before heading to Los Angeles on Friday.
I worried about Kylian the most. At seven, he had been getting in trouble in school the last few months. The fact that his behavioral problems began just when his mother remarried wasn’t something a shrink would need to unravel. Kylian hated the rocker. Well, he hated everything.
He hated California.
He hated his mother. His school. His little sister. He hated me.
Did all seven-year-olds hate so many things? I didn’t know.
Danielle assured me that he was fine. That he was just going through a phase. When I learned that he spent most of his time sitting with an Xbox controller in his hands, playing war games that were intended for kids much older than him, I told his mother of my concern.
She’d gotten angry. “Don’t you dare tell me how to raise our kids,” she shouted. “It’s easy for you to say ‘do this or do that’ because you live in New York. You’re not here. You—”
“And why is that? If I remember correctly, it’s because you took them away!”
It had only gone downhill from there, and as a result, Danielle had taken the kids’ iPads away from them, meaning I couldn’t FaceTime them or them FaceTime me. It wasn’t the first time she’d punished me — them — that way.
But when I’d spoken to my attorney about it, Leslie had only shrugged. “Is she stopping you from talking to them on the landline?” When I shook my head, she shrugged again. I really hated when she shrugged. “Then she’s fulfilling her side of the agreement. If you’d wanted unlimited FaceTime access, we should have added that to the parenting plan papers.”
But I hadn’t thought.
Dammit. I hadn’t thought of anything.
For someone with an IQ of one-forty-two, I was an idiot.
My phone rang, pulling me out of my head and into the real world of business, and by the time I hung up, Joyce was back with the wrapped present.
It made me smile. Joyce did everything right. The pink and white striped paper was secured with a wide, gauzy looking purple bow, with silk flowers tucked in for extra flair.
“Are you sure you won’t marry me?” I asked my assistant.
She rolled her light blue eyes. “I changed your diapers, so that would feel a little odd.” Her brow lifted. “I thought you were never marrying again anyway, so the whole topic is moot.”
“Moot?”
She nodded firmly. “Moot. Now, do you need anything else?” She checked her watch. “I’ll need to get it shipped out in the next twenty minutes if you want it to arrive tomorrow.”
I went through my mental calendar. With the three-hour difference, Kenzie should be home from preschool by now. I picked up my iPad and started tapping. Joyce gave me a little salute and closed the door on her way out.
“Daddy!”
My smiling girl’s entire face filled the screen, her baby teeth gleaming. “Hey, baby girl. I was hoping to find you home.”
Her eyes grew wide, looking impossibly blue behind her dark lashes. “I am. I had school, then I had lunch, then I went outside and swam in the pool. Then I heard my iPad sing toodle doo, toodle doo, toodle toodle toodle doo and here I am!”
God, she was so precious.
She pushed her wet hair back from her face and gave me smacking lip kisses against the screen. I put my lips near the camera and gave her smacking lip kisses back, knowing I looked more like a hairy fish out o
f water than anything else.
She giggled. A high-pitched joyous sound that caused my heart to squeeze again.
“So, what are you doing?” she asked, pushing her wet hair back again. Behind her, I could see the bright LA day. Much different than the rainy one I was experiencing on the other side of my window.
“Well…” I pulled back from the camera and held her present up in front of me. “I was getting ready to mail somebody a birthday present.”
Her eyes went wide. “Me?!”
I laughed. “Yes, you. And I wanted to see my girl when she was still three years old, because she’s going to be how old tomorrow?”
She held up four fingers. “Four!”
“That’s exactly right. And you’ll get to open presents tomorrow.”
She giggled, eyeing the package in front of me again. “What is it?”
I laughed. “A surprise.”
“Is it a puppy?”
My smile faltered. Yes, it was a puppy, but not the kind she wanted.
Since she had been able to say her first words, she’d wanted a puppy, and even as a little baby, she’d get excited when she saw a dog of any kind.
But her mother was “allergic.” Not the sniffling, sneezing kind of allergic, but the “I don’t want to deal with an animal” kind of reaction.
As much as I traveled, I hadn’t been able to deal with one either. So… I diverted.
“Do you want to go to the zoo this weekend when I get there?”
For Kenz, anything that involved animals was a treat.
“Can we see the giraffes?”
I lengthened my neck and smacked my lips together, pretending to chew grass. “Of course.”
She giggled again and stuck her neck out, mimicking me.
It had been hard, deciding between the stuffed puppy and the stuffed giraffe, but with our trip to the zoo, I could get her one from the gift shop to join her stuffed animal entourage.
Another guilt gift.
I pushed the thought from my mind.
“Yay! Then yes, let’s go to the zoo.” She wiggled her eyebrows, and with the action, reminded me so much of her mother.
