“He didn’t invite them. We think now that one of the photographers who was invited tipped them off. One of those horrid men on the second boat had made a lot of money off that picture of Lisette and likely thought that they could sell more intimate pictures like that.”
The queen’s eyes were distant, as if seeing that night on the other side of the world. “Nickolaus feels that if he hadn’t tolerated the paparazzi, if he hadn’t befriended some of them, then Lisette would still be alive.”
“But that still wasn’t his fault,” I protested. “He didn’t know the other boat would be there.” My heart went out to Nico—that was such a terrible burden to bear.
“It doesn’t matter what you think,” the queen said sharply. “Nor what I think. What matters is what he thinks. Nickolaus thinks he’s the reason Lisette lost her life and the children don’t have a mother. And now I suspect he fears that something might happen to you.”
“Me?”
“You were injured in London. My guess is that my son fears that history will repeat itself. That’s why he’s closed himself off to you.”
“That’s not why!” The queen’s hypocrisy made my blood boil. “It’s because of you! You’re the one who won’t let him marry an American.”
The queen stared at me, astonished. Perhaps no one ever raised their voice to her? And now I’d done it twice in my time here—yet I couldn’t stop. “I understand your feelings about my country, but it’s his life. He should be able to marry whoever he wants.”
In frustration, I stood and paced in front of the sofa. “You’re the most powerful person in this entire nation. You shouldn’t use your powers to control him like that.”
“I don’t,” the queen said simply. “I never told him he couldn’t marry an American.”
“When you issue decrees like that, you—wait, what?”
The queen’s face showed consternation. “It wouldn’t be my first choice, of course, but I never forbid it.”
The look on her face made me almost believe it. “But… but he said that in England, the queen had to approve her grandsons’ recent marriages.”
“That’s England,” the queen said with the dismissive wave of her hand. “They also think it’s appropriate to decorate their castle with corgis.”
“It’s—it’s really not forbidden?” Excitement coursed through me and I wanted to run and find Nico right that instant.
“No, it’s not. But just because something is not forbidden doesn’t make it a good idea,” the queen cautioned, some of the haughtiness returning to her voice.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” I said automatically.
“That is all,” she said somewhat condescendingly, but I didn’t care. She could’ve insulted me to my face right now and I wouldn’t have minded in light of this good news.
I rushed out of her quarters, ignoring the stuffy guard at the door. All I wanted to do was to find Nico. We needed to talk this through. Whatever was holding him back, we would work to get past it. Now that we knew that his mother wouldn’t object, anything seemed possible.
My feet practically skipped down the hall. I couldn’t wait to tell him what she said. But then I missed a step, some small warning issuing in the back of my head. I skidded to a halt. Something wasn’t right.
I stood there in the empty hallway for a minute and then two, trying to figure it out. And then it hit me. With a shaky hand, I reached for the stone wall next to me for support as the implications flooded my mind.
There wasn’t anything to tell Nico because he already knew. His mother had never forbidden him from marrying an American. He’d made that up as an excuse to keep me at arm’s length.
Suddenly, I could see it in my mind’s eye when he told me that. How he’d seemed to hesitate before telling me that lie. But he’d done it. He’d chosen to tell me that.
Why had he done that?
But I already knew. Slowly, I sank to the ground, coming to rest on the hard, cold floor. He told me there was no possible future because he knew there wasn’t one. He’d blamed it on his mother, but it wasn’t her, it was him.
Nico wasn’t willing to give us a chance. He wasn’t willing to try to work it out. He’d made up his mind and told me, plain as day, that it could never be. He’d lied about the source of that resolve, but it was true nonetheless.
Tears poured down my face as I shivered on the floor, feeling small and lost. He wasn’t willing to give us a chance. Ever.
That was the bottom line.
Shakily, I stood and made my way to my room. With blind hands, I fumbled for my phone. Heedless of the time difference, I pulled up the number.
When I heard the call connect, I spoke before she could even say hello. “Autumn? I’m coming home.”
37
Cara
Two weeks later, I was back in California staying at my sister’s house. Except for the pain, it was almost like I’d never left.
“Cara? Do you want to go shopping for baby clothes?” Autumn asked.
“Maybe later,” I said, not looking up from the pictures of Derrick and Elyse on my phone.
A few hours later, Ford popped his head in the door. “Dinners ready. Do you want to eat?”
“Maybe later.”
The next day, Autumn found me in the sunroom, staring out the window. “I could really use your help to get the nursery ready.”
“Sure,” I said. “Maybe a bit later, though.”
When she left, I pulled my knees up to my chest and hugged them. I knew Autumn and Ford were worried about me, but I couldn’t seem to snap out of it. I felt like I was in mourning. In a way, I was. I’d never see Nico, Derrick, or Elyse again. They were lost to me, so of course I grieved.
For some reason, it was easier to remember the good times with the twins. When I’d ordered a copy of the photobooks for the queen, I’d gotten ones for myself as well. Sometimes I spent hours flipping through them or the pictures on my phone.
Leaving the twins was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. A few days after I got back, we talked online, but seeing their little faces on the screen had hurt more than looking at their pictures. Just like their father, they’d captured my heart, too, and were part of the reason it was broken now.
The next day, Autumn all but dragged me to the table at lunch time. It was just the two of us, Ford was out.
“You have to eat something,” Autumn insisted, so I filled my plate and dutifully took a few bites. Vaguely, I wondered if the pasta really tasted like cardboard or if it was just me. Autumn seemed to have no trouble eating her portion, but then again, she was eating for two.
After a few more bites, I set down the fork. Autumn had finished, and I knew she gearing up for a lecture. She was my sister, it was her job to step in when I was upset.
But nothing could heal this pain.
“How about after lunch we drive over to campus and scope out where your classes will be?”
That held no interest for me. “It’s only the end of July. The graduate program doesn’t even start for a few more weeks.”
“It’s August second,” Autumn corrected. “And don’t you want to check out the campus?”
“No.”
“You have to do something besides mope around here all day.”
I took a sip of water to buy time. I knew she meant well. “There’s nothing I want to do.”
“Really? Nothing? You’re going to be an aunt. Don’t you want to help me fix up the nursery? You love children.” She rubbed her rounded belly.
“I miss Derrick and Elyse,” I said.
Her face softened. “I know you do, but they’re not the only children in the world. You can love them and your niece, too.” She’d found out the sex of the baby right before I’d gotten back.
“I will love her,” I said, conviction filling my voice for a change. “I already do.”
“I know you do,” Autumn said, reaching over to pat my hand. “And she’s going to love you. You’re going to be a huge part o
f her life, so I thought you’d want to help me prepare for her.”
“I do. It’s just… hard.”
“I know. When I thought I’d lost my chance with Ford, I could barely breathe.”
“I remember.” It had been very had for Autumn, but in the end, she’d gotten the man of her dreams. There was no fairy-tale ending in my future. But she was still my sister, and I needed to try harder for her sake. “I’m sorry. I’ll go up and see the nursery soon. It just… it reminds me of the twins.”
“And what about Nico?”
Her question made my heard stutter painfully. “What do you mean?”
“You keep talking about how much you miss the children, but what about him?”
I stared down at my uneaten food, blinking back tears. As much as I missed the twins, I could at least think about them without breaking apart. But with Nico? Every time I thought about him, I couldn’t breathe. The only reason I was functioning at all was because I tried to excise him from my mind as much as possible.
“Cara?”
“It hurts too much to even think of him,” I whispered.
Her face was full of empathy. “I know it’s hard, but it’s not always going to feel like that.”
“Yes, it will.” I knew that with every fiber of my being. “I love him, and my life will never be the same without him.”
“No… not the same,” Autumn said slowly. “But that doesn’t mean you’ll never be happy again. Your future is still in front of you, and it’s going to be a good one. But it’s going to hurt for a while.”
“Hurt?” I echoed. “It hurt when I got that cut in my arm in London. This is way beyond that kind of pain.”
“I know, honey.”
“It feels like I’m dying.”
She moved to my side and put her arms around me, my head resting against her belly. “I know it’s awful now, but you’re not dying. At some point, you need to resume being an active participant in your life even if it’s not what you envisioned.”
I didn’t say anything, but I closed my hand around the one she’d placed on my shoulder.
“Please come up to the nursery when you get a chance.”
“Okay,” I said.
For her sake, I’d try.
* * *
“Can I come in?” Ford found me in my room a few days later.
“Sure.” I was sitting on my bed, an unopened book next to me.
He sat down in the desk chair opposite the bed. “Autumn said you don’t want to talk about Nico.”
“That’s right, I don’t.”
“So I’m here to talk about Nico.”
I sighed. Neither my sister nor my brother-in-law had gotten where they were by giving up. A sudden thought struck me. “Do you know him?”
“No, but I know of him,” Ford said. “His firm has a good reputation. And I’ve had a few business dealings with his friend Blake Hollister.”
That was news to me. I sat up a little straighter. “You’ve met Blake?”
“A couple of times.” Ford rested his forearms on his thighs as he leaned forward. “I don’t know either of them well, but I do know how men think. And sometimes that thinking is really fucked up. Mine used to be. But you can’t change someone’s world view even if it’s wrong.”
“What do you mean?” Ford’s words were mysterious enough to keep the pain temporarily at bay.
“I mean Nico has been through a lot. Just being a single dad is all encompassing. But he also has a hell of a lot of responsibilities, plus a whole lot of baggage from his past. If I were ever to lose Autumn—” he broke off, putting a hand to his forehead. “I don’t know how I’d ever go on.”
Tears prickled the back of my eyes, but I ignored them, focusing on Ford. “You’re not going to lose her.”
“I almost did,” he said looking up at me. “Not through an accident, but through my stupidity. For a long time, I thought I wasn’t good enough for a woman like her. And even though I was falling in love, I thought letting her into my heart was going to change everything.”
“Did it?”
“Of course it did—for the better. But it took me far too long to figure that out. If you’d come up to me and said ‘Ford, you handsome devil, stop being an ass and marry my sister’ I likely wouldn’t have listened.”
“I think I did want to say something like that.”
“I doubt it would’ve helped. Some things—some realizations just take time. If I’d met Autumn a year or two before I did, I don’t know if I would’ve pursued her the way I did. I wasn’t ready. The past, my issues with my father, had too strong a hold on me.”
“Then I’m glad you met her when you did.”
“Me too. It still makes me shudder to think that I could’ve lost out on the most amazing woman I’d ever met just because I needed time.”
“You’re saying Nico needs time.” I stated the words flatly. They didn’t fill me with hope—I knew there was no chance for us.
“I’m saying that there was likely nothing you could’ve done to speed up the process. I may be biased about women in the Andrews family, but any man would be lucky to have you. The fact that he couldn’t accept the gift you offered him shows that he wasn’t ready. That he still has certain realizations he needs to reach on his own. And—and maybe he never will. Some people live their whole lives lost in the past. It’s a fucked up way to exist, but it happens. I don’t want it to happen to you.”
He reached out and took my hand in his. “This lackluster person hiding out in her room isn’t you, Cara. When I first met you, I thought you were the most annoyingly cheerful person I’d ever laid eyes on.”
The corner of my mouth twitched involuntarily upward. Even through the gloom, Ford had reached some part of me.
“I know you’re in pain, but… could you please, for me, make at least a little effort? You can’t stay holed up here until your graduate program starts.”
Actually, that didn’t sound like a bad thing, but I didn’t tell him that. And apparently he wasn’t finished.
“If not for me, then do it for Autumn. She’s excited about the baby, but she’s scared, too. It’s a bit undertaking. She wants to be there for you, but I hope you’ll be there for her, too.”
That got through. “I want to. It’s just so hard. I can barely get out of bed each day.”
“I know it’s hard. But do you know how many of your plays I’ve attended over the years? You’re an incredible actress. Maybe you could try out that whole fake it till you make it thing. Maybe it’ll get you started along the right path, at the very least.”
Part of me wanted to jump on his suggestion, to close my mind to the pain and act like everything was normal. But it wasn’t—and it never would be again. I sighed. Ford did have a point though. The last thing I wanted to do was to upset Autumn. I owed her everything. “Okay, I’ll try.”
“Good,” Ford said, sitting up straighter. “It doesn’t have to be an award-winning performance, but if you aimed for slightly more lifelike, that would be a start.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“I have faith in you,” he said with a smile. “So much so that I got you a rose for your future performance.”
Huh? He folded his arms in front of his chest, the long sleeves of his blue shirt rubbing together. Then he reached one hand inside the other sleeve and pulled out a red rose.
“How did you learn to do that?” I asked as I took it from him and brought it to my nose. The beautiful scent seemed to cut through the still air.
“YouTube,” he said with a wink.
“Really? When I first met you, you probably would’ve gone overboard and hired Penn and Teller to give you personal lessons.”
He chuckled. “Probably. But I’ve changed. You can, too. It just takes time.”
* * *
“Autumn?” I entered the nursery, but my sister wasn’t there. For the past week, we’d spent many hours in here, painting, decorating the walls, and arranging the furniture. I
sat down on the rocking chair and looked around. The little room was almost ready.
A mobile hung over the gleaming white crib. Speakers nearby could provide music, lullabies, or white noise. Baskets under the window seat held soft toys for infants. Next to the rocker was a bookcase filled to the brim. After much thought, I’d added my copies of The Princess and the Bow and The Prince and the Falcon.
Rocking gently back and forth, I stared at the crib. In a little over three months, a baby would be there. It was hard to believe. Would she be blonde like Autumn and me? Would she have the acting bug like we did? Or would she be full of quick-witted humor like Ford? The possibilities were endless.
She’d need me. Yeah, she’d need her parents more, but she’d need Aunt Cara too. I’d buy her clothes and take her out to eat. And we’d go to the theater. There were all sorts of children’s plays that were wonderful. Maybe we could make a tradition out of going together each year before the holidays.
The baby hadn’t even been born, and already I had so many plans for her. I wanted to take her to museums. Teacher her Spanish. Find out what she was interested in and help her learn more about it. There were so many things I wanted to teach her.
My thoughts stopped abruptly, a jolt going through my body.
I wanted to teach her.
Slowly, I rose from the chair and walked through the house. I found Autumn outside, watering some plants on the deck.
“Autumn?”
She looked up and smiled.
“Umm… I know you’ve already paid the first installment on my tuition, but… I don’t want to go to graduate school anymore. I want to teach.”
She stared at me in silence, water spilling onto the wooden slats below her.
I squirmed under her gaze. “I know it’s late. Most schools will start in the next week or two.” I babbled on, trying to make her understand. “But I have to try. I may not be able to find a position for this semester, but I want to try.”
Dashing: A Royal Cinderella Billionaire Story Page 25
