Romancing the Crown Series

by Romancing the Crown Series (13-in-1 bundle) (v1. 0) (lit)

  * * *

  Cade couldn't remember when he'd ever been so glad to be home. He couldn't believe, either, how much he was looking forward to seeing his wife. The nice buzz of anticipation he'd been nursing all day had intensified during the time he'd spent sitting in rain—and accident-snarled traffic on Houston's outbound freeways until now it was a throbbing weight in his belly and a smoldering fire in his groin.

  He hadn't been able to get her out of his mind all week. Images, bits and pieces of the day and night they'd spent at the ranch, kept invading his conscious and unconscious thoughts, making a joke of his concentration during the day and total chaos of his nights.

  The truth was, he'd done quite a lot of thinking about Leila and his marriage during those lonely nights in a barren motel room out there in the vast Texas midlands. And the conclusion he'd come to was that, since it looked like he was stuck in this marriage for the duration, he'd better find a way to make it work. He'd come back to Houston full of new vows and determination—to spend more time with his wife, for one thing. He thought—he hoped—if they did things together, if he got to know her better, maybe he'd find they had something in common after all. Maybe he'd even learn how to talk to her.

  One thing for certain: he was tired of fighting his desire for her. Literally. Worn out. It was sapping his strength, physically, mentally and emotionally, and if he didn't do something about it, sooner or later it was going to start affecting his ability to run a business. Not to mention what it was doing to his disposition.

  By the time Cade got home rain was coming down in buckets, so he parked his car right beside the back gate, the better to make a run for it. Conveniently for him, the gate was wide open. Surprising, too, since it was a poolyard gate and therefore supposed to be self-closing. The way it looked, the gate must have been thrown back with some pretty good force, so that the latch had caught on the fence, holding it open. Which was unusual, but not unheard of, and probably explainable because of the rain—somebody running for cover in a big hurry. He didn't begin to feel alarmed until he saw that the kitchen door was wide open, too.

  Calling Leila's name, he went into the kitchen. His heart was already beginning to pound. He was so intent on looking for her that he almost stepped in the mess on the floor before he saw it. "What the hell—?" he muttered. Quickly skirting the disaster, he stuck his head into the hallway, calling more urgently now. And he was halfway up the stairs when the significance of the open door and thrown-back gate finally penetrated the alarm-clamor in his brain. Then he knew exactly where he'd find her.

  Leila was in the center aisle of the stable. She was brushing the foal, Sari, while Suki, her mother, watched with anxiously pricked ears from a nearby stall. Leila was singing in Arabic as she usually did when she worked with horses, not in her usual soothing croon but in short, breathless whimpers that were not soothing to anyone. Least of all Leila.

  When she heard the scrape of footsteps on concrete, she did not want to look. She wanted to go on calmly brushing Sari as though she had not a care in the world, but how could she, when every beat of her heart felt like a blow that rocked her whole body, when her hands could not hold the brush steady, but instead jerked and shook as if she had a violent chill.

  Then, of course, she must turn to look. And she did not even think how melodramatic it looked—Cade, drenched and wild-eyed with his hair all on end, framed in the stable entrance while lightning flickered and flashed behind him like a scene from a horror movie. She was utterly lost in the storm of her own emotions. And what a bewildering mix of emotions! Relief, and longing.. .overwhelming love and unreasoning fury.

  "Leila?" He came rapidly toward her, and his voice was hoarse with concern. "Hey, are you okay? What are you doing out here?"

  "Your dinner is ruined." It seemed to Leila that her voice came from somewhere outside her own head. Half-forgotten in her nerveless hand, the brush traced an erratic zigzag across the foal's mottled charcoal back. "There was thunder...I dropped it on the floor."

  "Yeah, I saw." He touched her arm gently, a tentative turning pressure. "Hey, look—it's okay. It doesn't mat—"

  She whirled on him like a dervish. " Where...were...you?" Her fists thumped against his chest, her eyes spurted fire and tears together. "You said.. .you would be home early. And I waited and waited.. .and then it got dark..." The pressure of pent-up emotions had finally blown, and she could not have stopped herself if she'd tried. "And I thought.. .I did not know where you were!" She wasn't aware, nor did she care what she looked or sounded like, or whether she was acting like the classic shrewish wife. "And I thought.. .I thought... that you were..."

  "I'm sorry—the traffic was...the rain...there were accidents." Cade mumbled, dazed. His brain was reeling. All he could think was that this felt a lot to him like the moment out there in the live oak grove when his horse had abruptly gone one way and he another. His emotions and desires were all of a sudden galloping off in unexpected directions, beyond his ability to control.

  After a brief struggle he gave up trying. He got his arms around Leila's quaking body and caught her hard against him. Wrapped his hand in the humid tangle of her hair to hold her still, and kissed her.

  What came next was a conflagration. It exploded upon them so unexpectedly and burned so voraciously it gave him no time to think at all.

  When he first kissed her, Leila gasped in surprised outrage, then struggled against him—for all of two seconds—and the next thing he knew they were panting and whimpering and tearing off each other's clothes. He dimly remembered backing her into an empty stall.. .the deep cushioning straw coming up to meet him and his body already half-entwined with hers.

  With almost a week's worth of pent-up desire clawing at his insides and fogging his brain, it didn't even occur to Cade that he might have pushed into her too abruptly, or too soon. Nor to Leila, either, not then. She gave a sharp cry, but it was of passion, not pain, and her body arched against him, not away. Her body was hot.. .so hot, feverish in his arms, and she wrapped herself around him like that all-over glove he remembered. And it felt good.. .so good to be inside her.. .as if, after a long and perilous journey, he'd finally found his way home.

  A fierce, exultant joy invaded him as she met his thrusts with tiny passion-cries.. .when she gasped out his name as he released the flood of his passion into her. When she writhed and clung to him as he kept thrusting, until only moments later he felt her come apart.. .her body go light, limp and pulsing in his arms.

  Exhilarated, happier than he could ever remember being in his life, quaking with it, wanting to share his shaky, wondering laughter with Leila's, Cade slipped sideways enough so he could touch her face. His joy turned to despair. Laughter hardened inside him and became instead a throbbing lump in his belly.

  She was crying. Not the half sobbing, half laughing overflow of emotions that had bewildered and dismayed her so when he'd made love to her the first time—that he'd understood. This was different. This was misery. Grief-stricken, heartbroken despair.

  "Sweetheart, what is it?" His voice was rasping and raw. "Did I hurt you? I'm sorry—"

  She shook her head wildly, and because there was no one else from whom to seek comfort, turned her face to his chest.

  But what could he say to comfort her, when he didn't begin to understand the reason for her tears? So he said nothing at all, while his mind battered helplessly against the bars of his ignorance. Until, with a glimmering of hope, he thought of something that might, just possibly, make her feel better.

  "Hey," he murmured to her still-quaking silence, gazing down through a fog of mystified tenderness at the damp tendrils of hair draped across her ear. "I didn't have a chance to tell you. Guess who called today?"

  After only the briefest of pauses he gave her the answer. "Elena. And Hassan. They're back from their honeymoon. Just got back a couple days ago."

  She pulled away from him just enough so she could look at him. "Really?" She sniffed. One long hand came, furtive
and embarrassed, to wipe at her tears. "They are here? In Texas?"

  Cade nodded. "Yep. They're going to be at Elena's ranch this weekend. How'd you like to pay 'em a visit?" His throat ached as he smiled.

  She gave a little gasp and sat up, both her tears and her nakedness forgotten. "A visit? Elena has a ranch? I did not know. Is it very far? Will we fly?"

  "A little one.. .and not far at all, just outside of Evangeline. An hour's drive from here. How's tomorrow sound?"

  "Tomorrow? Oh, yes—oh, Cade..." She kissed him, and her face, still wet with tears and alight with happiness, was like the sun coming out after a rainstorm.

  Cade's heart was in dark despair. Just as when she'd kissed him after he'd given her the foal for her bride gift, his thoughts now were bleak. It's gratitude. She's only happy because I've given her something she wants. And it's not me.

  Elena came out to greet them, waving from the wide front porch of a house that, although it was made of white painted wood rather than brownish stone, reminded Leila of Cade's ranch house where she had been so briefly and blissfully happy. Reminded her of it so much, she had to swallow hard and blink away tears.

  Cade had barely parked the SUV before Leila was out of the car and running up the graveled path. She met Elena on the steps. "Oh, I am so glad to see you," she breathed impulsively as she returned the other woman's hug. And now she did lose control of a few tears. Elena seemed very like a sister to her now, which made her miss her own sisters all the more.

  She drew back, though, when she saw Hassan's tall form, standing just behind Elena. She did not know how to greet this relaxed and smiling man who seemed so different from her so-arrogant older brother, who had always lorded it over her and tried to intimidate her with his piercing black eyes. "Hello, Hassan," she said formally, and was even more bemused when he stepped forward and caught her up in a hug as warm as his wife's had been, and laughed and called her "Little sister." In Arabic. Hassan almost never spoke in Arabic!

  Then Elena was hooking an arm around hers and saying in a happy rush, in her Texas way, "We're just so glad you guys came—we're barely unpacked ourselves, but we just decided to say the heck with it and come out here for a few days. We'll have some lunch in a little bit, but right now, I just can't wait to show you around."

  "But.. .shouldn't we—" Leila looked toward the men, who had shaken hands and now were deep in conversation and drifting off across the porch in the direction of what looked like stables.

  Elena waved them away with a smile. "Ah, let 'em go—they'll just want to talk horses and oil. What I'm dying to hear about is you guys. I still can't believe it—talk about sudden! I wish Hassan and I could have stayed for the wedding. So.. .tell me all about it. How was the wedding? Did you have a honeymoon?" She paused to consider her own question. "Probably not, if I know Cade. Well—we're going to have to do something about that."

  "Cade has been very busy with his work," Leila said carefully, and Elena gave her a piercing look that made her glad she had decided to wear sunglasses to hide the tear-shadows around her eyes.

  Leila summoned a smile as she tried to divert Elena's attention. "It seems as though you and Hassan are very happy."

  Elena closed her eyes and smiled in a way that made Leila's heart ache with envy. "Oh, yeah. I can't tell you. Actually, if you want to know the truth, it's even kind of surprised me." She threw Leila a bemused look. "Not that I had any doubts that we loved each other—finally—but I thought it was going to be a lot harder to make it work."

  "Work?" Frowning behind the sunglasses, Leila paused to look at her.

  Elena gave a rueful laugh. "Oh, yeah—marriage takes work, don't ever kid yourself about that." Her laughter grew light again. "Especially when you have two people as different and bullheaded as Hassan and I are."

  "At least.. .you know your husband loves you." Leila hardly knew she had spoken it out loud. They had been walking as they talked, past the stables and up a gentle slope covered with grass and the same little yellow flowers that grew in Cade's pasture. Now, standing on a hilltop overlooking still more hills that rolled away to banks of trees and a huge hazy sky beyond, she thought of her dreamed-of spaces and was almost overwhelmed with misery. She hardly even knew Elena had put her arm around her shoulders until she spoke.

  "Oh, honey, of course Cade loves you!"

  "No," said Leila with a proud lift of her chin, "he does not."

  "Look," said Elena flatly, "I know him. He wouldn't have married you if he didn't love you."

  Leila firmly shook her head. "He only married me to save me from disgrace."

  Elena gave a hoot of laughter, which she quickly stifled when she saw the tears leaking out from under the edges of Leila's sunglasses. She gave her another hug and said with an exasperated sigh, "Okay, hon, tell me why you think that husband of yours doesn't love you."

  "He does not act as though he does." Leila's voice was choked and angry. "And he certainly has not ever said so." She was startled and a little hurt when Elena made a very rude noise in reply.

  The older woman shook back her short, dark hair and looked up at the sky for a moment as if in hopes of divine guidance. Then she put her arm around Leila's shoulders again. "Let me tell you something about your husband," she said quietly, as she began to walk with her back down the hill. "Cade Gallagher is just about the sweetest, most good-hearted man alive, and the best friend a woman could ever have. But the truth is, when it comes to emotional issues, he's pretty closed up. That's why he's never gotten married, I think—he never could find a woman he trusted enough to open himself up to. He wasn't always that way, I don't think. I think it happened when his mother died—he told you about that, I guess? It was a car accident—a hit-and-run driver ran her car off the road into the river, and she drowned."

  Leila tried in vain to stifle a horrified cry, and Elena glanced at her in sympathy. "Yeah, I know.. .terrible, isn't it? They never did find the one who did it...." Her voice trailed off, and Leila saw a grim and bleak look settle briefly over her features. Then she went on, in a voice that was harder and more clipped than before.

  "It happened about a year after his mom got involved with my father. He'd have been.. .fifteen, I think—I know I was only about eight when I first met him. But I remember he had this wonderful, absolutely spectacular smile—it would light up his eyes, I swear, brighter than the lone star of Texas."

  And Leila caught her breath and looked intently at her. Yes, she thought, her heart quicking. I have seen it too, that smile! Just once...

  "Anyway, after his mom died," Elena continued softly, "I never saw that smile again." Her lips curved, but not with a smile. "And I don't think it helped that a few years later he found out my father, the man who'd adopted him after his mom died and treated him like his own son, had actually cheated him out of his inheritance."

  Leila gave another horrified gasp. "Oh, yeah, it's true," said Elena. "I only found out myself recently— Cade told me just before I married Hassan." She took a breath. "It was a shock, believe me. His mom had left a will naming Yusuf Rahman as Cade's guardian, as well as trustee of her estate, which at that time was what was left of her daddy's oil company after Cade's dad had pissed away most of it. When Cade turned twenty-one, he found out my father had worked it so there wasn't anything left of his mother's holdings at all. Everything had been absorbed into Rahman Oil."

  She stopped walking to look back at Leila, who was standing still with her fingers pressed against her mouth. "So you can see," she said gently, "why the man might be a little bit slow to trust anybody with his heart, even after all this time."

  "But," Leila whispered through trembling lips, "what can I do? I do not know how to make him open himself up to me." The task seemed too hard, the obstacles enormous.. .insurmountable. She felt overwhelmed, defeated before she had even begun.

  "For starters, have you tried telling him how you feel about him?" Elena's voice was dry, as if she already knew the answer.

  "Of course
not," said Leila, drawing herself up stiffly. "And I will not—not until I know for certain that he has the same feelings for me." She was a princess. She had her pride!

  Elena made an exasperated sound. "You Kamals! You're all alike—the most bullheaded, proud bunch of people I ever met." They walked on down the hill in silence. Until...

  "I think...I have an idea."

  Leila looked at Elena in hope, and was surprised to find that she was smiling.. .smiling and gazing down the hill toward the stables, where Cade and Hassan could be seen leaning against the corral fence, still deep in conversation. She turned back to Leila, and her eyes were once again serene. "Hon, what you need to do is take a little trip. How'd you feel about a nice visit to Tamir? You know—go home and see your folks?"

  "Leave.. .Cade?" Leila's heart gave a leap, and she felt a cold wash of panic. "But—I don't understand. How—"

  "Hey," said Elena with a placid shrug, "it worked for me."

  "You mean, you left—"

  She shook her head, and her smile was a little crooked, now. "Uh-uh. Hassan left me. I'd refused to marry him—I guess I was afraid I didn't love him enough... then. So off he went, back to Tamir. It took me.. .oh, maybe a day to figure out I'd made the biggest mistake of my life. So I went after him. The rest," she added with a sound like a cat's purr, "is history."

  "But," Leila mumbled, "what if I go to Tamir, and Cade does not come for me?" Her heart was hammering. If Cade did not come for her, she knew she could not possibly come back here, not to live as she had been living for these past weeks. And yet, the thought of never seeing Cade again.. .never feeling his arms around her...frightened her so she could scarcely breathe.

  "Oh, he'll come," said Elena. "Trust me."

  "But.. .I cannot possibly ask him—"

  "Hey—don't worry about it. You just leave this to me."

  * * *

  Cade leaned against the corral fence and watched them come toward him.. .two women, one he'd known nearly all his life, as familiar as the grass around him, the other as alien and exotic as an orchid blooming in the desert. Both beautiful, but for one he felt nothing but the deep, abiding affection of a brother for his sister, while the other made his pulses thunder like a buffalo stampede. Why did it have to be the wrong one? He felt betrayed, somehow. Doublecrossed by his own heart.