Some Like it Secret (Going Royal Book 4)

by Long, Heather

  Leaning his head back against the seat, he retrieved his cell phone from his pocket. The screen was dark, though when he unlocked it, no messages waited for him. It was after eleven in California, which meant after two in the morning on the east coast. She taught an early class and the last thing she needed was to be woken in the middle of the night, but he wanted to hear her voice.

  If he took an early flight, he could be there by afternoon—or he could head to the airport immediately and be outside her class when she finished teaching. The car shifted abruptly and Sebastian glanced up at his driver.

  “Apologies, sir. We have a couple of tagalongs.” The driver explained and Sebastian sighed.

  The press.

  He couldn’t go to the airport. Saying nothing, he slid the phone back into his pocket. Tomorrow he would call Meredith and make everything right again.

  She was upset by their lack of time together. He understood her position and owed her an apology, but it would be better to let her calm before he confronted her. Anger sparked her declaration that they were through. His chest tightened. With her rejection, she’d thrown a gauntlet down, one he would gladly pick up.

  They were not over. He’d protected her—cherished her—for too long to accept any other outcome.

  But still, the ache in his heart wasn’t assuaged. She’d never hung up on him before.

  Never.

  Unsurprisingly, by nine-fifteen, Meredith Blake’s eight a.m. class on the elementary theory of numbers struggled to focus on the whiteboard where she’d scrawled several equations. Other professors made do with only punching in their time in these basic courses, but Meredith liked to challenge her students. If any of them could solve the equation by the end of the lecture period, she gave an automatic grade bump to the assignment of their choice.

  Application, after all, was the goal of number theory. Pacing to the front of her lectern, she studied the glassy eyed students arrayed around the room. Normally, she’d go for a joke or a lighthearted story, but she felt like she was dragging worse than they were.

  Gravity remained unaltered by physical events, yet depression and disappointment seemingly increased her mass. How else to explain the weight bearing down upon her? Maybe everyone deserved a bit of a break. “Let’s put it this way.” She spoke in a clear tone and knew her voice carried all the way to the back row. With seventy plus students in these classes, projection was everything.

  “Numbers are the basic building blocks of every single thing we do. We use numbers to predict the weather, to predict crime, to predict investments—even to predict winners. If you understand numbers and their applications, you have the most essential tools to success.” Pausing, she let them absorb the information. Then pointed to the equation on the board. “Has anyone solved this?”

  Not a single hand rose. She forced a conciliatory smile, but instead of letting them off the hook, she said, “How many of you tried to solve it?”

  Only two hands raised.

  Well, two out of seventy-three weren’t the worst statistics. “How many of you would have tried if I told you this formula will very accurately predict your chances of winning the lottery?”

  Alertness sparked in her audience. Throw down a gauntlet, most people picked it up. Throw down the promise of money and those numbers increased. “I’ll give you to the end of the week to solve the equation and send me your answer.” But because she couldn’t resist trying to make them smile, she said, “Of course, if you win the lottery with it—I’m sure my free grade bump won’t be nearly as valuable, no matter how fun.”

  Laughter erupted and she nodded, satisfied. “See you all next week.” Thumps of books, digital tablet covers snapping closed and the thud of feet on the stairs accompanied the students as they took advantage of their early release to rush out. All save Wes Keating and Rebecca Walsh—they headed straight for her. Holding up a hand, she stopped their questions before they could start.

  “No, I didn’t offer any other assignments for extra credit. No, I won’t extend the deadline next week if you haven’t solved it. And unless blood and bone are showing, you better have your assignments turned in.” She raised her brows at their crestfallen expressions. “Any other questions?”

  “No,” Wes resettled his backpack “Thank you.”

  Rebecca sighed. “I was kind of hoping…maybe we could talk you into a second formula? You know, if we can’t figure out the first.”

  Folding her arms, Meredith eyed the students. Every class always possessed at least one student who thought she’d change the rules just for them. “Sure, I can totally give you a second problem, however, you’d have to solve both for it to count.”

  The color drained from Rebecca’s face. “I think we can stick to the first one.” Tugging on Wes’ arm, she led him from the lecture hall.

  “That’s what I thought. Have a nice day.” She turned away because even what brief amount of amusement she gained from the interlude proved fleeting and she blinked back a fresh wave of tears. Gathering her notes together, Meredith glanced at the schedule on her cell phone. She held office hours in the afternoon and her schedule included two meetings with doctoral candidates to go over their theses.

  Retrieving her purse, she felt the vibration of a second phone and sighed. She’d meant to leave it home when she came in for the early class, but some habits were impossible to break.

  But I need to break them. Carrying the private phone, to which only Sebastian knew the number, was one such habit. Her heart twisted and her lungs felt like they’d seized. The hiccup in time couldn’t have lasted more than a bare few seconds and yet she wanted to curl into a ball and cry all over again.

  Her fingers itched to unzip the inner pocket and pull the phone out. Any other day, she would have rushed to do so and asked him to hold on while she jogged across campus to her office. Once inside, she’d have locked the door, settled down behind her desk and—Stop it.

  Just stop. Slinging the purse over her shoulder and stuffing the last of her things into her backpack, she refused to answer the phone. It wasn’t any other day. Last night, after blogs broke the news of his ‘secret’ engagement, all the while another news channel featured his arrival at a posh event in Los Angeles, Meredith found she couldn’t do it anymore.

  Five years of passionate interludes when he could steal away from his life, of being at his beck and call and never knowing when his security would show up to smuggle her away, it was too much.

  Under her arm, the phone kept vibrating. It would pause for a few seconds and then resume. A brisk wind cut through her thin sweater and she cursed herself for forgetting a jacket. This late into autumn, winter a promise delivered at sundown, though today it felt colder than when she’d walked to her class. She was frozen by the time she reached the building housing her office.

  Bypassing the elevator, she jogged up the three flights of stairs in a vain attempt to alleviate her shivers. The news forecasted a cold front moving into the area later in the day, but Meredith suspected it already arrived. Exiting the stairwell on the third floor, she spotted Terry O’Connor leaning against the wall outside her office. The retired soldier straightened the moment he caught sight of her and a look, akin to relief, rippled across his face.

  “I missed you at your class and you took a different route to the office today.” Meeting her halfway down the hall, he tugged the backpack from her nerveless fingers and held out his hand for her keys.

  “I didn’t realize.” Not really. She varied her routes depending on which lecture hall she needed to use, but they were all predetermined so Terry could track her as needed. Trailing him to her office door, Meredith shivered with an unexpected dread. The last time he’d shown up unannounced was after someone plunged a knife into Sebastian… “Did something happen?”

  She’d made herself turn off the television the night before. A clean break was better all the way around, but what if something happened afterward? The attempts on Sebastian’s family continued to increa
se and worsened in recent months and, while he didn’t share the specifics, she was perfectly capable of reading in between the lines of news stories to speculate at what they didn’t say.

  Terry unlocked her door and glanced inside her office before allowing her to enter. “Nothing’s happened, though I was instructed to pick up your detail today.”

  Instructed? Meredith deposited her purse on the desk. The crowded room boasted a variety of texts, some stacked ten and twelve deep on the floor next to her desk along with multiple white boards covered in equations. To the untrained eye, it probably looked like a lot of gibberish—a fact Terry pointed out on more than one occasion. Of course, he’d been to her office so many times at this point, the boards didn’t earn more than a brief glance. “By whom?”

  Instead of answering, he secured her door and prowled around to the window overlooking the quad below. With two quick twists, he closed the blinds before turning to face her. “By our mutual friend. Did you misplace your cell phone?”

  Relief swamped her. Their mutual friend. Sebastian sent Terry to check on her—most likely because she wasn’t answering her phone. If he’d called Terry, Sebastian was all right, at least physically. On the heels of her relief came resentment and its cousin, anger.

  “No, I didn’t misplace my phone.” After circling her desk, she sat down then pulled her laptop out of the backpack. “I’m sorry he bothered you, but I am not planning on traveling anywhere. You don’t really need to be here.”

  “I don’t mind hanging out. You’re good company and, if we’re not traveling, I can catch up on my reading.” He settled in one of her empty office chairs. “But you should check your phone.”

  Booting up her laptop, Meredith mulled Terry’s advice, but didn’t respond to it. Oddly, his presence and the crinkling of the newspaper he flipped open offered the most peculiar kind of comfort. Bringing up the college webmail, she skimmed the contents of her inbox without reading it. After several minutes of pretending to work and trying to ignore the insistent vibration in her purse, she retrieved the phone.

  Forty-one missed calls and a fresh round of vibration.

  She sighed. Bastian wouldn’t stop. “Terry, do you mind?”

  “Not at all.” Her bodyguard—despite the years of acquaintance, it still struck her as odd that she had or needed a bodyguard—rose and folded his paper. “I’m going to the coffee cart on the first floor. Do you want anything?”

  “A cappuccino would be lovely.” With about three fingers of butterscotch schnapps in it, but she wouldn’t ask no matter how good it sounded.

  “You got it. Lock the door behind me. Don’t leave till I come back.” It was a familiar routine, but she nodded obediently and trailed him to the door. The vibration ended and quickly resumed. After locking up, she answered the call.

  She couldn’t say anything.

  “Meredith?” Pure masculine sweetness poured over honeyed rocks flavored his European accent. Her pulse raced and her hands began to shake. “Meredith? Are you there?”

  Falling into old patterns helped no one, least of all her. Be strong. Don’t tumble down this familiar path, no matter how passionate his response. The man never failed to melt her past reason. A band around her chest squeezed all the air out of her. “I’m here,” she managed to push out past the lump in her throat, then swallowed with difficulty. “What part of ‘we’re over’ are you not understanding?”

  Silence and then a whoosh of breath from his end. “All of it.” His words grew more clipped in rebuttal. “I am sending the plane for you. O’Connor will escort you to the airport and travel—”

  “No.” She didn’t dare let him finish, since his words already weakened her. Her pulse picked up at the mention of his plane and heat flooded through her body. She couldn’t see him. Maybe it was the coward’s way out, but God knew he was a fantastic lover and when they were together—yes, he focused one hundred and ten percent of his attention on her. No woman could withstand the sheer force of his personality and devotion.

  But when they were apart? They were always apart. The time they did have together shortened repeatedly while the time in between visits elongated…

  “Darling, listen to me. I promise, we will talk all of it out. I need to see you.” Music to her ears, but how many times had he said the same thing before? Yet how many nights had she gone to bed alone, thousands of miles separating them and no one, not even her family, knew about the most precious relationship in her world?

  “I said no, Bastian.” Gripping the phone tighter, she tried to calm her respiration. Anger, resentment, misery, and joy tangled together in her stomach. An icy cold sweat broke out on her skin.

  “Meredith, I am not engaged. I understand the false story distressed you, but this is no different than all the others the last few years. Baseless speculation on the part of the press, their attempt to feed—”

  “Actually…” She interrupted him before he went down the road of belittling her upset. He wouldn’t mean to—he never meant to—but he would because he appeared to know better. He lived in a different world, one she wasn’t even allowed to visit. “It is quite different. This time I don’t want to understand. I don’t want to pretend it’s all right you spend half your life gallivanting around the world, dancing, kissing, and in general allowing all those women to be with you…”

  His voice sounded tight when he snapped, “They are not important.” Impatience fractured his normally calm and playful reserve, a first in their exchanges.

  “Can’t you understand?” She almost felt sorry for him, because he didn’t seem to see it. Maybe he couldn’t—maybe his upbringing precluded understanding the role of ‘mistress.’ “They may not be important, but they have easy access to you. You’re not ashamed to be seen in public with them, and you certainly didn’t seem to be fending off their affections. I teach math for a living, Sebastian. Maybe I don’t understand protocol and politics, but I understand one plus one. Please respect my wishes, and leave me alone.”

  She hung up because if she didn’t, he might keep talking and her traitorous heart would have listened. As she swiped away the tears on her cheeks, the phone began to vibrate again. She depressed the power button and held it down until the phone silenced.

  It was over.

  The sooner they both accepted it, the better off they’d be.

  Chapter Two

  Sebastian stared at the nearly dead phone in his hand until a single knock on the door interrupted. Slotting it onto a charger, he slid it into the drawer. “Enter.”

  His brother’s secretary, opened the door and curtseyed politely. “Excuse me, Prince Sebastian, but His Highness requests you join him in his office.”

  “I will be along directly. Thank you, Gretchen.” He turned his attention back to the window and the sprawl of the city below once she’d closed the door. Though he’d expected a summons from Armand, he needed his mask firmly in place before he spoke to his brother.

  Another knock announced a new arrival. Discipline schooling his features, he turned. “Enter.”

  Eduard Vidal stepped in and closed the door behind him. “O’Connor has Miss Blake under observation, sir. I’ve booked him for the full week and instructed him to keep a twenty-four hour detail for the foreseeable future. He has two men he trusts on rotation for when Miss Blake returns to her home.”

  So, she wouldn’t be alone and someone would be looking out for her. The thought provided a small measure of comfort.

  “However,” Vidal was not finished. “O’Connor stated that if Miss Blake refuses protection, beyond reasonable measure, he cannot legally force it on her.”

  “The man can’t follow instructions?” The last thing Sebastian needed was for Meredith to break away from her protection.

  Nonplussed by his annoyance, Vidal shrugged. “Your Highness, without her permission, it becomes stalking. As of yet, Miss Blake has not asked O’Connor to vacate, but it is a possibility.”

  Fine. He would simply have to deal
with it before the idea occurred to her. Meredith had never shown any sign of rebelling against his need to see her safe before. Of course, she’d never told him they were over nor refused his calls before either.

  Infuriated, he fought to control his breathing and lock down his reaction. “Understood. Please inform O’Connor I would be grateful if he would maintain his position for as long as possible.”

  “Do you still want me to make arrangements to send the plane?” Vidal’s tone was careful, but beneath it lurked doubt. Sebastian couldn’t really blame him for the question.

  “Have it on standby. I don’t want it going anywhere. Also, inform the staff on St. Christos to ready the house.” What he and Meredith needed was time away from it all. Together. If she felt neglected and underappreciated, then it was on him to fix it. “Please make sure no one else is there.” The family’s private island was one of the few carefully kept secrets guarded against the press and other interlopers. He’d never taken Meredith there, unwilling to share her with anything in his public life, but the only people who lived at St. Christos were trusted members of the staff, making it an utterly private paradise.

  Vidal nodded. “I’ll see to it.”

  Wishing he could already be aboard his plane or, better still, be in Boston, Sebastian made his way to the end of the long, cream carpeted hallway to Armand’s office. His eldest brother of late eschewed their New York, London, and Paris holdings, spending more and more time in Los Angeles. At first, he’d attempted to foster closer ties with their newly-discovered cousin. More recently, Sebastian suspected Armand’s reluctance to continue his usual duties could be attributed to his focus on his new marriage.

  Gretchen rose at his approach then opened the doors with only a knock to announce him. Nodding his thanks to her, he entered and closed the doors himself.

  His brothers occupied the conversation pit created by two sofas and a pair of upholstered chairs set in a loose circle around a Louis XVI coffee table. Though Armand worked in the space, he also used it for meetings. The casual atmosphere promised by the layout, fabrics, and color usage set his guests at ease—likely intentional on the part of the room’s designers. Sebastian, however, saw past the façade of comfortable elegance to the office’s true purpose.