by Abby Green
He kissed her everywhere, each secret hollow, each curve, even the backs of her knees and the crooks of her elbows. He kissed her breasts, slowly and thoroughly, and then he moved lower. He kissed all her secret places, until she cried out and went over the edge, clutching his dark head, moaning his name.
She was still sighing in sweet satisfaction when he slid up her body again. All at once, he was there, right where she wanted him most. She wrapped her arms around him, so tightly. And he came into her, gliding smoothly home. Her body was as open to him as her mind and her heart. She accepted him eagerly, the aftershocks of her climax still pulsing through her. And when he filled her, she let out a soft cry of joyous abandon.
Did it get any better than this?
She didn’t see how it could. Somehow, she’d finally found the man she wanted for a lifetime—or rather, he had found her.
There was nothing, ever, that could tear them apart.
Rule wasn’t sure what woke him.
A general sense of unease, he supposed. He turned to look at the woman sleeping beside him. The lamp was off and the room in darkness. Still, he could hear her shallow, even breathing. So peaceful. Content. He could make out her shadowed features, just barely. A soft smile curved her mouth.
She pleased him. Greatly. In so many ways.
No, she wasn’t going to be happy with him when she found out the truth. But she was a very intelligent woman. And there was real chemistry between them. Surely, when the time came, she would forgive him for his deception. He would rationally explain why he’d done what he had done. She would see that, even if he hadn’t been strictly honest with her, it had all worked out perfectly anyway. She wanted to be with him and he wanted her and the boy. They could work through it and move on.
He wanted to touch her. To kiss her. To make love to her again. When he was touching her, he could forget that he’d married her without telling her everything.
But no. He wouldn’t disturb her. Let her have a few hours of uninterrupted sleep.
Settling onto his back, he stared into the darkness, not happy with himself, wondering why he had become so obsessive over this problem. His obsession served no one. It was going to be a long time before he told her the truth, anyway. Maybe he never would.
In the past twenty-four hours or so, he’d found himself thinking that there was no real reason she ever had to know….
Except that he’d always considered himself an honest man. And it gnawed at his idea of his own character and his firm belief in fair play, to have this lie between them.
Which was thoroughly ironic, the more he considered it. He’d chosen the lie when he realized he wanted her for his wife. He’d seen it as the only sure way to his goal. So he supposed that meant his idea of himself as an honest man was only another lie.
And damned if he wasn’t giving himself a headache, going around and around about this in his mind, when he was set on his course and there was no going back now.
He heard a faint buzzing sound: the cell phone in his trouser pocket, flung across that nearby chair.
Slowly, carefully, so as not to wake her, he eased back the covers and brought his feet to the floor. By then, the phone had stopped buzzing. He collected it from the trousers and tiptoed to the room’s bath, where he checked to see who had called.
His father.
The voice mail signal beeped. He called to pick up the message.
His father’s voice said “Rule. Call me on this line as soon as you get this. We need to touch base on the subject of Liliana.”
Lili. What now?
With the nine-hour time difference, it would be around noon in Montedoro, which made it as good a time to call as any.
But not from the bathroom, where Sydney might wake up and walk in on him.
So he returned to the dark bedroom, where his bride was still sleeping the untroubled slumber of the blameless. He found his briefs and his trousers and put them back on. He tiptoed to the door and pulled it slowly open. The hinges played along and didn’t squeak. He slipped through and closed it soundlessly behind him.
The suite had a balcony. He went out there, into the warm desert night, and closed the slider behind him.
His father answered on the first ring. “I understand congratulations are in order?”
The balcony had a café table and a couple of chairs. He dropped into one of them. “Thank you. I’m a very happy man.”
“How is the boy?”
“Trevor is … a revelation to me. More than I ever might have wished for. Wait till you see him.”
“I’m looking forward to that. When will you bring them home to us?”
“Sydney needs a month, she says. I’ll come home ahead for a week or so and take care of my commitments there, and then return to help her through the transition.”
“I heard that you had a little run-in with the press.”
Rule didn’t ask how his father knew. Joseph could have turned in a report—or the information could have come from any number of other sources. “Yes. They got away with pictures. And they put it together—Sydney’s white dress, her engagement diamond and wedding band.”
“So I understand. It won’t take the story long to end up in the tabloids.”
“I know.” Rule felt infinitely weary thinking of that.
“Liliana is still here, still our guest at the palace. She has no idea that you’ve already married someone else.”
“I know,” Rule said again. He got up, stood at the iron railing, stared down at the resort pool, at the eerie glow the pool lights made, shining up through the water, at the rows of empty lounge chairs.
“Your mother is waiting to hear from you. She’s always thought of you as the most considerate and dependable of her children.”
“I’ve disappointed her.”
“She’ll get over it.” His father’s voice was gentler now.
“I’m trusting you to keep my secret,” he reminded his father.
“I haven’t told anyone, not even your mother.” His father sighed.
“I should have spoken to Lili first, I know, for the sake of our long friendship—and in consideration of Montedoro’s sometimes strained relationship with Leo.” King Leo was Lili’s hot-tempered, doting father. “But it was awkward, since I had made no proposal to her. How exactly was I to go about telling her that I wouldn’t be proposing? Also there was the timing of it. As soon as I finally met Sydney and made my decision, I felt it was imperative to move forward, to attain my goal before leaving the States.”
“You are so certain about this woman you have married, this woman you have only just met?”
“Yes,” Rule said firmly. “I am.”
“You wanted to marry her, for herself? Not simply for the child. You feel she is … right for you?”
“Yes. I did. I do.”
“Yet you don’t feel confident enough of her trust in you to tell her the basic truth of the situation?”
Rule winced. His father had cut a little too close to the bone with that one. He said, “I made a choice. I’m willing to live with the consequences.”
His father was silent. Rule braced himself for criticism, for a very much deserved lecture on the price a man pays for tempting fate, for doing foolish, thoughtless, irresponsible things and telling himself he’s breaking free, that he’s trying to help others.
More than three years ago, Rule had let his hunger for something he didn’t even understand win out over his good sense. And now, when he’d finally found what he was looking for, he’d lied to secure the prize he sought. And he was continuing to lie….
But then his father only said, “Fair enough, then. I see your dilemma. And I sympathize. But still, it’s only right that you explain yourself to Liliana, face-to-face, as soon as possible. She should hear it from you first. She’s an innocent in all this.”
“I agree. I was planning to return on Tuesday, but I’ll try to get away Monday … I mean, today.”
“Do your best.�
�
Rule promised he would and they said goodbye.
He turned to go inside and saw Sydney, her hair tangled from sleep, her green eyes shadowed, full of questions. Wearing one of the white terrycloth robes provided by the resort, she stood watching him through the sliding glass door.
Chapter Eight
He’d been facing away from the suite, he reminded himself. And speaking in low tones. She couldn’t have heard the conversation through the thick glass of the door.
Tamping down his anxiety that she might have overheard something incriminating after all, he pulled the door open and murmured regretfully, “I woke you….”
“No. The absence of you. That’s what woke me.” She took his hand, pulled him into the suite and slid the door shut. After that, she stood gazing up at him, and he had that feeling he so often had with her, the feeling he’d just described to his father. The feeling of rightness, that he was with her, that he had finally dared to approach her, to claim her. Too bad the sense of rightness was liberally mixed with dread at the way-too-possible negative outcome of the dangerous game he played. “Is there something wrong?” She searched his face.
He still had her hand in his, so he pulled her back to their room. Once he had her inside, he shut and locked the door.
“Rule, what?”
He framed her sweet, proud face between his hands. He loved her wide mouth, her nose that was perhaps a little too large for her face. A nose that made her look interesting and commanding, a nose that demanded a man take her seriously. One lie, he had already told her. A huge lie of omission. All else must be the absolute truth. “You’re going to be angry with me….”
“You’re scaring me. Just tell me what’s going on. Please.”
He caught her hand again, took her to the bed, sat her down and then sat beside her. “That was my father, on the phone. He asked me to come back to Montedoro today. He thinks I should talk to Liliana, that I owe her an explanation, that I should be the one to tell her that any proposal she might have been expecting is not forthcoming, that I’m already married.”
She pulled her hand from his and drove right to the point. “And what do you think, Rule?”
“I think my father is right.”
She speared her fingers through her night-mussed hair, scraping it back off her forehead. He wanted to reach for her, but he didn’t dare. “Princess Lili is still waiting, I take it, for you to ask her to marry you?”
“That’s the general assumption. She’s a guest at the palace. It would be pretty unforgivable of me to let her find out in the tabloids that I’m already married.”
“Pretty unforgivable?”
“All right. Simply unforgivable. As I said before, she’s like a sister to me. While a man doesn’t want to marry his sister—he doesn’t want to see her hurt, either.”
“I understand that.”
“Sydney …” He tried to wrap his arm around her.
She dodged away from his touch. “Why, exactly, is she expecting you to marry her?” She looked at him then. Those green eyes that could be so soft and full of desire for him, were cool now, emerald-bright.
“I told you, she’s always believed herself to be in love with me, ever since we were children. She’s looked up to me, she’s … waited for me. And as the years have gone by and I never married, it has been spoken of, between our two families, that I would need to marry soon due to the laws that control my inheritance. That Lili would be a fine choice in any number of ways.”
“What ways?”
He suppressed an impatient sigh. “Ways of state, you might say. Over the years, there has been conflict, off and on, between Montedoro and Alagonia.”
“Wars, you mean?”
“No. Small states such as ours rarely engage in wars. In Montedoro, we don’t even have a standing army. But there has been discord—bad feelings, you could say—between our two countries. The most recent rift occurred because King Leo, Lili’s father, wanted to marry my mother. My mother didn’t want to marry him. She wanted to rule Montedoro and she wanted, as much as possible, to protect our sovereignty. If she’d married a king, he could so easily have encroached on her control of the throne. Plus, while she’s always been fond of King Leo, she didn’t feel she could love him as a husband. And she wanted that, wanted love in her marriage. She managed to avoid a situation where Leo might have had a chance to propose to her. And then she met my father.”
“Don’t tell me.” At least there was some humor in her voice now. “It was love at first sight.”
“So my mother claims. And my father, as well. They married. King Leo is known for his hot temper. He was angry and even went so far as to put in place certain trade sanctions as something of a revenge against my mother and Montedoro for the injury to his pride. But then he met and married Lili’s mother, an Englishwoman, Lady Evelyn DunLyle. The king loved his new wife and found happiness with her. He gave up his vendetta against my mother and Montedoro. Leo’s queen and my mother became fast friends. Though Queen Evelyn died a few years ago, relations between our countries have been cordial for nearly three decades and we all think of Lili as one of our family.”
“You’re saying that if you’d married the princess, it would have bolstered relations between your countries. But now that you’ve essentially dumped her, if she goes crying to her father, your country and her country could end up on the outs again.”
“I have not dumped her.” He felt his temper rising, and quickly restrained it. “A man cannot dump a woman he’s never been with in any way. I swear to you, Sydney, I have never so much as kissed Liliana, except as a brother would, chastely, on the cheek.”
“But she thinks you’re going to kiss her for real. She thinks you’re going to be with her. She thinks that she’ll be married to you before the twenty-fourth of June.”
“Yes.” He said it resignedly. “I believe she does.”
“You realize that’s kind of pitiful, don’t you? I mean, if you’ve never given her any sort of encouragement, why would she think that you’ll end up proposing marriage—unless she’s a total idiot?”
“Lili is not an idiot. She’s a romantic. She’s more than a little … fanciful.”
“You’re saying she’s weak-minded?”
“Of course not. She’s a good person. She’s … kind at heart.”
Sydney shook her head. “You strung her along, didn’t you?”
“No. I did no such thing. I simply … failed to disabuse her.”
“Come on, Rule. She was your ace in the hole.” Those green eyes were on him. He had the rather startling intuition that she could see inside his head, see the cogs turning as he tried to make excuses for what he had to admit was less than admirable behavior. “You never encouraged her. But you didn’t need to encourage her. Because she’d decided you were her true love and she’s a romantic person. You figured if you never met anyone who … worked for you, as a partner in life, you could always marry Lili when your thirty-third birthday got too close for comfort.”
“All right.” He threw up both hands. “Yes. That’s what I did. That is exactly what I did.”
She gave him a look that seared him where he sat. “And it was crappy what you did, Rule. It was really crappy.”
“Yes, Sydney. It was … crappy. And I feel accountable and I want to apologize to her in person.”
“I should hope so.” She huffed out a disgusted breath.
And then there was silence. He stared straight ahead and hated that she was angry with him.
And by God, if she was angry over Lili, what was he in for when she found out about Trevor?
He couldn’t stop himself from pondering his own dishonesty. About Trevor. About Lili. He was beginning to see that he wasn’t the man he’d believed himself to be. That he was only an honest man when it suited him.
Such thoughts did not make him proud.
Plus, he found himself almost wishing he’d told her another lie just now, given her some other excuse as to
why he had to go back right away to Montedoro. He hated this—the two of them, so late on their wedding night it was already the next morning, sitting side by side on the edge of their marriage bed, not looking at each other.
“We’ll leave right after breakfast,” she said. “You can go straight to Montedoro. I’ll get a commercial flight for Lani and Trevor and me.”
“I will take you to Dallas,” he said.
“Really. It’s fine. I’ll—”
“No.” He cut her off in a voice that brooked no argument. “I will take you to Texas. And then I’ll go straight on from there.”
A half an hour later, they lay in bed in the darkness together, but not touching, facing away from each other. Sydney knew it was the right thing, for him to go, to make his peace with the woman he’d kept on a string.
She knew it was the right thing …
But she didn’t like it one bit. She was disappointed in Rule. And more than a little angry that because of him, their wedding night had ended in such a rotten, awful way.
Here she’d married her prince, literally. She’d been so sure he was the perfect man for her—and the day after their wedding, he had to leave her to fly back to his country and apologize to the woman everyone had thought he would marry. A woman Rule said was like a sister to him, a woman who was pretty and delicate and romantic at heart. Sydney was none of those things. Not pretty. Not the least delicate.
Okay, maybe she was a bit of a romantic. But she’d never had the luxury of indulging her romantic streak—not until her own personal prince came along.
Maybe her prince wasn’t such a fine man, after all. Maybe she should have slowed things down between them, at least a little, given herself more time to make sure that marrying him was really right for her. She’d been hurt before, and badly. She should have kept those past heartaches more firmly in mind. Ryan and Peter had proved that she didn’t have the best judgment when it came to giving her heart. And yet, after knowing Rule for—oh, dear God, under forty-eight hours—she’d run off to Vegas and married him.
Sydney closed her eyes tightly. Was she a total fool, after all? She’d followed her heart yet again. And look at her now, hugging the edge of the bed on her wedding night, curled into a tight ball of pure misery.
