by Abby Green
“You would have needed longer than I could afford.”
She made a low sound. “Because of the Prince’s Marriage Law.”
“Yes.”
“You’re telling me you were trapped.” She spoke with disdain.
“No. I’m telling you that I knew what I wanted, at last. After all the years of being so sure I would never find it, find you. I wanted you. I wanted our child. And I wanted my inheritance, too. I made choices to give myself—and us—the best chance that we could both get what we wanted.”
“And you kept making choices. Kept making the same choice. To lie to me. Over and over and over again. Since our marriage, I can’t even count the times when you could have made a different choice.”
“I know it. And we’re back to the beginning again. Back to where I remind you that we have been so happy, and that telling you the truth would have destroyed our happiness, back to where I say I did what I did because I couldn’t bear to lose you.”
She stood up. And then, looking down at him, she said, “In making the choice to lie to me, you stole my choices. You treated me like a child, someone not fully responsible, someone unable to deal with the facts and make reasonable decisions based on all the available information. For generations, men did that to women, treated them as incompetent, as unable to face reality and make rational choices. Treated them as possessions rather than thinking human beings. I will not be treated as your possession, Rule, no matter how prized. Do you understand?”
He did understand. And at that point, there was nothing left for him but to admit the wrong he’d done her—done them both—and pay the price for it. “Yes. I understand.”
“It matters. That you believe in me. That you trust me. That you treat me as your equal.”
“And I see that,” he said. “I do.”
“But given the same set of circumstances, you would lie to me all over again—don’t you tell me that you wouldn’t.”
He wanted to deny it. But somehow, he couldn’t. And his denial wouldn’t matter anyway. He couldn’t undo what he’d done. What mattered now was that, no matter what the circumstances, he wouldn’t lie to her again. “I simply didn’t want to lose you. That’s all. I lied because I was certain the truth would cost me what we have together. And now, you can be assured I see that I made the wrong choice. I swear I’ll never lie to you again.” Her face was set against him. He shook his head. “But then, I look at you and I see that it doesn’t matter what I promise you. I see in your eyes that I’m going to lose you anyway.”
Her cold expression changed. She looked … puzzled. And also disbelieving. And then she actually rolled her eyes. “Of course you’re not going to lose me, Rule.”
He gaped at her, convinced he couldn’t have heard her right. “What did you just say?”
“I said you’re not going to lose me. I would never leave you. I’m your wife and I love you more than my life. But I am not the least happy with you. And I’m not going to hide how I feel about this, or pretend to get past it when I’m not past it. You may end up wishing that I would go.”
“My God,” he said, hope rekindled, catching fire. “I would never wish for you to go. You have to know that.”
“We’ll see.”
He rose. His arms ached to reach for her. But her expression signaled all too clearly the reception he would get if he tried. “I want our marriage,” he said, and longed to give her words back to her. I love you more than my life. But it seemed wrong to speak of his love now, wrong and cheap. So instead, he said, “I want only you, always. That isn’t going to change, no matter what you do, no matter how angry you are at me.”
“We’ll see,” she said again. And for a moment, he saw the sadness in her eyes. Men had disappointed her before. And now he was just like the others.
Except he wasn’t. He refused to be.
Whatever it took, he would be more, better, than he had been until now. Whatever the cost, he would win back her trust again and reclaim his right to stand at her side.
She was watching him, assessing him. “How much do your parents know?”
“My father knows everything. I confided in him. But my mother knows nothing—beyond being certain that Trevor is my son as well as yours.”
“You told her?”
“No. She guessed that he was mine the moment she saw him. She asked my father what he knew. He offered to betray my confidence and tell her everything. She didn’t think that would be right, so she declined his offer to break his word to me.”
“I do like your mother.”
“Yes,” he said dryly. “Like you, she is thoroughly admirable—and you remind me I need to speak with her.”
She indicated the tabloid she’d tossed to the floor and asked him wearily, “About all this?”
He nodded. “By now, she’ll have had her morning look at the newspapers, including The Sun. I have to go to her and explain.”
Sydney said, “We’ll go together.”
It was more than he’d hoped for. Much more. “Are you sure?”
“I’ll just leave a note for Lani.”
They met with his mother in the apartments she shared with his father. It was just the four of them—Adrienne, Evan, Rule and Sydney.
Rule told the whole story all over again. His mother’s face remained unreadable throughout.
When he was done at last, she turned to Sydney. “I am so sorry that my son misled you.”
Sydney replied with a slow nod. “Yes. I am, too.”
Rule stared straight ahead. He felt like the bad child in school, sent to the corner to sit on a stool facing the wall and contemplate the terrible extent of his transgressions.
His mother said, “All right. Where are we now in terms of dealing with The International Sun and their absurd pack of lies?”
His father outlined the brief earlier meeting with Leticia and Donahue, concluding with, “To start, at least, Donahue will demand a retraction.”
His mother looked at Rule, at Sydney, and then at Rule again. “Would a retraction satisfy you two?”
Satisfy me? Rule thought. Hardly. What would satisfy him was to have his wife once again look at him with affection and desire, to have her forgiveness. “That would be fine,” he said, not caring in the least anymore about the damned tabloid story.
“It’s not fine with me,” Sydney said.
He glanced at her, took in the tightness of her mouth, the spots of hectic color high on her cheeks. She was as furious at the tabloid as she was at him. It hurt him, to look at her. It made him yearn for the feel of her skin under his hand, for the pleasure of simply holding her. Despair dragged at him. She’d said she wouldn’t leave him.
But how long would it be before she allowed him to hold her again?
Sydney went on, “The retraction, yes. Absolutely. They should start with a retraction. And then we should sue their asses off.”
“Their asses,” his mother repeated, exchanging a glance with his father. “I do admire your enthusiasm, Sydney.”
“It’s an outrage.” Sydney pressed her lips more tightly together. She blew out a hard breath through her nose.
His mother said, “I agree. And we will have a retraction.”
“It’s not enough,” Sydney insisted. “That article is a gross misrepresentation of Rule’s integrity, of his character. Rule would never simply walk away and desert a woman who was pregnant with his child. Never.”
Rule realized he was gaping at her again. He couldn’t help it. She astonished him. As infuriated as she was at him, she still defended him. He reminded her gently, “Sydney. It’s just a silly tabloid story. It doesn’t matter.”
Her eyes were green fire. “Of course it matters. It’s a lie. And they deserve to have their noses rubbed in it. I think we should hold a press conference and tell the world what liars they are. I think we need to tell the world the truth.”
Tell the world the truth. She couldn’t be serious.
He said, with slow care, “Y
ou want me to tell the world that I was your sperm donor? That it took me more than two years to get up the nerve to approach you? That when I did, I didn’t tell you I was your child’s father, but instead seduced you and got you to marry me under false pretenses?”
“Yes,” she said hotly. “That’s what I want from you, Rule. I want you to tell the truth.”
For the first time on that awful day, he felt his own anger rising. It was all coming much too clear. “You want to see me humiliated. And it’s not enough for you that The Sun should make me look like a fool. You want to see me make a fool of myself.”
She sucked in a sharp breath and put her hand to her throat. “No. No, that’s not it. That’s not what I meant.”
He told her icily, “Of course it’s what you meant.”
“Oh, Rule,” she said softly after several seconds had passed. “You don’t get it. You don’t get it at all.”
He said nothing. He had nothing to say.
Finally, his mother spoke softly. “Whatever action the two of you decide to take, you have our complete support. I can see this is something the two of you must work out between yourselves.”
Chapter Fourteen
But Rule and Sydney didn’t work it out. They returned to their apartment—together, but not speaking.
That night, Rule slept in the small bedroom off the master suite. He lay alone in bed in the darkness and realized he wasn’t angry anymore.
He missed his anger.
It was a lot easier to be furious than it was to be ashamed.
Now his anger had left him, he could see that for Sydney it was as it had always been; it was about honesty. She saw that insane press conference of hers as a way to clear the air once and for all, to lay the truth bare for everyone to see. She saw it as a way to beat The International Sun at its own game. She was an American, an egalitarian to the core.
She didn’t have generations of proud, aristocratic Calabretti ancestors behind her, staring down their formidable noses, appalled at the very idea that one of their own would even consider getting up in a public forum and explaining his shameful personal shortcomings to the world at large.
Such things were not done.
A Calabretti had more pride than that.
He had more pride than that. Too much pride. He could see that now.
He was not about to tell the world the unvarnished truth about his private life. Even if he’d behaved in an exemplary fashion, that would have been extraordinarily difficult for him.
But his behavior had not been exemplary. Far from it.
He’d been an imbecile. On any number of levels. And it just wasn’t in him, to stand up and confess his own idiocy to the world.
The next day was as bad as the one before it. He and Sydney were polite with each other. Excruciatingly so. But they hardly spoke.
In his office, the phone rang off the hook. Every newspaper, every magazine, every radio and TV station wanted a few brief words with Prince Rule. He declined to speak with any of them.
And he stayed another night in the extra room. And then another after that.
The weekend went by. He spent time with his son. He and Sydney continued to speak to each other only when necessary.
Monday evening they had a meeting with Jacques Fournier, the architect they’d chosen, about the renovations at the villa. Sydney sent Rule an email about that on Monday afternoon.
An email. She was one room away, but she talked to him via email.
Do you want me to contact Fournier and tell him we won’t be available tonight?
He zipped her off a one-word reply. Yes.
She didn’t email back to update him on her conversation with Fournier. Just as well. He didn’t really care if the architect was annoyed with them for backing out on him.
What he cared about was making things right with his wife. Unfortunately, he had no idea how to do that.
Or if he did have an idea, he had altogether too much pride to go through with it.
That evening, she surprised him.
She came and hovered in the doorway to his little room. Hope flared in him yet again, that this might mean she was ready to forgive him. But her face gave him nothing. She seemed a little nervous, maybe. But not like a woman on the verge of offering to mend a serious breach.
“I called Fournier,” she said.
He set the book he’d been trying to read aside. “Thank you,” he said stiffly.
“Fournier said it was fine, to call and reschedule when we were … ready.” Her sweet mouth trembled.
He wanted to kiss the trembling away. But he stayed in the room’s single chair, by the window. “All right.”
“I’m sure he must know about that awful article …”
He shrugged. “He might.”
“Not that it matters what the architect knows.” She looked tired, he thought. There were dark smudges beneath her eyes. Was she having as much trouble sleeping as he was? “I … Oh, Rule …” She looked at him sadly. And pleadingly, too.
His heart beat faster. Hope, that thing that refused to die, rose up more strongly, tightening his throat, bringing him to his feet. “Sydney …”
And then she was flying at him and he was opening his arms. She landed against his chest with a soft cry and he gathered her into him.
He held on tight.
And she was holding him, too, burying her face against his chest, sighing, whispering, “Rule. Oh, Rule …”
He lowered his lips to her fragrant hair, breathed in the longed-for scent of her. “Sydney. I’m so sorry. I can’t tell you …”
“I know.” She tipped her head back, met his waiting gaze.
Crying. She was crying, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes, leaving shining trails along her flushed cheeks.
“Don’t cry.” He caught her face between his hands, kissed the tear trails, tasted their salty wetness. “Don’t cry …”
“I want … to make it right with us. But I don’t know how to make it right.”
He dared to kiss her lips—a quick kiss, and chaste. It felt wrong to do more. “You can’t make it right. I have to do that.”
She searched his face. “Please believe me. I didn’t suggest that press conference to shame you. I swear that I didn’t.”
“I know. I see that now. Don’t worry on that account. I understand.”
“I’m … too proud, Rule. I know that I am. Too proud and too difficult. Too demanding.”
He almost laughed. “Too prickly.”
“Yes, that, too. A kinder, gentler woman would be over this by now.”
He kissed the tip of her nose. “I have no interest in a kinder, gentler woman. And you are not too anything. You are just right. I wouldn’t want you to change. I wouldn’t want you to be anyone other than exactly who you are, any way other than as you are.”
“Oh, Rule …”
He took her shoulders and he set her gently away from him. “Can you forgive me?”
She shut her eyes, drew herself taller. And when she looked at him again, she wasn’t smiling. “I’m working on it.”
Strangely, he understood exactly what she was telling him. “But you aren’t succeeding. You can’t forgive me.”
She pressed her lips together, shook her head—and started to speak.
He touched his thumb to her mouth. “Never mind. You don’t have to answer. Let it be for now.”
“I miss you so. It hurts so much.”
Gruffly, he confessed, “For me, as well.”
She took his hand, placed it on her still-flat belly where their unborn baby slept. The feel of that, the promise of that, came very close to breaking his heart. “We have to … do something,” she said in a torn little whisper. “We have to … get past this. For the baby’s sake, for Trev. For the sake of our family. I have to get past this, put aside my hurt pride that you lied, that you didn’t treat me as an equal. We have to move on. But then, just when I’m sure I’m ready to let it go, I think of all the time
s you might have told me, might have trusted me….”
“Shh,” he said, and lifted his hand to touch her lips again with the pads of his fingers. “It’s not your fault. I am to blame and I know that I am. Somehow, I have to make you believe that I do trust you in all ways, that no matter how hard the truth is, I will never lie to you again.”
She let out a ragged breath. “I want to believe you. So much.”
He lifted her chin and brushed one last kiss against her tender lips. “Give it time,” he said again. “It will be all right.” Would it? Yes. Somehow, he would make it so.
She stepped back and turned. And then she walked away from him.
It was the hardest thing he’d ever done, to watch her go. To let her go. Not to call her back. Not to grab her close again and kiss her senseless. Not to promise them both that everything was all right now.
When it wasn’t all right.
When something precious was shattered between them and he knew that, as the one who had done the shattering, it was up to him to mend a thousand ragged pieces into one strong, shining whole.
The answer came to him in the middle of the night.
Or rather, in the middle of the night, he accepted fully how far he was actually willing to go to make things right.
He saw at last that he was going to have to do the one thing he’d said he would never do, the thing he’d rejected out of hand because it was going to be difficult for him. More than difficult. Almost impossible.
But whatever it took, if it gave him a chance of healing the breach between him and Sydney, he was ready to do it. To move forward with it.
And to do so willingly.
Pride, she had told him. “I’m … too proud, Rule.”
They were alike in that. Both of them prideful, unwilling to bend.
But he would bend, finally. He would do the hardest thing. And he would do it gladly.
If it meant he would have her trust once more. If it meant she would see and believe that he knew the extent of the damage he’d done and would never do such a thing again.
He turned over on his side and closed his eyes and was sound asleep in seconds.
