The Prince's Cinderella Bride

by Christine Rimmer

  “Was she unhappy?”

  “She never admitted she was. She claimed that she looked at it simply, that we were married and that was that. She liked me, she said. She wanted my babies, and she was proud to be the wife of the heir to the throne. When I told her how, to me, she’d changed completely, and that I was unhappy, she only frowned and told me to stop being silly about it. We got along well together, she said. She just didn’t get what my problem was.”

  “You were miserable the whole time you were married to her?” Lani was incredulous. “Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “No, not the whole time. After a few years, it wasn’t so bad.”

  “But what does that mean, it wasn’t so bad?”

  “I grew numb, you might say. And then, when Nick was born, it got a little better. Sophia and I both wanted children. Parenting was something we both valued, something, at last, that we had in common. We were a family, and that was a good thing. Then we had Connie. I was actually happy by then, fond of Sophia and grateful for my children. I learned to accept that I would never have the kind of marriage I’d planned on, never have the closeness my parents share.”

  Lani kicked off her shoes and drew her feet up on the sofa. “But, Max, people still talk about the two of you, about the perfect marriage you had, about how well matched you were, how blissfully happy you were together....”

  “So? They had it wrong—but not completely wrong. By the end, I was happy with her, with our life together. And it was fine with me, that the press made up a pretty story about how much in love we were. Just as you’re my naughty nanny and my Cinderella bride, Sophia and I were soul mates. From the beginning, the story was that we were exactly like my parents, that we shared a great love.”

  “But it was a lie....”

  “I was the heir. Divorce wasn’t an option. And even if I hadn’t been the heir, I would have stayed in my marriage, because I personally believe that marriage is forever. In so many ways, Sophia was an excellent wife. After I accepted that she wasn’t going to change, I wanted to make the best of the situation. So did she. For once, the press cooperated. To the world, we were the perfect couple. Beyond occasional reports about the total happiness we shared, they pretty much left us alone.”

  Lani seemed lost in thought. And then she asked, “Were you there when she had the accident?”

  “No. I stayed in Montedoro with the children while Sophia took a long weekend at Lac d’Annecy in the French Lake District with her sister Maria and their brother Juan Felipe.”

  She looked at him expectantly. “But how did it happen? I know I could do a little research and get all the facts. But, Max, I would rather hear it from you.”

  So he told her what he knew. “Sophia was skiing and the line went lax. She just went down. They circled the boat back around to get her, but there was no sign of her. Juan Felipe and Sophia’s bodyguard both jumped in to save her. Her skis bobbed on top of the water, but she was nowhere to be found.”

  “They never found her?”

  “A fisherman spotted her body days later in a secluded inlet, floating near the shore. Her life jacket was missing. The cause of death was drowning. But she’d taken a serious blow to the forehead, from one of her skis, they said. The theory was that the head injury had disoriented her. In her confusion, she took off the life jacket and eventually she drowned.”

  “It’s so sad and senseless.”

  “What can I say? Yes, it was. And after she was gone, I found that I missed her terribly. I began to see that I had been happier in my marriage than I ever realized. I began to...idealize what we’d had. I missed her so much, missed her presence, her steadiness, what I saw as her commitment to our life together. I grieved. In the end, in spite of everything, we were partners in life. I really believed that what we’d had, together, what we’d built together, our marriage...I believed it had meant something, that, in spite of the rocky start, the two of us had made a good, rich life. By the time she died, I’d gotten over the way she’d tricked me at the beginning. I’d fallen in love with her all over again.”

  Lani was watching him so closely, studying his face. “There’s more, isn’t there? It...wasn’t what you thought, somehow.”

  He only looked at her.

  And she whispered, “You said you believed that your marriage had meant something, not that it actually did.”

  He couldn’t stand to draw it out a moment longer. He went ahead and told her. “She betrayed me.”

  Lani gaped. “I don’t... What?”

  “Six months after she died, I found out she’d been in love with another man for the whole time she was married to me.”

  “No...”

  “Yes. Sophia had a lover—a longtime lover. In fact, she and that other man were lovers through most of our marriage, from her first trip back to visit her family in Spain a year after our wedding, until the other man died, which happened almost a year to the day before Sophia drowned at Lac d’Annecy.”

  Lani made a low, disbelieving sound. “But how did you find out?”

  “I was cleaning out her desk and I found his letters—old-fashioned letters on plain white stationery, the kind no one writes anymore. But Sophia’s lover did. Later, I went through her computer, looking for emails or instant messages from him. None. Just those letters. Over a hundred of them. They were tucked away in a hidden drawer, along with his obituary torn from a Spanish newspaper.”

  Lani’s sweet face had gone pale. “Oh, my God, Max.”

  He went ahead and told the rest. “I locked the door so no one would disturb me and I read them all, every one of those letters. His name was Leandro d’Almas. He was a friend of Sophia’s brother, of Juan Felipe, and Sophia had known him since she was a child. D’Almas held a minor title and he had very little money. He never married. She would go home to Spain a few times a year and they would be together in secret then.”

  Lani asked softly, cautiously, “Nicky and Connie, are they...?”

  “Mine. D’Almas had some medical condition that eventually killed him. He was sterile and his letters were full of his frustrations that he couldn’t give her children, that her children were mine. He also went on and on about his love for her, about the things they had done together in the past and what he would do to her and with her the next time she could get away from me and come to him.”

  “Oh, Max...”

  “Those letters were tearstained, folded and refolded, tattered, read and reread. Sophia had cherished them. She should have destroyed them, but she didn’t. I’m guessing she couldn’t. They held her true heart. The heart I never understood, never saw, never knew...because I didn’t know her. Even when I thought that we had come to something workable and strong and lasting together, over time—even then, it was just a lie that I told myself. I didn’t know my wife at all.”

  She caught her lower lip between her neat white teeth. “Is that what you’re afraid of with me? That I’ll betray you? That if you marry me, I’ll take a secret lover and lead a secret life behind your back?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Of course I’m sure.”

  “Then I just don’t get it.”

  “Get what?”

  “Well, Max, you wanted a real marriage more than anything. We could have that, together, you and me.”

  He longed to get up and circle around the table, to sit on the sofa with her, wrap his arms good and tight around her, to breathe in the wonderful scent of her hair. But he stayed in the chair. “I just can’t, Lani. I can’t do it again. I don’t believe in marriage anymore, not for me, anyway. I can’t...lock myself in that way. I want us both to be free to go at any time—so that every day we’re together, we know, we’re certain, that with each other is where we really want to be.”

  “But you’re th
rowing away the very thing you’ve always yearned for. Oh, Max. What kind of sense does that make?”

  He only shook his head. “I don’t know. No sense at all, I suppose. But still. I mean it. I can’t do it. Not again. Not even for you. Why can’t you understand?”

  That soft mouth trembled. He could see the pulse beating in the base of her throat. And then she unfolded her legs and stood.

  He willed her to come to him.

  But she only went around the low table and over to the sliding door. She stood there, staring at her own darkened reflection in the glass.

  Finally, she seemed to draw herself up. She turned to him. “I’ll tell you what I see.” Her voice was soft suddenly. Soft and resigned. “I see that you can’t get past what happened with Sophia. You can’t get beyond the lies that she told you, that she lived with you. I see that you loved her twice—when you married her and then later, after the children came.”

  “And both times it was a lie.”

  “Oh, Max, no.”

  “Yes. It was a lie.”

  “All right. I get how you would feel that way. But I see...gray areas, too.”

  “What do you mean ‘gray’?” he demanded gruffly.

  “I just... Well, I think she must have loved you, too. Not enough for you, I know that. But enough to mean that you and she knew happiness together.”

  “No,” he insisted. “How can you say she loved me? She loved him. With me, it was all a lie....”

  “I just don’t agree with you. Yes, she lied to you. But there was also a certain truth in what you had with her. You were partners, raising a family. She gave you two beautiful children. Maybe you never knew the secrets of her heart, but I think there was goodness in her. If there wasn’t, you never could have loved her.”

  “How can you defend her?”

  “I’m not. I think what she did was totally wrong. I’m defending you, my darling, defending the marriage you made, the trust that you kept. As for Sophia, she’s gone. You’ll never be able to confront her. You need, somehow, to make peace with her memory.”

  “How can I make peace? I loved an illusion.”

  “I don’t think so, Max. You didn’t know everything, but that doesn’t mean the love you had for her wasn’t real.”

  “I was a blind idiot and she was a...” He let the sentence trail off unfinished. For Nicky and Connie’s sake, he refused to speak the ugly word he was thinking.

  Lani stared at him so tenderly, unspeaking, for an endless time. And then finally, she said, “I’m sorry for you, for her, for all of it. But what you’ve just told me doesn’t change the fact that I want a lifetime with you. I want you for my husband. Not because you’re a prince and I want to be a princess. Not because you’re the heir to the Montedoran throne. There is no one else waiting in secret for me. You’re the one for me, Max. I want to marry you because I love you. Because we’re good together. Because I love Nicky and Connie and I want to be there for them, while they’re growing up. I want to be your wife, Max. I want to give you everything you always wanted from Sophia. But I can’t do that. Because you don’t trust yourself or me.”

  “That’s not true. I trust you absolutely.”

  “No, you don’t. If you trusted me, you would put your fear aside, take my hand and make a life with me. Deep in your heart, I think you still want what your parents have, a good marriage that can stand the test of a lifetime. But you won’t let yourself have that. You’re too afraid it will all go wrong all over again.” Those big dark eyes pleaded with him. They begged him to swear that he did trust her, that he was ready to get past his fears and give a life with her a chance.

  But he couldn’t do that, not in the way that she wanted it. And right then, at that moment, he saw what he’d been so stubbornly refusing to see. In this, in the question of marriage, there really was no middle ground for either of them. She wanted what he couldn’t give her. And it was wrong of him to keep after her, to keep pushing her to come to him on his terms. He was not the man for her. He needed to do the right thing, to let her go. There was nothing more to say about it.

  He took her key from his pocket and set it on the low table. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  Her mouth was trembling again. With a soft cry, she turned her back to him. “I can’t bear this. Just go now. Please.”

  That at least, he could give her. He strode to the door and pulled it open. “Goodbye, Lani.”

  She didn’t answer him.

  He went out, shutting the door quietly behind him.

  * * *

  Lani whirled when she heard the door click shut.

  Her eyes blinded by hot tears, she ran over and locked it. Then she threw herself down on the sofa and let the tears have their way, let the ugly, painful sobs take her.

  An hour or so later, she went online and tortured herself a little more looking at pictures of him, and pictures of the two of them together. She read the crappy tabloid stories about their relationship and groaned through her tears over the lurid headlines.

  More than once that night, she picked up the phone to call him, as she’d been doing every night since they returned from Texas together more than three weeks ago. What could it hurt? she kept asking herself. To call him and tell him she was willing to do things the way that he wanted. That she couldn’t bear being apart from him for another minute. If he wouldn’t marry her, she wanted them to be together, at least.

  But she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t make that call.

  In loving him, she’d learned to love herself so much better than before. To respect herself and her principles. She was her mother’s daughter to the core, one of those people who still believed that true love and marriage went together. It wouldn’t work for her to try to be someone else. It would only make the inevitable ending more painful.

  * * *

  That Sunday afternoon, Max took the children to the beach. They built a crooked sand castle and ran in the waves.

  When they sat down to eat the picnic Marceline had packed for them, Connie asked him why Miss Lani couldn’t come with them.

  He did his best to ignore the ache in his chest at the mere mention of Lani’s name and told his daughter gently that he wasn’t seeing Miss Lani anymore.

  Connie crunched on a carrot stick. “But I see her all the time. I saw her Friday. She came out into the garden with Aunt Sydney and Trev and Ellie. We were all together and she let me brush her hair.”

  Jealousy added a knot in his stomach to the ache in his heart. He was jealous of his own daughter, for getting to be with Lani, to touch Lani, when he had to make himself stay away.

  Nicky said, “Papa means he dumped her. She’s not his girlfriend anymore.”

  Connie gasped. “Papa! You dumped Miss Lani?”

  He put a soothing hand on Connie’s little shoulder and gave Nick a stern frown. “I did not dump Miss Lani. It didn’t work out between us, that’s all.”

  “You broke up with her,” Nick accused.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” Connie pouted.

  Was he suddenly in the doghouse with both of his children? “Ahem. It didn’t work out between me and Miss Lani. Sometimes that happens. There is no one to blame.” God. He sounded like a pompous ass.

  Nicky peered at him, narrow-eyed. “I knew it already. I’ve known it for days and days.”

  “Erm, knew what?”

  “That you and Miss Lani broke up.”

  “How did you know?”

  “You’re different, that’s all.” Nick sipped from a bottle of Evian. “Back like you used to be.”

  Connie announced, “Well, at least Miss Lani can still see me.”

  Max asked Nicky, “Like I used to be, how?”

  Connie put in dreamily, “She likes me and I like her. We have our gi
rl things.”

  Nick said, “You know, like this.” And he made a blank sort of face. “All serious and maybe kind of sad.”

  Connie crunched another carrot. “She would never stop seeing me.”

  Serious and sad? Did Nick have it right?

  Max told Connie, “I’m glad that you and Miss Lani are still friends.”

  Connie wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him loudly on the cheek. “I’m glad, too.”

  He turned to Nick. “And I promise I will try not to be so serious and sad.”

  Nick shrugged. “It’s all right, Papa. That’s just how you are, I guess. You were always that way. Except, you know, with Miss Lani.”

  * * *

  A week went by. And then another. He saw Lani now and then. In the garden. In the library. They would nod and smile politely at each other and leave it at that.

  It hurt every time he saw her. A deep, fevered kind of ache. But at least then he felt something.

  Because his son was right. He’d gone back to his old ways, to living his life at a distance, as though there was an invisible barrier between him and the rest of the world. The familiar numbness he’d known for so long had claimed him again.

  Most of the time, he simply went through the motions. He felt alive only in snips and snatches: when he held Connie on his lap and read her a story. When he helped Nick with his studies. Or when he caught sight of Lani and gave her a false smile and his love for her welled up, hot and hungry and alive.

  Other than those brief flashes of intense feeling, he was his old self in the worst kind of way.

  His mother got him alone after a Monday meeting with her ministers and asked him what had happened with Lani.

  She knew, of course. She always did.

  He told her it was over and he didn’t wish to speak of it.

  “May I make a suggestion?”

  “No.”

  She suggested anyway, “Consider putting your pride aside. Stop punishing yourself for making the wrong choice once. Think of your children, of all you gained by that wrong choice. And move on. Ask Lani to marry you. Let yourself be happy.”