She caught his hands in her slender ones, stepped back and beamed up at him. “You’re here. At last…”
So. She didn’t know.
“Lili, I came to see you right away, as soon as I got in. I have something important to tell you.”
She became even more radiant than a moment before—if that was possible. “Oh.” She sounded breathless. “Do you? Really? At last…”
What if she fainted? She’d always been so delicate. “Let’s…sit down, shall we?”
“Oh, absolutely. Let’s.” She pulled him over to a blue velvet sofa. They sat. “Now. What is it you’d like to say to me?”
He had no idea where to begin. His tongue felt like a useless slab of leather in his mouth. “I… Lili. I’m so sorry about this.”
Her radiance dimmed, marginally. “Ahem. You’re…sorry?”
“I know you’ve always had an expectation that you and I would eventually marry. I realize I’ve been wrong, very wrong, to have let things go on like this, to have—”
She cut him off. “Rule.”
He coughed into his hand. “Yes?”
Her perfect face was now scarily composed. “All right. So, then. You’re not here to propose marriage to me.”
“No, Lili. I’m not. I’m here to tell you that I’m already married.”
Lili gasped. Her face went dead-white.
He got ready to catch her as she collapsed.
Chapter Nine
But Lili remained upright on the sofa. She asked in a voice barely louder than a whisper, “Would you mind telling me her name, please?”
“Sydney. Sydney O’Shea.”
“Not Montedoran?”
“No. I met her in America. In Texas.”
Lili swallowed, her smooth white throat working convulsively. “Sydney O’Shea. From Texas.”
“Yes. Lili, I—”
She waved a hand at him. “No. Please. I… Fair enough, then. You’ve told me. And I hope you’ll be very happy together, you and this Sydney O’Shea.” Her huge blue eyes regarded him, stricken. Yet she remained so calm-seeming. She even forced a tight smile. “I hope you will have a lovely, perfect life.” She shot to her feet. “And now, if you don’t mind, I think I would like you to go.”
“Lili…” He rose. He wanted to reach out to her. But that would be wrong. He would only be adding insult to injury. What good could he do for her now? None. There was no way he could help her through this, nothing he could do to make things better.
He was the problem. And he really needed to leave, now, before she broke down in front of him and despised him even more for bearing witness to her misery.
“Go,” she said again. “Please just go.”
So he did go. With a quick dip of his head, he turned on his heel and he left her alone.
* * *
He called Sydney again the moment he reached his own rooms.
“How did it go?” she asked.
“Not well. She sent me away as soon as I told her.”
“Is there someone with her? Someone she can talk to?”
“She has a cousin with her. But I don’t think that they’re close.”
“Who is she close to?”
“My God, Sydney. What does it matter? What business is it of mine or yours?”
“Men are so thickheaded. She needs someone to talk to, someone to comfort her, someone who understands what she’s going through.”
He needed a stiff drink. But then again, it was barely eleven in the morning. “You don’t know her, Sydney. How can you possibly know what she needs?”
“Rule. She’s a woman. I know what she needs. She needs a true friend with a shoulder she can cry on. She needs that friend now.”
“Sydney. I adore you,” he said in his coolest, most dangerous tones. “You know that. And I’m very sorry to have made such a balls-up of all this. But you don’t know Liliana and you have no idea what she needs. And I’ll thank you to stop imagining that you do.”
“I’m getting seriously pissed off at you. You know that, right?”
“Yes. I realize that. And we’re even. Because I am becoming pretty damn brassed off at you.”
Dead silence on the line. And then, very flatly, “I think I should hang up before I say something I’m bound to regret.”
“Yes. I agree. Go back to sleep, Sydney.”
“Hah. Fat chance of that.” Click. And silence.
“Goodbye,” he said furiously, though it wasn’t in any way necessary, as she had already hung up.
He put down the phone and then he just stood there, staring blindly at an oil painting of a pastoral scene that hung over the sofa, wanting to strangle someone. Preferably his bride.
A tap on the outer door interrupted his fuming. “Enter.”
His secretary, Caroline, appeared to inform him that Her Sovereign Highness and Prince Evan wished to speak with him in the Blue Sitting Room of their private apartment.
* * *
In his parents’ private rooms, they didn’t stand on ceremony.
His mother embraced him and told him she forgave him for running off and marrying his Texas bride without a word to the family beforehand. His father congratulated him as well and said he was looking forward to meeting Sydney and her son. Prince Evan said nothing about the secret Rule had finally shared with him a few weeks before. Rule was grateful to see that his father, at least at this point, was keeping his word and telling Her Sovereign Highness nothing about how Rule had come to meet his bride in the first place.
And when his mother asked him about that, about how he and Sydney had met, he told her the truth, as far as it went. “I saw her going into a shopping mall. One look, and I knew I wanted to know her. So I followed her. I convinced her that she should have lunch with me and after that, I pursued her relentlessly until she gave in and married me. I knew from that first sight of her, getting out of her car, settling her bag on her shoulder so resolutely, that she was one of a kind.”
His mother approved. She’d more or less chosen his father that way, after seeing him across a room at a Hollywood party during a visit to the States. “You did have us worried,” she chided. “We feared you would fail to make your choice before your birthday. Or that you would marry our darling Lili and the marriage would not suit in the end.”
Rule had to keep from gaping. “If you thought that Liliana and I were a bad match, you might have mentioned that to me.”
His mother gave a supremely elegant shrug. “And what possible good would that have done? Until you met the right woman, you were hardly likely to listen to your mother telling you that the perfectly lovely Lili, of whom you’ve always been so fond, was all wrong for you.”
Rule had no idea how to reply to that. He wanted to say something angry and provoking. Because he felt angry and provoked. But that had more to do with his recent conversation with Sydney than anything else. So he settled for saying nothing.
And then his mother and father shared a look. And his mother nodded. And his father said, “I hope you’ll be having a private word with Liliana soon.”
At which point he went ahead and confessed, “As it happens, I’ve already spoken with her.”
His mother rose abruptly. Rule and his father followed suit. She demanded, “Why ever didn’t you say so?”
Yes. No doubt about it. To strangle someone or put his fist through a wall about now would be extremely satisfying. “I did tell you. I told you just now.”
“When did you speak with her?” his mother asked.
He glanced at his wristwatch. “Forty-five minutes ago.”
“You told her of your marriage?”
“Yes.” His parents shared a speaking glance. “What? I shouldn’t have told her?”
“Well, of course you needed to tell her.”
“Then I don’t understand what—”
“Is she alone now?”
“I have no idea. Solange Moltano answered the door to me. I’m assuming she’s still there, in Lili’
s apartment.”
“The Moltano woman will never do. Lili will need someone to talk with, someone to comfort her.”
It was exactly what Sydney had said. And that made him angrier than ever. He gritted his teeth and apologized, though he was sick to death of saying how sorry he was. “It’s all my fault. I can see now I’ve handled everything wrong.”
His mother put her cool hand against his cheek. “No, darling. You did what you had to do—except for not telling me the moment you left her. Lili will need me now. I’ll go to her right away.” And with that, she swept from the room.
Into the echoing silence after her departure, Rule said, “I think I would like to hit someone.”
His father nodded. “I know the feeling.”
“I’ve broken Lili’s heart. And my wife is furious at me.”
“Lili will get over this, Rule. Leave it to your mother. She loves Lili like one of our own and she will know just what to say to comfort her—and why is your bride angry with you?” His father frowned. “You’ve told her already, about the boy?”
Rule swore. “No. Not yet. And I won’t. Not…for a while, in any case. Sydney’s upset about Lili. She sympathizes with Lili. She says I used Lili as my ‘ace in the hole,’ as a way to hedge my bet in case I didn’t find someone I really wanted to marry before Montedoran law took my title and my fortune.”
“She sounds like a rare person, your new wife. Not many brides have sympathy for the ‘other’ woman.”
“Sydney is like no one I’ve ever known,” he said miserably.
“That’s good, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know what to think. She has me spinning in circles. I don’t know which end is up.”
“A good woman will do that, turn your world upside down.”
“I’ve mucked everything up.” Rule sank to the sofa again, shaking his head. “Sydney believes absolutely in honesty and truth and integrity. She’s disappointed in me because I wasn’t honest with Lili, because I didn’t make my true feelings—or lack of them—clear to Lili long ago. I keep thinking, if Sydney can hardly forgive me for not being totally honest with Lili, how can I ever tell her the truth about Trevor?”
His father sat down beside him. He said gently, “You have a real problem.”
“I used to see myself as a good man, a man who did what was right… .”
“Do you want my advice?”
“You’ll only tell me to tell her, and to tell her now.”
His father’s lips curved in a wry smile. “So that would be a no, then. You don’t want my advice?”
“I can’t tell her. Honesty is everything for her. If I was going to tell her, I should have done it at the beginning, that first day I met her, before I pushed for marriage…”
“Why didn’t you?”
“She confided in me concerning her past romantic relationships. I knew she had very good reasons not to put her trust in men. If I’d told her before I married her, she might never have allowed me to get close to her. Certainly she wouldn’t have let me near her in the time allotted before the twenty-fourth of June. It’s as I said to you on the phone. There was no good choice. I made the choice that gave me a fighting chance. Or at least, so I thought at the time.”
“What do you have on your calendar?”
Rule arched a brow. “And what has my schedule got to do with my complete failure to behave as a decent human being?”
“I think you should clear it.”
“My calendar?”
“Yes. Fulfill whatever obligations you can’t put off here and do it as quickly as possible. Reschedule everything else. And then return to Texas. Make it up with Sydney, get through this rough patch, spend time with Trevor, strengthen your bonds with both of them. And return to Montedoro when your wife is ready to come with you.”
* * *
That morning, Sydney actually had two reporters lurking on her front lawn. When she backed out of her garage on the way to the office, she stopped in the driveway, rolled her window down and let them snap away with their cameras for a good sixty seconds.
They fired questions at her while they took the pictures. She told them that yes, she had married her prince and she was very happy, thank you. No, she wasn’t willing to share any of their plans with the press.
One asked snidely if she’d met the Alagonian princess yet. She said no, but she was looking forward to making Princess Liliana’s acquaintance—and in case they hadn’t noticed, hers was a gated community. She would be calling neighborhood security the next time she found them on her property. That said, she drove away.
At the firm, she met with three of her partners. They already knew about her marriage.
And they weren’t surprised when she told them she would be leaving Teale, Gayle and Prosser. They weren’t happy with her, either. She was a valued and very much counted-on member of the team, after all. And they were going to be scrambling to fill the void that would be created by her absence.
When she told them she hoped to leave for her new home within the month, an icy silence descended. After which there was talk of her obligations, of the contract she had with the firm.
Then she told them about the potential clients she would be bringing in before she left. She named the ones Rule had mentioned the night before their wedding. And she explained that His Highness, her husband, had excellent business connections worldwide—connections he was willing to share with Teale, Gayle and Prosser.
By the time the meeting was over, her partners were smiling again. Of course, they would be waiting to see if she delivered on her promises. But at least she had a chance of getting out quickly with her reputation intact and zero bridges burned.
She went to work with a vengeance, getting her office and workload in order.
Rule hadn’t called since the second time she’d talked to him the night before, when she’d gotten all up in his face. Had she been too hard on him?
Oh, maybe. A little.
But she couldn’t believe he’d just dropped the bomb of his elopement on the poor, lovesick princess and then left her all on her own because she’d asked him to. Sydney hoped her harsh words had put a serious bug up his butt—as her Grandma Ellen might have said—and that he’d found a way to make sure Liliana had the confidant she needed at a time like this.
At five that afternoon, Sydney was called into the main conference room, which was packed with her partners, the associates, the paralegals, the secretarial staff and even the HR people. There was champagne and a pile of wedding gifts and a cake.
Sydney couldn’t believe it. It was really happening. She was getting the office wedding shower she’d been so certain she’d never have.
She thanked them and made a little speech about how much they all meant to her and how she would miss them. And then she ate two pieces of cake, sipped one glass of champagne and did the rounds of the room, her spirits lifted that her colleagues had made a party just for her.
It was nine at night when she left the office. She was seriously dragging by then. Sleep had been in short supply for five days now—since last Friday, when her whole life had changed in an instant, because she’d gone into Macy’s to buy a wedding gift for Calista Dwyer.
At home, Lani helped her carry in the gifts from the party. “You look exhausted,” Lani said. “Just leave everything on the table. I’ll deal with it tomorrow.”
Sydney dropped the last box on the stack and sank into a chair. “How was your day?”
“Fabulous. Trevor took a three-hour nap and I got ten pages done. And then later, we went to the park. He seems to have slacked off on the endless knock-knock jokes.”
“That’s a relief.”
“I so agree—he asked twice about ‘Roo.’ He wanted to know when Rule was coming to see him again so they could play trucks.”
Sydney was happy that her son was so taken with his stepfather. She only wished she didn’t feel edgy and unsure about everything. But it had all happened so fast between the
m, and now he was gone. A sense of unreality had set in.
She told Lani, “He said he’d be back in a week.”
“Well, all right. Good to know—and is everything okay with you two?”
Sydney let her shoulders slump. “There are some issues.”
Lani knew her so well. “And you’re too wiped out to talk about them now.” At Sydney’s weary nod, she asked, “Hungry?”
“Naw. I had takeout at the office—and two pieces of cake at the party. I think I’ll go upstairs and kiss my sleeping son and then take a long, hot bath.”
Forty-five minutes later, Sydney climbed into bed. She set the alarm for six-thirty, turned off the light and was sound asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow.
Rule didn’t call that night. Or the next morning.
Apparently, he really was “brassed off” at her. She thought it was rather childish of him, to cut off communication because she’d pissed him off. Then again, nothing was stopping her from picking up the phone and calling him.
She felt reluctant to do that, which probably proved that she was being every bit as childish as he was. And she did wonder how things had worked out with Liliana, if he’d done what she’d asked him to do and found someone for the poor woman to talk to.
And okay, she hadn’t asked. She’d more like commanded. And he hadn’t appreciated her ordering him around.
Maybe she shouldn’t have been so hard on him. Maybe she should have…
Who knew what she should have done? She was totally out of her depth with him. She’d only known him since Friday and now they were married and already he was halfway around the world from her. No wonder they were having “issues.”
She hardly knew him. And how would she get to know him, with him there and her here?
All she knew for certain was that she ached with missing him. The lack of him was like a hole in her heart, a vacancy. She needed him with her, to fill that lack. She wanted him there, with her, touching her. She wanted it so bad. She wanted to grab him in her arms and curl herself into him, to hold on so tight, to press herself so close. She wanted to…somehow be inside his skin.
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