Kitabı oku: «The Wedding Party And Holiday Escapes Ultimate Collection», sayfa 53
Ten
Amongst a sea of talking and laughing christening guests, Rafe reluctantly took hold of the baby. He was happy to be godfather—Mark and Karen were good friends—but why did people always expect that he’d want to hold their children? Although maybe godfathers ought to want to. Lex would doubtless have an opinion on the subject. Lex, whom he did want to hold, but couldn’t and wouldn’t because she was leaving tomorrow, going back to her old life. It was for the best.
They’d had yesterday, undoubtedly a mistake given the outcry in the media. But a mistake he couldn’t regret. He’d wanted it to last forever, wanted her smiles and her laughter.
He looked into the clear blue and strangely alert eyes of the child in his arms, who appeared, much like Rafe, to be wondering why this strange man was holding her. Karen called to someone across the room and walked away, and Rafe had to stop himself from calling her back.
“If you cry now,” he quietly encouraged the child whose name he’d already managed to forget, “your mother will come back for you.” In Rafe’s experience, that was how this scenario usually played out. Unfortunately, this child didn’t know the drill and merely blinked. He was fairly sure she was a girl, though that long gown she, or he, had worn for the cathedral ceremony wasn’t necessarily a guarantee of femininity.
Conversation flowed around him, and the baby continued to study him. “I hold you responsible,” he said, and the baby smiled. “If it hadn’t been for this christening, I could have been in Vienna by now. Or maybe even Argentina.” And he wouldn’t have entangled his life and emotions with Lexie. Although he couldn’t bring himself to regret what they’d shared.
The baby’s stare turned accusing.
“Okay,” he admitted. “I stayed for her, too. But don’t you dare tell anyone.”
He heard a bubbling, sexy laugh and followed the sound to Lexie, where she stood talking with Adam and Karen. She wore a silky red wrap dress. He’d been pleased to see her in it. Pleased and turned on, but he ignored the second reaction. She’d at least stopped trying to hide her vibrancy behind fiercely elegant clothes. No point now, he guessed, given that she wasn’t marrying his brother. She was leaving. Her hair was pulled into a twist at the back of her head, its lushness contained. That fact pleased him, too. He admitted to a proprietary attitude to her hair—it featured in so many of his fantasies.
She caught him watching her. Her gaze dipped to the baby in his arms and her eyes widened in surprise. Yes, Lexie, he thought, I do know how to hold a child, it’s just not something I do voluntarily. And Lexie was exactly the sort of woman who’d want children, who’d be a natural, loving mother. Which was why he had to let her go.
He looked around for Karen. Surely he’d done his godfatherly duty and could hand the baby back. And leave. “Okay, kid, where’s your mother?” Only now the child had closed its eyes and—he couldn’t believe it—gone to sleep in his arms. It was the strangest feeling. He held the warm bundle a little closer.
“You’re in trouble now.” He heard a soft, smiling voice at his side.
“Meaning?” he asked Lexie, wanting only to hand the baby away so he could fill his arms with this woman instead. Yes, he was in trouble all right.
“I understood you have a policy of never falling asleep with a woman, and I’m figuring that extends to letting them fall asleep in your arms.” She spoke quietly, her words winding sensuously around him.
“First time for everything.”
She touched her fingertip gently to the sleeping child’s cheek.
“You want children?” he asked, even though the answer was obvious in the softness of her smile, in the tenderness and longing that lit her face.
“Someday. Doesn’t everyone?” The smile widened with secret thoughts and plans.
“No. Not everyone.”
“Like Everest?”
“Exactly.” He smiled back, enthralled, held captive by what felt like an almost physical connection to her. The entire roomful of people could fade away and he wouldn’t notice. She felt it, too. This wasn’t one-sided. Which only made the situation worse.
“But don’t you? Want children.” She searched his face.
“It’s not something I’ve thought about.” And he was terrified that looking at her, children were something he could want. “Here, do you want to hold her?” He nodded at the soundly sleeping little girl. If Lexie was holding the baby, she’d stop looking at him. And the sight of her holding a baby would stop him thinking thoughts he shouldn’t. He couldn’t possibly lust after a woman holding an infant. It would just be wrong.
“Emma?”
That was her name, of course.
“Yes, please.”
He passed the sleeping child to Lexie. They had to stand close, almost chest to chest, only Emma between them, hands bumping and sliding.
“Babies aren’t your thing?” Lexie asked, not looking at him, as she took Emma’s weight, held her to her chest.
“Not at all.” His standard answer came to him. And yet he’d felt the strangest reluctance to let go of the small bundle. The child who had fallen asleep in his arms.
“You’ll be a great father. Once you give yourself permission to love,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be scary.”
Oh, but it was.
She couldn’t leave soon enough. It was torture seeing her. Seeing her hope, her optimism.
As Karen approached, Rafe took a flute of champagne from a passing waiter. He saw one of his few remaining bachelor friends and headed to talk to him. Preferably about polo or something equally safe, equally shallow.
Lexie rested her hands on the rough stone of the windowsill and looked out through the tall, narrow window. The day room was at the top of the castle’s southernmost turret. Rafe had mentioned it once, mentioned its forever views and its isolation. After navigating corridors and climbing endless winding stone stairs, Lexie could see why it was so was so seldom used. But the views over the manicured palace grounds and the rolling countryside beyond were worth the effort. The sky was a clear, bright blue, taunting her. It should be dreary and miserable to match her mood.
The room was just as she’d imagined. A contrast of textures and centuries. Leather couches, shaped to fit the circular space, lined the small room. A plush rug lay in the center of the floor.
She’d escaped the christening, escaped the sound of Rafe’s laughter with his friend, to come here. She’d lost track of how long she’d been standing, looking out and trying not to think, when the heavy door opened behind her. She turned as the man she’d been trying not to think about stepped into the room. He paused, clearly not expecting to see her here. “Is the party over?” she asked.
“Still going.” He gave a half smile. “I bailed. Thought I’d come up here for a little time-out.”
Lexie took a single step away from the window. “You stay,” she said. “I was just going.”
But as he crossed to her she didn’t seem able to move any farther.
“It’s so beautiful up here,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, his gaze never leaving her face. He stopped in front of her and brushed a thumb across her cheek. Did that mean he’d seen the telltale tracks of her tears?
“I’m leaving.” She didn’t know whether she spoke the words for his benefit or for hers. The only thing she did know was that the prospect of her departure was a dark, yawning chasm. The thought of leaving San Philippe forever. The thought of leaving Rafe. Forever. It weighed almost unbearably on her.
“I know.” He lowered his head and placed the gentlest of kisses on each of her cheekbones. And then he pulled her into his arms and she went willingly. He held her tightly to him and she absorbed the sensation of being pressed against him, tried to commit it to memory, tried to detail each part of her that touched him and where and how, the feel of his cheek resting on her head, his arms around her.
She tilted her head up to look at him, to study his face. He returned her scrutiny for the longest time. And then he kissed her. Soft and gentle, the knowledge of her leaving in his kiss. She tasted the faint trace of champagne on his lips.
What started out soft and gentle grew heated and hungry. Breathing hard, Rafe lifted his head. “We shouldn’t. I shouldn’t.”
She pulled his head back down. “We should.” She smiled against his lips, heedless. “I’m leaving anyway. What can it hurt now?”
“It can hurt you. You deserve better. Someone needs to look out for you, and if you won’t protect yourself from me then I have to do it.”
“I deserve this. After all you’ve put me through, I deserve this.”
But still he backed away.
Lexie pulled the silk ribbon that held the front of her dress in place and the dress fell open. “Don’t go.”
“That’s a low trick, Lex.” Rafe stopped dead. “It wouldn’t be humanly possible now.” He walked slowly back to her. “Have I told you red is my favorite color?” He looked into her eyes as he pushed her dress from her shoulders, smiled as it pooled at her feet, then trailed his fingers in its wake to touch the red of her bra, and then her panties. “Do you know what you do to me?”
“I’m hoping it’s something like what you do to me.”
As he slid his hands to her waist, and slowly up and round, she trembled beneath his touch. His fingers found the clasp they sought, and her bra whispered to the floor.
She gasped as he knelt before her and pressed a kiss to the center of her panties. And then he drew the fine lace from her hips, over her thighs.
One more kiss, and another gasp. He trailed more kisses upward, another to her belly, between her breasts, her neck. With her eyes on him he undid his buttons. He discarded his shirt, his pants, his boxers. No pretence, no barriers. Till he stood before her, bathed in golden sunlight, strong and proud and hers.
For now.
Him. Her. Nothing else.
He reached for her hair, ran his fingers through its sun-warmed length, ran his hands over the curve of her shoulders, down her arms till his hands founds hers.
Holding her gaze, he lifted her hands and pressed a kiss to the back of each. Then, lowering his hands, he slid his fingers between hers, stretching them apart. Palms touched, breath mingled.
And then he touched his lips to hers, with a gentleness born of constraint.
She moved. Closed the gap between them till her breasts pressed against his chest and her belly pressed against his erection.
He pulled her closer still, hard against him, deepening the kiss at the same time, and they moved together, legs twining, hands searching, all the while each drinking in the taste of the other.
Kissing, they made it as far as the center of the room and then no farther. Dropping to their knees on the rug, hands and lips had free rein.
Lexie pushed him back and he pulled her with him. She straddled him and then sheathed herself on him, loving the feel of him in her, under her. Loving him.
He was hers.
For now.
He lifted his hands to her breasts, caressed and kneaded. He pulled her forward so he could take a nipple in his mouth. His hands shifted to her waist, her hips, and he was pushing into her deeper, pulling her onto him harder.
She rode his thrusts, and he drove her higher, further, into darkness and light. And then she was gasping, whimpering. Her eyes flew open, locked on his, all beauty and blind passion, and together they cried out.
Lexie fell forward onto him, her hair curtaining his face, her body pulsing around his.
And he held her tight to him.
In the darkness, Lexie clung to Rafe’s hand, keeping close as he led her through the castle’s dimly lit halls. They’d made love again and again in the turret room. And then slept. And now, in the small hours, they found their way, stumbling and laughing, through corridors and downstairs.
He stopped outside a door, pushed it open and led her into a room. Lit only by the light of the moon, Lexie could still see it was a bedroom. Rafe’s bedroom.
Not releasing her hand, he crossed with her to the massive sleigh bed. He lifted his hands to her hair. “We should sleep.”
“Yes.” They should. She had no idea what time it was, knew only that it was late or very early. But she slipped her hands around his waist, pressed her lips to his. She had this one stolen night with him. She wouldn’t waste it. She pulled him unresisting down with her onto the bed, reveled in the weight of him on her and over her.
And after the rug and the couch of the turret room, his broad bed was a novelty. Room to roll and tangle and laugh and touch.
Lexie woke with sunlight warming one side of her face and Rafe’s chest warming the other side. His heart beat strong and steady beneath her cheek. His arms rested loosely around her. As she woke fully, she basked in the magic, the beauty, of being with him.
She tilted her face up to see him watching her and then pulled away to see him better.
He let her go, his hands trailing from her.
Instantly, she regretted pulling away. When she’d been lying close, touching, eyes closed, anything had been possible. There had at least been a fragile hope of a glittering future. That they—she and Rafe—might be possible.
Now, lying on her side, she studied him. Rumpled hair, beard-shadowed jaw and a slow, sexy smile, but it was the wariness in his dark eyes that pierced the fragile magic of the morning, that sucked away her happiness.
And she knew in that moment that she should never have come to his room, should never have fallen asleep with him so that they then had to navigate waking up together. The memories of their night together would now forever end with this.
She’d given up her dreams because of him. But not for him. She knew not to allow herself to be that stupid. But she hadn’t been able to love his brother when her every thought had been of Rafe. When she had felt things for Rafe and wanted things from Rafe that she would never feel or want from Adam.
She was leaving today. And she knew he wouldn’t, couldn’t, offer her a future. And yet here she lay, wanting precisely that. A future. With Rafe.
Not the man of her dreams, but the man of her realities. The man who understood her and made her laugh and made her want him.
The wariness in his eyes now froze her hopes, her heart. She could almost see the regrets and his questions and fears. Would she want to marry him now, want to have his babies, want to trap him? Already he was formulating words to soften his rejection.
She had wanted, desperately, to make love with him, but not to love him, to fall in love with him. She hadn’t wanted that. But heaven help her, looking at him now, feeling already the pain in her heart, she realized that she had fallen anyway. So the answer to those fearful questions in his eyes was—yes, she wanted to marry him and yes, she wanted to have his babies. And most of all she wanted him to love her. But no, she didn’t want to trap him.
“Lexie.” His voice had the sexiest early-morning rasp.
She touched a finger to his lips. “I don’t think you should say anything. I don’t want regrets or excuses, and I couldn’t bear false promises. I’m here, in your bed, and I know that’s breaking all your rules, but it wasn’t planned.
“I’m going today, we both knew that, so we both knew last night was just…last night. And this morning is this morning. So don’t say anything. Unless of course it’s ‘make love with me right now.’” She tried to make it a joke. But even though there was only a hollow space where her heart used to be, the rest of her still wanted him. Just once more. And that need had slipped through in her voice.
She saw his hesitation even as he lifted his hand to touch her hair. The warm lips parted beneath her fingertip, but no words came out.
She slipped from the bed.
He made no move to stop her.
At the door to the bathroom she turned back and tried to smile. Giving up, she swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Last night was perfect. Thank you.”
Eleven
Rafe stood on the lowest of the palace steps. Cloaked in the royal Marconi calm that revealed nothing of their private thoughts, his father, brother and sister were gathered around Lexie. She hugged each of them in turn, then looked for him. He stepped down. Neither royal protocol nor experience had prepared him to bid farewell to a woman like Lexie. A woman who meant the things Lexie meant to him.
Mere hours ago she had been in his bed. It had killed him, not asking—begging—her to stay, in his bed, in his life. But he’d shattered enough of her dreams. She deserved her fairy tale. Despite his title, he was no one’s fairy tale, and never would be.
Dry-eyed, she walked to him. Pale and strong and…the most beautiful woman he’d ever known. A soul-deep beauty, rare and precious. He couldn’t stop himself, he touched a hand to her hair, her jaw, tried to commit to memory the feel of her, even though forgetting her was critical to his future happiness. He hadn’t been going to embrace her, but she stepped into his arms, and if his life had depended on it, he couldn’t have avoided wrapping them around her for the chance of holding her to him one last time.
She was the one to break the contact, stepping away from him. For a moment he saw the question and hope in her eyes. The same look he’d seen when she woke up in his arms this morning.
Then she smiled, and it was the saddest smile he’d ever seen. Clenching his fists, he kept his hands at his sides. “I didn’t mean to make you sad, Lex,” he said quietly. “If I could take back last night, for your sake, I would. We should have ended with the day before yesterday. That was what I wanted to give you.”
If anything, her smile grew both sadder and brighter. “I wouldn’t,” she answered. “That day was perfect. But last night was even better.”
“You’ll find a good man. One worthy of you. One who’s everything he should be. Better than Adam. Better than me.” Someone who loved her for who she was. Someone who could offer her marriage and the family she wanted. Someone who’d treat her with respect and reverence. Not someone who couldn’t even wait till they got to the other side of a room but dragged her down to a rug on the floor.
“My only requirement is that he loves me.”
“He’d be a fool not to.”
“There’s no shortage of fools.”
She got into the waiting car and he watched it pull away, seeming to pull a piece of him with it.
Lexie’s departure was vastly different from her arrival. No eager, waving crowds waited at the airport. A fact for which she was deeply grateful. A handful of photographers loitered at the barriers, doubtless waiting to document the fact that the woman who’d spurned their favorite prince and been spurned in turn by the other one did actually leave their country.
Joseph, the head of security, escorted her across the tarmac and up the stairs to the jet. She knew it was meant as a courtesy. It felt like she was being seen off the premises, that like the press, he wanted to make sure she really did go, that there would be an end to the havoc she’d wrought.
She wanted that end, too, to the havoc of her personal and emotional life, though she knew the pain was only just beginning.
On board she sank onto one of the deep cream couches and did up her seatbelt at the gentle prompting of the hostess. Lexie had deliberately chosen the couch because it didn’t face a window. She closed her eyes and waited. Finally the tone of the jet’s engines changed and they began to taxi along the runway. She resisted the urge to take one last look at San Philippe as they gathered speed and then became airborne. The wheels locked back up into the undercarriage with a thudding finality.
She’d expected tears, but they never came. All she felt was a great, welling hollowness.
So much for not making a spectacle of herself. She’d done that and so much worse.
She heard a sound in the cabin. The hostess. If only she could be left alone. “I’m fine, thanks,” she said. “I don’t need anything.”
“Or anyone?” a deep, achingly familiar voice asked.
Her eyes flew open and she drank in the sight of Rafe as he smiled down at her and then lowered himself onto the couch beside her. “What are you doing here?” She was almost afraid to ask. “How did you even get here?”
He took her hand, held tight to it. “The second question’s easy to answer. I took a leaf out of your book and came by motorbike. I passed you just before the airport.”
“And the first question?” She clung to his hand like a lifeline. So much depended on his answer. Hope filled her, but she’d had her hopes dashed before now and the prospect of it happening again terrified her.
“A, I’m not a fool and B, I’m not a martyr.”
That was no answer. At least not one she understood. “Meaning?”
“I said only a fool wouldn’t love you. And clearly I’m not a fool because I do—love you. I don’t know when or how it happened. I wanted you almost from the start, from the time I first saw you in the nightclub, no surprise there. I’d wanted women before, so I didn’t think it was anything I couldn’t control.” He made a derisive sound. A laugh cut short. “But the wanting that started that night has only grown stronger, become something more than I even believed existed—love.” He shrugged, but the grip on her hand tightened. “And the love is well out of my control. I’ve got no idea how it even happened and only one idea of what to do about it.” He ran gentle fingers down a lock of her hair, reverently touched her face.
The hostess appeared, took one look at them and just as quickly disappeared.
“I didn’t mean it to happen, Lex, but it did. And till half an hour ago I thought letting you go was the right thing to do, which is when I remembered I’m not a martyr. I’m not willing to sacrifice my happiness while you look for someone worthy of you. I want to be the one you wake up with every morning. Though I know I’m not your fairy tale.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but he silenced her with a finger to her lips. “Let me finish, Lex. This isn’t easy for me, but I need to say it, need you to hear it.” When she nodded, he continued. “I know I’m not the one you wanted to love. And I know there are better men out there than me. But I can’t let them have you. At least not without offering myself to you first. I want to marry you, to be yours, to make you mine. I want all the things I never thought I would. Knowing you has changed so much for me, for the better. But it was only the awful prospect of actually losing you that forced me to see it.”
He searched her face and then in a sudden movement swooped in, covered her lips with his and kissed her. And she clung to him, kissed him back, drank in the taste of him, reveled in the feel of him. She didn’t have the willpower or even the desire to deny him.
Too soon, he broke the kiss, rested his forehead against hers. His hands cupped her jaw, his fingers threading into her hair. She held him, breathed in his scent, drew it deep within her, resented having to exhale and lose that part of him she’d captured. Her weakness for him was absolute.
He took her hands again, folding strong, sure fingers around hers. “Say you’ll have me?”
She was desperate to say yes and yet she couldn’t. “Rafe—” she clung to his hands, the contact imperative “—you haven’t thought this through. You once said you were trying to protect me from you. But it’s you who needs to be protected from me. Think about your father and your country. Think about what the press will say.”
“I don’t care what anyone other than you says. And, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m still waiting for a yes here.”
“I care what they say about you. They’ll vilify you.”
“Not just me.” He smiled. “You, too. But not for long. And at least we’ll be in it together. I’ll get us through it. Trust me, I’ve had practice. Besides, you haven’t seen this morning’s papers, have you?”
“No. I couldn’t bear it anymore.”
“It’s not all bad news. Some bright spark in the press corps has realized that my father only ever said he had given permission for his son and Alexia Wyndham Jones to marry. He never said which son. So along with all the photos of you and me together, the press are speculating that this is what Dad, the master manipulator, meant all along, that he was playing them. They’re rewriting history to suit themselves. And Dad’ll be happy to go along with it.”
“He couldn’t possibly have had any idea that we’d fall in love.”
“So you do love me?” He studied her face.
She paused, unable to deny this man a moment longer. “With all my heart.”
“And do you mind if we don’t do the big royal wedding thing?”
“I don’t mind at all.” She was still trying to process what was happening. That Rafe loved her, that he wanted to wake up with her every morning.
“Good.” He smiled. “Because my father’s not the only wily one. I have it all figured out. The pilot’s already changed the flight plan. We’re heading to Vegas. And we’re getting married. Today. May as well give the press something to get really worked up about. We can be San Philippe’s Rebel Royals. And in tricking them and denying them all their royal wedding, we’ll have sunk so low that the only way to go will be upward in the public’s opinion. And as soon as you have my babies everyone, but me especially, will be happy. All will be forgiven and forgotten.”
He lifted her hand, covering it with his other so that it disappeared within his clasp. “Lex, you’re a part of me that I hadn’t even realized was missing. The best part.” Tenderness shone in his dark eyes. He released her hand to cup her face, and she pressed her cheek against the warmth of his palm. “Alexia Wyndham Jones, Lexie, my Lexie. I love you. You are my Everest, my everything.”
Finally, finally he kissed her again and she knew despite what he’d said, she had her fairy tale.
