A Royal Engagement: The Storm Within\The Reluctant Queen (8 page)

‘Alessandro…'

‘Can you blame me for burying myself here and hiding away from the media's macabre pursuit, Dr Hunter? Can you begin to understand?'

‘It doesn't have to be like that,' she offered softly, but knew it could indeed be like that. ‘It never has to be like that again.'

‘No. Not if I stay here.'

And she knew she had to play her final card—the final truth she had taken this long to admit. ‘And if I told you that I loved you?'

He looked at her then, savagery mixed with tragedy. ‘Then I would say you are the most cursed of all.'

T
HE
applause rang out loud and long in the Washington auditorium, and Dr Grace Hunter smiled in her sensible suit and bowed one final time to the audience, finally able to withdraw to the quiet of the room generously labelled her dressing room—little more than a closet to store her things, really, but at least it provided her with a bolthole.

The lecture in London three months ago had been such a resounding success that she'd been booked almost solid ever since. City after city wanted to hear the story of the lost pages, wanted to see her presentation and hear the lost messages from the fabled book of healing.

She felt a fraud every time—tonight more than ever. How could it be a book of healing, she wondered, when she felt so heartsick every minute of every day? And yet she had the fame she had sought. She had the respect of her peers and her colleagues. She had a book deal and offers of chairs at universities all around the world. Even, in her latest coup, a last-minute slot on a prime time chat show.

How was it possible, with all that success, to feel so wretched?

Or had Alessandro been right? Was she the most cursed of all, loving a man who could not return her love?

She peeled the jacket from her shoulders and pulled the court shoes from her feet, remembering another outfit—a waterfall of silk atop silver sandals that shimmered with every
step. His fiancée's dress. Had he realised how much he'd hurt her when she'd heard that? Or hadn't he cared because in his mind she'd already ceased being his fiancée before she had died? Whatever, she supposed she should be thankful that at least he'd taken the trouble to find her something that had never been worn. And it had been a beautiful dress.

She sighed, picking up her programme folder to remind herself of where she would be next. There was no point focusing on the past. She must look to the future. She had career decisions to make and continents to decide between.

There was a knock on the door and she pushed herself from her chair reluctantly, remembering the drinks organised for after her presentation. No doubt a reminder call. She was probably already late.

She pulled open the door, ready to make her excuses, but the words dried up in her throat, incinerated by the lightning bolt that coursed through her. She blinked up at him, her eyes moving past his beauty and his horror to drink in the man himself.

‘I heard your lecture,' he told her, when he clearly realised she was incapable of speech. ‘You were amazing.'

She swallowed. ‘You heard it?'

‘I wouldn't have missed it for the world.' And then, perhaps because he sensed she was incapable of rational thought, ‘Perhaps you might invite me in?'

And she shook her head to scatter her woolly thoughts and remembered her manners. ‘Please, Count Volta.'

‘Alessandro,' he corrected, and her stunned heart—not yet ready to hope—warmed just a little.

There was barely room for the two of them. He refused to sit, his wide frame shrinking what little space there was. ‘What's happened?' she asked, knowing what it must have cost him to leave the castle—knowing what it must have cost him in the stares and whispers of strangers, in the camera
flashes of the paparazzi. ‘Why are you here? Someone will have seen you.'

His tortured eyes confirmed it, but he shook his head, as if dispensing with that mentality. ‘You once said to me that I should not define myself by my scars—'

‘No—please. I had no right. I had no idea of what had really happened.'

‘Grace,' he said, taking one of her hands in his own, ‘you had every right. You were right.' He took a breath, and then another, and she could see how much it was costing him to tell her this. ‘Don't you see? I became my scars. I hid behind them because it was easier to live in the dark. Because it was easier than facing the light.'

‘It's okay,' she said, wanting to spare him any more pain, knowing what it must have cost him in media attention to get here, suspecting there was a pack of photographers waiting outside right now to see him. ‘You don't have to explain it to me.'

‘But I do. Don't you see, Grace?' He took hold of her other hand, held them both up in his. ‘You brought me back the light. You were the one who chased the darkness away. You made me see it was all right to live again.'

Her heart skipped a beat, and then another, because she didn't want to believe what it might possibly mean. ‘I did?'

He smiled. ‘You did. You turned up in my dark world and showed me what life could be like with your enthusiasm, with your joy of discovery. At first, I admit, I hated you for it, because you reminded me of all the things I had lost and of all the things I would never know again. But bit by bit I wanted to be part of it. I wanted to share your light. I wanted to share your joy.'

She thought back to the disastrous dinner and his cruel comment about the dress. ‘You were protecting yourself.'

‘I couldn't let myself crumble. It took me years to recover after the accident. I couldn't let anything like that happen
again, even if it meant losing the best thing that had ever happened to me. I was desperate to find some kind of outlet. I hadn't played the piano for ten years until you came. It was something I associated with
her.
It was part of my former life and I couldn't bring myself to touch the keyboard until wanting you drove me to it. Drove me back to something I loved. Just as you drove me back to life and living and I realised it didn't have to be the same.'

Tears leaked from her eyes. Her heart was pounding in her chest.

‘You kissed my scars, Grace. I was shocked and I overreacted, but do you have any idea what was happening to me? You broke something free inside me, something dark and poisoned and toxic. And bit by bit you chased the blackness away.'

For the first time she noticed the moisture glazing his eyes too, as he brought her hands up to his mouth, closed his eyes and kissed them.

‘I had to come,' he said at last. ‘I knew it from the first day you left. I knew I had missed an opportunity so golden that it might never come again. But still I couldn't do it. I told myself you were busy becoming famous, that you could not possibly have any place for me in your life. Fear bound me to the castle, just as you said. But as the days and weeks went on I had to know. I had to find out for myself, whatever it took.'

He hesitated then, as if searching the depths of his soul for words. ‘Grace, you once told me you loved me. Is there any chance you might love me again? Love a man who was too blind to recognise his own love when it stared him in the face?'

Her heart swelled so large with his words she thought it might explode with happiness. She threw herself into his arms, drinking in his scent, relishing the hard plane of his chest. ‘I will always love you, Alessandro.
Always.
'

And he sighed, almost with relief, as if there had ever been any doubt, and drew her closer into his embrace. ‘You do not know how I have longed to hear those words again—if only for the opportunity to tell you that I love you with everything this scarred heart can offer. You have it all. But I know you have your career, and that must come first—'

Alarm bells sounded. ‘What do you mean that must come first? Before what?'

‘We can work it out. You will prefer to continue working, of course. You will not want to be tied down…'

‘Alessandro, what are you saying? Maybe you should spell it out first.'

His dark eyes were troubled and uncertain, and she had never seen him so vulnerable. He had risked everything for her today, she realised. Everything. And she would love him for what that had cost him for ever.

‘You have your work.'

‘Tell me!'

‘I hoped—I wondered—so long as it doesn't interfere with your work—' she glared at him ‘—I wondered if you might agree to become my wife?'

‘Yes!' she cried, tears of joy springing to her eyes. ‘Yes, I will marry you, Alessandro. Yes, I will become your wife.'

And his face lit up brighter than she had ever seen it, until both sides of his face were beautiful, both sides of him magically, wonderfully hers.

T
HE
dock had been sanded and oiled till it gleamed in the sun, the rocks bordering the track freshly painted white. Flags fluttered gaily along the route, and the small harbour was filled with dozens of bobbing white pleasure craft.

It was to be a small affair, he'd promised her. No more than two or three hundred guests. And under the lure of a perfect summer's day they spilled out of the massive ballroom and filled the grounds around the castle, admiring the view across the sea to the Italian coast or having their pictures taken in front of the dolphin fountain, where the water played and splashed like jewels in the bright sunshine.

He looked magnificent, she thought as she caught a glimpse of him through the crowd, in one of his beautifully tailored suits that showed the long, lean line of his body to perfection. He looked magnificent and at ease with himself at last—as if he'd cast his demons from his shoulders, as if he'd come to terms with his past. He'd even wooed the inevitable media, so it was now fully behind him, and covering his wedding as if it was some kind of fairytale. And it
was
a fairytale, she knew.

But it was much more than that.
He
was much more than that. Right now he was talking to someone hidden by the crowd, his beautiful scarred face animated and alive.

He caught her eye across the space and held it, and she felt that now familiar slow burn of heat flare up inside her as
he excused himself and headed her way, looking neither left nor right as he cut a swathe towards her. He was at her side a heartbeat later, sweeping her up in one arm and swinging her around.

‘Have I told you how beautiful you look today, Countess Volta?'

She smiled. ‘Maybe once or twice,' she said, though they both knew it was many, many more times than that. ‘And have I told you how magnificent you look, my husband?'

‘So many times,' he growled, nuzzling her ear, ‘that I fear I may just start to believe it.'

‘Believe it,' she said. ‘You are the most handsome man here.'

‘Grace—'

‘No, it is true. You are smiling so much you are like a beacon. Everyone wants to talk to you. Why else has it taken this long to have a moment with you alone?'

‘I was just talking to Professor Rousseau.'

Grace looked around, trying to find her through the crowd. ‘Oh, I should have come over to you. She doesn't know many people here, Alessandro.'

‘She's fine. I left her talking to my best man.'

‘To Bruno? I wouldn't have thought they would have much in common.'

‘On the contrary. It turns out they both have pirate ancestors. Bruno has offered to show the Professor through the caves below the castle.'

‘He has?' She scanned the crowd, which finally parted enough that she could see them both in deep conversation. As if aware he was being discussed, Bruno suddenly looked up and gave a bashful smile. ‘He smiled at me,' she said. ‘Bruno actually smiled.'

The man beside her laughed, and she found so much joy in the sound that she wondered… ‘Do you think it's true, Alessandro—the legend of the
Salus Totus
? Do you think
it really is a book of healing? Do you think it a coincidence that it was found here?'

He took her hands in his own. ‘I think you are the healer here, Grace. You came to an island where a monster resided, where only darkness existed. You lit up that world and shook it until your light and your love chased the darkness and the monster away. And I will love you for it for ever.'

He kissed her as tears sprang to her eyes. Tears of love. Tears of joy. Tears for the wasted years, and tears for all the years that were yet to come.

Years they would spend together.

Caitlin Crews

“H
ELLO
,
Princess.”

It was a dark voice, low and deep, and echoed hard and deep in Lara Canon's bones—making them sing out in recognition. She turned without conscious thought, as if compelled, searching for the man responsible, though some part of her knew at once who he must be. Her gaze flicked across the parking lot of the unremarkable supermarket in her Denver, Colorado, neighborhood, scanning out from the side of her car where she'd stopped still.

She found him at once, unerringly, as if he'd commanded it. Her heart began to beat wildly, even as her skin prickled.

He was even more compelling than his voice, tall and broad like a warrior, with jet-black hair and deep gray eyes above a hard, unsmiling mouth. He held himself with an ease she knew at once was deceptive—he was too watchful, too ready. He wore a black, tight shirt that strained against the tautly packed muscles of his broad chest and flat abdomen, and trousers in the same color that clung to powerful legs and lean hips. He was beautiful in the way that dangerous thunderstorms were beautiful, and Lara discovered that she was breathless.

He was the most gorgeous thing she'd ever seen, for all that he was the most arresting. And more than that, she recognized him.
She knew him.

She had thought she'd never see him again. She felt her pulse pound beneath her skin.

“I did not expect that you would grow to favor your father,” he said, those remote, storm-colored eyes seeming to see right through her, shocking her, looking straight into the past she'd long denied. The shopping bag in her arms slipped a few inches as her fingers lost feeling. As panic surged through her.

She realized two things, clutching at the brown paper bag before it fell to the asphalt at her feet. First, that he was not speaking English. And second, that she could understand the language he
was
speaking.

It made her think at once, of course, of Alakkul. Her father's tiny, oft-contested country in the Eurasian, sometime-Soviet mountains, where his family had ruled with iron fists and an inflated sense of their own consequence for generations.

The country she and her mother had escaped from, in the dark of night, when she was sixteen years old. The country that she had been running from, in one way or another, ever since. And the last place she had seen this man, when he had still been more of a boy. When he had been far less beautiful, far less dangerous, and had still managed to break her teenaged heart.

Her stomach clenched into a thick, tight knot. She told herself it was panic—that it could not be that old, familiar desire she'd been so overwhelmed by as a girl. They were in a busy parking lot, filled with people on this bright June evening. He was standing far enough away that she didn't think he could reach over and grab her—and anyway, she was twenty-eight years old. Her father could hardly attempt to regain custody
now.
There was no reason for him to be here. And therefore no reason for her to acknowledge their shared history.

“I'm sorry,” she said. In English. She shrugged to indicate her lack of comprehension and, hopefully, polite disinterest.
It had been so long. Maybe she was seeing ghosts. Maybe it wasn't him at all. “Can I help you with something?”

He smiled, and it was far more disturbing than his voice, or his hard, shocking beauty. It made his gray eyes warm slightly, with a flash of what looked like sympathy. It confused Lara even as it set off a tiny trail of flickering flames across her skin, licking up and down her limbs. Reminding her. Making her yearn for things she dared not name.

“You are the only one who can help me,” he said, in his perfect, exotically accented English. His mouth crooked. “You must marry me. As you promised to do twelve years ago.”

She laughed, of course. What else could she do? She laughed, even as old memories chased through her head—long-buried images of crystal-clear mountain lakes, snow-capped peaks jutting in the distance, the spires of an ancient castle hewn from the very rock of the steep hills. A lean, feral young man with dark gray eyes, looking down at her with a fierce expression while her heart beat too fast and the white-cloaked priests murmured archaic, improbable words through the haze of incense and ritual. His head bent close to hers to whisper secrets in the middle of a great festival dinner, making her shiver. His smile, his occasional laughter, that fire in his stormy eyes when he gazed at her…

How long had she told herself those images were part of a dream? That they could not be anything
but
a dream? Yet the man who stood before her was undeniably, inarguably real.

And worse, she knew him. Her body knew him—and was reacting exactly as it had then, when she had been so young. She'd spent a long time convincing herself that all that fire had been no more than a young girl's fantasy. That he could not possibly do these things to her. That she had embellished, exaggerated, as young girls did.

“Thank you for the offer,” she said, as if she was placating him. As if she did not, in fact, remember him. “But I'm
afraid I have a personal policy against marrying strange men who approach me in parking lots.”

“I am Adel Qaderi,” he said, in that calm yet implacable voice, his gray eyes on hers, that name sounding within her like a gong. Her breath tangled in her throat. “I am no stranger to you. I am your betrothed, as you know very well.”

It was such an odd, old word. Lara concentrated on that—pushing away the fluttering of her pulse, the constriction in her throat. The onslaught of too many memories she'd thought forgotten long ago.

“I'm sorry,” she said, dismissing him. If she didn't accept this was happening, it didn't have to happen, did it? “I'm late for a—”

“You are the Crown Princess of Alakkul,” Adel said in that low, commanding voice, somehow making it impossible for Lara to turn and get into her car as she knew she should. “The last of an ancient bloodline, warriors and kings throughout history. The only child of the great King Azat, may he rest in peace.”

She felt the blood drain from her face. Her knees wobbled beneath her.

“May he…?” she echoed. She shook her head, trying to clear it. What could this mean? How could it be true? Her father was the monster under her bed, the nightmare that lay in wait when she closed her eyes. Hadn't her mother always told her so? “He's…
dead
?”

“At least you do not deny your own father,” Adel said, his expression stern. He moved closer to her but then stopped, as if he felt called to an action he chose not to take. Still, somehow, she knew he grieved for her father in all the ways she could not. It made a headache bloom to life in her temples. “Perhaps we can dispense with the rest of this game of pretend now.”

“You approached me in a parking lot, like a vagrant,” Lara hissed. Unwilling to face what he'd just told her. Unwilling
to imagine what it might mean. “What did you think my reaction would be?”

“I did so deliberately.” His gaze was cool. Assessing.
Dangerous.
“I assumed you would feel more at ease in a public place. After all, you have spent most of your life running away at the slightest hint of your homeland.”

Lara shifted the bag in her arms, and wished her head would stop spinning. How was she supposed to act? Feel? She had not heard from her autocratic father directly in twelve years. She had not wanted to hear from him. If asked even five minutes before, she would have announced without a qualm that she hated the man.

But that did not mean she'd wanted him dead.

“I need to inform my mother…” she began, her temples pounding, wondering how fragile, prone-to-hysteria Marlena would be likely to take such news. Wondering, too, what her mother would center her life around now there was no more King Azat to hate and fear and blame. But perhaps that was unkind.

“Your mother is being notified even now,” Adel replied coolly.

Lara found herself staring at the play of muscle in his strong arms, his hard abdomen. She felt her body's treacherous heat, its instant response to the very sight of him, despite her emotions.

“I am afraid your business is with me, Princess. I cannot allow you the necessary time to grieve.” Was his tone ironic? Or did she only imagine his judgment? Was that guilt she felt, pooling inside of her? “We must wed immediately.”

“You are insane,” she told him, when she could speak. When the red haze of confusion and emotion receded slightly. When she could jerk her attention away from his warrior's body. “You cannot really believe I'll marry you!”

Adel smiled again, though this time, there was nothing par
ticularly sympathetic about it. Where was that younger man she remembered, who had been so eager to see her smile?

“I understand that this is a shock,” he said. “But let me be clear. You have only two possible choices before you, and while I am aware neither one is necessarily easy, you must choose one of them.”

“Your attempt at compassion is insulting,” Lara managed to say, her hands clenched tight into the bag she held. Part of her wanted to fling the sack at him as he stood near the trunk of her sensible sedan. And then run. Only the fact that he probably expected that reaction kept her from it.

“Nonetheless, it is real,” he said. His storm-colored eyes moved to hers, and darkened. “It would never have been my choice to confront you in this way, with this news. I regret the necessity. But it does not change anything.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about,” Lara said after a moment, her temper kicking in—replacing the wild swirl of far trickier feelings. Anger was better. Anger
felt
better—more productive. “And more important? I don't care.”

“Yet you must listen,” he told her. So quiet. So sure. And she could only stare at him. And obey. “I am sorry for that, too, but so it is.”

There was something about the way he looked at her then that…bothered her, in a way she couldn't quite categorize. As if he could see the buried truths she'd denied existed for years. The old dreams. The yearnings for a life, a family, the kind of things other girls took for granted while she trailed around after Marlena, cleaning up her messes. The way she'd felt about him all those years ago, the things she'd dreamed they'd do together—

Lara blinked, and steeled herself against him—and the surprising swell of something like grief that she would have sworn she'd never feel.

“What, then?” she asked, her voice too rough, as she fought
back the unwieldy emotions that shifted and rolled within her. “What is it you think I need to hear?”

“You have a choice to make,” he said again, and the worst part, Lara realized in a sort of horror, was that his voice was kind, his eyes the same. As if he understood exactly what she was going through—as if he
knew.

And yet he was continuing anyway, wasn't he? He was an Alakkulian male. An Alakkulian king. Just like her father, he thought only of himself. That much was blatantly obvious, no matter how kind his eyes might seem. No matter her memories of his smile, of his tenderness.

“The only choice I will be making,” she told him, enunciating clearly, deliberately, with razor-sharp precision, as if sounding tough would make her feel that way, too, “is to get in my car and drive away from here. From you. From this ridiculous conversation. I suggest you get out of the way, unless you'd like me to run you over.”

“You did not merely promise to marry me, as any young girl might,” Adel said in the same calm, commanding tone, as if she had not just threatened him. “You entered into a binding legal contract.”

“I was a teenager,” Lara retorted. “No court in the world would ever hold me to it. It's absurd you would think otherwise—this is not the Stone Age!”

“You overestimate the progressive nature of the world's courts, I think,” he replied, something almost like humor flashing briefly across his face. But she did not want to think of him as human, as capable of humor as he'd been before, and ignored it. “But in any case, it does not matter. Your father signed for you when you were too young, as is the custom. When you came of age you did not withdraw your consent from the contract—which, according to the laws of Alakkul, means you thus agreed that you entered into the terms of the contract of your own free will.”

“I will not marry you,” she said. Her shoulders tightened, her chin rose like a fighter's. “I would rather die.”

“There is no need for such theater,” Adel replied in a faintly reproving tone. Yet his mouth curved slightly—as if he found her amusing. It made her temper kick in again. That, she told herself, was the feeling that pounded through her, shaking her. “You may break the contract, if that is your wish. But there is a price.”

“Let me guess.” Lara scraped her heavy curls back from her face with an impatient jerk of her hand. “My honor will be smeared? My family name forever muddied? Isn't that how you people think?”

“By ‘you people,'” he asked, his voice staying even though a cold fire blazed to life in his gaze, “am I to understand you mean your own people? Your countrymen?”

“I'll live with the dishonor,” Lara told him, not wanting to admit the twist of shame she felt move through her. Much less the odd urge she had to reach over and touch him. “Quite happily.”

“As you wish,” Adel said with that great calm that, for some reason, infuriated her as surely as if he'd openly taunted her. It made her want to scratch at him, poke at him—made her want to see beneath the surface, rip off the mask she was sure he wore, see what lurked beneath. She just wanted to
touch
him.

She had no idea where that urge came from. Nor why it seemed to move through her like a scalding heat, rippling over her skin and pooling in places it shouldn't.

The city seemed to mute itself around them, the parking lot fading, the bright sky above and the slight breeze from the Rocky Mountains in the distance disappearing. There was only this dangerous, compelling warrior of a man in place of the boy she had once known, and too many emotions to name. She felt…pulled to him. Drawn. As if he'd cast a spell with that fascinating mouth and that commanding, resolute gaze
of his, and she was helpless to resist, no matter how many reasons she had to avoid him and how little she wanted to hear what he might have to say.