Her Royal Husband (7 page)

“I thought no one knew about you. I didn’t want them to know about you, start investigating you, dissecting your life. I wanted to keep you, the memory of you, all to myself forever. I wanted to have one thing in my life that was private to me. One thing about me that was not public and would never be public.

“Of course, I was being naive. I realize now I was not allowed to go to the United States unescorted. Someone has known about you all along. I don’t know if they knew about our daughter or not.”

“Our daughter?” she echoed. “I never told you Whitney was your daughter.” Now he could see there was fear added to her anger. It reminded him of a wild kitten that he wanted to pet, hissing and spitting, getting ready to defend to the death against his affection.

“I can do math.”

“You never asked how old she was yesterday. How
can you do math when you don’t even know the equation?”

He said nothing.

“You had it checked, didn’t you? Never mind just waiting for me to answer! How much easier to sic a secret service team on us! What else did you find out? That I live in a house that’s no bigger than this whole garden?”

“I didn’t ask anything else.”

She regarded him suspiciously, then put down the scone with only one little nibble gone from it. “Well, don’t. Because my life is none of your business. For what it’s worth, I accept your apology, and even your explanation. We were both very young. I’m sure we both did things we regret and that we would like to change. But it doesn’t matter. It’s over and done with. Don’t make the mistake of thinking we are going to pick up where we left off, because we aren’t.

“Owen,” she leaned toward him, and knocked the meaning out of his world. “I’m marrying someone else.”

J
ordan wanted to slap her hands over her mouth like a child who had accidentally blurted out a swear word. She had
lied.
She, who took such pride in her integrity, had looked Owen in the face and informed him she was getting married. She, whose closest male relationship was with a cat!

It was a measure of her desperation.

Because, despite all her resolve, all her righteous indignation, Owen was making her feel things that she did not want to feel. It had started when she had entered the garden underneath that unbelievable canopy of leaves, yellows and reds and golds and oranges dancing in the faint breeze, beckoning her forward,
softening
her.

What woman could resist walking into a dream? And then the garden was so quaint, ivy-covered stone walls surrounding it, cobblestones with thick moss growing between them, artfully placed tubs of mums, flower borders abundant with late bloomers, the table set with ex
quisite china and a silver service—it was all a romantic fantasy almost too intense to handle.

Owen, probably with a snap of his fingers, had set the stage. He had created an inviting space of warmth and beauty that could make even the most hardened cynic decide that maybe fairy tales weren’t so bad.

It frightened Jordan that he could manipulate her feelings so completely without speaking a word.

Then the pony. Wasn’t that part of her dream for Whitney? If Jordan was really honest about it wouldn’t she rather have bought a little farm than a little house? Of course, it was way out of her price range, but how she would have loved for Whitney to have a dog, and kittens and yes, a pony. What mother didn’t want to see her daughter glowing with joy the way Whitney was now with her arms wrapped around that pony’s solid little neck?

And now, sitting across the beautifully laid table, and just looking at Owen, the handsome familiar lines of his face, the deep blue of his eyes, the quirk of his mouth, the way that lick of hair fell so endearingly over his eye, she felt that treacherous stirring of desire.

The only thing she had never liked about Owen, way back when, was that awful blond hair. Now, even that was gone, and his hair was glossy, nearly black and beautiful. It made some traitorous part of her long desperately for things she knew were lost.

It didn’t help knowing underneath those well-tailored clothes was
her
Ben, his flawless skin stretched taut over muscles that she had brailled with her fingers, imprinted forever on her brain.

Trying to think of something else, she looked squarely in his face. She saw the bruises beginning to fade, the swelling going from his lip, and it made her think of him
in captivity, at the mercy of someone with a brutal agenda. It made her ache, made her want to cross the distance between them and touch his swollen lip and bruised cheek with her fingers. Or maybe even her lips.

It felt as if her survival depended on him not knowing that, never suspecting how weak he made her, how flimsy seemed the wall of her resolve.

“That’s right,” she said brightly. “I’m getting married. He’s a—” mouse catcher? “Exterminator. Justin Jason.” Her voice faltered at the look on his face.

She was not sure she had ever seen such pain in a human being, and she had certainly never caused anyone else such pain. On purpose. To protect herself.

The blood had drained from his face, his eyes darkened to a color of blue she had never seen before, a white line appeared around the lower edge of his lip. But then, almost so quickly she was not sure she had seen it, the pain was gone, and his face looked as if it had been carved from cold, hard stone.

“Over my dead body,” he said quietly.

Had he expressed the sadness, the torment, she had seen so briefly cross his face, she had the awful feeling she would have been lost, like a weak ninny.

But this autocratic response brought her the tool she most needed—her fighting spirit surfaced.

“You have gotten far too used to ordering people’s lives,” she told him. “You have no authority over me, and you will not tell me how to live my life. You had your chance. But I wasn’t good enough to be a bride for a prince, was I? Tell me, what’s changed, Owen?”

“I have,” he said firmly. “And it’s unfair to say you weren’t good enough to be my bride. We were eighteen, Jordan. Neither of us were thinking in terms of forever. Not then.”

“But now you are?” she said sweetly.

“Yes.”

“Me, too. And his name is Jason Justin.”

“I thought you said it was Justin Jason.”

“I didn’t,” she said with certainty, though of course she was not certain at all.

“I hope he’s not as ridiculous as his name. I can’t believe you’d want to go through the rest of your life as Jordan Jason.”

“That’s because you’re shallow enough to think something so superficial as a name would matter to everyone, just because it matters to you. I bet your bridal candidates all have only the best of names and the best of pedigrees, don’t they?”

He said nothing, confirming her ugly suspicion there was, somewhere, an approved list of young women he would be allowed to marry. It was a list she was certain she was not on, and never would be.

“Tell me, is virginity still a prerequisite to marrying someone like you?”

He actually choked on the scone he was eating, and she was glad she had shocked him. He looked so supremely confidant, every inch a prince. It would be easy to allow herself to be intimidated by him, or worse, swept away by him.

“Thanks to you I don’t even qualify to be a bride to a prince, so why wouldn’t you wish me happily ever after, since you can never provide it?”

“Things are changing in royal families,” he said stiffly, “becoming far less rigid and rule-bound.”

“Is that right? You have an older sister, don’t you?”

“Three,” he said warily.

“Well, if the system is changing so much, why are you and your brother the candidates to take over the
throne? I understand, from talk in the kitchen, it will almost certainly be you. But why wouldn’t it be one of your sisters? The oldest one, perhaps? Why can’t she become the reigning monarch?”

Whatever slight advantage she had gained by knocking him off balance, by shocking him was gone, he was looking at her with growing amusement.

Amusement!

“I remember you like this,” he said, smiling suddenly. “So smart. You scared all the boys away always playing devil’s advocate. Did you know that?”

“Unfortunately, I didn’t scare away the boy whom I should have been most afraid of.”

His smile disappeared, and again she registered the pain in his face, and instead of feeling good about it, felt terrible.

She rushed on, searching for safe ground. Far easier to discuss politics, philosophies, than mistakes made, regrets harbored. “As for being a devil’s advocate, I find myself on an island that has an archaic political system. A patriarchal monarchy, a system that assumes and entrenches the superiority of men. I’m a devil’s advocate for mentioning it? Do you see why we can’t have a future?”

“Actually, it only makes me think a future with you would be more interesting.”

He said that as if he was really and truly contemplating a future with her. She could not give in to the feeling that caused within her: weakness. A feeling of wanting to melt toward him, erase the hurts of the past with their lips and their hands.

It was a war for her soul, and she wanted to surrender? One day in and she was going to wave the white flag? She needed to be building her battlements, not crawling
over the walls! It was good that she had said she was getting married! Even if it was a lie, it was a necessary one, one that should keep Owen at a distance.

“You and I have no future, Owen,” she said, forcing her tone to be uncompromising. “I know that. Why can’t you see it?”

The problem was he didn’t look like he was going to give up and just wish her a nice life. His face had a stubborn cast to it.

“I find myself asking why you’ve been brought here to Penwyck. Someone with a great deal of power has a piece of this puzzle that I don’t have.”

Was he saying he might be given permission to marry her? She would not even allow herself to contemplate it.

“Owen, I am not a chess piece in the royal manipulations. I have no desire to be. The sad truth is that you and I had a passionate summer that we cannot revisit. We barely knew each other then, and we barely know each other now. There is a possibility that it is only the most amazing of coincidences that I wound up here to help cook your stupid dinner.

“You should be relieved to know I’ve decided to refrain from venting five years of rage at you by putting Ex-Lax in your portion of the Dancing Chocolate Ecstasy.

“On Sunday morning, I am going to pack my bags and I am going to take my daughter and go home and back to my very ordinary life.”

He was watching her closely. Much too closely.

“She’s my daughter, too,” he said quietly.

“Don’t you even think of threatening me, Owen.”

“I’m not. I’m simply stating a fact.”

“Well, it’s a good thing for me she’s a girl, since that puts her out of the lineup for the throne. Or would her
illegitimacy have done that anyway?” She was saying hurtful things to him, but they seemed to be backfiring on her. Every time he winced as one of her barbs found its way home, she found herself feeling sorry she had said it.

“You aren’t listening to me,” he said quietly. “You are trying to turn everything into a fight. I seem to remember that, too. You were a formidable debate partner. But I don’t want this to be a debate. I want to be Whitney’s father.”

“Nothing can change the fact that you are Whitney’s father.”

“I don’t mean as a function of biology. I want to be her father. A person of importance in her life.”

“Look, Owen, money is obviously not a problem. You will have to do what the other weekend dads do, fly over and visit, buy her a pony, take her to Disneyland once a year.”

It occurred to her that meant he would always be part of her life. At least until Whitney was grown-up. She could be strong for four or five more days, but fourteen years?

“Give me until Saturday,” he said.

“To what?”

“To change your mind. About the man. And about me.”

“No!”

“Jordan, something is wrong here. You talk about getting married without an ounce of excitement, talk about going back to an ordinary life. My experience with love is that nothing is ordinary once it finds you. Everything is extraordinary.”

“I’m glad love was so extraordinary for you! My experience with love is that it hurts!”

“Are you telling me you are going to marry a man you don’t love?”

Oh, God, that was the problem with lies. They started out so simply, and the next thing you knew they were tangled around you as if you had inadvertently dropped in on a nest of snakes.

“I am not discussing my personal life with you!”

“Give me until Saturday.”

“No!”

“If it was possible to change your mind,” he said slowly, “that’s something you should know.”

“Don’t you dare wreck my life and then turn around and say it was for my own good.”

“I just want your happiness.”

“You are no expert on my happiness,” she told him.

“And if it isn’t possible to change your mind, you have nothing to worry about. You can go back to your ordinary life and live happily ever after. I can live with that. If you give me until Saturday to change your mind. Give me a chance to get to know you all over again.”

“You can’t change my mind.”

“Then we have a deal?” he said smoothly.

Oh, this was insanity. It was like making a deal with the devil. But her pride would not allow him to think she was afraid of the power he had over her, even if she was.

“Deal,” she said. It was safe enough. Saturday was only a few days away. She would be in the kitchen most of that time. Besides, now was the time to prove, forever, that she was immune to him. To take back her life, and her power, to leave those summer days of five years ago behind her for eternity.

He was right, though she damned him for it. If she
could not leave that summer love behind, there was no hope for her ever finding happiness.

“Let’s begin like this,” he said. He got up from his chair and came around to her. She watched him warily. In the last second, she knew what he was going to do. She had time to push back her chair and run.

But she didn’t.

She watched him lower his head to hers, helpless. She sat as frozen as if she was carved from ice when his lips, familiar, touched her forehead, trailed to her cheek.

The ice melted, and when his lips sought hers, her body did the ultimate betrayal. She responded. She did not want to. She ordered herself not to.

But when his lips touched hers it was as if the color stripped from the world washed back into it. It was as if winter dissolved into spring. Something within her, in chains, released, and she answered his lips.

Came home to them.

She realized she had been alive only in her dreams, when these lips touched hers.

“Mommy!”

Dazedly, she pulled away. Her daughter was standing at the foot of the table, regarding them wide-eyed.

Owen straightened and smiled.

Whitney stared at her mother. “You smooching with Pwince Owen?”

“Um, sort of, I guess.”

Owen raised a wicked eyebrow at her. “Yes or no question,” he said.

Whitney pondered this for a moment, and then climbed onto a chair, studied each of the clown cupcakes in turn, and then chose one. She took a big bite.

“Will you be a pwincess, then Mommy?”

Owen chuckled at Jordan’s discomfort. “Doesn’t Mr. Justin ever kiss your mother?” he asked.

Jordan felt a desire to kill him. It struck her it had always been like this with him—a roller-coaster ride. Exhilarating. Full of twists and turns and plunges and climbs.

“Who?” Whitney asked, puzzled.

Owen looked smug.

“Jay-Jay,” she told her daughter, taking a risk.

“Oh, Mommy kisses with him all the time.”

It was Jordan’s turn to look smug, but she knew she had to change the topic, fast, before Whitney added that she also liked to scratch his tummy and behind his ears!