Something in the Heir (It's Reigning Men, #1) (20 page)

Adrian just shook his head in dismay.

Darcy and Caroline made their way to the dining room table, and feigned surprise at the uninvited guest.

“So, uh, Serena, is it?” Caroline said. “What brings you to our neck of the woods?”

Emma kicked her under the table, not wanting to bring that up around her parents.

“Adrian and I have some things to discuss,” she said cryptically.

‘Really?” Caroline said. "Do tell!”

Emma kicked her again since clearly the first time didn’t hurt enough.

Serena cleared her throat, reaching for her orange juice glass with that rock glinting in the morning light. “I’m afraid it’s a conversation I must having in confidence with Adrian. I’m sure you’ll understand.”

Adrian gulped, dreading this.

“So while you’re in town, you’ll have to be sure to hit some of the local highlights,” Caroline said. “Bumper boats are always fun. Maybe that strip club on Highway 58 as you’re leaving town.”

Emma’s mother choked on her pancake. “Caroline!”

“Joking, Mother,” Emma said. “Caroline always loves to be the comedian. You know that!”

“Perhaps you could take a stroll on the beach,” her mother said. Which caused Adrian to choke a bit, what with his experience on the beach the night before.

Darcy cough-spoke, just to get a laugh, “Skinny dip.” Which caused Adrian to kick him under the table.

“Thanks, but I won’t be staying long,” Serena said. “I need to get back immediately.”

“All night is a long time to fly just to have a conversation,” Bob said.

Adrian squirmed in his seat, his eyes fixed on his plate of pancakes. He kicked Darcy again to encourage him to redirect the conversation.

“Oh yeah, I’m sure I could show Serena the town,” he said. “After all, Adrian’s quite busy.”

Adrian hoped that would fix that and he could get on with his business of being an escapee from The Family.

“I’m sure Adrian can take a few minutes to discuss the future of the Firm and his role in it,” Serena said. “I think he’d like a say in that, wouldn’t you, Adrian?”

The Firm. An insider’s term referring to the royal family.
She’s acting like she’s in already
.

“Firm?” Ellen asked. “You work for a law firm back home too?”

Emma intervened. “It’s complicated, Mom,” she said. “They have some mutual family and friend things that Serena was jokingly calling a firm. That’s all.”

Serena looked around the table, convinced that she was surrounded by a bunch of lunatics, certain that the sooner she got out of there the better.

“So what do you do back home?” Ellen asked her new houseguest.

"Oh, me?" Serena hemmed and hawed. "Well, I'm engaged to be married."

Adrian turned white as a ghost and Darcy kicked him so hard beneath the table he yelped in pain.

“Everything all right?” Ellen asked.

“Fine, fine,” Adrian said. “But if I could perhaps excuse myself for a moment?”

He got up and nodded his head, pushing his chair in as he wandered down the hall to Emma’s room.

“I’ll be right back,” Serena said to the group sitting around the table, rushing away, leaving her pancakes untouched.

Serena didn’t even bother to knock, but rather pushed her way into the pink palace, and stood with her jaw wide open, staring at the room.

“My, my, my, how the mighty have fallen,” she said. “I didn’t exactly expect to find you sleeping on a park bench, but this? Though honestly, this isn’t a whole lot better! What gives? I find you at this squalid little house with these, these, these
people
, and you’re wearing surfer clothes in the dead of winter, no sign whatsoever of your royal status, no staff but for Darcy, who hardly counts as staff. What has gone wrong with you?”

“This home is not in the least bit squalid,” he said. “It’s homey. And they have been generous to allow me to take a little break from the demands of my life and for that I will be eternally grateful to them. So I will thank you to put away that attitude and be gracious.”

Serena eyed him suspiciously, squinting. “Aha! I knew if I said something rude like that it would get you to talk. So you’re taking a break from the demands of your life, eh?”

Busted. Adrian snapped his finger and shook his head, mad at himself that he fell for such a rookie maneuver. “I needed a little time off.”

“What’s the matter — your mom got your tongue?”

“What?”

“Maybe a little problem with your mother demanding, let’s say, a bit too much of you?”

It was Adrian’s turn to squint at Serena. “What are you getting at?”

She held out her hand. “Does this ring a bell maybe?”

“I’m not quite sure what you mean.”

“This foolish idea of your mother’s, trying to get us to get married!” she blurted out.

Adrian stared at her. “You mean you don’t want to be married to me?”

Serena cackled.

“I don’t think that’s the kindest of responses,” Adrian said.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said. “It’s just that I already have someone in my life with whom I’m in love. I know the man I want to marry, and I’m sorry, Adrian, but it’s not you.”

“But what about all of that stupid behavior of yours,” he said. “All that time, you were forcing yourself on me?”

“What?” she said. “I never forced myself on you!”

“And those parties, you were drunk as a boiled owl and falling all over yourself. And me, for that matter.”

“Oh, please,” she said. “I wasn’t truly drunk! I was faking it. I tried my hardest to make your mother not want me in the family. Like I said, I have a man in my life. I just want to be able to live my own life and choose who I can marry.”

Adrian started nodding his head in agreement. “Yes! Precisely! Me too!” he said. “I got so tired of my mother forcing you on me I had to get away to try to figure out how to get out of this obligation. But I see it never actually was an obligation.”

“Oh trust me, if it was left up to your mother and mine, we’d have been married off already.”

“So this ring?” Adrian asked, lifting her hand to inspect it more closely. “You didn’t do this to force an engagement to me?”

“To you? You have got to be kidding me.” Serena laughed out loud, shaking her head in amazement. “Adrian, you must think even worse of me than I had assumed you did. No, I’m not that brazen — or stupid — that I’d force an engagement on a man against his wishes.”

Adrian stared at Serena, realizing maybe she hadn’t been the monster he’d thought she was.

“So, uh, who’s the lucky fellow?”

Serena held her hand out and splayed her fingers, admiring her twinkling engagement ring. “Roberto Fournier. You met him last year on the day after Christmas. You may recall he and I were eating a candy cane at the same time from different ends.”

“Huh,” Adrian said, scratching his head. “I guess that should have been my clue, eh?”

“Yeah, well, I guess the two of us worked so hard to avoid each other that we never paid much attention to our lives at all.”

“I’m happy for you, Serena,” he said. “You look truly at peace.”

She smiled. “More so than ever, now that I know we’re on the same page with this thing and can do something about it. My mother was giving me fits over this whole thing. After all, she’s never one to refuse your mother.”

Adrian sat down on Emma’s pink quilt. “Well, if this isn’t the most unexpected of things. So what do we do now?”

“It’s why I was so desperate to talk to you, yet you kept refusing to speak,” she said. “I figured we’d have strength in numbers if neither of us wanted the other, well, then, what could they do?”

Adrian raised an eyebrow. “An arranged marriage?”

“Surely our mothers aren’t that cruel.”

“I don’t know. I wouldn’t put it past mine. She sure does dig in when she doesn’t get her way.”

She reached out and hugged him, trying to cinch the deal.

“So come back home with me. We’ll face them together and put an end to all of this nonsense,” she said. “After all, I have a wedding to plan. And, uh, nothing personal, but not with you!”

A
drian
heard a knock on the door and before he could untangle himself from Serena, Emma was there, staring in disbelief at them both, her face betraying her emotions.

“Well, you two sure didn’t waste any time," she said. “Snap my fingers and voila, you’re on my bed going at it.”

Adrian blanched. “Emma, you’ve got it all wrong,” he said, releasing his hold on Serena. “To the contrary, no one’s going at anything.”

“It’s okay. It’s fine," she said, pressing down her Snuggie only to realize how stupid she looked and instead pulling it off. The static it left behind caused her short pajamas to cling to her in a most revealing manner, which didn’t help matters for Adrian. “Really it’s perfect. You two were meant for each other. I’ll just let the both of you straighten up and get decent before you come back out to the living room.”

Before Adrian had a chance to defend himself and tell her he wasn’t
not
decent, he heard a phone ring. The phone. The one he’d remembered to turn back on only thirty minutes ago.

“Adrian here,” he said.

“Ade—” his brother said, his voice sounding distraught. “It’s me, Zander. It’s Mum. I don’t know what is going on, but she’s had some sort of attack.”

“She was attacked?” Adrian said, the shock of what his brother was saying washing over him.

“No, no. No one attacked her,” he said. “But she’s had some sort of thing. I don’t know if it’s her heart or what. She was in her sitting room and she was going on about how upset she was with you disappearing and she was yelling at me again about my swimming pool episode and all of a sudden she grabbed her heart and—”

“Is she all right?”

“I think you need to get to her immediately,” Zander said. “There’s no telling what is going on. Father’s with her upstairs. She’s resting now, I’ve called for the doctor. But I think it’s time for you to come home.”

“Right,” he said. “Of course. I’ll get Darcy to arrange everything. We’ll leave immediately.”

They hung up the phone and Adrian sat there for a few moments, dazed.

“Something’s wrong with your mother?” Serena asked.

“You know how she can get,” he said, which only served to enhance Emma’s frown even more, what with all these family secrets those two shared. “She gets so worked up about things, but this time Zander said she reached for her heart, then she passed out.”

“Oh, your poor mother,” Emma said. “You must go to her immediately. I’ll help you get your things together.”

“And it’s all my fault,” Adrian said. “If I hadn’t been selfish, if I just listened to her, this never would have happened.”

Emma crossed her arms across her pajama-clad body and frowned. How much of this was her responsibility? She had a part in this. She’d encouraged Adrian to defy his mother. She didn’t know enough about his family and background to have made those decisions. She was operating from a lot of presumptions based on the life she knew, not the life that only Adrian (and maybe Serena) could understand.

Perhaps it was for the best that Adrian and Serena marry. After all, that old adage, mother knows best, was often right. No doubt his mother knew what was right for The Firm. And that decidedly would never include the likes of Emma.

It was easier this way. No long goodbyes. No wishing for what couldn’t be. He had his family; he had The Firm. Duty called. And never would she be part of that duty.

~*~

“S
orry to have to leave you just as we were getting to know each other,” Darcy said, sighing, his arms around Caroline, his forehead pressed up to hers.

“Remember, you owe me a ball,” Caroline said.

Emma’s parents looked confused, considering all they knew was that Darcy was Adrian’s former lover. And now here he was in an intimate posture with Caroline and she was telling him about some ball debt.

“Well I’ll be darned," her father said, watching Darcy with Caroline. “I guess it works both ways.”

Emma rolled her eyes. "Dad, it’s not like that. I’ll explain later.”

Conveniently Serena’s driver was waiting for her to whisk her back to her jet, which was at an airport about an hour and a half away. Darcy only had to place a discreet call to the embassy, which had a helicopter on the ground at the Beaufort airport before they knew it. His Royal Highness would be on his way home to Monaforte before he digested his animal pancakes.

Emma had thrown on a sweatshirt and a pair of ratty jeans, but still had a pair of fluffy slippers on her feet as she stood outside, despite the winter cold. A few snowflakes had started to fall while they milled about outside, saying their goodbyes.

Adrian pulled Emma aside, away from everyone’s view. “Listen, Emma,” he said. “I’m so sorry this has to end so suddenly. You know I really do have feelings for you. And I’m sorry we couldn’t explore this any further. I guess my life is too complicated.”

Emma shook her head. “It’s okay. I knew this day would come. Maybe not quite so abruptly... But I understand. It’s your mother. Of course you have to be there for her.” She stood rocking on her heels with her hands in her pockets, her shoulders slumped. “I don’t want to bother you at all so maybe you can just ask Darcy to let Caroline know how she’s doing and then Caroline can update me?”

Of course they’d never have any more communication than that. What were they going to become, pen pals?

“Maybe I can tell you all by myself, rather than playing any more silly telephone games.”

Emma frowned. “It’s okay. I don’t think it’s worth it. It would just drag things out longer. Probably just as well to leave you to your life and me to mine.”

Adrian pulled her toward him and wrapped his arms tightly around her. “Em,” he said. “I don’t want to do that.’

“I know you think that. But once you get back to your world, to your life, this will just be some long-forgotten thing.”

He scruffed her already messy hair. “As if I could forget you that easily.”

He leaned forward and kissed her. At first she refused to go along, but she knew resistance was futile, and she knew she’d never feel the same way about kissing another man again, so she might as well enjoy it while she could.