by Amy DeLuca
He glanced at the other cleaning women, all of whom were now staring. This was not the time or the place to ask those questions.
Alex lowered his voice, making an effort to keep the tone casual. “Maybe we could grab a cup of coffee—or dinner if you’d like—and catch up.”
The spark of panic flared into a wildfire. Cinda turned away, grabbing her purse and a caddy filled with spray bottles and cleaning cloths. She didn’t look at him as she delivered a reply in hasty, staccato rhythm.
“I’m not sure what the point of that would be. We’re all done here. Thank you for your business. Enjoy your visit.”
And she left, fleeing the house as if a swarm of bees was in pursuit. The other women followed, casting bewildered glances at Alex before shutting the door.
Well, well, well. Whatever that was—it was not indifference.
“You can run but you can’t hide,” he said to the empty room, pulling out his phone and strolling to the window overlooking the front drive.
On the side of the cleaning company’s van, in a large font clearly visible from his vantage point, was a telephone number.
Alex tapped it into his phone and hit the save button.
Cinda thought she was done with him. She had no idea how wrong she was.
Five
Things Left Unsaid
Kristal sat across from Cinda at the restaurant on Monday, giving her long-time friend her patented Are you crazy? look.
She shoved her phone toward Cinda. On the screen was a photo of Alexander Wessex, smiling in a suit and tie, walking beside an equally handsome guy the caption identified as his brother Cameron.
“What am I missing here?” Kristal said. “He’s gorgeous, single, worth a zillion dollars, and oh, yeah, a literal prince. What is the problem?”
As Cinda was trying to be “out of the office” as much as possible today, she’d asked Kristal to meet her for lunch at 22 Bowen’s Wharf, one of their favorite places. Cinda was buying, of course, to thank her friend for watching AJ Friday night.
The instant Cinda had told her who Alex, her long-lost love, really was, Kristal had pulled out her phone and done a search for him.
“That is the problem,” Cinda said, using her fingers to count off the reasons she couldn’t have dinner, coffee, or even a Tic Tac with Alexander Wessex.
“He lives in a foreign country, he lied about his identity—well he didn’t lie, but he hid the truth from me. He’s not who I thought he was. And he’s way out of my league. He’s in your league. He’s an aristocrat.”
She left the biggest reason off the list. She was too terrified to even think it, much less say it aloud.
“I’m not. I don’t even like society parties,” Kristal said.
“You know what I mean. You grew up with people like that.”
“And you grew up with me. Which means you should know that just because someone has money, it doesn’t mean they’re from a different planet.”
Cinda and Kristal Bianco had become friends in high school, bonding over their shared misery at the hands of their “wicked” stepmothers.
Not that long ago, Kristal’s stepmother had forced her out of her family’s mansion on Bellevue Avenue following her father’s death and the foreclosure of the luxurious waterfront property.
Kristal had spent a couple of weeks on Cinda’s couch while looking for a new place to live and generally re-building her life from the ground up.
“I know you’re normal,” Cinda said. “But the thing is, I don’t know Alex—Alexander Wessex—at all. Not anymore. I don’t know if I ever did.”
“You know you loved him.”
The statement reverberated through Cinda’s heart, echoing in the emptiness like a lonely howl through a canyon.
There was no denying it. Not to her best friend anyway.
Kristal had been there in the aftermath of both the biggest losses of Cinda’s life—her father’s fatal heart attack and Alex’s disappearance immediately afterward. Kristal had been away with her own family that summer and hadn’t met Alex, but she’d rushed home for the funeral and dried way more than her fair share of tears during the next few months.
“I did. And I thought he loved me,” Cinda said. “But he left without even saying goodbye. I never heard from him again. His family has houses all over the world. For all I know he had a girl in every port, so to speak, and I meant nothing to him.”
“If you meant nothing to him, I don’t think he’d be asking you out and stalking you at work, trying to get you to talk to him.”
Alex had called the office several times over the weekend, looking for Cinda. He’d called again this morning.
She’d instructed Trudy and the weekend answering service to say she was not available. He’d left his number and his name, identifying himself as simply “Alex.”
Cinda shook her head. “There’s no point in seeing him. It was a long time ago, and there’s a lot of water under the bridge. I’ve changed so much since then. I’m sure he has too.”
“You never know. First loves are pretty powerful. And maybe you were meant to run into him yesterday. Lots of people reunite after spending time apart and live happily ever after.”
“You do love your fairy tales, don’t you?”
Kristal had seen more animated movies than any kid Cinda had ever met. Not only that, she’d recently found her real-life prince, Hunter, a guy they’d gone to high school with who’d apparently harbored a secret mad crush on her through all these years.
“Especially when they come true.” Kristal took a sip from her glass. “It happens. I’m living proof. All I’m saying is maybe you should just give it a chance. You work harder than anyone I’ve ever known, and you’ve taken some rough knocks in life. No one deserves for something good to happen more than you.”
“Give what a chance? Do you really think a foreign monarch is interested in rekindling a relationship with someone he thinks is a maid?”
A sudden jolt of longing shocked Cinda with its strength.
Even after all the years and all the resentment she’d built up against Alex for his desertion, it had only taken a glimpse of him to awaken feelings she had thought were impossible for her to feel ever again.
She tamped them down again, stuffing them back into the lead-lined box where she’d stored them away once she understood Alex had left without a backward glance.
“At best he wants to have another fling for old times’ sake while he’s in town,” she told Kristal. “Anyway, I can’t risk it. It’s not just me now—I have AJ to think of.”
And there, ladies and gentlemen, was the number one reason Cinda couldn’t chance even a brief conversation with the only man she’d ever loved.
“Exactly,” Kristal said, oblivious to her fear. “It might be good for AJ to have a man around. Not to mention good for you. You shouldn’t be alone, Cinda. You have too much love to give, and you deserve to be loved, and to have some fun for goodness sake. And you don’t have to do it all by yourself. Case in point, at least half of Hunter’s former housemates at the billionaire bachelor house hung on my every word whenever I mentioned you. Every one of them is cute as can be and filthy rich.”
After losing her home, Kristal had upgraded from Cinda’s couch to a guest suite at the mansion shared by Hunter and his six housemates, a group of friends and co-workers Hunter’s brother had nicknamed the “seven dwarves.”
The unconventional living arrangement had led to Hunter confessing his lifelong crush on Kristal and the two of them falling in love.
At Cinda’s eyeroll, she went on. “It’s not the end of the world to count on someone, you know. Total independence is great in theory, but it’s a lonely way to go through life. We all need someone.”
“Not me. I’m fine on my own. AJ is fine.”
Kristal dragged the tines of her fork through a small pile of mashed potatoes on her plate, not looking at Cinda.
After a long pause, she said, “You know… some people would
say Alex has a right to know about his son.”
“Kristal—”
Despite her friend’s warning tone, Kristal persisted. “Think about it—you could get some financial help. He should be paying child support. You wouldn’t have to struggle for money and work such long hours. You could spend more time with AJ.”
Cinda leaned forward, lowering her voice. Though she loved Kristal like a sister, the sternness of it left no room for argument. “You will not tell him. You can’t tell anyone. Ever.”
“I know, I know. I would never—”
Cinda reached over and gripped her hand on the tabletop. “I mean it, Kristal. If Alex had showed up here, and he was just a regular guy, I would tell him. I would. But you understand my fears, don’t you? He’s a billionaire. He’s a royal. His family has ruled over a European principality since 1304 for goodness sake. He has power and influence I could never compete with. If he decided he wanted to sue for custody, I couldn’t stop him. And if he were to take AJ back to Aubernesse for a visit, he might be able to keep him there, thousands of miles away from me. I might lose my son.”
Cinda had to swallow back an uprising of bile before continuing. “He’s all I have—all that matters. I can’t take the risk.”
That night she sat on the edge of AJ’s bed, reading aloud from the picture book he held, stealing glances at his long lashes, tiny cleft chin, and perfect profile.
So like his father’s.
Cinda had known since the first time she’d seen her child’s face in the delivery room that he resembled his father more than her. When his downy baby hair had fallen out and was replaced by curling blond locks, the resemblance was even more pronounced.
After seeing Alex again, she realized AJ didn’t just resemble him—he was a perfect miniature version of the man who’d fathered him.
She could not, under any circumstances, allow the two of them to be in the same place at the same time.
Cinda was profoundly grateful her work and single-parenting schedule had kept her too busy to ever create a Facebook account or use any other form of social media. As far as she knew, there were no pictures of AJ floating around in public anywhere.
All she had to do was be careful this week, keeping her son away from her office and out of public sight as much as possible.
By next week, the Wessex ball would be over, Alex would leave town again, and life would go back to normal.
There was a buzz from her pocket. She reached into it, drawing out her phone.
Oh please don’t let anyone else be too sick to work.
She did not need to work late again this week. Kristal had come in clutch on Friday, but Cinda didn’t want to take advantage of her best friend’s generous nature by asking her to babysit again so soon.
Seeing that AJ had already fallen asleep, she checked the screen. Her heart rate went from bedtime lullaby to thrash metal rock concert in the space of an instant. The text wasn’t from work.
It was from Alex.
How had he gotten her number? Never mind, he’d probably sweet-talked Trudy into giving him her “beloved” stepsister’s personal contact information. Either that or he’d greased a palm somewhere—he certainly had enough money to find out anything he wanted to.
That thought ratcheted Cinda’s pulse even higher. Had he found out about AJ? Was that why he wanted to talk?
Again and again, she read the words on the screen.
Hi, it’s Alex. Wonderful to see you last week. Sorry if I acted strangely. I was a bit overwhelmed. Would love the chance to chat. So many things left unsaid. Please call.
So many things left unsaid? What had he not said? What was there to say?
Her father had died of a massive heart attack, throwing her life into total disarray. When the dust had settled, Alex was gone. He hadn’t called or written or even wondered, apparently, why she hadn’t shown up for their date that last night.
Maybe he knew why and just didn’t care. All of this after promising to love her forever.
The two back-to-back losses had left Cinda’s heart shattered. For a long time, she’d missed Alex and then been angry at herself for missing him. It had taken her months just to be able to function normally again.
Finally, she’d convinced herself it was for the best that Alex had removed himself from her life when he had. Someone who could so easily walk away from a relationship like the one they’d shared couldn’t be trusted in the long term with her heart.
He certainly couldn’t be trusted with her son’s heart.
Cinda leaned over and kissed AJ’s forehead, inhaling his soapy, clean little-boy smell, and pulled the covers more snugly against his chin before leaving the room.
Glancing back one more time, she flipped the switch to turn off the red airplane lamp on his bedside table.
“Good night, my little prince,” she whispered.
Seeing his tiny form under the covers, fierce love gripped her. He was hers, and hers alone. And it would stay that way.
The two of them had made it this far without Alex’s help, and they’d continue to survive without him.
Yes, it might be nice not to have to do it all alone, and of course little boys needed male role models to look up to. But the risk was too high.
She couldn’t take another loss of that magnitude, no matter what the potential gain might be.
Six
Peace with the Past
It was good to have his family all together in one place again.
It had been a while. Janey had been far from home attending university in Boston, and Cam, being Cam, had been… everywhere.
Alex’s two siblings had excused themselves to get reacquainted with Newport, leaving him alone this morning in the mansion with Mother—unfortunately.
While he saw her on a regular basis back in Aubernesse and they got along well, she was in rare form today. The weather forecast had her in a furor.
“How could there be a hurricane during our visit? It just isn’t right. I’ve put so much time and effort into planning this ball, and I want it to be perfect.”
He chuckled at her indignant expression. “This is the middle of hurricane season. It runs from June first to the end of November.”
“But fall in New England is supposed to be beautiful. That’s why the deRamels wanted to visit Newport at this time. We’ve never had an issue with storms here in the summers.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. Unlucky break, I guess.”
Or lucky, depending on your perspective.
As for Alex, he found himself actually siding with Team Hurricane.
It wasn’t that he was planning to shirk his duty and back out of the royal wedding or anything. He would do what was expected of him, as always.
Audrey was an attractive girl, supposedly a nice person, and really, wasn’t that the best one could expect? He’d already seen what came of falling head over heels for someone and giving away your heart.
It got broken.
So an arranged marriage to cement the understanding between their two countries made perfect sense. As his father, His Royal Highness, Henry Wessex, Prince of Aubernesse, always said, “Romance doesn’t last, but family does.”
It was just that Alex was dreading the whole public announcement, the ball/engagement party, the whole “making it official” part.
That would be the end of his life as he knew it and signal the beginning of a whole new level of royal duty.
He did feel bad for Mother, though. “Maybe the storm will fall apart before it even gets here,” he said in an encouraging tone. “It happens all the time. It’s still far south of here. The Atlantic stays so cold up this far north that storms often downgrade by the time they reach Newport.”
She looked somewhat mollified but still pouted. “I just don’t see why it has to happen at all. I wanted the guests to be able to enjoy the gardens. And the fireworks—we must have the fireworks. It’s all been planned. If it’s windy and raining everyone will have to stay
in the ballroom the whole time. Audrey’s family will be disappointed.”
“I’m sure they’ll still be impressed. With all the flower arrangements and other decorations you’ve ordered, it’ll be like being in a garden. I’ll be happy to pick up a few sparklers if you like,” Alex joked.
Mother didn’t laugh. “That reminds me. I need to tell Francis to check on the permit from the fire department and ask Patton to get more ice. The deRamels will arrive on Thursday night, and I want everything to be completely ready.”
“I’ll pick up the ice. I’ve got to run an errand anyway.”
Alex kissed the top of her head and grabbed the car keys. “Don’t worry. It’ll all work out the way it’s supposed to.”
“You’re a dear,” Mother said and blew him a kiss.
Climbing behind the wheel of the Rolls, Alex drove toward downtown.
His mother probably wouldn’t have called him a “dear” if she’d had any idea where his errand would take him. He’d pick up the ice, but first he was going to the headquarters of Fairy Godmother Home Cleaning Service.
He’d called several times over the past few days, being informed each time that Ms. Brown was “not in at the moment” or “on the other line.” Alex did find out she was the owner of the agency, which gave him an unaccountable sense of pride.
Of course he’d had nothing to do with it, but she’d made a success of herself as he’d always known she would. He was happy for her.
Finally, after playing the VIP client card, he’d managed to wheedle a cell number out of the receptionist yesterday and sent Cinda a text last night. She hadn’t responded.
What was the matter with him? Clearly, she didn’t want to talk.
But every time Alex told himself to let it go, he got a mental image of her eyes, that desperate, panicked look in them, and he picked up the phone again.
He had to find out if it was just his imagination or if there was actually still something there between them. And he was running out of time.