He peeked over at her. “Really? That’s what you think?”
“Look at it logically. How does it benefit us to never speak? It doesn’t. It makes the charade more difficult and opens the doors for us to make mistakes.”
“True.”
“But if we talk at dinner and lunch, debrief about our days—”
This time when he peeked at her, he sort of smiled. “Debrief?”
“Sally and Joshua are rubbing off on me. I just mean we should talk about our days with each other.”
“Ah.”
“Then we won’t make as many mistakes.”
“It seems to me that just a few weeks ago, you were ignoring me.”
“I was figuring everything out.”
“And now you think you understand the whole situation?”
“I really do.”
“And your answer is for us to debrief.”
She met his gaze. “It’s more than that.”
His eyes darkened. “How much more?”
“I think we need to tell each other our reading interests, where we’ve been on vacation, a bit or two about our jobs. I think I need to fix your cuff links. You need to let me straighten your tie. I think we should be talking baby names and colors for the nursery.”
He held her gaze. “That’s going to take us into some dangerous territory.”
She took a long breath and with all her strength, all her courage, she kept eye contact. “I’m a big girl. I’m also a smart girl. I sort of like knowing that this relationship will end.”
His eyes searched hers. “So you’ve said.”
“My dad was an alcoholic who made promises he never kept. He was his most charming when he wanted to manipulate me. If there’s one thing I can’t trust, it’s people being nice to me. How am I ever going to create a relationship that leads to marriage if niceness scares me?”
He laughed unexpectedly. “You’re saying you think a relationship with me will work because I’m not nice?”
“I’m saying this is my shot. Do you know I’ve never fantasized about getting married and having kids? I was always so afraid I’d end up like my mother that I wouldn’t even let myself pretend I’d get married. So I’ve never had anything but surface relationships.” She sucked in a breath. Held his gaze. “This baby we’re having will probably be my only child. This marriage? It might be fake to you, but it’s the only marriage I’ll ever have. I’d love to have two years of happiness, knowing that I don’t have to trust you completely, that you can’t hurt me because we have a deadline.”
“You really don’t trust me?”
“I’ll never trust anyone.”
He glanced around the table at her bridesmaids, who were chatting up his brother, his dad and her mom, who clearly weren’t paying any attention to them, and suddenly faced her again.
“No.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE CATHEDRAL IN which Dom would marry Ginny was at least a thousand years old. It had been renovated six times and almost totally rebuilt once after a fire. The pews were cedar from Israel. The stained glass from a famous Italian artist. Two of the statues were said to have been created by Michelangelo, though no one could confirm it. And the art that hung in the vestibule? All of it was priceless.
But when Ginny stepped inside, her hand wrapped in her mom’s, every piece of art, every piece of wood, every famous, distinguished and renowned person seated in the sea of guests, disappeared from Dom’s vision.
She looked amazing.
She’d let her hair down. The yellow strands billowed around her beneath a puffy tulle veil. The top of her dress was a dignified lace with a high collar and snug lace sleeves that ran the whole way from her shoulders, down her arms, across the back of her hand to her knuckles. The skirt started at her waist, then flowed to the floor. Made of a soft, airy-looking material, it was scattered with the same shimmering flowers that were embroidered into the lace top, but these flowers stood alone, peeking out of the folds of the fabric and then hiding again as the skirt moved with every step Ginny took.
She’d managed to look both young and beautiful, while pleasing his father with a very dignified gown that took Dom’s breath away.
His brother leaned forward and whispered, “I know you weren’t happy about this marriage, so if you’d like to trade, you can have your princess back and I’ll raise your love child.”
Any other time, Dom would have said, “Shut up, you twit.” Today, mesmerized by the woman who had already seduced him once, and if he’d read her correctly the night of the formal dinner with her bridesmaids, wanted to seduce him again, he very quietly said, “Not on your life.”
Ginny and her mom reached the altar. Rose kissed his bride’s cheek and then walked to her seat. Ginny held out her hand to Dom and he took it, staring at her as if he’d never seen her before. Because in a way he hadn’t. He’d seen her silly and happy and playful the night of their date. He’d seen her dressed in jeans and T-shirts and even beautifully, ornately, for the night with the ambassador. But today, in this dress that was as beautiful as it was bridal, she was a woman offering herself to a man, as a bride.
Caught in the gaze of her pretty blue eyes, he was floored by the significance of it. Especially after their conversation about making their marriage real for their time together.
The minister cleared his throat. Their hands joined, Dom and Ginny turned to the altar and the service began. As the solemn words and decrees were spoken by his country’s highest-ranking religious official, Dominic reminded himself that this wedding wasn’t real. Even when they said their vows and exchanged jewel-encrusted rings, he told himself they were words he meant, truly meant, for a limited time.
But when the minister said, “You may kiss the bride,” and she turned those big blue eyes up at him, his heart stuttered. She wasn’t just a woman in a white dress, helping him to perpetuate a charade that would give legitimacy to Xaviera’s next heir. She was an innocent woman, a bride...
She was his now.
She whispered, “You don’t want to kiss me?”
His heart thundered in his chest and he realized he’d been standing there staring at her. In awe. In confusion. She wasn’t just an innocent. She was someone who’d been hurt. Someone who couldn’t trust. If he agreed to make this marriage real, no matter how much she protested that it wasn’t true, he would hurt her. He knew he would hurt her. Because as much as he hated the comparison, it seemed being royal had made him very much like her dad. He was his most charming when he needed to get his own way, and selfish, self-centered, the rest of the time.
Still, he held her gaze as his head lowered and his lips met hers. He watched her lids flutter shut in complete surrender. Total honesty. His heart of stone chipped a bit. The soft part of his soul, the place he rarely let himself acknowledge, shamed him for being so strict with her.
They broke apart slowly. She smiled up at him.
He told himself she was playing a part. The smile, the expression meant nothing. If she was smart enough to realize she didn’t trust anyone, she was also smart enough to play her role well. Smart enough to see he was doing what needed to be done not just for the next heir to the throne, but for his child.
The child in her stomach.
They turned to the congregation and began their recessional down the aisle to the vestibule, where they were spirited away to a private room while their guests left the church. They endured an hour of pictures before they walked out of the church, beneath the canopy of swords of his military’s honor guard.
Dressed in black suits and white silk shirts and ties, his bodyguards whisked them into the back of his limo, to a professional photo studio for more pictures.
And the whole time Ginny smiled at him radiantly. Anyone who looked at her would assume—believe—this wedding was real. Because he was beginning to get the feeling himself. She wasn’t such a good actress that she was fooling him. What she’d said haunted him. She wanted this to be real. At least for a li
ttle while. Because this, this sham, was as close as she’d ever get to a real marriage.
Her mother rode in the limo with his dad. Her bridesmaids rode with his brother and a distant cousin who served as his best man and groomsman.
Alone in their limo, he turned to her. Struggling to forget the bargain she’d tried to strike and come up with normal conversation, he said, “You look amazing.”
She smiled, reached over and straightened his tie. “You do, too.”
He shifted away, afraid of her. Not because he worried she was going to hurt him or cheat him. But because he knew she wasn’t.
“Dominic, the straightening-the-tie thing is important. A piece of intimacy everyone expects to see. You need to be still and let me do it.”
Because of her suggestion that they make this marriage real, and his desperate need not to hurt her, he was now the one who might ruin their ruse. “I suppose.”
She shrugged, her pretty yellow hair shifted and swayed around her. “No matter what you decide, I intend to be a good wife for these two years.”
His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. What did that mean? That he’d find her in his bed that night?
He remembered that yellow hair floating around them their one and only night together, remembered the softness of her skin, and wondered just how a man was supposed to resist that honesty or the sexual tug that lured him into a spell so sweet, another man would have happily allowed himself to be drawn in.
But he wasn’t just any man. He was a prince, someday a king. Someone held to a higher standard. He did not deliberately hurt people.
They arrived at the palace. Bodyguards ushered them into the main foyer. They stopped in his father’s quarters to have a toast with her mother and his dad and their wedding party. Then they took an elevator to the third floor of his dad’s wing of the palace and stood on the balcony, waving to well-wishers.
A young woman edged her way through the crowd to the space just in front of security. She waved and called, “Toss your bouquet!”
Dom said, “That’s odd.”
Ginny laughed. “She’s American. We have a tradition that whoever catches the bride’s bouquet will be the next person to be married.” She gave him a smile, then winked, before she turned and tossed the spray of fifty roses with strength that would have done any weight lifter proud.
The flowers bowed into a graceful arc before beginning their descent. The crowd gasped at Ginny’s whimsy. The people closest to the woman who’d called realized they could intercept the bouquet and they scrambled forward, but it landed in the young girl’s arms. As the crowd pressed forward to grab flowers from the bouquet, security surrounded her.
Ginny faced him. “Have her brought up for an audience.”
He laughed. “Seriously?”
“Yes.” She bowed slightly. “My lord,” she said, her eyes downcast, her tone serious.
Those crazy feelings of wanting her rippled through him again. He raised her chin. “You don’t have to bow to me.”
“The etiquette books say I do.” She smiled. “And I’m asking for the wedding favor the book also says I get. I’d like to meet the woman who wants so desperately to be married that she’d risk arrest.”
Dom faced his bodyguard. He made a few hand gestures. The crowd called, “Kiss the bride,” and he did. But he did so now with curiosity that nudged his fear of hurting her aside. He liked being able to do something for her.
When they returned to the king’s receiving room, the young woman awaited them.
Ginny walked over and hugged her. “I hope the whole bouquet thing works out for you.”
Their guest laughed nervously. Her big brown eyes stayed on Ginny’s face. “I never thought you’d do it.”
“I waited years for my prince. I know what you’re feeling.” She squeezed her hand and said, “Good luck.”
Dominic nodded, the security detail motioned her to the door and she left with a quick wave. But the way Ginny had said, “I know what you’re feeling,” struck him oddly. She didn’t say, “I’ve known what you feel.” She said, “I know what you’re feeling.” He heard the sorrow there, maybe even a loneliness that almost opened that soft place in his soul again. But he hung on. He could not let sentiment destroy his plan. He could not become his dad.
Ginny said, “You know crazy people are going to try to steal that bouquet from her. You’re going to have to have someone escort her to her hotel and maybe even out of the country.”
“Yes. Security will take care of it.”
But he couldn’t stop staring at her. He might have closed the soft place in his soul, but his brain was working overtime to figure her out. What she had done had been a tad reckless, but it was very Ginny. Very sweet. Very warm. She’d used the wish her groom was to grant her for someone else.
And that’s why he knew he couldn’t sleep with her. No matter what she said or did or how she phrased things, she was innocent. Too nice for him.
But she was also hurting. She really believed she’d always be alone.
He couldn’t think about that. He had to be fair.
They received dignitaries for hours. Even Dom was tired by the time his father, brother, cousin and Ginny’s entourage escorted them to the palace ballroom.
They entered amid a trumpet blast and after toasts and a short speech by his father welcoming Ginny into the family, they finally ate.
Still, in between dances, he managed to find time to speak to his detail and arrange for their luggage to be taken to the yacht that night, instead of the next morning.
There was no way in hell he was taking her back to his apartment, where they’d not only had privacy, they’d had friendly chats and a wonderful kiss.
Even he had his limits.
The staff on the Crown Jewel was too big to be in on the marriage ruse, but precautions were easier there. He and Ginny would be sleeping in the side-by-side bedrooms of the master suite, but the yacht was also so big that he could keep his distance. They’d sail so far out onto the ocean that even long lenses couldn’t get pictures. And the staff would rotate so the same people wouldn’t see them twice and wonder why they weren’t kissing or holding hands.
Not only would this work, but it would be easy.
Piece of cake, as Ginny would say.
* * *
When they had to take a helicopter to the yacht, Ginny knew why Dom had chosen it as their honeymoon spot. The pilot put the helicopter down on the landing pad, and Dom helped her out, gathering the skirt of her gown so she didn’t trip over it as she navigated the steps.
Walking across the deck, under the starlit sky, she glanced around in awe. “It’s the friggin’ Love Boat.”
He turned to her with absolute horror in his eyes. “What?”
“You never saw the television show from the eighties? The Love Boat?”
Clearly relieved that she was referencing a television show, not referring to something about their relationship, he said, “You weren’t even born in the eighties, so how did you see it?”
“My mom watched reruns all the time. It’s a show about a cruise ship.”
His eyes narrowed. “So you’re saying our yacht is big?”
“Your yacht is huge.”
“If that’s a compliment, I accept it.”
It wasn’t a compliment. She was telling him she knew his plan. He intended to use this big ship to avoid her for the two weeks they were to be away. But he didn’t seem to catch on to what she was saying.
It didn’t matter. She was happy to have figured out his plan. She’d thought the night of the formal dinner for her friends had been her moment, and when it turned out that it wasn’t, she’d hoped her honeymoon might give her another shot. And here she stood on a boat big enough to rival an aircraft carrier. It meant her options for finding another moment were seriously limited. But at least she knew what she was up against.
A security guard opened the door for them and Dom motioned for her to enter first. She stepped
inside, expecting to see stairs with metal railings painted white, expecting to hear the hollow sound of a stairwell. Instead, she entered a small lobby. Sleek hardwood floors led to an elevator. Gold-framed paintings hung on the walls.
She spun around to face Dom. “Seriously? Is that a Picasso?”
Dom said, “Probably,” as the elevator door opened. She hadn’t even seen him press a button for it.
They rode down, only a few floors, before the door opened again onto a room so stunningly beautiful it could have been in a magazine. Huge windows in the back displayed the black sky with the faint dusting of stars. A taupe sofa flanked by two printed club chairs sat in front of a fireplace. The accent rug that held them all in a group was the same print as the club chairs. A long wooden bar gleamed in a far corner. Plants in elaborate pots converted empty space into focal points.
She wanted to say, “Wow,” but her chest hurt. Her knees wobbled. This was her wedding night. But unlike a normal bride who knew what to expect, every step of her journey was a mystery. She wanted one thing. Dom wanted another. And only one of them could win.
Security guards entered behind Dom, rolling the cart carrying their luggage. She’d packed her four bags with care. Even though Dom had told her she’d need only a bikini and some sunblock, she’d brought clothes for romantic dinners—and undies. Pretty panties, bras and sleepwear that she and Joshua had chosen from catalogs so exclusive that prices weren’t listed beneath the descriptions.
Joshua had said, “If you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it.”
And at that point she decided she didn’t want to know. Dominic could afford to buy and sell small countries. She wasn’t going to quibble over the price of the nighties she’d probably need to seduce him.
The bodyguards disappeared down the hall with the luggage cart carrying their bags.
“Nightcap?”
She pressed her hand to her tummy. “I probably could use some orange juice.”
He walked to the bar. “Tired?”
Was he kidding? Even if she was exhausted, nerves would keep her awake tonight. The last time they’d been in this position, she hadn’t had to seduce him. They’d seduced each other. Which meant, she shouldn’t be nervous. She should be herself.
Harlequin Romance February 2016 Box Set Page 27