by Sparks, Ana
Orlo, it turned out, was a fairy-tale city. And Tarana itself was much the same. Though I guessed I shouldn’t have been surprised by that, as this was a nation still ruled by a royal family. Real-live princes, and all that.
That first day, I had a tense discussion with Francisco over breakfast—well, second breakfast for me—where we decided that Javier was evidently more interested in seeing the proof or our relationship than actually talking to either one of us.
After all, he’d barely given me room to make my little speech. And I wasn’t really sure he’d even bothered to listen to it.
“He’s never believed that I would find someone who could entertain me enough to make me want to settle down,” Francisco had told me over his croissant.
I’d reached out and taken his hand. “In that case, I suppose we’ll just have to show him that you have.”
An answering smile from him, a quick question about whether I was ready, and he’d whisked me away from breakfast and out of the house, into a very small, very red sports car.
“Where are we going?” I’d asked.
He’d turned to me with a smile. “You showed me around your city,” he’d said. “Now, it’s my turn to show you around mine.”
And so we’d started a week of touring. That day, we drove down the coast, which was breathtakingly clean and starkly beautiful, in a way I’d always thought the coast of California must be. The ocean was bluer here than I’d ever imagined it could be, the cliffs darker, the rocks tumbling down them… well, tumbling harder, I supposed. We’d driven with the top of the car down, laughing as we tried to shout conversation to each other, and had ended up in a restaurant far from town.
And as we ate, staring out over the expanse of ocean in front of us, we’d talked about all the things we hadn’t really gotten to talk about back in Chicago. His childhood, and mine. My love for music—which he’d brushed up against but had never really heard too much about—and his dreams about starting a charity for orphaned children. When dinner ended, we decided that it was late enough that we didn’t particularly want to drive all the way back to the city.
So we’d stayed in the hotel that was attached the restaurant, using Francisco’s name and stature to guarantee what I thought had to be one of the most highly sought-after hotel rooms in the entire country. We’d made slow, passionate love to each other—several times—and then fallen asleep staring up at the stars from the balcony, and woken to the sunrise the next morning.
And then we’d taken off again.
Francisco had grown up in Orlo, and knew every twist and turn of the place. I saw his favorite bookstores, drank tea in his favorite cafés. We saw a movie in the theater he’d gone to when he was young, with his brother, and we ate in the best restaurants. We did a tour of the churches in the city, each of them more beautiful than the last, and I started to see that Orlo—and the country itself—was a mix of both the old and the new, centuries-old churches huddled up against and below skyscrapers that stretched up into the sky to touch the clouds.
It was, I thought, most likely what all of Europe was like. The old and the new. Ancient things pressed up against things as they were now. Much like Francisco himself was—a mix of the old and the new. A mix of the playboy, constantly flirting with drama, and the man who secretly wanted to settle down and play a bigger part in the government of his country.
And through it all, through every stop and every dinner, every night spent twisted in the sheets of Francisco’s bed, I felt a common thread. A thread that was Francisco and me twined together, building our own path through the country—and city—that had raised him. Getting to know each other like we never had before, in our short and fairly scattered acquaintance.
And falling more and more in love with each passing day.
Or at least… well, I was. We didn’t talk about it, though, so I didn’t know for sure whether that feeling, that thread, was reaching through his life or not. I didn’t know if it was just me.
A week after I arrived, Francisco told me to wear the new dress he’d just bought for me—the red one—and nice shoes, and I complied, thinking that it was an odd request, but that it most likely at least meant that we wouldn’t be doing much walking.
And after a week of adventuring, I was ready for some sitting, and if he thought we were going to do much traveling while I was in heels, I would just make him carry me. Which was almost as good as just sitting, in my opinion.
When we walked out of the house, though, I saw the sports car in the drive and stopped.
“If you think I’m riding in a convertible after I’ve just gone to all the trouble to control my hair, buddy, you’ve got another thing coming,” I told him sternly.
He just grinned, walked around the car, ducked into it, and pushed a button.
The top moved smoothly up and over the car, and Francisco stepped back and gestured to it.
“As you can see, I’ve thought of everything,” he said. “Get in. I have a surprise for you.”
He barely waited until I’d closed the door before taking off, and I quickly buckled my seatbelt, giving him a sideways glance and wondering what he was so worked up about. His face was turned to the road, though, his eyes intent on our path, and I settled in and turned my gaze to the scenery flying by us.
I knew Francisco well enough now to know that determined look on his face. He clearly had something very specific in mind, and he was going to be so focused on it that he wouldn’t want to talk until we arrived at his intended destination.
I was just smiling at the realization that I knew him well enough now to be able to recognize something like that, when I realized something else. I knew where we were. Or rather… not where we were, exactly, but certainly the general area.
“This is the same road we drove before,” I said. “On the first day, when you took me down the coast.”
When I turned to him, I saw the corner of his mouth twitch. “You’re right,” he said.
“Where are we going? Not to the beach when I’m dressed like this, I hope.”
The twitch turned into a grin, but one that he kept cornered at the side of his mouth. “That,” he said with a sideways glance, “is a surprise.”
* * *
We were going, it turned out, to the same restaurant he’d taken me to after that first drive. Only this time, where there had been several other cars and people milling about before, the place looked deserted.
“Is it closed?” I asked doubtfully, not really wanting to get out of the car if it was going to turn out that we weren’t allowed in.
“No,” he said quickly. “Just… reserved.”
Reserved? What on earth did that mean?
Before I could respond, Francisco stepped out of the car and shut the door behind him, and moments later he was opening mine and helping me out of my seat.
“But we’re going to be allowed in, right?” I asked, still a bit concerned.
“Of course!” he said with a laugh. “I’m the one who reserved it.”
Okay, now this was just getting weird. He’d reserved the entire restaurant?
“But why?” I asked.
Instead of answering, he spun around and went to his knees in front of me.
“Because,” he said quietly. “I didn’t want anyone else to get in the way of what I have planned. I’m in love with you, Erika. I have been since the morning you woke me up in that bar—though I didn’t know it at the time. Hell, I don’t think I knew it until you showed up at my door, fainting right into my arms. Between that morning and now, though, everything has changed. I’ve seen the world through your eyes. I’ve seen the world with you in it. And I don’t want to go back to a world without Erika ever again. I can’t imagine living without you. I don’t want to imagine it.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a box, opening it to expose the largest diamond I had ever seen in real life.
“Say you’ll be my wife,” he whispered. “Be my princess, the mother of my chil
d. Say you’ll stay here with me. Forever.”
The tears started without me even realizing it, and by the time I pulled him to his feet, my face was wet with them.
“Promise we’ll never stop having adventures?” I asked.
“I swear on everything I hold dear,” he said solemnly.
“And that you’ll always order me food when I’m sick, or when I don’t want to go out?”
He put a hand to his heart. “How could I do otherwise?”
I paused, and then dove in. “Promise to love me as much as you love me right now, for the rest of our lives?”
He tipped forward and pressed a short, sweet kiss to my lips. “I can’t help myself,” he whispered, his lips moving against mine, his breath soft against my face.
“Then the answer is yes,” I whispered back. “Yes, a million times over. With all my heart.”
Chapter 30
Francisco
I pulled away from Erika, my face wet with her tears, and stared down at her, so surprised by everything that had happened in the last two months that I could barely breathe.
I’d met this woman by accident, and then convinced her to get me another drink. A drink that had turned into breakfast, which had turned into a weekend, which had turned into…
“A lifetime,” I told her. “I want a lifetime with you, and I won’t accept anything else.”
She reached up and ran her fingers down my jawline, bringing my skin to life. “And you’ll have it,” she answered. “But first, food. I’m starving.”
I laughed, took her hand, and led her toward the restaurant that I’d rented out for the night—and where I’d meant to propose to her. The problem being that I hadn’t wanted to wait, and had done it in the parking lot instead.
Patience, I’m afraid, has never been one of my virtues.
When I threw open the door to the restaurant, though, expecting a quiet, candlelit room, like I’d requested, I was shocked to see… a party.
There were streamers and balloons and banners and people. Not lots of people, exactly, but certainly a few. I saw my brother. My mother. Isabelle and Carlos. My brother’s wife.
My brother was here. And he’d brought our family with him.
What the hell?
“What are you doing here?” I asked, surprised and more than a little bit annoyed at his sudden presence. Couldn’t I do anything without Javier getting involved?
He grinned as he walked up to me with his hand extended. Like we were just meeting on the street or something, rather than him actually crashing my date with my girlfriend. The date where I had just proposed.
“I’m here to congratulate you, of course,” he said, his grin getting even bigger when he turned to Erika—who looked just as confused as I felt. “And you. Welcome to the family, Erika.”
Luckily, my… well, fiancée, I supposed… was not as tongue-tied as I was. She accepted the hug he offered her, but pulled back afterward with a frown on her face. “Welcome to the family? From the guy who sat me down on my first morning here and essentially warned me that he’d be watching for me to screw up?”
Javier gave a graceful shrug and increased the wattage on his smile. “I wanted to make sure you were the real thing. Surely you can’t blame me for that. He is my little brother, after all.”
And with that, he took me under his arm and gave me a hug as well.
I still didn’t know how to deal with any of this, so I kept my mouth shut.
“So you what, dropped that little warning in my lap and then…?” Erika lifted her eyebrows in question, though I could see the smile starting to form on her lips.
I huffed in annoyance at that. No one could ever stay mad at my brother. It was one of his most irritating characteristics. Something about the title, I was sure.
Javier finally grew serious at her question, though, and took a step back from the two of us. “I’m embarrassed to say that I had the two of you watched over the last week,” he said.
“Not all the time, of course,” he went on hurriedly. “But I… Well, I wanted to make sure that this was what you said it was. I wanted to make sure that you”—he glanced meaningfully at me—“were serious about settling down with this woman, who had flown halfway around the world to see you. And I wanted to make sure that you”—he turned his eyes to Erika—“were serious about him.”
“What, flying halfway around the world wasn’t enough to convince you?” she asked, her mouth trying hard to hide the smile that was trying to break out.
Javier finally gave her a bit of a smile back, and shrugged. “Would you do anything less, if it was your family on the line?”
“No,” she said firmly. “Did you see what you needed to see?”
“That and more,” he told her. “And may I be the first to offer you congratulations on your engagement?”
I reached out and pulled Erika against me before he could sweep her off her feet, scowling. “This one’s mine, Javier. You’ve already got a wife.”
He cocked his head and grinned at me, though, and I found that I couldn’t maintain the scowl on my face.
I was far too happy for that.
So when he held his arms open to us, Erika and I stepped forward together, partners, to hug him and accept his blessing.
Though that didn’t mean I was going to forgive him for having spied on us. If I was going to have a wife, and a family, then I guessed it meant I needed to have a serious talk with my brother about boundaries.
Because I’d finally found the girl of my dreams, and I’d somehow managed to get her to fall in love with me and agree to spend the rest of her life with me. And I wasn’t about to share that—or her—with anyone else. I didn’t care if he was the king of Tarana or not.
Epilogue
Seven Months Later: Erika
I got off the phone with my agent—that’s right, I had an agent!—and looked at my gorgeous husband, grinning.
“They said everything’s on schedule with the album,” I told him, almost incapable of speaking past the enormous smile on my face. “They said it’ll drop in a few weeks, just like they said it would.”
He wrapped me into one of his trademark hugs, laughing with excitement, and I let him. Despite my big belly, which insisted on getting in the way in a situation like this.
It had been doing that a lot, lately. I was right on top of my due date, which meant that the belly felt like it was starting to wear me. I was beyond ready to be finished with the whole process, and not only because I didn’t want to be pregnant anymore.
I wanted to meet our daughter. I wanted to know who she was going to be, see whether she had my eyes or Francisco’s, see whether she would come out with curly hair, like we were betting she would. Francisco had been encouraging me to go to the hospital early, so I could be there already when the time came, but I’d been fighting him on it.
Well. “Fighting him” was putting it pretty strongly. We hardly ever fought, beyond the occasional argument about who would be cooking dinner that night and whether I was too pregnant to take another road trip to yet another “nearby” city. But I’d been refusing to go to the hospital ahead of time.
There was just too much to get done before little Ana got here.
The biggest thing, of course, had been to move all of my things from Chicago to Orlo, because the moment Javier had decided that he would allow and even encourage our marriage, Francisco and I had both known that I was going to have to change my address.
After a lifetime of traveling and making trouble across the globe, Francisco had finally come home. And this was where he belonged. At his brother’s side, helping to run the country. Showing the people that even a rebellious prince who had been barred from almost a dozen countries across the world could come home again and make something of his life.
And if he was going to be here, in Tarana, then I was going to be here with him. I hadn’t even had to think twice about it. And when I’d called the bar and talked to Henry, letting him know that I
was coming back to Chicago, but only for my things, he’d laughed and told me that he’d known it.
He’d also made me promise that I would come back at some point to play at the bar.
I smiled again at that thought, because he was going to insist on that even harder after he heard the album I’d written and recorded since moving to Orlo. I had my own little recording studio set up in one room of Francisco’s suite, and Francisco had helped me find not only an agent but also a producer.
The writing had been simple. I’d been doing that since I was a kid. Actually performing in a music studio?
Well, it turned out that that had been simple, as well. Not as rewarding as playing in a bar, certainly, but there had been rewards of a different type. Getting to hear the playback, for one. And getting to play it for Francisco. Then helping to master it, choose what order the songs were going to go in, and even which songs would make the album and which had to wait for the next one.
Hearing the first single on the radio for the first time. And the second. And the third.
It was everything I’d ever dreamt it would be. And it was all because of this man hugging me right now.
I squeezed harder, wondering if he could feel how much I loved him, and knowing that he knew it, even if he couldn’t feel it in my hug.
And then I felt water rushing down my legs.
I jumped back at the same time as Francisco, his eyes on the floor underneath me.
And then we were both in motion, moving at the same time and flying toward the tasks that we’d given ourselves during our planning sessions for this exact situation. Because we’d known it was coming. And we’d wanted to be ready.
We didn’t want to be caught by surprise. Not where our baby girl was concerned.
Three minutes later, give or take, we met back up in the living room, me with my bag of toiletries and Francisco carrying the suitcase I’d packed for myself and the baby, as well as the bag of things he’d packed for himself. I eyed the second bag in his hand, though, deciding that my water might have broken, but I still had time to give him a hard time about a few things.