37 Her Highness and the Bodyguard

by Christine Rimmer

  “Yes. All right. Of course.” She gulped. “Go on.”

  He started in again. “I’ve been planning to tell you, trying to figure out how, exactly, to manage it....”

  She ached to demand that he tell her and tell her now, but somehow she succeeded in keeping her mouth shut.

  And about then, he gave up trying to ease into it. He said simply and flatly, “You’re right. There’s no good way to say this. I got a call from Los Angeles today. This morning, my father died.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “B-but you don’t have a father,” she heard herself sputtering. “I mean, do you?”

  He pulled away from her, pushed back the sheet and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. And then he just sat there. She stared at his powerful naked back. His big shoulders were hunched.

  “Marcus?” She asked his name raggedly, barely making a sound. When he didn’t answer, she reached out.

  But he was already bending to grab his trousers from the floor. He rose and put them on. For a moment she thought he would pull on the rest of his clothes and walk out, leave her there gaping after him, naked in the bed where they’d just made love.

  But then he did turn to her. He held out both arms to the side in a hopeless, bewildered sort of gesture. “All those years ago, I couldn’t bear to tell you. I’ve never told anyone, except the investigators I hired to find out if he really might be who he said he was. The man is...was not a father to me in any way that matters. But biologically, yes. He’s the man who fathered me.”

  She had to concentrate to draw breath. “I don’t... All those years ago, when we were together, you knew of him then? At UCLA?”

  He stuck his hands in his pockets, as though he couldn’t decide what exactly to do with them. “Yes.”

  “But you always said—”

  “I know what I said. It was... I couldn’t talk about it then. I wanted to forget all about it, about him. I wanted it to be as if he’d never approached me, as if I’d never seen his face or heard him tell me I was his son.”

  “When, Marcus? When did he approach you?”

  “Just before I first met you.”

  “In Los Angeles?”

  He nodded. He still had his hands in his pockets and he seemed to be looking everywhere but at her. “I had only just arrived in California. He approached me the first day I was there. It was in Westwood. I’d gone to the drugstore to pick up razors and shave cream and toothpaste. He just came right up to me there on Westwood Boulevard. He said he was my father and that he’d hired people to keep track of me through the years, that he had learned of my fellowship at UCLA, had known I would be coming to Southern California. He knew where my dorm was. He said he’d followed me from campus just then....”

  His words came at her. She heard them, but as though from far away. Her mind kept cycling back to the impossible fact that he actually knew who his father was. “I don’t understand. You never told me. How could you never have told me something so enormous as that?”

  “Rhia, I didn’t believe him then. I refused to believe him, even though I couldn’t deny, even on that first day, that I did look like him. I called him a liar. He grabbed my hand and put a piece of paper in it. He said if I ever wanted to know the story of my birth, I should give him a call. I kept that scrap of paper, but I didn’t call. Not for more than two years. Not until after you came to me and told me you wanted to try again with me. After that, after losing you a second time...I don’t know why that made the difference, but then, somehow, I had to know.”

  She longed to correct him, to remind him that he hadn’t lost her. He had sent her away. But the pain in his voice stopped her. Yes, he should have told her all of this before. She was shocked and hurt that he hadn’t. It cut deep that he hadn’t. It was the harshest sort of proof of the basic problem she had with him. He kept himself apart. He kept secrets. She needed to be the one he told his secrets to.

  But then she reminded herself that he was telling her his secrets. He was telling her right now. And it was agony for him.

  His suffering broke her heart. She reached out her hand again. “Come here. Here to me. Please...”

  He shook his head. He still didn’t look at her. “I hate this. I should have told you, but I didn’t know how. And I didn’t want to think about it, about him. It makes me want to put my fist through a wall, whenever I think about him.”

  She scooted to the edge of the bed, until she could reach out and catch his hand. When she did, she pulled him toward her. “Come on. Sit down.”

  He hovered in place for a moment. But then at last he came to her and dropped to the mattress. Dragging the sheet to cover herself, she swung her legs over the edge so she could sit beside him.

  She still had hold of his hand. And now, he was holding on, too. Tightly. He took her hand into his lap, twined their fingers together and looked down at them, as though the sight steadied him somehow. “Eight years ago, I thought I knew who I was. I fully accepted that I was alone, that whoever my parents had been, they had deserted me. For me, they didn’t exist. What I would make of my life would be completely of my doing, on my own shoulders. I had graduated from university, had received my commission. You know how rare that is, for a commoner, for someone with no family, to receive an officer’s commission?”

  She nodded. “Yes. I know. Very rare.”

  “I was proud, of all I’d done, of how far I had come from such difficult beginnings. I was a university graduate with a commission. I was in America, sent there for a special fellowship...and then a complete stranger walked up to me and said he was my father. It blew my world apart. I considered just...leaving.”

  “Leaving what?”

  “Leaving everything. Vanishing. Disappearing into America.”

  She pressed herself closer against his side, wishing she could somehow make it better for him. Not so annihilating. Not so full of pain. “But you didn’t.”

  He shook his head again. “It’s strange. I was so angry. My fury made me bold. Had I not been so angry, I never would have dared to approach you that day in the bookstore when you challenged me for staring at you. I never would have presumed to introduce myself so brashly, nor to go with you when you asked me to coffee. I never would have gone so far as to stare openly at you when I saw you and knew who you were. If I still hadn’t been reeling from that encounter outside the drugstore, if I hadn’t been burning with rage and ready for anything, I would have turned carefully on my heel at the very sight of you and walked away. Had you, for some reason, happened to smile upon me, I would have saluted, of course, and given you a proper greeting. But never in any way would I have allowed you to see me as more than a soldier at your command and sworn to serve.”

  “So then,” she tried gamely, doing her best to look on the bright side, “in a way, we have this father of yours to thank, for...bringing us together.”

  He stared straight ahead. “We have nothing to thank him for. Nothing.”

  She wrapped her other hand around his bare arm. It was hard as ungiving rock, every muscle tensed. “You never had a chance to make your peace with him, then?”

  He glanced at her sharply. “I think I have, yes. As much as I can. I never could forgive him for what he did. But I have accepted that he is—was—the man who fathered me.”

  “Marcus. You seem...”

  “What?” He was looking at her now, his face set in a furious scowl. “I seem what?”

  She braved his scowl to answer truthfully. “You seem far from peaceful when you speak of him.”

  He let out a slow breath. “All right. You have a point, I suppose. No, then. I have never managed to reconcile with him. And I don’t imagine I ever could have.”

  Gently, she asked, “Will you tell me his name?”

  “Roland Scala.”

  “Scala? Is that a Greek name?”

  “He became an American citizen more than a decade ago. But he was born here, born Montedoran.”

  “And your mother...?”


  “Her name was Isa Rhodes. She died the night I was born.”

  “Oh, Marcus. I’m so, so sorry....”

  He gave a shrug. And then, bleakly, he asked, “Are you sure that you want to hear this? It’s not a happy story.”

  She met his gaze steadily. “I do want to hear it, Marcus. Very much.”

  “Fair enough.” He drew in a breath—and then let it out hard. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “Anywhere. It doesn’t matter where you start. It only matters that you tell me what happened, how it was....”

  He gazed at her for several seconds, unspeaking. And then finally, he blurted, “My mother was a roulette dealer at the casino.”

  “At Casino d’Ambre?” She named the world-famous casino not far from her villa.

  “That’s right.” He turned his eyes away and stared straight ahead. And then he seemed to gather himself. He started rattling off the story swiftly, as though he couldn’t get it out and over with fast enough. “She was half French, half Montedoran. Roland met her there, at the casino. They were lovers. He said that by the time she knew she was pregnant, it was over between them. They didn’t marry. He said they were always fighting and they both agreed that they would never make it as a couple. She left Montedoro and went across the border into France when she was six months along.”

  “To her family?”

  “She had no family. Neither did he. They were both only children. With older parents. By the time they met, they were both on their own....” He was quiet. She wanted to prompt him to go on. But she didn’t. She waited. And finally he continued, “Two months later, she gave birth to me in a small country hospital. As soon as I was born, that same night, she took me and left the hospital. She went back to the cottage where she’d been living and called Roland. She told him he had a son, and that she’d taken me home with her. He thought she sounded strange, confused. Delirious. So he went to her. She had hemorrhaged, he told me. He claimed she was already dead when he got there. He was afraid to call the authorities. And afraid to just leave me there, for fear no one would find me soon enough and I would die, too. So he took me back to Montedoro....” He seemed to run out of steam.

  She finished for him, softly. Regretfully. “And he abandoned you on the steps of Our Lady of Sorrows.”

  He squeezed her hand harder. “That’s right. He abandoned me. And then he went to America right after that. He had some money put by, he said. He gave up gambling. Opened a restaurant. Did well for himself. Applied for citizenship—and got it after he’d been in Southern California for fifteen years.”

  She pressed her lips to the hard curve of his shoulder, longing to give him comfort, knowing that nothing could ease him right then. “He told you all of this when you finally contacted him six years ago?”

  “Yes. I returned to Los Angeles then, and met with him.”

  “And you believed him, believed his story?”

  “Not a word of it. But he showed me the certificate of my birth, which he’d found on the kitchen table in the cottage where my mother bled to death after having me. The birth date was right. She had named Roland as the father. And so I...looked into it. I hired someone to investigate for me. The investigator found out that a woman named Isa Rhodes had died in the place and in the way that Roland said. Though the baby was never found, the district coroner had determined that she’d very recently borne a child and then the local police discovered that she’d given birth in the same hospital named on the certificate my father had taken from the cottage.”

  “Oh, Marcus.” She leaned her head on his shoulder, rubbed her hand up and down his arm. “I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry...for all of it. For your mother and you. And even for your father.”

  He spoke low and intensely. “Don’t feel sorry for him.”

  “But he—”

  “Just don’t. He left her there, with no one. All alone, even if it was too late for her. And then he took me...and left me, too.”

  She wanted to remind him that it was best not to judge. But what did she know about how it must be for him? She’d led a graceful, happy, sheltered life for the most part, with two loving parents who doted on her, with the world at her feet and brothers and sisters she adored. That day she’d told him she was having his baby, he’d called her proud and thoughtless. He’d said she took her happy childhood and her family for granted.

  She’d been shocked at the time that he would say such cruel things to her.

  But now she saw the truth in his words.

  Now she knew that she was the one who had no right to judge.

  She asked, softly, “He died just today, you said?”

  Marcus nodded. “Or late last night. A lawyer contacted me through the CCU several hours ago. He said that Roland had sold his restaurant and retired. That he has a woman, a longtime housekeeper, who comes in to clean and cook for him every day. When the housekeeper went to make up his room, he was just lying there in bed, already gone. The doctor she called said it was some kind of aneurysm or a heart attack. They’ll know more later. And I...I am his heir. The lawyer said I should come.”

  “Of course you must go.”

  “I don’t want to go.” He sounded slightly numb. But angry, too. A slow, seething, deep-seated kind of anger. “Why should I go? That man is nothing to me.”

  “Marcus.” He looked at her then. His eyes were flat, the color leached from them. She said, “We’ll go together, you and me.”

  He pulled his hand from hers. “I told you, I don’t want to go. And there is no way I could ask you to go. That wouldn’t be right.”

  “Of course it’s right. And you’re not asking me. I’m asking you. Please. Take me with you. Let’s do this together. Let me be with you for this.”

  He put his head in his hands. “I don’t want to do this.”

  “Marcus, you have to. You know that you do.”

  “No. I don’t know that. I don’t know that at all.” He raised his head and looked at her wildly. “I don’t want any of this. I haven’t spoken with that man in over five years. I thought I had...accepted the reality that he was my biological father. But I certainly didn’t want him in my life. I am the man I was raised to be. I am Marcus Desmarais. I own that name and I earned it. I never planned to tell a soul about him. Until you. Until now, in this past week...” He fell silent. His eyes were haunted now, guarded. And furious, too. But he did lift a hand. He cradled the side of her face. She melted inside at the tender touch. “Because you demanded that I tell you my secrets....”

  She held his gaze. “I’m so glad that you’ve told me. I only wish you had told me sooner.”

  “I didn’t want to tell you at all.” The words were rough, very low.

  She gazed steadily at him and didn’t even try to hide her reproach. “Always guarding your secrets, so self-contained...”

  He surprised her by answering with urgency. “But I swear to you, Rhia. I knew I needed to tell you. I was working up to it.”

  In spite of her frustration with him, she found she believed him—and she said so. “I believe you. And it does help me, Marcus, when you tell me the hardest things, the things you wish you could keep secret even from yourself.”

  He made a scoffing sound and dropped his caressing hand. “Helps you? How could knowing all this...this ugliness possibly help you?”

  “It helps me to know you, to understand you better.”

  He grunted. “Why would you ever want to understand a nasty mess like this one?”

  “Because that’s what you do, when you care for someone. That’s what you do for the ones of your family. You listen when they are able to tell you the truth about themselves, no matter how hard that truth might be. And then you do what you can to help them get through whatever difficult time might follow.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The next morning, early, Marcus went with Rhia to the Prince’s Palace to speak with HSH Adrienne.

  He told the whole awful story all over
again—to his sovereign this time. As always, the princess was serene and understanding and ready to smooth the way. He was given open-ended family leave from his duties at the CCU.

  Back at the villa, Rhia called her director at the National Museum and explained that she would be out of the country for a while on urgent family business. Marcus called Roland’s lawyer again and said they were coming. And then they packed their suitcases and flew to Los Angeles.

  They arrived at LAX after midnight. A car was waiting to take them to the Beverly Wilshire, where a suite had been reserved for them. After they had checked in, Marcus stood on the balcony and stared out over the lights of Beverly Hills and Century City and wondered why he had come. He thought of Lieutenant Joseph Chastain, who had a small room adjacent to their suite and had been assigned to provide security during this trip. Marcus almost envied Joseph.

  Joseph was a good man. And he knew exactly what he was here for. He would protect Her Serene Highness with his life. So very simple. So very clear.

  Marcus would do the same for Rhia. But as her lover, the father of her child and possibly her future husband—if she ever said yes to him—he would never again be assigned to protect her. A bodyguard needed a cool head, after all, and that all-important emotional distance from the one he was charged with protecting.

  Marcus had no emotional distance when it came to Rhiannon. He never had. But in the past, no one else had known—well, except for Hector and Her Highness Alice.

  Now, everyone knew. Even the tabloids.

  He heard light footsteps as she came out onto the balcony and stood at his side.

  “Such a beautiful night.” She took his arm and together they admired the view. He enjoyed the feel of her body so close, the touch of her fingers against his skin. He was treated to a faint, tempting hint of her perfume. But soon enough, she was pulling him back inside. “Let’s go to bed. We have to be up early tomorrow.” The lawyer had agreed to meet with them first thing in the morning, even though it was Saturday.

  He stopped just inside the balcony doors and turned her to face him. “It’s past 2:00 a.m., already tomorrow.”