She took a seat. The wind tugged at her hair, so she put on her scarf as he dealt with the mooring lines. When he took the wheel, she asked him, “The ashes?”
“In the cabin.” He put on his aviator sunglasses, started the engine and backed the boat from the slip.
They were quiet with each other as he eased the boat through the obstacles in the crowded harbor. It wasn’t long before they passed between the twin points at harbor’s end and into the open sea.
He turned the boat and followed the coastline south for a time. She watched the glorious, gray-green hills of her country moving by, the red roofs of villas so inviting through the lush canopy of trees. The Prince’s Palace, home of her childhood, appeared on its high, craggy promontory, growing larger as they came even with it. The sun was warm on her shoulders, but the wind had a bite to it. Seagulls soared on the air currents overhead. She could hear their distant calls.
Finally, he said, “I think it’s safe to drift for a little.” He left the wheel, ducked below and emerged with a plain black box.
He took off his sunglasses, put on his hat and took the box to the landward side, where the wind was at his back. Then he turned to her. She remained in the seat by the wheel, unsure of what her involvement should be. He tucked the box under one arm, and held out his free hand to her.
She had that light-as-air feeling again as she rose and moved to his side.
He caught her hand, brought it to his lips. “I know you’re going to want to say a few words....”
She gave him a wobbly little smile. “Yes. Please.”
They turned together toward the coast. He opened the box.
The wind pushed at her back. He folded down the plastic lining and tipped the box so the ashes drifted out slowly. She started the Lord’s Prayer. When she finished that, she recited the Twenty-Third Psalm, all while he carefully shook free the grainy gray powder studded with white bits that had to be bone. Some of the powder made a film on the surface of the blue water, some the wind carried away toward the shore.
When it was finally done, he took the box below. Then he put his sunglasses back on and went to the helm once more. She reclaimed her seat beside him. He started up the boat and drove them back the way they had come.
It was all strangely dreamlike, she thought. Dreamlike and so peaceful.
They reentered the harbor. He maneuvered the boat back to the slip, eased it cleanly into place and tied it down again. He took her hand and helped her back onto the pier.
“Let’s walk a little,” he said, and tucked her fingers around his arm. He led her to the Promenade and they strolled along it for a time. There was a man with a camera back on the pier, snapping pictures of them. And another man, also armed with a camera, who seemed to keep popping up in her side vision as they walked.
She didn’t care. She tuned them out. Marcus didn’t seem to mind, either.
People called to her and waved. She smiled at them, returning their greetings. Eventually, they came to that same bench beneath the tree where they’d sat together on that first night he moved into her villa.
“This looks familiar,” he said. They sat side by side in the shade. He took off his hat and his sunglasses and turned to her. “It meant a lot to me, that you were with me.”
“To me, too.”
“I think it was...nice.” He touched the side of her face. She smiled into his eyes as he untied her scarf. “Peaceful.” She made a sound of agreement as he pulled the scarf away. He gave it to her and then began removing the pins from her hair.
That made her smile. “You do know that we are probably being photographed.”
“I don’t care. You’re here with me. That’s what matters. Give me your hand.” She did. He put the pins in it, on top of the scarf. She wadded the whole thing up and stuck it in her bag as he combed her hair with his fingers. “There.”
She gazed into his almost-green eyes and felt tears welling in hers. “Oh, Marcus....”
He touched her cheek, wiped a tear away with his thumb. “Don’t cry. I love you, Rhiannon. I’ve always loved you.”
She blinked in amazement. The miracle had happened, just like that. He’d said the words she needed so much to hear, said them so she knew he meant them. At last. She sniffed, shut her eyes, willed the tears down. Because she knew then. She knew...everything. “Oh, Marcus...”
He gazed at her so earnestly. “You made me tell you about that other woman, the one I never actually met. But that was only a sad little story I told myself, a pitiful consolation for the hard fact that I couldn’t let myself have you. You were always the only one. Always. Please believe me.”
“How could I not?” she whispered. “It’s been the same for me.”
“I know I hurt you.”
She let it out then. The old, awful, brutal truth. “I begged you to give us another chance. While you just stood there on the steps of that empty house and looked at me like you only wanted me to stop. I pleaded with you, threw my poor heart at your feet. Still, you sent me away.”
“I was wrong.”
“You were. Terribly wrong. I so longed to hate you for that.”
“Say that you didn’t.”
“No. I wanted to. I couldn’t. I could never hate you, not really. I love you. More than anything. I will never, ever stop loving you, Marcus.”
He took her hand again. “I’ve been waiting. Trying to show you that I can be the man you need for a lifetime. That we can be together in every way. Stand together. Love together. Be the ones who make the future. Raise our baby together.”
“Oh, God.” Tears scalded the back of her throat again. She swallowed them down and made herself come clean. “I thought...that maybe you had changed your mind.”
“No. Never. I’ve been an idiot, but not anymore.”
“Oh, Marcus....”
“Marry me, Rhia. Be my wife.”
She looked down and he was slipping a diamond onto her finger. “Oh! Oh, it’s beautiful.”
“Just say yes. Tell me yes.”
And she did. “Yes,” she said clearly and firmly. “Forever and for always, Marcus. That’s how I want it to be.”
And he grabbed her close and kissed her long and slow and deep, right there on the Promenade for all the world to see.
Epilogue
The pictures of the bodyguard’s proposal on the Promenade at Colline d’Ambre appeared in various tabloids worldwide three days later.
Noah Cordell saw them. Not because he was a big fan of the stuff they printed in the scandal sheets, but because Noah made it his business to keep up with everything that happened in the Bravo-Calabretti family.
Noah dreamed big. They called him brash and bold. Difficult to know, yet charming with a boyish quality that had helped him to get ahead.
He had started out on the mean streets of Los Angeles with nothing. At the age of eighteen, he’d enrolled in business school at night and gone to work days as a laborer for a guy who flipped houses—and loved horses. Within two years, Noah was flipping houses himself. And getting invited to his new boss’s ranch, where he quickly learned to love horses, too. Noah moved up and he moved up fast.
By the end of his real estate career, Noah was building office towers in all the major real estate markets. But then, with his unerring feel for the markets, he sensed the crash was coming. He got out just in time, and he took his fortune with him. Since then, he’d been living the good life, looking after his investments, watching his money grow.
Noah thoroughly enjoyed the fruits of his ambition and labor. Five years ago, as a thirtieth birthday present to himself, he’d bought a sprawling, luxurious horse ranch in Santa Barbara. He’d moved in, bringing his frail younger sister, and the housekeeper who’d once been his sister’s foster mom. More recently, while pursuing his interest in fast, expensive cars and beautiful women, he’d wrangled an introduction to Prince Damien of Montedoro. Noah and Damien found they had a lot in common. The connection to Damien was a big step in the rig
ht direction. Noah now had a friend in the Bravo-Calabretti family.
He wanted two things from the Bravo-Calabrettis.
One, the princely family bred and trained Akhal-Teke horses. The tough, ancient, hot-blooded breed from the deserts of Turkmenistan fascinated Noah. He wanted an Akhal-Teke stallion from the palace stables of Montedoro and he intended to have one.
Two, Noah had decided it was time he got to work on his dynasty. To start a dynasty, a man needed the right woman. Noah thought that a princess would do very nicely.
But not any weird, inbred, frail kind of princess. Noah wanted a woman with guts and brains and a sense of humor. Oh, and with a family history of fertility. After all, a dynasty is predicated on the production of heirs.
It was a tall order. But Noah knew where to look to fill it. The Bravo-Calabrettis were a large, loving family. There were five sisters in that family. One of them loved horses as much as Noah did and was closely involved with the breeding and training of the Akhal-Tekes he coveted.
So Noah had concentrated on the horsey one, on finding out more about her. He’d learned that not only was she a genius with horses, she had something of a wild streak. She liked riding fast motorcycles and dancing all night in working-class bars.
There were a lot of pictures of her on the internet. Noah had studied them at length. She had brown hair and dimples, eyes that sometimes looked gray and sometimes blue and sometimes a strange, haunting color in between. Her smile dazzled.
Yeah. She was the one, all right. Her Serene Highness Alice would definitely do.
* * * * *
Watch for Alice and Noah’s story,
HOW TO MARRY A PRINCESS,
coming in November 2013,
only from Harlequin Special Edition.
Keep reading for an excerpt from Her New Year's Fortune by Allison Leigh.
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Chapter One
New Year’s Eve. A night of mystery.
Just like she was mysterious. Beautiful. Exotic. And definitely mysterious.
Dark, auburn hair spilled in waves down her back, kissing the golden spine revealed by the cut-down-to-there black cocktail dress that clung to her lithe figure. Her companion’s dark blue gaze was focused intently on her face...dropping to her lips as she took a small sip of her martini. Slightly dirty, just the way she’d ordered. She lowered the cocktail and leaned a little closer to him, feeling more than slightly naughty. Beneath the table, she slipped her foot out of her sinfully high black heels and subtly slid her toes along his ankle...
“Excuse me, miss. Miss? Miss?”
The fantasy spinning inside Sarah-Jane Early’s head popped like a bubble of spent soap and she focused on the tuxedo-clad man standing in front of the hostess station she was manning at Red, looking none too patient. She was there not to daydream, but to help see to the needs of every guest of the wedding reception that had commandeered the popular Mexican restaurant for the night, and she quickly smiled. “Yes, sir, how can I help you?”
The man tugged at his skewed bow tie, casting a glance off to one side. “How do I get to the Red Rock Inn?” His question was hurried, and muttered half under his breath. She could have told him he needn’t have bothered trying to be so quiet. For the past three hours, the music from the reception had made conversations nearly impossible. She leaned a little closer to give him the directions to the hotel. He nodded, and took time to thank her before moving away to hold out his hand to the woman he’d obviously been waiting for.
In seconds, they were hurrying out the front door of the restaurant, the man’s arm wrapped possessively around the woman’s hips. It was obvious to anyone with eyes in their head that the couple couldn’t wait to be alone.
She knew there was no point in envying a couple in love...or even a couple in lust, or she’d be spending her life in a constant state of envy. Still, Sarah-Jane sighed and shifted her weight from one foot to the other.
Fantasizing about wearing killer heels was one thing. Actually doing it was another. She wished she’d have just worn a pair of shoes from her own closet. She had a pair of black pumps. Admittedly they were nearly ten years old, purchased by her mother who had insisted that Sarah-Jane needed to wear the modestly-heeled things for her high school graduation. But they were leather and having been worn only a few times since, were still in good condition.
She glanced down at the shoes she was currently wearing. If she were honest, the only thing in common these shoes had with the old ones in her closet were that they were black. She twisted one foot this way and that, and sighed again, a little wistfully. The shoes that Maria Mendoza had insisted she wear were beautiful. The velvety suede was as black as midnight and certainly suited the clinging black cocktail dress she was wearing better than her sensible old pumps.
Just thinking about the dress had Sarah-Jane’s fingertips twitching at the hem of it, as if she could eke out another few inches of cloth where there was none. The hem of the dress stayed midway down her thighs, where it had been since she’d donned the garment earlier that day. She couldn’t do anything about the hem anymore than she could do something about the diagonally-slashed cutout neckline that exposed much more of Sarah-Jane’s cleavage than she liked. If she weren’t positively devoted to Maria, who not only owned the restaurant along with her husband but also owned the knitting shop where Sarah-Jane really worked as an assistant manager, there’s no way she’d have worn something so unsuitable out in public. She was a lot more comfortable in the pullover shirts and khaki pants that she wore at The Stocking Stitch. She wouldn’t win any fashion awards, but at least she didn’t have to worry that people might think she believed she could carry off such a look.
Her gaze drifted from the empty lobby area of the restaurant back toward the bar where many of the wedding guests had migrated. Most of the wedding party remained, though Emily Fortune and her brand-new husband, Max Allen, had already departed. As had many of the older guests, leaving the younger crowd to stay on and party into the night.
There wasn’t an unsuitably-clad person in the bunch.
What else would one expect when the bride was part of the wealthy Fortune family? To a one, every single person who’d entered the restaurant that evening had looked like they’d stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine.
Her fingertips searched for her hem and tugged.
“Sarah-Jane.”
The sound of her name had her quickly straightening and she turned to find Marcos Mendoza gesturing from near the kitchen. He managed Red, but was also married to a Fortune of his own, and since that Fortune happened to be the little sister of the bride, he’d also been part of the wedding party. She left her post at the hostess station and hurried toward him. “Yes?”
“I think it’s safe for you to clear out,” he offered. “There’s still a little New Year’s Eve left for you to enjoy.”
She kept her smile in place. “I arranged to be here the entire evening, Marcos.” She certainly didn’t have anything more exciting waiting for her at home. Her roommate, Felicity, was at a party, and there had never been any handsome men in Sarah-Jane’s life who were anxious to ring in anything with her, much less a new year. At least by helping out Maria, she was doing something productive. “I
know Maria wanted all of you to be able to enjoy the wedding as guests rather than staff. I can still help out in the kitchen or something.”
He smiled wryly. “Well, I’m not about to turn down willing help. But you’d be a waste in the kitchen dressed like you are.” Off duty and wedding guest or not, he was still clearly in management mode. He quickly scanned the restaurant, then nodded with decision. “Cindy’s slammed at the bar; if you don’t mind grabbing a tray and starting to collect the empties—”
“I don’t mind,” she assured, and was glad to head that way. Being busy was always preferable to standing around letting her wandering mind conjure up silly fantasies of a faceless man who had eyes only for her.
Ignoring her aching feet, she headed toward the bar, crossing between the crowded tables. She would have had to have been blind not to notice the line of men bellied up to the bar as she rounded it, but she kept her gaze focused on the new task at hand. Cindy, the temporary bartender that Maria had hired for the evening, did look slammed, barely glancing at Sarah-Jane when she found the trays behind the bar. She retrieved one and quickly turned back around, heading to the tables once more. In minutes, she’d filled the tray with abandoned glasses, and she aimed toward the swinging door leading to the kitchen. She had to pass by the line of men at the bar again on the way, and as she did, one of them stuck out his arm behind him.
“Here you go, hon.” Even above the music, his voice was deep and filled with a Southern drawl. The man didn’t glance at her, and she automatically took the glass, looking away shyly when her gaze collided with the dark blond-haired man sitting next to him. “Wyatt, what the hell do you mean you’re not coming back to Atlanta?” she heard him demand.
Not wanting to appear to be eavesdropping, she stacked the glass precariously inside another, and aimed for the kitchen again. The tray was too heavy to carry one handed, and she turned, using her hip to push through the swinging door.
37 Her Highness and the Bodyguard Page 19