But her legs refused to work. Her hands were clasped together before her as if she were praying, and she could not force herself to wrench her gaze away from his. She was not sure she was even breathing. Time seemed to stand still, fold in on itself, and all she knew was that sorrow in her heart and the way it reflected back at her from his bittersweet gaze.
She had cut that last silver line of hope, of the dream of him, and without it, she knew suddenly, with a deep certainty that seemed to echo inside of her and grow louder with every passing second, she was as unknowable to herself as he was without the great long parade of his history.
He was her history. He had made her as surely as she had made herself; they were entwined and entangled, and she did not know how to exist without it. Without him. She could as soon exist without air.
Thinking that, she released the breath she had been holding and inhaled deeply, as if for the first time.
“I cannot seem to leave you,” she whispered then, something like grief washing through her as if it was overflowing from within, as if it was a poison, as if it had to get out. “I have been trying to do it for years, and this time even my legs have given out on me.”
“I will carry you wherever you want to go, if you wish it,” he said gruffly, and she could see that he meant it, this difficult man, however little he wished her to leave.
He would do it because he was honorable, for all she had longed to believe otherwise. He was not his father. He was not a monster. He was, perhaps, as conflicted and confused as she had always been.
Then she could not hold any of it at bay any longer—the sweltering heat and storm of all that sorrow, all that pain, all their years and wars and battles and passions—and she bent over with the force of it, sobbing it out into the plush carpet beneath her.
“Come now,” he murmured, coming closer.
But still she wept, as if she would never stop, as if she was only beginning, as if she could make sense of the past five years through the salt of her tears.
“Bethany,” he said softly as his arms went around her and lifted her. “Please.”
But she sobbed against the wide wall of his chest, his scent and heat enveloping her like an embrace, warming her, caressing her, keeping her safe while the storm raged on.
“Come, luce mio; do not cry like this,” he murmured close to her ear, pressing a kiss against the flushed skin of her cheek, soothing her the only way he could. “I beg you.”
But she could not seem to stop. Not when he lapsed into crooning, comforting Italian. Not when he carried her to the window seat in the bedchamber and settled her on his lap, holding her close and murmuring into her ear. She cried and cried, and she could not make herself stop it any more than she had been able to make herself stand up and walk out the door.
Instead, she simply let him hold her.
“This is my fault,” he said when she had been quiet against him, in his arms, for a time. Bethany tilted her head back and searched his face. He held her close to his chest, but for once she did not worry that this made her appear the child. She felt …comforted by the steady beat of his heart. By his warmth. By his muscled strength surrounding her.
“If there is fault,” she said, her voice raspy in the aftermath of the storm that had shaken her, her eyes feeling swollen and bruised. “Then there is enough to go around.”
“I am the perfect prince,” he said, his tone heavily sardonic, and for once she knew he aimed it at himself. “I have spent my life practicing, so one should hope I’ve succeeded at it after all these years.” His eyes blazed at her, alight with a kind of determination she had never seen before. “But I am not much of a man.”
“I love you,” she said unevenly.
The fear was gone, wept away. She was washed clean. Only the truth remained, shining hot and bright inside her like a beacon. Like something profoundly, life-alteringly simple. She loved him. What else mattered?
She sat forward, turning so she could face him on the window seat. “That does not mean it is not complicated. That it is not painful. But I have always loved you.”
“I know,” he said, a ghost of his arrogant smile curving his sensual lips, though his eyes blazed and his face filled with an emotion that made her stomach clench. “But I did not think that mattered to you any longer.”
“Of course it matters to me!” she whispered. He reached over and traced her mouth with one long, tapered finger, elegant as the rest of him. He smoothed his fingertip along the bow of her upper lip, the curve of her lower lip, and Bethany shivered slightly as that same familiar fire scorched her from within, as it always did. Always. Leo smiled slightly and drew his hand away.
Bethany stared at him for a long moment, as if she could see the answer to all of their problems tattooed across his beautiful, regal, beloved face. She was not sure what she felt, or how. All she knew was that once again she could not take the final step that would separate her from him. She could not do it. And every second that she did not leave, that she let him hold her, that she breathed in and felt him do the same beside her, that resilient little thread of hope stretched out between them. And grew thicker. Tougher. It would be that much harder to break the next time.
Maybe, a little voice whispered inside her heart, it is not supposed to break at all.
She had wanted him to be all things to her, when he had wanted the chance to be no more than a man. She had wanted him to keep her safe, but there was nothing safe about loving like this—so deep and so hard that it had altered her completely, changed her, made her into someone she had not recognized for years. She had feared it for so long, fought it, fought him, desperate to keep herself from disappearing in him. Because that was what she’d always been so scared would happen if she succumbed to the power of her feelings. He was so much bigger than life, so much more than she had ever dared dream … Of course she had thought he would consume her whole.
But what if that was not what happened at all?
Today she had seen Leo as she never had before. Perhaps he had always been this way and she had been too overawed by him to note it, but today she realized that she had the power to hurt him as much as he had hurt her. It did not make her happy or proud of herself. But, as she sat and looked at him, she felt that shifting once again, as if they sat on a fault line and the earth was readjusting itself beneath them. If he did not hold all the power, then that meant she could only disappear if she chose to let that happen. If she did it herself, to herself. But …what if she did not?
What then?
She was not a puppet, she thought, the words feeling almost nonsensical, impossible, in her own head even as they resounded like truth in her gut. But a partner. His partner.
The idea of it all but took her breath away.
“If you are leaving me,” he said, his voice low and rough, his gaze intent on hers as if he was inside of her already, as if he could read her as easily as he read her body, as if he knew what she was thinking, “then you must do it soon, Bethany. I am only a man, and not a particularly decent one, I do not think. I fear my good intentions are few and far between where you are concerned.”
She felt the tug in her heart, the silver string wrapping around her again and again, tying her securely to him as it always had. She understood, in a way she never had before, that she could choose.
Every moment of the day, every moment with this man, she could choose: hope or fear. One would help her fly and one would shut her down. She had spent three years in fear, all alone in that house in Toronto. She had spent all the scared and lonely nights she needed to spend. Did she really want to spend the rest of her life that way, loving this man and keeping herself apart from him because it scared her too much to be with him?
What kind of life was that?
She sat up straighter and could not look at him. She lifted up the hands that she’d kept clenched into fists while the sobs had wracked her body and she’d cried out all the years of sorrow.
“But what if I choose t
o stay?” she asked, her voice the barest whisper, though she saw each word hit him like an electrical bolt. His dark eyes blazed with a fierce hope she recognized. She felt it hitch in her own chest.
And then, slowly, she opened up her hands until he could see her palms and what lay in each of them—what she had scrabbled to find in the pocket of the purse where she’d secreted them. What she had held on to even as she fell to her knees.
In one palm lay a simple platinum band. In the other, an exquisite sapphire ring.
“I was given to understand you got rid of them,” Leo said with an echo of his usual arch amusement, but he picked up the rings, holding them in his much bigger hands as if he was seeing them for the first time. As if he had not selected them himself from the Cartier boutique in Waikiki. As if he had not slid them onto her trembling fingers while she’d cried tears of joy through a smile so wide it had made her jaw ache.
“I refused to wear them,” Bethany admitted, looking at him and pushing through the cloud of fear—because what was a little more vulnerability at this point? What was left to protect, if she lost him and herself? “But I could not be without them.”
It was one more truth she had ignored. One more clue. One more part of a deep, abiding and painful love she had given up on, called hopeless, but had never quite managed to let go.
His eyes met hers then and Bethany felt exactly the same way she’d felt when they’d married on that private beach in Hawaii years ago. Holy. Sacred.
Right—despite everything.
They had stripped everything away, and here they still were. She could choose to fear, or she could choose to hope. She could choose—and the truth was that her heart had chosen long ago.
It had never wavered, even when she had—especially then.
“Allow me,” Leo said.
Then, just as he had so long ago, he put the rings back where they belonged. One by one, he gently slid them onto Bethany’s left hand. When they were secured, he laced his fingers tight to hers and drew her hand to his mouth.
“Do we start again?” he asked, his brown eyes calm and clear but so alive. So filled with hope, with a love she thought she just might dare to believe. To return. Bethany felt his gaze move through her, down to her toes.
Such a simple question, for such a complicated endeavor. But what else could they do? They could not seem to live apart. They could not seem to leave. Perhaps it was time to see what they could build together.
“We cannot seem to end,” she said, but her heart felt full, and the threads that tied her to him felt intricately knotted, tangled and tight. At last, she admitted to herself that she wanted it that way. That on some level she always had.
“Then we might as well begin,” he said huskily. A new promise. “Again and again.”
“Until we get it right,” Bethany vowed, her voice soft and sure.
He leaned closer and pressed his mouth to hers, making it right. Lighting the great fire that had always burned within them.
Sealing the promises they’d made so long ago. Sealing their fate.
Setting them both free.
ISBN: 978 1 472 09579 4
ONE RECKLESS DECISION
Majesty, Mistress … Missing Heir © 2010 Caitlin Crews
Katrakis’s Last Mistress © 2010 Caitlin Crews
Princess From the Past © 2011 Caitlin Crews
Published in Great Britain
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited
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One Reckless Decision (Mills & Boon M&B): Majesty, Mistress...Missing Heir / Katrakis's Last Mistress / Princess From the Past (Special Releases) Page 48