by Dani Collins
“I told you, that’s why I went away. I needed to think. To be sure, but yes. Almost losing my one true love has convinced me.” She leaned to kiss Bernardo’s waxen forehead. “Of course I will marry you, mi amor.”
Her father’s breathing tube was gone and his white lips managed a small, cherishing smile.
“Papa—” She stopped herself, unable to protest their trying again. Her mother would take it as a lack of support.
She didn’t know where to look as she fought letting all her bitter, angry, confused, angst-ridden thoughts fly out of her tight throat.
Ramon moved in close behind her and rubbed his hands on her upper arms.
“Congratulations,” he murmured over her shoulder to Bernardo. “We’re both very happy for you. Francisca, did you spend the night here? You must be exhausted. Let me order a car, so you can go home for some rest. We’re in no hurry to get back to Paris. Isidora will want to sit here awhile and assure herself Bernardo is on his way back to fighting form.” He walked her mother out.
Once they were alone, Isidora met her father’s eyes. Her brimming eyes overflowed in a pair of tracks down her cheeks.
“Papa... She left.” Her hands locked around the bed rail, blurred eyes taking in the equipment that had kept him alive when his heart had given out. Did he not see that this time her mother had, in actual fact, broken his heart?
“I love her,” he whispered. “I have to give us another chance.”
No, he didn’t.
But he would.
“What are you going to do?” he asked, gaze sliding to the door where Ramon had disappeared with her mother.
She shook her head. She couldn’t move back here and watch her parents struggle and implode again, but she couldn’t continue with her farce of an engagement, not when she saw what a physical toll misguided love could take.
She refused to keep giving chances to someone who would never love her back.
* * *
Isidora was introspective all the way back to Paris. Ramon couldn’t blame her. He was a private man himself, especially when a family crisis occupied his thoughts, but he found himself wanting to draw her out. Reassure her.
“Are you upset about your parents reuniting?” he asked as he poured them glasses of wine.
“Hmm?” She seemed to come back from a long way away. “Oh. Worried, I guess. I learned a long time ago that their relationship is not something I can control, though.”
She took the glass he brought her with a murmur of surprise. “Gracias.” She returned to her pensive study of the closed drapes. She wasn’t being cold, just quiet, which seemed worse.
“Do you want to watch a movie or something?”
“No,” she murmured, that absent voice entirely too lethal. “I’m going to pack.”
He heard the words, knew what they meant, had even expected them on a subconscious level, but he wasn’t prepared for them. He wasn’t prepared for the way the handful of short words set him into a barren arctic wasteland, where snow blew in a fuzz of white, making him feel blind and deaf. Abandoned.
“I don’t expect to sleep together,” he said, then realized how stupid it sounded.
Her head came around and her lashes came up, revealing the gray of her eyes to be a bleak mist. Her mouth curled into a mockery of a smile, but the least amused kind. He half expected her to say she hadn’t invited him to.
“I know.”
What did she know? He didn’t know anything. His brain was as empty as his soul. Something in him leaped to thinking he could survive without sex. He would hate it and burn with need, but he could live without holding her as long as she stayed in his life.
“You can’t—” He cut himself off, unable to find the reason she couldn’t leave. His sisters had moved on to new, very safe situations. His brother would handle the sensation caused by his own children. Even the online trolls targeting Isidora had subsided to something to keep an eye on, not truly fear.
“I can’t play pretend anymore.” Her voice held only a small rasp, but it was as gritty as sandpaper across his ears, making every hair on his body stand up. “And it’s never going to be real. Is it?”
It wasn’t a question. She was confirming a fact. Her parents’ relationship was not something she could control and neither was he.
The way she looked at him so nakedly, heart open so he could see how desolate she was in her acceptance of this hard fact, pushed him into the maw of a black hole.
“No,” he agreed. Had to. The kindest thing he could do for her was free her of him once and for all.
Still, the way her breath caught in a hiss made him feel cruel. He wanted to apologize, but she nodded distantly and turned away.
She didn’t see his hand lift, clench into a fist and get forcibly pushed into his pocket.
* * *
She disappeared into thin air.
She went from his apartment to the secure flat above Maison des Jumeaux. He knew that much, but a week later, he realized she had slipped out of Paris and he had no way to trace her. She took over paying her security team and that was that.
It threatened to drive him mad.
Ramon knew this feeling. He hated it above all others. It was precisely the reason he was so careful about allowing people into his heart. Worry gave him a vulnerability, a pressure point. It was a type of gnawing pain that never ceased.
He barely slept, either spending the night conjuring a kind of hell he didn’t want to contemplate, or recalling the heaven he’d had. He woke in an empty bed and checked his phone, saw no messages from her and was forced to wonder where the hell she was. With whom.
Her father said she had taken a PR position with a very exclusive client. He didn’t know who it was, but she had assured him she was happy and well looked after.
After another two weeks, Ramon broke down and called Killian, their security specialist. “I want you to locate Isidora for me.”
After a beat of surprise, Killian admitted with a hint of reluctance, “I can’t fulfill that request.”
“Why the hell not?” Then, with suspicion, he asked “Is she working for you?”
“No.”
“A client?”
“You know I don’t discuss clients.”
“I love this conversation we’re not having, Killian. Can you give me proof of life? Is she well?”
“Yes.”
It was a relief, but a very small one. Killian wouldn’t say where she was or how he knew. He had clients all over the world so Ramon had to continue to speculate.
When Angelique called a few days later, claiming to be homesick, and begged him to visit, he complied. She was always comforting to be around when he was unsettled, but the minute he landed, he was uneasy, wanting to be in Paris in case Isidora turned up there, looking for him.
Why the hell would she look for him? He had savaged her heart yet again.
“I was surprised you agreed to come,” Gili said as he was shown into her obscenely lavish private apartment inside the palace of Zhamair. “When we were here for Sadiq and Hasna’s wedding, you were quite put out at the cultural restrictions, if I recall.”
Her gentle teasing came with a hug that contained volumes of an embroidered dress with a cape. Her head was loosely covered in a beaded scarf, her forehead graced with chains of gold. Her eyes were made up with dramatic dark liner and thick lashes, but this was no stranger. His compassionate sister lurked in her searching gaze as they drew apart.
“Chatting up women doesn’t interest me the way it used to,” he admitted grimly, making a restless turn past an ottoman to a tinted window that overlooked the well-watered grounds. “Have you spoken to her?”
“Who?”
He sent her an impatient look. “Isidora. Trella said you suspected more was going on with our pretend engagement. Has she been in touch? Said anything about where she is? What she’s doing?”
Gili adjusted the fold of her scarf alongside her face. “When she called to ask to use the P
aris flat, she said things didn’t work out between you, but she has always drawn a line between our friendship and her feelings for you.” She moved to sit and carefully arranged her skirt. “She has never once tried to prevail on us the way other women have, to try to get near you and Henri. That’s why we love her.”
Love. He shoved his hands in his pockets, fearful that that was the root cause of his discontent. He used to like using Gili as a sounding board, but suddenly he was loath to open up. The things he had shared with Isidora, the way she made him feel, were far too personal to reveal to even his most trusted sibling.
“It’s why I wanted to help her when you broke her heart yet again,” she murmured.
He whirled around. “You—What do you mean? You sent her somewhere?” His brain clicked to the answer very quickly. It made perfect sense, but he still couldn’t believe it. “She’s here? Working for you?” The sense of betrayal was startlingly sharp. “Why would you keep that from me? Does Henri know? Does Trella?” His tone was a lot harsher than he would normally take with her.
Rather than tear up, however, his sister folded her hands in her lap and set her chin, regal in the way she regarded him. Angelique was always toughest when defending those she loved and right now, he knew exactly whose side she was on. Not his.
“She deserves a chance to heal in private, after you made such a spectacle of her.”
He grimaced and looked away.
“But when Killian said you were concerned about her, I thought I should let you know that she’s perfectly safe. She has a room here in the palace and forms part of my entourage when I have royal duties. We’re all under royal guard. She’s safer here than she would be anywhere,” she mused. Then she grinned like her old self as she confided, “I almost miss the tourists and the selfies. The press is so respectful here, it’s kind of funny.”
He was glad for her and wanted to hear more about that, but not right this second. “I want to see her.”
She sobered. “Why? Just because she hasn’t given me details doesn’t mean I can’t see how miserable she is. If I thought you loved her—”
“I do.” It came out through clenched teeth—he’d resisted to the very last second. It came with a wrench that reframed his heart, cracking the vault, spinning the dials, opening to allow her in, then sitting agape. That aching sense of exposure was nearly more than he could stand. “Take me to her, Gili. Now.”
* * *
Isidora was living a fairy tale, the kind that took place over a thousand and one nights.
Her job was much the same work she’d been doing for all the Sauveterres, but she focused on Angelique now. Kasim had a team that handled his palace concerns, but she had been hired to comb the English-language sites, addressing rumors that specifically affected his wife, especially anything that had the potential to reflect poorly on her, his country, or his ability to rule.
From a career standpoint, the job outshone even the Sauveterre name on her CV. On a more personal level, while her boss was a man, she rarely needed to speak directly to him. She had two female coworkers and, since fraternization between the sexes was discouraged, rarely spoke to any men at all.
She was making new friends and helped keep Gili from feeling homesick. They lunched together a few times a week, practiced their Arabic on each other, visited the spa together and traded opinions on the designs Angelique’s team sent from Paris. Sometimes, if Kasim was tied up for an evening, they ordered a Western movie and watched it in Angelique’s private chamber.
Isidora thought her own lodging plenty fit for royalty. It was ridiculously beautiful for a midmanagement PR clerk, not that she would dare to say so and risk being kicked out of it. More of a bachelor suite, the sleeping area was part of the main room, but the space was enormous. It had marble floors, a lounge and dining area, and a pretty screen to hide the dressing area that also led to an attached bathroom.
It was like living in a hotel. She ordered food by speaking to her personal attendant and her meal was delivered hot and fresh at the requested hour. Tonight she said, “I’ll call you when I’ve finished my swim.”
Her private bathing pool was too tiny for laps. She could walk end to end in its waist-deep, kidney shape in less than ten steps. It sat under a trellis in a walled garden, where a handful of birds sang and fluttered amid a riot of colorful blooms from climbing roses to dangling fuchsias. The fragrances off the lavender and lemongrass, cloves and saffron, were exotic and dream-inducing—it was the perfect place to relax.
She poured herself a glass of cordial, stripped naked next to the pool and waded down the steps. As the water lapped at her knees, then her thighs, she sat—as she did every evening—and let the agony she ignored all day overtake her.
Because this beautiful life did not make her happy. She missed Ramon. So badly. The tears coming out of her eyes were drawn directly from her heart, squeezed out with each clenched beat.
With her elbows sitting in the water, braced on her submerged thighs, she let her tears run through her fingertips, certain she was what filled this pool every day, not the underground spring her attendant claimed.
And when she heard a footstep, and flung up her head, mortified to have her attendant catch her like this, she was even more appalled to see a man. The man who had reduced her to this.
She cupped some water, splashed her face to clear her eyes and, yes, Ramon still stood there in a pair of his scrupulously tailored pants. His crisp button shirt was open at the throat and strained across his chest as he set his hands on his hips.
She couldn’t meet his eyes. She ducked her head, crossed her arms across her front and drew her feet up a step. “What are you doing here?”
“Visiting my sister,” he said flatly.
“Wrong room.”
“I’ve been worried about you.”
“I don’t want to talk to you, Ramon. Not like this. Let me get dressed.”
In her line of vision, she saw him toe off his shoes, then his pants skimmed down and landed in a ball of charcoal, quickly topped by navy colored shorts and a pair of black socks.
She clenched her eyes shut, not watching the rest. “What are you doing?”
“You sounded uncomfortable that you were naked and I was clothed.” The water rippled and he sighed. “This is nice.”
“You are such an impossible man.” She hid her face behind her hands, huddling to protect her nudity, still feeling teary, but for an entirely different reason. Some horribly sick part of her wanted to hope, but it was so futile. “They have pools elsewhere, you know. With your connections, I’m sure you could get your own right here in the palace.”
“I spoke to your father. He sounds well.”
Her parents were muddling along, waiting until her father was fully recovered to plan their wedding. They weren’t yet falling apart, but it was early days. She wouldn’t get her hopes up any more than she would with Ramon. Why was he here?
“Isidora. Look at me.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ll talk me in to whatever stupid thing you want me to do and I refuse, okay? You have come to the well once too often.”
The water swished and she mentally pictured his strapping form gliding toward her. Her pulse tripped. Water swayed against her, licking sensually, teasing her into wanting to open her eyes.
“Ask me why I spoke to your father.” His voice was at the far end of the pool.
“No.”
“No matter what I ask of you, you’re going to say no? Is that what I’m hearing?”
“That sounds like a trick question. I refuse to answer.”
“The trouble with an intelligent woman,” he muttered.
“Better than being a stupid one.”
“Do you feel stupid for loving me?”
Present tense, like he knew how deeply she had fallen for him. Fresh tears pressed the backs of her aching eyes.
“No.” She finally lifted her head and opened her eyes.
>
He had his arms outstretched against the pool’s edge, shoulders gleaming, hair wet, cheeks stubbled and rugged. The desert sky was fading to mauve and the pinprick strings of white lights that wound through the trees were coming on.
It was magic, pure magic.
Not real.
A line of fire stretched from the back of her throat to spread burning fingers around the walls of her heart. “But I would be stupid to let you take advantage of my love again. I won’t, Ramon.”
“I want you to marry me, Isidora.”
“That’s—” Cruel. “Why? What happened? Never mind. I don’t want to know. No, Ramon.” She started to rise.
He pushed off from the end, striking through the water like a crocodile, barely giving her time to react beyond pressing backward into the hard edge of the step behind her before he was right there, eye-to-eye, arms caging her, water sluicing a pattern down his chest hair between them.
“Why not?”
“Because I won’t go through that again.” She put up a hand to ward him off, but he eased onto one elbow, then another, so he bracketed her very tightly, practically nose-to-nose.
“We’re good together.”
“Sexually? You can get that anywhere.”
He sizzled with temper as he pierced her with a hot, green stare. “No. I can’t. It’s different when you love someone.”
Her heart flipped and tumbled, creating such a jumble of emotions in her that she pressed his shoulder, silently begging for space to assess and understand. To keep her head so she wouldn’t follow her foolish heart into believing the impossible.
“Don’t—don’t say that. You don’t even know me. You don’t—”
“I know you.” So askance.
“You know what I like in bed.” She couldn’t say it without her stupid voice creaking and, yes, she was starkly aware they were naked. Why the heck was he doing this to her like this, keeping her off-kilter and completely defenseless? She was half seduced by his nearness alone and refused to look down, even though she was quite sure she knew what that firm shape was that was nudging her thigh.
“You—” She cleared her throat and kept her hand firmly on his shoulder, holding him off. “You know that you can talk me in to anything. You don’t want a wife. You want a PA who puts out.”