by Romancing the Crown Series (13-in-1 bundle) (v1. 0) (lit)
"Neither of those names has anything to do with my parentage or my mother," he explained with more patience than she expected. "They have to do with me being an idiot."
Once more she blinked, feeling oddly unbalanced. "But you're not an idiot."
"Yes, I am. Trust me."
She did trust him—there was no doubt of that—but she also knew he was quite intelligent and competent … at least, when not dealing with her. She gazed up at him, her eyes wide, and softly said, "I trust you, Tyler. Honestly, I do."
Chapter 6
H er words, quiet, simple but sincere, made a lump form in Tyler's throat. He knew well what a difficult proposition trust was—knew how many people gave it, lost it, betrayed it. He imagined Anna, sheltered though she was, had seen her own trust betrayed more than most, and yet she could so innocently offer it to him.
And he didn't deserve it. He'd spent half their time together wishing she were anywhere in the world but with him, and the other half wanting to make love to her until they both forgot who and what she was. A princess. The treasured daughter of his father's friend. A virgin. And the woman he was lying to. Who didn't know he'd already betrayed her by calling her father yesterday from Clarkston.
Slowly he became aware of her pulse, steady and strong beneath his fingers. He looked down at her wrist, so small and delicate in his grip, and knew he should let go. Should quit touching her so much. Quit looking at her. Quit wanting her.
Yeah, and for his next trick, he would stop the snow, make the sun rise at midnight and turn the dead of winter into hot, hot summer.
"You said you wanted to speak with me," she said politely. He vaguely remembered telling her that after she'd dropped her bombshell and before he'd called her a spoiled brat. After she'd tried to slap him and before he'd grabbed her. After he'd brought that stricken look to her face that had wiped away her smile and dimmed the light in her eyes, that had made her full lower lip tremble and left him feeling as if he'd just kicked an innocent puppy.
Sliding his hand down until his fingers were twined with hers, he drew her back to the sofa, seated her at one end, then went to stand in front of the stone fireplace. The mantel consisted of a massive piece of wood, rough-hewn with the axe marks still visible, and when he touched it, it was warm with the heat from the fire. Lined up along it were pieces of locally made pottery, offered for sale in the motel office. He drew his finger over the graceful curves of one tall vase, then took a breath and faced Anna.
"You asked me a question on the way back into town this afternoon. I … didn't answer it."
"I asked you several questions. You didn't answer any of them." She smiled faintly, and he realized that even without looking at her, he would have known she was smiling. He had come to recognize it in her voice. "You make a habit of doing that."
"I suppose I do. I'm sorry about that." After a moment, he sat down at the opposite end of the sofa, and she immediately turned to face him. Part of him wished she hadn't. "You asked how important this job is to me—whether I enjoyed it and could see myself still doing it in ten or twenty years. My father decided when he was a little kid that he was going to be an air force pilot when he grew up, and damned if he didn't do it. When he retired, he decided to start a successful business, and he did that, too. He always knew exactly what he wanted, and he always got it
"Well, except when he tried to convince Kyle not to go into the service and to take over the company instead. The only reason he lost then was because Kyle was just as determined and stubborn. Jake's like that, too. They're all so sure of what they want and how to get it—so confident and single-minded and decisive. And then there's me."
Though he wasn't looking at her, he knew Anna's gaze hadn't wavered. He wished it would—wished she would turn those dark eyes toward the fire or the snow outside. He'd never talked to anyone about this—not the mother who'd raised him while his father was off saving the world or the brothers who'd taught him all the important things that their old man hadn't been around for, like throwing a football, sliding into home and being prepared for a date. Certainly not with Edward himself on those occasions he was home.
"My mother says I never knew what I wanted from one day to the next. I never could decide which toys I wanted for Christmas, which food was my favorite, which girl I liked better, which college I wanted to go to or what I wanted to major in while I was there. After I graduated, I never knew what I wanted to be doing next month, much less next year. All those jobs I told you I'd done … some of them I knew were just temporary, but most of them I really intended to stick with … at least until I got bored. I started and quit or got fired from so many jobs that it got to be a family joke. It made Mom and Dad crazy. Hell, it made me crazy. She thought I was wasting my life. He couldn't decide whether I just wasn't living up to my potential, or whether somehow a son of his could possibly not have any potential."
"Not everyone is born knowing what they want to do or who they should be."
"Every Ramsey is," he said with a wry grin. He'd always felt as if he didn't quite fit in. He'd been the only one without ambition in a family driven by it. The only one content to drift where life took him rather than forge his own trail over, around or preferably through any obstacles. The only procrastinator in a bunch of hard-chargers. Hell, he didn't even look like the other men in the family. Kyle and Jake had their father's brown hair and gray eyes, while his hair was auburn and his eyes green, like their mother's.
He'd stuck out like a sore thumb. The indecisive one. The unreliable one. The disappointment.
"I don't know what prompted my old man to offer me a job with the Noble Men. Maybe he thought it would force me to grow up, or maybe it was his last attempt to turn me into a credit to the Ramsey name. Hell, maybe he wanted to prove once and for all that I couldn't cut it in his world. Whatever his reason, I like what I do … finally. It's important to me—damned important—and I would very much like to be doing it in ten or twenty years. But … I can't afford any mistakes. This is my last chance to be a son he can be proud of, and if I blow it, that'll be it. I can't screw up."
Finally he looked at her. She was studying him with sympathy and other emotions he didn't want to identify. "Do you understand what I'm saying, Annie?"
"Yes," she murmured even as she shook her head no.
"This job is the most important thing in my life," he said quietly, carefully. "I have to concentrate on what I'm doing. I have to prove myself to my father, to the Noble Men, and to myself. I don't have time for distractions."
"And I'm a distraction."
"Yes." Hell, yes. Of the worst kind. "That's why I reacted so … strongly when you said Christina believes we're…" He couldn't bring himself to say the word and half expected her to finish it for him. It's not such a difficult word. Lovers. See? But she didn't speak up, so he left the sentence hanging. "If she lets it slip to your father or anyone else, I'm screwed. I can kiss my career goodbye. I can't let that happen, Annie, not when it took me so damn long to figure out what I wanted to do. Now do you understand what I'm saying?"
For a long time, she sat still, her dark eyes shadowed with hurt. Then she raised her chin an inch or so, straightened her spine a few degrees and, through sheer will, apparently, forced a wintry chill into her gaze that could hold its own against the cold outside. "You flatter yourself, Tyler," she said frostily. "No one who knows me would believe that I might seriously entertain the notion of a relationship with you. Even Christina believes I'm merely using you for sex. After all, you're already on my father's payroll. Why shouldn't I get his money's worth from you? That's what she did with Jack Dalton."
Tyler's gaze narrowed, and a pain started deep in his gut. "She married Jack Dalton."
She laughed at his unspoken suggestion that if it happened to Christina and Jack, it could happen to them. "My father has princes, nobility and sheiks asking for my hand in marriage on a regular basis. They offer power, riches, influence and alliances that could strengthen Montebello wel
l into the next century. What could the Ramsey family joke offer that could possibly compare?"
Her words hurt more deeply than he'd thought they could. It was only the tears suddenly brimming in her eyes that stopped him from retaliating. There was no need to retaliate. He'd already hurt her enough.
He stood up, retrieved the remote control from cabinet, turned on the television and started the tape. then laid the unit on the coffee table. Then he went into the kitchen, through the well-stocked pantry and out the back door, where the cold hit him with the force of a freight train.
Snow that had drifted onto the porch soaked through his socks, but he hardly noticed. Except for a narrow passageway to the steps, the entire porch was stacked with firewood. Miz Gemma Lee believed in being prepared for just about anything. Come the spring thaw, she didn't want to find any of her paying guests long past suffering from lack of heat or food. That might give the place a bad name.
For a long time he stood there, staring out at the snow. Periodically a crack would echo through the forest as a tree branch gave way under a load too heavy to bear. If he weren't too cold to feel much besides rotten, he might consider doing the same.
He hadn't meant to hurt Anna. He'd just wanted her to understand why he'd reacted the way he did in the kitchen. He'd wanted her to know that no matter how damn much he wanted her, no matter how much she enjoyed amusing herself with him, there couldn't be anything between them. How the hell had he wound up bringing her to tears?
Shivering, he grabbed a load of logs and stacked them on the pantry floor. Before heading out for more, he strained to hear something besides the TV—but please, no tears, no sobs, no whimpers. Laughter would be good. Angry curses would be better.
He couldn't make out a thing.
He brought in several more loads of firewood, then closed the door with more force—more noise—than necessary and jerked off his wet socks before cautiously entering the kitchen. There he started the instant brown rice cooking, then sneaked a look over his shoulder at the princess. She sat in the same rigid, regal position, her attention riveted on the TV. If she was crying, it was the quietest, most elegant crying he'd ever witnessed.
When the timer rang for the rice, he turned off the heat, then removed the chicken from the oven. Hoping he sounded halfway normal, he called, "Dinner's ready," without looking in her direction, then began transferring the food to plates.
"You may serve my meal over here," she announced coolly. Tyler's first impulse was to snidely point out that he wasn't her servant, but he clamped his jaw shut before the first word escaped. If acting out the part of spoiled princess helped her to cope, more power to her. She could put him in his rightful place, and he could get pissed off with her condescension and eventually get back to thinking of her as the royal pain in the ass—that he had to endure until this job was over. Maybe.
Like a good servant, he located a serving tray in the pantry, then carried her food, utensils and diet pop to her. He passed behind the couch, so he wouldn't block her view of the television, and offered her the tray without a word. Seconds ticked past—five, ten, then twenty—before she finally deigned to raise one hand in a gesture so careless it was insulting.
"Place it there."
He considered placing it upside down over her head and seeing how she liked wearing chicken and rice a la Beatrice. But once again he resisted the impulse, set the tray on the end table, then returned to the kitchen for his own food.
He ate at the dining table, his fork in one hand, his book in the other, but by the time he finished eating, he hadn't read more than ten words or understood even one of them. He'd just stood up to return his dishes to the kitchen when she broke her silence once more.
"Take this away. I'm finished."
Grinding his teeth, he collected the plate and found she hadn't taken more than a few bites of her meal. His patience strained, he dumped the food into the trash, then gripped the edge of the sink with both hands. He could get through this. He was a Ramsey, and Ramseys could endure anything.
In fact, when he got through this, he had no doubt he would have suffered so much that he just might be the toughest damn Ramsey of them all.
* * *
The worst of the snow dissipated sometime in the night, though Anna could just barely tell that when she awakened Saturday morning. The long, narrow windows that circled the sleeping loft were coated with snow on the outside and a thin layer of ice on the inside. She felt something of a kinship with the glass. Though she had no snow on her outside at the moment, she certainly had the ice inside.
If she were home in Montebello, she would go to her favorite spot on the island, a small beach not far from the palace, made private by rocky outcroppings on either end and kept that way by palace security. As a child, she'd learned to swim there and had built castles in the sand—as if the real-life castle in the distance could have been improved upon. As a teenager, she'd passed many solitary hours there, reading, letting the sound of the waves relax her and sweep her away to someplace in her imagination. Now she needed to lie there under the Mediterranean sun and absorb the heat, the peace, the easiness, of nature into her heart and her soul.
Instead she was snowed in, in a cabin that was much too small for two, that had lost all of its charm in the aftermath of last evening's conversation.
She was ashamed that she'd taken words Tyler had said to her in confidence and thrown them back for no reason other than to wound him. If asked, she would have been confident she was above such petty, mean-spirited behavior. It wasn't a welcome discovery to find that she would have been wrong.
Down below the sofa springs creaked as he shifted positions. When he'd first informed her they would be sharing the cabin, she would have happily offered to share the bed, too, and when he turned that down, she would have offered to sleep on the sofa, though he likely would have turned that down, also. By the time bedtime had arrived, they'd been ignoring each other too carefully to even speak a civil good-night. She had lain in the center of her comfy, queen-size bed—princess-size, in this case, she thought with a faint smile—and hoped he would sleep poorly and awaken stiff and cranky, and know he had only himself to blame.
She should he ashamed of that pettiness; as well … but she wasn't.
The sofa creaked again, followed by a rustle of bedding and a grunt Rolling onto her side on the edge of the bed, she could just see Tyler, standing beside the sofa, arms over his head in a stretch. His arms were bare, and so was he—at least, what little she could see, though she had no doubt he wore something. Sleep naked in the same cabin in which she slept? Ha! No doubt, be would be appalled by the very idea.
She drew her covers tighter, tucking them high around her neck so camouflage would be a simple matter if he should look in her direction, and she watched as he moved to the fireplace. Last night's fire had burned down to a pile of ash-coated embers that showered as he tossed a couple of logs on top, then held his hands out as if to coax them into flame.
She could see now that she'd been right—he'd slept in the same disreputable sweat pants he'd worn the evening past. Of course, that could have been for warmth as well as propriety. Heat rose, and while she'd been toasty comfortable in the loft, no doubt the temperature had been significantly cooler downstairs. The waistband of the garment had slipped below his own waist and gave her plenty to peer at through barely opened eyes—lots of skin a few shades lighter than her own, nicely developed muscles, broad shoulders, strong arms.
Interesting how her own temperature was starting to increase. Once the logs were burning brightly, he disappeared into the kitchen, then returned a moment later with a cup of microwaved coffee. This time he presented his back to the flames, which presented her with a nice view of his front. He was the epitome of lean, strong and healthy … and he had placed himself off-limits to her.
Slowly, when it seemed he'd run out of anything else to look at, he raised his gaze to the loft. She closed her eyes quickly and regulated her breathing. stea
dy and easy. She needed a plan for dealing with him over the next few days. She couldn't lie in bed and ogle him every time he wasn't looking, and she certainly couldn't pretend to be asleep every time she thought he might glance at her.
She could be civil to him, though it was the last thing on earth she wanted. Her mother had taught her to be most pleasant with those whom she liked least. She'd witnessed the queen playing gracious hostess with people who, had they not held some position of authority somewhere, wouldn't have been deemed fit to venture into polite society. If the queen could do it, so could Anna. After all, in spite of her insult the previous night, Tyler was neither ill-mannered nor a boor. He was an exceedingly polite man with an excessive sense of duty and a compelling motivation to do his job properly. He would make it easy for her to be gracious.
Unable to put off her morning needs much longer, she made a big show of awakening—rolling onto her back, fumbling with the alarm clock, yawning loudly—then sat up and swung her feet to the floor. A sidelong glance down below showed that he'd hastily turned his back to her.
A shower did much to energize her. After she dressed in jeans and a Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt, she took socks and a pair of boots downstairs with her and left them near the coffee table. "Good morning," she said, reminding herself to emulate her mother. Cool, polite, gracious.
Tyler had pulled on his own shirt and was in the small kitchen, and his tone was guarded when he replied, "Morning. What do you want for breakfast?"
She considered everything they'd bought the previous afternoon-bacon, eggs, ham, cardboard tubes containing preformed biscuits, cereal and milk—and said, "Ice cream with fudge topping."
He blinked once before opening the freezer, then placing a carton of ice cream next to the jar of topping. She knew, though not from experience, that ice cream was not so unusual a Saturday morning breakfast for children in America, but apparently not in the Ramsey household. Beatrice Ramsey, according to Tyler, was a very good cook—no doubt forced to become one by her family of big healthy strong males with healthy strong appetites. Well, she was a healthy, pampered female who didn't fly planes, handle weapons, run miles, lift weights or save the world, and she wanted ice cream.