by Romancing the Crown Series (13-in-1 bundle) (v1. 0) (lit)
But he still felt cramped. He'd had security around him all his life—it was the price of being the crown prince of Montebello—but it was somehow worse here, in this place. This was America, where such things as royal titles meant little to everyday people, and here he'd always been able to move more freely.
"We will be at the hotel within fifteen minutes, Your Highness."
Lucas suddenly tuned in to the aide's words, realizing he should have been paying more attention.
"Your suite is prepared, and—"
"No."
Gallini blinked. "Your Highness?"
"We'll go to the hospital first."
"But the security hasn't been finalized—"
Lucas shook his head. "The hospital. This has waited too long already."
It was odd, he thought as Gallini passed along the new instructions to the driver, that back here in the still-wild country of the Rockies the quiet obsequiousness of the people who served him seemed out of place. As if the land itself had created the mind-set of its people, that everyone was equal, and should be treated so.
I'm thinking like Joe, he realized.
Joe had been just another guy, an average citizen, his only uniqueness being his condition, that wall he'd come up against every time he tried to remember anything beyond the time when he'd awakened in the wreckage of the small rented plane, after losing the battle with a Colorado blizzard. It had been a wall so blank he'd only known he'd been the pilot because there was no sign anyone else had been aboard.
Joe had been able to go anywhere, do anything, talk to anyone, without worrying about protocol, image or threats to his life. Joe had been able to work happily until he was exhausted without being cautioned about overdoing it. Joe had been able to rant against fate without fear of his complaint being overheard and hitting the tabloids within twelve hours.
Joe had been able to fall in love simply because the right woman was there, not because his parents had arranged a suitable and advantageous match.
An image of Jessie as he'd last seen her, asleep in her huge old brass bed, coalesced with all-too-perfect clarity in his mind. A shaft of winter moonlight turning her long, blond hair to silver as it lay, still tousled from his eager fingers, across both her pillow and his. Her soft lips, slightly parted, curved into a slight smile even in sleep, and if the sheet had slipped one more inch down the soft swell of her breast, one of the lovely pink nipples he'd caressed and sucked and rubbed until she cried out in pleasure would have drawn him irresistibly back to her.
She'd had the look of a woman who'd been well loved, and leaving her had been the hardest thing he'd ever done in his life. Only the fact that he'd known it was the best thing he could do for her had gotten him through it.
Now he was about to see her again, for the first time since that night. And he didn't know what to expect from her.
Or from himself.
* * *
Lucas was aware of the charged atmosphere the moment they went through the hospital doors. He'd once accepted it as a matter of course, the odd reaction people had to royalty. As Joe, ordinary ranch hand, he'd lost the knack, and now that he was Prince Lucas again—or trying to be—he wasn't sure he'd ever get it back. The nanny lagged slightly behind on the order of the bodyguard, whom Lucas had instructed to protect his son at all costs.
Clearly they'd known he was coming. The usual phalanx of security and staff clustered around him before he got halfway through the lobby. He supposed the hospital had planned it out in the hours since they'd entered American air space. He wanted more than anything to tell them all to shut up and simply take him to Jessie, but he no longer had that option. Joe Benson could say anything he wanted to anyone, if he was willing to take the consequences. Lucas Peterson Sebastiani had had the consequences of incautious speech drilled into him since he'd been old enough to talk.
Joe, he thought wearily as he smiled and nodded endlessly, had had it easy.
It seemed forever, although he knew it was only a few minutes, before someone finally gestured him down a hallway to a large, private hospital room.
"Everything is as you wished," a woman with rather false-looking black hair gushed. He thought she had identified herself as some sort of public relations person for the hospital, which was typical. He would much rather deal with the frontline people, but knew this was simply another cost of being who he was.
Joe had definitely had it easy, he thought, realizing even as he thought it the irony of thinking a man who'd lost his entire past had had it easy.
"Thank you," he said as they paused outside the door to the room. He looked at Gallini. "Now, if you will give me a moment, please?"
His father's man was nothing if not well-trained, and he immediately ushered the entourage away. Lucas hesitated, bracing himself, then reached for the door handle. He inched the door open and stepped inside.
She was asleep.
Jessie had always had a fragile look, a look belied by an incredible inner strength. She had constantly amazed him—or rather, Joe—by the amount of work she did on the ranch, the things she was capable of that he never would have believed. If her physical strength wasn't enough, she put that clever mind to work and found another way.
But now she didn't just look fragile. She looked nothing short of frail, and it frightened him. He'd wondered if he would see her differently, now that she was the mother of his son, but all he could see right now was that frailness. The knowledge of how close he'd come to losing her hit with gut-sinking power, that the report of her death had very nearly been true. The dark circles under her eyes and the paleness of her skin as well as the bruises that marked her slender body told him this was a woman who had been through hell. A woman who still had a fight ahead of her to fully recover, physically and emotionally. He could only hope he'd brought the right medicine.
* * *
Jessie woke up slowly. The now-familiar sounds registered first, voices in the hallway, the distant bell of an alarm as some other patient rang for assistance. She held off opening her eyes—as long as she kept them closed she could pretend it wasn't real. She'd never been one to avoid reality, but lately she'd found herself doing it more and more often.
Why not, she muttered inwardly, closing her eyes more tightly, when my reality is just plain rotten ? My baby is gone before I even had the chance to hold him, my own sister betrayed me in the worst possible way, I was held captive in a cellar by a mentally ill man for months....
She smothered a sigh, knowing she was feeling sorry for herself. And even telling herself she had reason didn't make her feel any less guilty about it.
"Jessie?"
For a moment she thought she had gone back to sleep and was once more hearing Joe's low, husky voice whispering her name. God, she'd been such a fool. Falling in love with an itinerant ranch hand was bad enough, but falling in love with a prince? That was idiotic.
"I know you're awake."
It was Joe's voice.
Her body became rigid as knowledge came back to her in a rush. She'd known he was coming, she'd heard the hospital staff buzzing about the impending visit of Montebellan royalty. There was protocol to learn and follow, security arrangements to be made, she'd heard it all. Including the whispers about the tabloid stories of an amnesiac prince who had dallied with a rustic American woman, only to regain his memory and realize she was utterly unsuitable. She'd tried to dismiss it as tabloid sensationalism, but the common-sense logic of it had dug deep into her heart.
The nurses had even come to her for help, full of their excited questions, and she'd laughed so hard even she couldn't miss the hysterical edge that had tinged the sound. And she couldn't explain the absurdity of them asking her how to address a crown prince when she'd known the man only as Joe Benson, a good man with a horse, but one without a past.
And a good man in bed. Oh, yes, she knew that, too.
Great. What a thing to think of just before you have to open your eyes and face him.
With an ef
fort that taxed her minimal stamina just now, she forced the vivid, erotic memories out of her mind. And opened her eyes.
She had thought she was prepared. She'd spent every hour since the call from the Montebellan royal family's advance man getting ready for this moment, telling herself what to expect. But now that she was face-to-face with it—with him—it did no good at all, and her heart broke all over again.
This man standing beside the bed was a stranger. Oh, he had Joe's face, his dark hair, his lean, rangy body, his beautiful deep blue eyes, so much darker than her own. But he was a stranger. Joe had been haunted by what he couldn't remember, but this man's eyes were even more grim, as if the memories he'd regained haunted him even more. This man stood just as straight, yet seemed weighed down, as if with an even greater burden. This man had an air about him that Joe had never had, something she couldn't quite put a name to. And it wasn't just the fact that he was dressed in an elegant, obviously expensive suit and tie, clothing she could never have pictured her ranch lover wearing.
She opened her mouth to say his name. She shut it again when she realized the name she'd been about to say was Joe. She remembered the discussion she'd heard between a couple of the nurses, about what you called a crown prince. Certainly not Joe....
"I suppose I should say 'Hello, Your Highness,"' she finally said.
He winced visibly. "Jessie, don't."
"I'm sorry. Was that not the proper form of address? Or should I simply be flattered that the 'playboy prince' has come to visit?"
She thought he winced again, but he controlled it so quickly she couldn't be sure. She knew she sounded bitchy but she couldn't seem to help it. She was tired, aching in more ways than one, and emotionally spent. She had to gather what defenses she had, and right now they were rather meager.
"I'm still the same man I was on the ranch," he said. "It's just that my name is Lucas, not Joe."
"Are you the same man?" she asked. "Are you really?"
She saw the brief flicker in his expression, and knew she'd struck a nerve.
"Inside I am. Somewhere."
His voice was tinged with such pain that she dropped the sarcasm in her own. And bit back, as she had been doing since the moment he'd walked in, the urgent questions about her baby. If crazy, twisted Gerald had lied, if the Sebastianis had kept the truth from her and her baby wasn't alive and well, she didn't want to know. Not yet.
"Will you answer a question?" she asked him instead.
"Of course."
"When did you know? When exactly did you remember who you were?"
"That's two questions."
She let out a compressed breath as he dodged answering directly.
"I mean, each has a different answer," he said quickly, as if he sensed her reaction.
"Oh?"
"I knew who I had to be when I saw my photograph on the news. But I still didn't remember anything more than what I'd told you."
She frowned. Then why had he left her like that, skulking out in the middle of the night, leaving nothing but a note? She understood now what he'd written, about not being the man she thought he was, but why had he run, if he still had no memories of his past?
She reached for the small control panel on the hospital bed and pushed the button to raise her head. She was quickly reminded of her every bruise and aching muscle, but she hated lying there helpless, looking up at him.
He leaned over, as if alarmed, and she supposed she must have winced at the various pains. She eyed him warily, not wanting him any closer, not now, not while she was battling to sort out her confused emotions. Again as if he'd read her reaction, he backed off.
Joe had been like that, she thought. He'd been seemingly able to read her every mood. So maybe there was some of Joe left in Prince Lucas Sebastian!.
She tried to hide the shiver that went through her as she thought the name, a name she had heard long before the battered, lost man called Joe had come into her life. The name she'd connected with the other glitterati of the world, kings, queens, princes and princesses.
The name she still found so difficult to connect to the man she'd known and fallen in love with during those glorious months on the ranch that was her life.
She'd allowed herself the fantasy, allowed herself to picture herself and Joe making their life on the land her family had lived on for generations, to picture a happy life with another generation of Chambers's to work this ranch she so loved.
But her Joe was the man often called the most eligible royal bachelor in the world. She had known when she first realized who he was that there was no future for them. Prince Lucas Sebastiani was far out of the league of a modest Colorado rancher who loved her quiet, peaceful life. She understood that. But her heart broke a little more on the knowledge that Joe, just plain Joe, had loved that life, too.
When she'd discovered she was pregnant with his child, she'd been both thrilled and terrified.
Terrified, she thought now as she stared up at this stranger with Joe's face, had been the more appropriate reaction of the two.
"Why?" she asked. "Even if you did realize you were... who you are, why did you go like that?"
He lowered his gaze. "The more I saw of the news story, all the media fuss, the more I realized that if I was found at the ranch it would destroy your life there. I can't explain it, but in my gut I knew it would be chaos." He grimaced. "It was like some part of me still remembered what it was like to be constantly hounded by the media, even if I couldn't remember anything else yet."
"But later... you did remember?"
"Jessie," he said quietly, and there was an undertone in his voice that made her hold her breath. "I'll tell you everything, answer every question you have, I promise. But...."
She held her breath once more, waiting in tense silence as he walked back to the door of her hospital room. He opened it partially, and she heard him speak quietly to someone outside, although she couldn't make out the words.
When he turned around, he held a small bundle in his arms. Jessie smothered a gasp. She hadn't thought he would... she just hadn't dared to think about it at all.
She sat up quickly, despite the protest of various body parts. Her heart raced. She forgot to breathe at all. And every last ache and pain was forgotten as Joe—Lucas—laid that bundle gently in her arms.
And at long last, after countless weeks of agony and heartache, she did what she had feared she would never do again.
She looked down into the eyes of her son.
Chapter 2
Lucas felt his heart pound solidly in his chest as he watched the tender reunion. From what he'd been told, Jessie had barely been able to hold baby Luke before he'd been snatched away by the near-bumbling madman to play his pivotal role in the insane scheme hatched by her vicious sister.
He couldn't even begin to imagine what it had been like for her. His own mother, the serene, unruffled Queen Gwendolyn, had been moved to tears at the picture painted by the American investigator's report on how Jessie was found.
"She will be fragile," his mother had warned him before he left, "and you must treat her gently."
His mother, as usual, had been right. Jessie was making no effort to halt the tears that flowed freely down her cheeks. Perhaps she wasn't even aware of them. It wouldn't surprise him, given the absolutely rapt look on her face as she stared down at little Luke. His throat was tight and he was having a hard time holding his own tears back. He knew that feeling so well, that sense of disbelief and wonder. It was a long, silent moment before he could speak.
"I'd been trying to contact you, calling the ranch at different times of day, but you never answered. I was afraid you had... that it was because I'd left you that way, that you were avoiding even talking to me. I couldn't blame you for that, told myself you had every right."
She flicked a glance at him, and he read in her expression that there was at least a little truth to his guess—that if she had been there at the ranch when he'd called, she would have done just that.
When she looked back at the baby, wonder again filled her face, and she lowered her head to nuzzle Luke's dark hair, and reached out to gently touch his cheek. With an effort, knowing it had to be said no matter how much he didn't want to say it, Lucas went on.
"When they told me you'd been killed, that Gerald Hanson had murdered you, I felt like the sun had gone out. When they told me you'd been pregnant, but the child had been stillborn, I no longer cared about anything."
Her gaze came up to him again, and this time she didn't look away.
"I went through the motions, but without purpose. Nothing mattered to me, not my life, my country, my crown. Nothing. And then—" He had to swallow to get the rest out past the lump in his throat. "Then they brought me Luke. And I had a reason to go on."
He reached out and laid a hand on their son's dark head. "He was the only thing that got me through," he said softly. "I had to keep going, for him."
Something warm and beautiful came into her eyes then as she looked up at him. Something he imagined he might have seen had things been normal, if he had been there when his son had been born. He wasn't sure he'd earned that look from her, but he couldn't deny how it made him feel. And how much he wished he had earned it.
She cuddled the baby closer, cooing nonsensically to him. Luke gurgled back, which seemed to delight her. When she looked up at Lucas again, her expression was eager as she asked, "What's he like?"
That took him a little aback. He's like a baby, didn't seem like what she'd want to hear, yet he wasn't sure what else to say. So he thought for a moment, searching for something to tell her.
"He has your smile," he finally said. "And he likes my father's beard."
Jessie smiled at his first words, but at the rest, the smile slowly faded. Lucas saw her changing expression and wondered what he'd said wrong.
"All those weeks I missed," she said, sounding so forlorn his chest tightened. "You know him, even your parents know him, but I don't."