by Kendrick, Sharon; Lawrence, Kim; Crews, Caitlin; Milburne, Melanie
If her father thought she was a sympathetic figure now, she thought darkly, he would be delighted when she announced to him and the rest of the world that she was going to be a mother.
A single mother. A princess destined for his throne, with child.
Her thoughts went around and around, keeping her up at night and distracting her by day. And there were never any answers or, rather, there were never any good answers. There were never any answers she liked. Shame and scandal were sure to follow anything she did, or didn’t do for that matter. There was no possible way out.
And even if she somehow summoned the courage to tell her father, then tell the kingdom, and then, far more intimidating, tell Achilles—what did she think might happen then? As a princess with no path to the throne, she had been expected to marry the Crown Prince of Tissely. As the queen of Murin, by contrast, she would be expected to marry someone of equally impeccable lineage. There were only so many such men alive, Valentina had met all of them, and none of them were Achilles.
No one was Achilles. And that shouldn’t have mattered to her. There were so many other things she needed to worry about, like this baby she was going to be able to hide for only so long.
But he was the only thing she could seem to think about, even so.
The gala was as expected. These things never varied much, which was both their charm and their curse. There was an endless receiving line. There were music and speeches, and extremely well-dressed people milling about complimenting each other on the same old things. A self-congratulatory trill of laughter here, a fake smile there, and so it went. Dignitaries and socialites rubbing shoulders and making money for this or that cause the way they always did.
Valentina danced with her father, as tradition dictated. She was pleased to see Rodolfo and Natalie, freshly back from their honeymoon and exuding exactly the sort of happy charm that made everyone root for them, Valentina included.
Valentina especially, she thought.
She excused herself from the crush as soon as she could, making her way out onto one of the great balconies in this water palace that took its cues from far-off Venice and overlooked the sea. Valentina stood there for a long while, helplessly reliving all the things she’d been so sure she could lock away once she came back home. Over and over—
And she thought that her memory had gotten particularly sharp—and cruel. Because when she heard a foot against the stones behind her and turned, her smile already in place the way it always was, she saw him.
But it couldn’t be him, of course. She assumed it was her hormones mixing with her memory and making her conjure him up out of the night air.
“Princess Valentina,” Achilles said, and his voice was low, a banked fury simmering there in every syllable. “I do not believe we have been introduced properly. You are apparently of royal blood you sought to conceal and I am the man you thought you could fool. How pleasant to finally make your acquaintance.”
It occurred to her that she wasn’t fantasizing at the same moment it really hit her that he was standing before her. Her heart punched at her. Her stomach sank.
And in the place she was molten for him, instantly, she ached. Oh, how she ached.
“Achilles…”
But her throat was so dry. It was in marked contrast to all that emotion that flooded her eyes at the sight of him that she couldn’t seem to control.
“Are those tears, Princess?” And he laughed then. It was a dark, angry sort of sound. It was not the kind of laughter that made the world shimmer and change. And still, it was the best sound Valentina had heard in weeks. “Surely those are not tears. I cannot think of a single thing you have to cry about, Valentina. Not one. Whereas I have a number of complaints.”
“Complaints?”
All she could seem to do was echo him. That and gaze at him as if she was hungry, and the truth was that she was. She couldn’t believe he was here. She didn’t care that he was scowling at her—her heart was kicking at her, and she thought she’d never seen anything more beautiful than Achilles Casilieris in a temper, right here in Murin.
“We can start with the fact that you lied to me about who you are,” he told her. “There are numerous things to cover after that, culminating in your extremely bad decision to walk out. Walk out.” He repeated it with three times the fury. “On me.”
“Achilles.” She swallowed, hard. “I don’t think—”
“Let me be clear,” he bit out, his dark gold gaze blazing as he interrupted her. “I am not here to beg or plead. I am Achilles Casilieris, a fact you seem to have forgotten. I do not beg. I do not plead. But I feel certain, princess, that you will do both.”
* * *
He had waited weeks.
Weeks.
Having never been walked out on before—ever—Achilles had first assumed that she would return. Were not virgins forever making emotional connections with the men who divested them of their innocence? That was the reason men of great experience generally avoided virgins whenever possible. Or so he thought, at any rate. The truth was that he could hardly remember anything before Valentina.
Still, he waited. When the royal wedding happened the day after she’d left, and King Geoffrey made his announcement about his lost daughter—who, he’d realized, was his actual assistant and also, it turned out, a royal princess—Achilles had been certain it was only a matter of time before Valentina returned to London.
But she never came.
And he did not know when it had dawned on him that this was something he was going to have to do himself. The very idea enraged him, of course. That she had walked out on him at all was unthinkable. But what he couldn’t seem to get his head around was the fact that she didn’t seem to have seen the error of her ways, no matter how much time he gave her to open her damned eyes.
She was too beautiful and it was worse now, he thought darkly, here in her kingdom, where she was no longer pretending anything.
Tonight she was dressed like the queen she would become one day, all of that copper hair piled high on the top of her head, jewels flashing here and there. Instead of the pencil skirts he’d grown accustomed to, she wore a deep blue gown that clung to her body in a way that was both decorous and alluring at once. And if he was not mistaken, made her curves seem more voluptuous than he recalled.
She was much too beautiful for Achilles’s peace of mind, and worse, she did not break down and begin the begging or the pleading, as he would have preferred. He could see that her eyes were damp, though the tears that had threatened seemed to have receded. She smoothed her hand over her belly, as if the dress had wrinkles when it was very clear that it did not, and when she looked up from that wholly unnecessary task her green eyes were as guarded as her smile was serene.
As if he was a stranger. As if he had never been so deep inside her she’d told him she couldn’t breathe.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“That is the wrong question.”
She didn’t so much as blink, and that smile only deepened. “I had no idea that obscure European charities were of such interest to men of your stature, and I am certain it was not on your schedule.”
“Are you questioning how I managed to score an invite?” he asked, making no particular move to keep the arrogant astonishment from his voice. “Perhaps I must introduce myself again. There is no guest list that is not improved by my presence, princess. Even yours.”
Her gaze became no less guarded. Her expression did not change. But still, Achilles thought something in her steeled. And her shoulders straightened almost imperceptibly.
“I must apologize to you,” she said, very distinctly.
And this was what Achilles had wanted. It was why he’d come here. He had imagined it playing out almost exactly this way.
Except there was something in her tone that
rubbed him the wrong way, now that it was happening. It was that guarded look in her eyes perhaps. It was the fact that she didn’t close the distance between them, but stayed where she was, one hand on the balcony railing and the other at her side. As distant as if she was on some magazine cover somewhere instead of standing there in front of him.
He didn’t like this at all.
“You will have to be more specific, I am afraid,” he said coolly. “I can think of a great many apologies you owe me.”
Her mouth curved, though he would not call it a smile, precisely.
“I walked into a bathroom in an airport in London and saw a woman I had never met before, who could only be my twin. I could not resist switching places with her.” Valentina glanced toward the open doors and the gala inside, as if it called to her more than he did, and Achilles hated that, too. Then she looked back at him, and her gaze seemed darker. “Do not mistake me. This is a good life. It is just that it’s a very specific, very planned sort of life and it involves a great many spotlights. I wanted a normal one, for a change. Just for a little while. It never occurred to me that that decision could affect anyone but me. I would never have done it if I ever thought that you—”
But Achilles couldn’t hear this. Because it sounded entirely too much like a postmortem. When he had traveled across Europe to find her because he couldn’t bear the thought that it had already ended, or that he hadn’t picked up on the fact that she was leaving him until she’d already gone.
“Do you need me to tell you that I love you, Valentina?” he demanded, his voice low and furious. “Is that what this is? Tell me what you need to hear. Tell me what it will take.”
She jolted as if he’d slapped her. And he hated that, so he took the single step that closed the distance between them, and then there was no holding himself back. Not when she was so close again—at last—after all these weeks. He reached over and wrapped his hands around her shoulders, holding her there at arm’s length, like some kind of test of his self-control. He thought that showed great restraint, when all he wanted was to haul her toward him and get his mouth on her.
“I don’t need anything,” she threw at him in a harsh sort of whisper. “And I’m sorry you had to find out who I was after I left. I couldn’t figure out how to tell you while I was still with you. I didn’t want to ruin—”
She shook her head, as if distressed.
Achilles laughed. “I knew from almost the first moment you stepped on the plane in London. Did you imagine I would truly believe you were Natalie for long? When you could not perform the most basic of tasks she did daily? I knew who you were within moments after the plane reached its cruising altitude.”
Her green eyes went wide with shock. Her lips parted. Even her face paled.
“You knew?”
“You have never fooled me,” he told her, his voice getting a little too low. A little too hot. “Except perhaps when you claimed you loved me, then left.”
Her eyes overflowed then, sending tears spilling down her perfect, elegant cheeks. And he was such a bastard that some part of him rejoiced.
Because if she cried for him, she wasn’t indifferent to him. She was certainly not immune to him.
It meant that it was possible he hadn’t ruined this, after all, the way he did everything else. It meant it was possible this was salvageable.
He didn’t like to think about what it might mean if it wasn’t.
“Achilles,” she said again, more distinctly this time. “I never saw you coming—it never occurred to me that I could ever be anything but honorable, because I had never been tempted by anything in my life. Only you. The only thing I lied to you about was my name. Everything else was true. Is true.” She shook her head. “But it’s hopeless.”
“Nothing is hopeless,” he growled at her. “I have no intention of losing you. I don’t lose.”
“I’m not talking about a loss,” she whispered fiercely, and he could feel a tremor go through her. “This isn’t a game. You are a man who is used to doing everything in his own way. You are not made for protocol and diplomacy and the tedious necessities of excruciating propriety. That’s not who you are.” Her chin tilted up slightly. “But I’m afraid it is exactly who I am.”
“I’m not a good man, glikia mou,” he told her then, not certain what was gripping him. He only knew he couldn’t let her go. “But you know this. I have always known who I am. A monster in fine clothes, rubbing shoulders with the elites who would spit on me if they could. If they did not need my money and my power.”
Achilles expected a reaction. He expected her to see him at last as she had failed to see him before. The scales would fall from her eyes, perhaps. She would recoil, certainly. He had always known that it would take so very little for people to see the truth about him, lurking right there beneath his skin. Not hidden away at all.
But Valentina did not seem to realize what had happened. She continued to look at him the way she always did. There wasn’t the faintest flicker of anything like revulsion, or bleak recognition, in her gaze.
If anything, her gaze seemed warmer than before, for all it was wet. And that made him all the more determined to show her what she seemed too blind to see.
“You are not hearing me, Valentina. I’m not speaking in metaphors. Do you have any idea what I have done? The lives that I have ruined?”
She smiled at that, through her tears. “I know exactly who you are,” she said, with a bedrock certainty that shook him. “I worked for you. You did not wine me or dine me. You did not take me on a fancy date or try to impress me in any way. You treated me like an assistant, an underling, and believe me, there is nothing more revealing. Are you impatient? Are you demanding and often harsh? Of course.” She shrugged, as if this was all so obvious it was hardly worth talking about. “You are a very powerful man. But you are not a monster.”
If she’d reached over and wrenched his mangled little heart from between his ribs with her elegant hands and then held it there in front of him, it could not possibly have floored him more.
“And you will not convince me otherwise,” she added, as if she could see that he was about to say something. “There’s something I have to tell you. And it’s entirely possible that you are not going to like it at all.”
Achilles blinked. “How ominous.”
She blew out a breath. “You must understand that there are no good solutions. I’ve had no idea how to tell you this, but our… What happened between us had consequences.”
“Do you think that I don’t know that?” he belted out at her, and he didn’t care who heard him. He didn’t care if the whole of her pretty little kingdom poured out of the party behind them to watch and listen. “Do you think that I would be here if I was unaware of the consequences?”
“I’m not talking about feelings—”
“I am,” he snapped. “I have not felt anything in years. I have not wanted to feel. And thanks to you all I do now is feel. Too damned much, Valentina.” She hadn’t actually ripped his heart out, he reminded himself. It only felt as if she had. He forced himself to loosen his grip on her before he hurt her. “And it doesn’t go anywhere. Weeks pass, and if anything grows worse.”
“Achilles, please,” she whispered, and the tears were falling freely again. “I never wanted to hurt you.”
“I wish you had hurt me,” he told her, something dark and bitter, and yet neither of those things threaded through him. “Hurt things heal. This is far worse.”
She sucked in a breath as if he’d punched her. He forged on, throwing all the doom and tumult inside him down between them.
“I have never loved anything in my life, Princess. I have wanted things and I’ve taken them, but love has always been for other men. Men who are not monsters by any definition. Men who have never ruined anything—not lives, not companies and certainly not
perfect, virginal princesses who had no idea what they were signing up for.” He shook his head. “But there is nothing either one of us can do about it now. I’m afraid the worst has already happened.”
“The worst?” she echoed. “Then you know…?”
“I love you, glikia mou,” he told her. “There can be no other explanation, and I feel sorry for you, I really do. Because I don’t think there’s any going back.”
“Achilles…” she whispered, and that was not a look of transported joy on her face. It wasn’t close. “I’m so sorry. Everything is different now. I’m pregnant.”
CHAPTER TEN
ACHILLES WENT SILENT. Stunned, if Valentina had to guess.
If that frozen astonishment in his dark gold gaze was any guide.
“And I am to be queen,” she told him, pointedly. His hands were still clenched on her shoulders, and what was wrong with her that she should love that so much? That she should love any touch of his. That it should make her feel so warm and safe and wild with desire. All at once. “My father thought that he would not have an heir of his own blood, because he thought he had only one daughter. But now he has two, and Natalie has married Rodolfo. That leaves me to take the throne.”
“I’m not following you,” Achilles said, his voice stark. Something like frozen. “I can think of no reason that you have told me in one breath that I am to be a father and in the next you feel you must fill me in on archaic lines of succession.”
“There is very strict protocol,” she told him, and her voice cracked. She slid her hands over her belly. “My father will never accept—”
“You keep forgetting who I am,” Achilles growled, and she didn’t know if he’d heard a word she’d said. “If you are having my child, Valentina, this conversation is over. We will be married. That’s an end to it.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“On the contrary, there is nothing simpler.”
She needed him to understand. This could never be. They could never happen. She was trapped just as surely as she’d ever been. Why couldn’t he see that? “I am no longer just a princess. I’m the Crown Princess of Murin—”