“Max, I—”
“I must tell you, I could have your address so easily without asking you. Gerta would give it to me. I could get it from Rule. And there are other ways. There are men my family hires to find out whatever we need to know about anyone with whom we associate.”
“Max, what are you doing? I really don’t like this. Is that a threat?”
“No threat. Only an explanation. I can find out whatever I want to know about you. But I would never do that. I care for you. I respect your rights and your privacy. So please. Give me your address or hang up the phone and never call me again.”
“Max, this isn’t like you. Ultimatums have never been your style.”
“My style, as you put it, is not serving me well with you. Make a choice. Do it now.” There was nothing gentle in that voice. He didn’t grant her so much as a hint of the compassionate, patient Max she’d always known.
Obviously, her sweet and tender prince was being a complete jerk and she needed to hang up and forget about him. Let it be and let him go. Move on. It was only what she’d repeatedly told him she wanted.
He spoke again. “Lani. Choose.”
She gave him the address.
Chapter Four
Max was furious.
He’d been furious for a couple of days now. Ever since Gerta had told him that Lani was no longer Trev and Ellie’s nanny, that she’d found an apartment and moved into it.
He left the palace by a side door and walked down Cap Royale under the pale sliver of a new moon. It took him eight minutes to reach her street and a minute more to get to her door.
The old villa was locked up at that hour of the night. But she was waiting in the vestibule, as he’d told her to be.
Their gazes locked through the etched glass at the top of the door. She opened it. He went in. She wore yoga pants and a big sweatshirt that made her look small and vulnerable, her hair curling on her shoulders, a little wild, as though she hadn’t been able to stop herself from raking her fingers through it.
“This way,” she said in a hushed voice, and turned for the stairs.
He caught her arm before she could escape him.
She gasped and faced him, tried to pull away. “Max, I—”
“Nine days,” he whispered, pulling her closer, bending his head to get right in her face. “Nine days. Not a word from you.”
“I thought it would be better. You know, to let it go.”
“Maybe it would have been. I didn’t want to give up on you. I thought it mattered, what we might have had. But a man can be told no only so many times before he begins to wonder how big a fool he really is. When Gerta told me you had moved, I decided that was it. You’d been sending a message and I’d finally received it. I was done with you. I set my mind on forgetting you. Then you called me tonight. Why?”
She drew in a careful breath and let it out slowly. “Let’s just go upstairs. Please.”
He jerked her closer. The sweet scent of her hair drifted up to him, piercing him like knives.
“Max...” She said it pleadingly.
He wanted to be cruel to her. He wanted to make her pay somehow for being able to just go like that, just walk out of his life so easily. He wanted to get even with her for giving him a taste of heaven.
And then taking it back.
But she was right. They should go to her apartment, where they could close the door and say what needed saying without the possibility of nosy neighbors listening in. He was the Prince of Montedoro, after all. The heir to the throne should know better than to let himself be heard carrying on an intimate discussion in a dimly lit apartment foyer in the middle of the night.
He released her.
She turned again and led him up two flights. Her apartment door was open, soft light spilling out onto the landing. She ushered him in first and closed and locked the door behind them.
They were in the living room. It was small and plain—a sofa and two chairs, her desk facing a sliding door.
She gestured at the sofa against the inside wall. “Sit down.”
He did no such thing. They remained near the door, facing off against each other like enemies. “Why did you call me tonight?”
She wore a look of desperate confusion. “I couldn’t help it.”
“Not good enough.” He waited.
Still she only gazed at him, all big, dewy eyes and no answers.
He knew then that he really was a fool. Duped by the best of them. Tricked yet again. “There’s nothing here for me. I understand.” He did his best to gentle his tone. “It’s all right, Lani. We’ll do what you wanted. We’ll move on. Step out of my way.”
She gulped. Hard. “I... Oh, God, Max. Please don’t go.”
He tried not to waver. But it wasn’t easy to cut her free. She’d changed his world, turned the never-ending grayness to warm, soft, beautiful light. When he looked at her, he never wanted to look away. “Give me a reason to stay.”
“I...” She shut those enormous black eyes. Gulped again. “I need to...Max, I need to tell you a few things about me, a few not-so-good things.” She made a sound then. Ragged, shrill. Not quite a laugh and not exactly a sob. “Scratch that. Worse than not-so-good. Straight-up bad things. I’ve done some really rotten, crappy, bad things. I thought I had forgiven myself. But now, since New Year’s, since I had to admit how much you mean to me, I’m not so sure.”
How much you mean to me. Could he count the admission as progress? He searched her face. “I knew there was something.”
“I haven’t wanted to tell you. I didn’t think I could bear to see the disappointment in your eyes.”
He dared to reach out and take her hand. Her soft fingers felt good in his, as always. They felt achingly right. Gently, he suggested, “I think that now we should sit down.”
She blinked, looking slightly dazed. “Yes. All right.”
He turned for the sofa and she followed obediently. Once there, he took her slim shoulders, gently pushed her down and then sat beside her, facing her, laying an arm along the sofa back behind her, hitching a knee up onto the cushions.
She did not turn to him, but sat facing front, hands folded in her lap, staring straight ahead. “When I was eighteen, I fell in love with my dad’s best friend. He was forty-five and he was married—well, separated. But still. There had been no divorce. He was a writer, a novelist. His name was Thomas McKneely.”
McKneely. Max knew that name. He was pretty sure he’d read at least one of the man’s novels and that he’d found what he read funny and smart.
She went on. “Thomas was everything I thought I wanted someday to be. He and my dad had gone to college together. Thomas wrote humorous novels set in Texas.”
“I’ve heard of him.” Max kept his voice carefully neutral. “Go on.”
“I’d known Thomas since I was a child. I’d always idolized him. He was...bigger than life, you know? Tall and broad-shouldered and handsome, always laughing and saying the cleverest things. He and his wife, Allison, often came to dinner, to the parties my parents would give. And then, in the summer after my senior year, he left Allison. He came to dinner alone one night and he was...different. Kind of sad and withdrawn. But then he looked at me and I knew he really saw me, finally. He saw me as a woman.”
He couldn’t resist pointing out the obvious. “His best friend’s daughter? What a bastard.”
“Yeah, well. I wanted to get something going with him or nothing would have happened, believe me.”
“You were only eighteen. Barely an adult.”
She shook her head slowly. “True. I didn’t know my ass from up. Some people have seen enough and learned enough to be grown-ups at eighteen. Not me. In hindsight it’s way clear I was asking for all kinds of trouble. But I was the baby of my family, totally s
poiled, and I thought that if I wanted something bad enough, it had to be okay. So I snuck out to meet him several nights in a row. We were secret lovers. I thought it was so romantic and beautiful and he would divorce his wife and we would be together forever.” She put up her hands and covered her face—and then dropped them again. “Young. I was so young. And I really was sure I knew everything, all the secrets of life and love and happiness that my parents just couldn’t understand.”
“And then?”
“My father found out. He caught me sneaking out and he confronted Thomas. They fought, the two of them, punching at each other, rolling around on the front lawn. My father won. He stood over Thomas and called him a lowlife child-molesting... Well, there were bad names and there were a lot of them. And I...I blamed my dad. I yelled at him that I was eighteen and a grown woman and I had a right to love the man of my choice.” She fell silent, staring into the middle distance.
Max wanted to say something, to offer some kind of comfort. But he had no words right then. And when he reached out a hand to her, she leaned away from his touch.
“No,” she whispered. “Don’t. Let me finish this.” He drew back and she went on. “I left with Thomas that night. I moved in with him. I thought we would live on love and he would write more brilliant novels and dedicate them all to me. But what do you know? The summer went by and he wasn’t writing and I didn’t go away to the University of Iowa as planned. We started fighting. He drank too much. I cried all the time. And then, in October, he told me that I was a spoiled, selfish child and I didn’t really have anything to offer him. He went back to his wife.” She looked at him then, and her eyes were defiant. “He was a bastard, yes. But he was also right about me.” She smiled the saddest smile. “I went home. I didn’t know where else to go. My parents forgave me. That’s how they are.”
He wanted to kill Thomas McKneely. But it seemed to him he’d read the man’s obituary already. “I think I read somewhere that Thomas McKneely died.”
She made a small sound in the affirmative. “Four years ago. A ruptured aortic aneurysm. Allison was with him right to the end.” Lani eased her folded hands between her knees, hunched her shoulders and looked down at the floor. “She was a good wife to him. Truer than he ever deserved. A year after he died, I went to see her, to apologize for all I’d put her through. She was really something, so kind. She said it was all years ago, that I should put it behind me and move on.”
“A good woman.”
“Yeah. I heard later that she remarried and moved to Florida. I like to picture her there, holding hands on the beach with some handsome older guy.”
Max waited, in case there might be more.
And there was. Eventually, she let out a long, slow sigh. “A month after Thomas went back to Allison, I realized that I was pregnant.” He swore, with feeling. She gave a sad little shrug. “I didn’t know what to do. I just...did nothing. I told no one. I stayed in my room most of the time. My brother, Carlos, came and tried to lecture me. He yelled and told me off, trying to make me snap out of it. I just shut the door in his face. And my poor parents didn’t know how to reach me, how to help me. I never actually told them I was pregnant. They found out when I miscarried at the first of the year.”
He cast about for something helpful and comforting to say, but all he could think of was, “I’m sorry, Lani. So damn sorry...”
She raked a hand back through her hair. “My parents called an ambulance. They stayed at my side. I lost the baby, but I pulled through all right, physically at least. Mama and Papi were hurt that I hadn’t told them about the baby, that they found out only when I was losing it. Children and family mean everything to them. But still, they didn’t accuse me or blame me. They tried to see the positive. They said that miscarriages do happen, that someday there would be other babies, that I was young and strong and things would get better in time.” She lifted her tear-wet gaze to him. “I meant it when I said that they’re good people. They stuck with me and came through for me and they tried to convince me to get help, tried to talk me into seeing a counselor. But I refused. I felt I was dead inside. I wanted to die.”
He knew then what she would tell him next. “Lani, my God.”
She covered her face again. “I had the pain medication they’d given me at the hospital when I lost the baby. I took it. All of it. I was unconscious when my mother found me. She called me another ambulance. It was touch and go for a while, they told me. But, well, here I am. I pulled through.”
He touched her arm. “Look at me.”
Once more, she lowered her hands and turned her eyes to his. “I was in a psych hospital for several weeks and I got the intensive therapy I needed right then, and for a year more after I got out, I saw a really good doctor who helped me to get well.”
He didn’t know what to say. So he didn’t say anything. Instead, he touched her again, lightly clasping her shoulder, guiding her closer. She didn’t resist that time, but melted against him. He pressed his lips to her hair.
She said in a voice barely more than a whisper, “I swear to you, Max. I thought I was over all that, over the past, over my own stupid, blind arrogance, to risk it all on a completely self-absorbed married man more than twice my age. I thought I was, well, if not over losing my baby, at least at peace with it. I thought I had forgiven myself for going against everything I’ve ever held true and trying to end my life.”
“But you’re not over it.” It wasn’t a question.
She put her hand against his chest and tucked her head more snugly under his chin. “I’ve made a good life, a safe life, with Syd and her family. Kind of, you know, living on the edge of other people’s happiness. Loving Syd’s children. Writing my stories, but not taking too many chances. Dating safe, kind men like Michael Cort, breaking it off with them eventually because what I had with them was never enough. But then...” She pushed away from him and looked at him. “There was you...”
He pulled her down again and guided her head back to his shoulder.
She said, “I know I tried to deny it that day in the gardener’s cottage, but you were my friend for more than a year. And it was okay, being friends with you. It was safe, the kind of safe I’ve always needed, after all that happened eleven years ago.”
“You mean it was okay until New Year’s. Until we were suddenly more than friends.”
“That’s right. Then I got scared. Terrified. I’ve felt this strongly for a man only once before. And now you know that didn’t go well.”
“I would never do what he did.” He said it quietly, but a little of his earlier fury crept in. He had made his own mistakes, been the worst kind of fool. But at least he’d always kept his promises.
She had tipped her head back, was watching his face. “Of course you’re nothing like Thomas. Nothing at all. Oh, Max. If you despise me now, I do understand....”
He traced the line of her hair where it fell along her cheek, his anger fading away. “You’re harder on yourself than I could ever be.”
She gazed up at him pleadingly. “Just tell me. Do you despise me?”
“No. How could I? You made some bad choices. Everybody does. You learned from those choices and you came through to be who you are right now. I have no problem with that. I’m only grateful you’re finally able to tell me about it.”
“But, well...” She put her hand against her throat.
“What?” he demanded. “Tell me.”
“Oh, Max, I hate to have to say it, but you see now, don’t you, why I said it would be better if we both just moved on?”
Move on now? When he was finally breaking down the walls with her? No. “I don’t see that. I don’t see it at all.”
“But you should. You really should.”
“Shh.” He cradled her closer. “I don’t want to move on, Lani. I want to stay right here with you.”
She hitched in a sharp breath. “You really mean that?”
“I do.”
She laughed then, a low laugh. There was something deeper than humor in the sound. “I think you must be out of your mind. I’m a mess. It’s not pretty.”
“You are something of a mess, I’ll give you that—but you are very, very pretty.”
She sat up and made a show of tossing her head. “What are you telling me? That at least I’ll have my looks to fall back on if all else fails?”
He grinned at that, and then he said in all seriousness, “It matters to me, that you trusted me, finally. That you took that kind of chance on me. But you have to stop running away from me.”
“I get so scared that I’ll ruin everything—and then I ruin everything...”
He finished for her. “By running away.”
“Yes. That’s exactly right.”
“Stop doing that,” he instructed sternly.
“I will. I promise you, Max.” She made a low, nervous sound. “So...we’re good, then?”
He reached out, eased his fingers up under the thick fall of her hair and wrapped them around the soft, warm nape of her neck. “We are excellent.” He gave a tug.
And she came to him, leaning close, smelling of gardenias and oranges. Her soft breasts brushed his chest. He felt the promise of that softness, even through the layers of their clothing. And her mouth was right there, an inch from his. “Oh, Max...”
He claimed her lips. She opened, sighing. He tasted her. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her for a long time, sitting there on the old sofa in her plain living room.
“Lie down,” she whispered against his mouth.
He admitted reluctantly, “I can’t stay...”
“I know.”
“New Year’s was beautiful,” he told her, his voice rough with the memory of it, with the reality of her right now, in his arms. “But next time, I want to go slow, to have the whole evening together.”
“All right. Yes.”
“That is a word I love to hear you say.”
The Prince's Cinderella Bride Page 6