The Prince's Cinderella Bride

by Christine Rimmer

  “True.”

  “But you did it anyway. Because he’s important to you and his family matters. Well, he needs to know your family. Take him to Texas.”

  There was a gray cat on the neighbor’s balcony. He sat in a little splash of sun, giving himself a bath. “Okay, Syd. I’ll think about it.”

  Sydney reached across the narrow table, took Lani’s chin in her hand and guided it around so she was looking at Syd instead of the gray cat across the way. “Talk to me. Come on. You know you want to. Tell me what’s on your mind, and I shall use my big brain to help you solve whatever problem is nagging at you.”

  “I didn’t say anything was bothering me.”

  Syd actually shook a finger at her. “Don’t be that way.”

  “Fine.” Lani let her shoulders slump.

  Sydney ate two spoonfuls of soup, taking her time about it. “Still waiting over here.”

  “If I take Max to Texas to meet the parents, they’re going to be all over him wanting to know what his intentions are. I just cringe when I think of it. My mother is already asking me when Max and I are going to get married.”

  “So? I’ve been kind of wondering about that myself.”

  “Very funny. Especially since I explained to you that Max has told me he’ll never get married again.”

  “Didn’t believe it then, don’t believe it now.”

  “I’m pretty sure he still feels that way.”

  “Pretty sure, huh?” Syd gave a disgusted little snort. “Has he said so?”

  “We’ve only been—what?—together, exclusive, whatever you call it—for a little over a month.”

  “Not the question.”

  “You’re getting all lawyerlike on me, you know that, right?”

  “I’m going to ask you again. Since you and Max have been ‘together,’ has he said that he’ll never get married again?”

  “No. We haven’t talked about it. It hasn’t come up.”

  Syd sat back in her chair. “And what about you? How do you feel about marriage now that you’re in love with my brother-in-law?”

  “Did I say I was in love with him?”

  Syd gave her that look, the one that said she was barely restraining herself from rolling her eyes.

  Lani stared at her soup and her half-eaten sandwich and realized she had no appetite at all. “You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?”

  “No. You’re going to say it because you want to say it. Because it’s the truth and I’m your friend and you and I, we always try to deal in the truth with each other.”

  “Okay. All right.” She pushed her plate away. “I’m in love with Max and nowadays marriage is starting to sound like a pretty good concept to me, like a good thing to do with the person you can see yourself being with for the rest of your life. I’m even...” She let out a moan and put her head in her hands.

  “Come on, sit up straight. Look at me and say the rest.”

  She let her hands drop to her lap again. “Dear God. I want to have babies with him. I want to help him raise Connie and Nick. I want...everything. All of it. The wedding ring and the stepkids and the baby carriage, too. I want Max and me getting old together.”

  “Beautiful.” Syd beamed, green eyes misty. “Good for you.”

  “But I haven’t told him any of that. I don’t even know where to start. And really, as I already said, I’m thinking it’s kind of soon to be bringing all that up, anyway.”

  “Soon?” Syd gave another snort. “You’ve known him since we moved here. You were friends for a year before the man even kissed you. Now you’re together and it’s obvious to everyone that you not only have the fireworks, you have the friendship and the mutual interests and everything else it takes to make it work. So I’ve gotta say that it’s not in any way too soon in my book.”

  “That’s because you’re one of those.”

  “One of whats?”

  “Oh please, Syd. You accepted Rule’s marriage proposal within forty-eight hours of meeting him in Macy’s. Then the two of you promptly ran off to Vegas to tie the knot. You’re like my mother. Love at first sight, a marriage proposal coming at you so fast it should make your head spin—but you don’t even hesitate. You just say yes.”

  “Tell him you love him.”

  “Oh, Dear Lord...”

  “Trust me, Lani. It never hurts to lead with the love.”

  * * *

  Tell him you love him.

  It shouldn’t be that hard, should it?

  After Syd left, Lani started kind of obsessing over the idea of saying her love out loud to Max. Over how she might just tell him that very night.

  I love you, Max. Four little words. Seriously. How hard could that be?

  He was coming over at seven, bringing dinner. It had gotten to be a regular thing with them. Once a week at least, the two of them spent the evening at her place. Max brought the food so she wouldn’t have to think about cooking after a hard day stringing words together.

  How quickly the weeks had fallen into a certain rhythm. A night at her place, a couple of evenings and all day Sunday with the children. Friday or Saturday night out together, and then after the night out, the villa on the Avenue d’Vancour afterward, for slow, delicious lovemaking and maybe a little champagne.

  They had it all, really, and she ought to remember that. She did remember that, always. She had the work that she loved. And her own place, where she could write undisturbed all day long. And a wonderful man she loved to talk to, whose kisses turned her inside out, a man who had stuck with her, refused to quit on her, during all those months she’d given him almost nothing in return.

  And now?

  Well, now, she simply wanted more.

  * * *

  She was out on the balcony when he arrived. He let himself in with the key she’d given him. She’d left the slider open behind her, so she heard him, heard that one little squeak the door always gave, heard him reengage the lock and then move to the table to put the food basket down.

  He approached, his steps quiet, measured. Still, she heard them. Or maybe she only felt them all through her, in the form of a sweet shiver of pleasure and longing, as she leaned on the iron railing and stared out at the hill and the shadowed trees directly across from her.

  His hands, so warm and strong on her shoulders, pulling her back against him, then easing lower, sliding over her waist, across her stomach.

  She let herself lean against him with a sigh. “Max...” Already she could feel him growing hard against her back.

  He kissed her temple, rubbed his cheek against her hair. She couldn’t resist turning in his arms then. She wrapped herself around him and they shared a long, sweet kiss.

  The balcony seemed safe enough from prying eyes. But you just never knew.

  He took her hand and led her inside. She pushed the slider closed behind them and followed him, breathless, her body already humming with pleasure, to the bedroom.

  I love you, Max. She stared up into his iron-blue eyes as he took off her shirt and unbuttoned her jeans.

  I love you, Max, as he laid her down across the sheets. I love you, Max, as he kissed her and caressed her. Every touch was pure wonder, every kiss a revelation.

  I love you, Max. Love you, love you, love you...

  The words filled up her head as he filled up her life, her body, her yearning heart. As he blasted away her loneliness, her very separateness.

  She felt so close to him, so right with him.

  But those four little words that filled up her head?

  She didn’t let them out. She couldn’t quite bring them to the level of sound.

  Maybe it was cowardice.

  Or maybe she would do it a little later, over dinner. Yes, that would be better. While they sa
t at the table to eat the meal he’d brought.

  In time, they got up and shared a quick shower. She put on the silk robe he’d bought for her. He pulled on his trousers, and they went to the table to eat.

  She opened the basket. Draped over the white napkin cradling the dinner rolls, something glittered: a diamond and onyx bracelet. “Oh, Max...”

  He looked so pleased with himself, eyes shining, hair damp and curling at his temples. “Goes with the earrings.” He’d given her the diamond and onyx earrings a couple of weeks before. He was always bringing her presents, usually rare research books she coveted, occasionally something pretty and far too expensive. “Here.” He took it. “Give me your wrist.”

  She extended her arm and he put it on. The diamonds gleamed against her skin, and the onyx had a deep luster, blacker than night. “So beautiful.” I love you, Max. “Thank you.” I love you, I do.

  He pulled her up out of her chair and she went to him for a slow, lovely kiss. “You make me happy. So very happy,” he whispered against her lips.

  I love you, Max. “You do the same for me.”

  Reluctantly, he let her go. They sat down to eat.

  He waited through the meal, all the way until after they’d demolished a nice pair of caramel-glazed crème puffs, before he said, “There’s something you need to see.”

  She peered at him more closely. Was that anxiety in his eyes?

  “All right,” she answered cautiously. And he got up and went over to the low table in front of the sofa. He moved a stack of books she’d left there and took a tabloid paper from underneath them. She caught a glimpse of the garish cover. It was The International Sun.

  Her stomach did something unpleasant. She pushed her dessert plate aside.

  He came and sat down again. “I was selfish. I saw you out on the balcony, looking relaxed and happy and so tempting, waiting for me. I wanted some time with you before you saw this.” She only stared at him and put out her hand. He gave it to her. “Page two.”

  Her stomach lurched again as she stared at the cover and read the lurid headlines: “Kate’s Darkest Hour,” “Alien Baby Born in Perth,” “Secrets of the Killer’s Dungeon.”

  “Lani?” he prompted, sounding worried.

  She tried to make light of it. “It seems there’s always an alien baby being born somewhere.” The effort fell flat. She made herself turn the page, where she found a color photo of her and Max by the Fountain of the Three Sirens in front of Casino d’Ambre. She wore her favorite little black dress and he looked so handsome it made her heart ache. He had his arm around her. They were smiling at each other, happy simply to be together, pretending the rest of the world didn’t exist.

  But it did exist. Inserted next to the picture of the two of them was a black-and-white promotional headshot of Thomas taken several years before his death. He grinned his jaunty grin straight at the camera. The headline read, Prince Max’s Naughty Nanny.

  “Really, really tacky,” she heard herself say.

  “It could be worse,” he offered hopefully.

  She shot him a grim glance and started reading. It was short, which was the only good thing about it, a lurid little exposé concerning the “secret love nest” she’d shared with the bestselling Texas author who, at the time of their “torrid May-December affair,” had been a married man twenty-seven years her senior.

  That was pretty much the whole thing. Nothing about her lost baby, nothing about her attempt to end her life or her extended stay at Spring Valley Psychiatric Care.

  Max said what she was thinking. “The rest, beyond what you see there, would be pretty hard to dig up. The medical community has confidentiality laws to abide by. Unless someone close to you who knew more started talking...”

  She lifted her head from the ugly little story and looked at him across the table. “I think you’re right. People did talk when I moved in with Thomas. You could say that was public knowledge. But everything else, only my doctors, my parents and my brother ever knew—and now you and your mother and Sydney and probably Rule. All people I trust who would never break a confidence.”

  “Then there you have it. That should be it.”

  “You never know, though.”

  “God knows that’s true.”

  She stared down at the story again, at the picture of Thomas, who’d once torn her heart out and stomped it flat. How strange that she wasn’t more upset. “I...”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. It was such a long time ago. I thought it would rip me apart all over again, if any of it ever came out.”

  “But...?”

  “Well. It happened. I did what I did and I’m not proud of it. It took me years to get over it, to forgive myself. But now I am over it. I’ve moved on. Would I prefer not ever to see anything about it in the tabloids or online? Definitely. But it is in the tabloids. And all I can say about that is, hey. The prose may be purple, but at least what’s written here is more or less the truth.”

  He made a low noise that was almost a laugh. “That’s the spirit.”

  A disturbing thought occurred to her. She demanded, “Has your mother seen this?”

  “Settle down. There’s nothing to be upset about.”

  “But—”

  “Lani, my mother’s the one who gave it to me. Her secretary has a clerk who spends every morning scanning the scandal rags and the internet for possible stories that the family ought to be keeping in front of—for damage control. There’s an art to it, I promise you. My mother’s a genius at putting positive spins on negative situations.”

  Now she did feel a little sick to her stomach. “Oh, God. What will she do about this?”

  He smiled then. “Have you read some of the things that have appeared in print about my family? We’ve been embroiled in one scandal after another since the thirteenth century. You, of all people, ought to know that. You’ve written three books detailing the shocking exploits of just a few of my ancestors.”

  She tapped the page with the story on it. “You’re saying this isn’t that big of a deal to her or to the family?”

  “Her concern was more about how you were going to take it.”

  Now, that was lovely to hear. “Truly?”

  He gazed at her so tenderly. “Truly.”

  And she got up and went over and sat on his lap. “I guess we’ll get through it.”

  “You guess?” He smoothed her hair along her cheek. “I know that we will.”

  She kissed him for that, another long, slow one.

  He trailed kisses over her chin and down the side of her throat. And then he stood, lifting her high in his arms, and carried her back to the bedroom. For a while she forgot everything but the glory of his touch, the wonder of his kiss and the joy she had in loving him.

  It wasn’t until much later, after he’d gone home to his children and she was alone in bed, that she began to see his lack of concern about the tabloid story in a different light.

  * * *

  “No,” Syd said firmly. “I don’t believe that. You’re letting your doubts and fears override simple logic. Maximilian is a good man. He doesn’t care about that old story because he’s got his priorities right. He cares about you.”

  They sat in the living room of Syd’s villa, just the two of them again. Ellie was napping. Trev and Sorcha, the new nanny, were out in the gardens.

  Lani raked frustrated fingers back through her hair. “Of course he cares about me. And he is a good man, a good man who’s been completely honest with me all along. But logic is on my side here. I’m Max’s lover. If I have a shady past, so what? It’s not like he’s going to marry me. He doesn’t care if all that old garbage about Thomas comes out because he’s never getting married again. He won’t have to explain me to the French ministers. I’ll never be his princess, ne
ver have a baby who would end up in line for the throne. I’m his...refuge, his safe haven, the one he turns to when he needs to decompress. But my past, my...reputation doesn’t really reflect on him. He can keep me completely separate from his position as heir to the Montedoran throne.”

  Syd was shaking her head. “What am I going to do with you? Just when I think that you’ve come so far, you come up with something like this.”

  “Something that makes perfect sense and you know it.”

  “Really, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

  “Syd, I’m only being realistic.”

  “Did you tell the man you’re in love with him?” Silence echoed. “Well, I guess I have my answer on that one.”

  Lani knew her lip was quivering and there was a big, fat lump in her throat. “I just... I can’t, okay? He’s a wonderful guy. I’m insanely in love with him. But what we have, that’s it. That’s all there is. I need to learn to accept that. Or if I can’t, I have to accept that the day will come when I need to move on.”

  “Or you could just get honest, just tell him you love him and you’ve changed your mind about certain things—and then take it from there.”

  “Eventually, yes. I will do that, of course. When I feel the time is right.”

  “Oh, honey...”

  “I mean it, Syd. It’s like this. He comes to my apartment, or I go to his at the palace. Every moment we have together is precious, rich, unforgettable. But then he goes home. Or I go home. Back to our separate lives—and that would be fine, that would be about all I could deal with, anyway. If he hadn’t made me open up to him, made me tell him the secrets that were holding me back, helped me to see that I really can let the past go and move on from here. He...accepted me. He wanted me, just as I am. And now, he’s done this wonderful, beautiful thing for me. And it’s changed me. I want more now, more than all that we already have, more than to be his lover and his friend. I want it all. And I just don’t think that he does.”

  Syd wouldn’t give it up. She’d always made relentlessness into an art form. “You need to get with him, can’t you see that? You need to tell him all these things you just told me. You need to give the guy a chance to be what you need him to be.”