“Of course, you—”
“Shh.” She reached across the space between their two swings and put her finger against his lips. At his nod of agreement not to interrupt, she withdrew her hand. “I don’t know why we don’t say it to each other, why I’ve never said it to you when I’ve known it for weeks now. Longer. Known it even back when I was set on denying it. For all those months when we were ‘just friends.’”
He had the strangest feeling—weightless and drowning, both at once. He wanted to stop her, wanted to drag her back somehow to the safety of what they were to each other now, of all they’d had together in the past month.
But she refused to stay safe. “I don’t know why we don’t say it, Max. Maybe because to say it leads on to the next step and the next step is one you’re not willing to take. But, well, I have to say it. Are you listening? Tell me you’re listening.”
“Damn it, Lani.”
She stilled the swing completely. “I’ll say it anyway. I love you, Max. You’re everything I could ever want in a man. Are we clear on that?”
“Lani, I—”
“Max. Are we clear?”
I love you, too. You’re everything to me. How hard could it be to tell her? “Yes. We’re clear.”
She looked at him so sadly. But he didn’t need her sad look to tell him how completely he had disappointed her. “I need to...say the rest.” She sounded breathless now. And not in a good way. “I know I told you once that I would never get married, never have children. I meant it, at the time. And you told me the same about yourself. You do remember that.” It wasn’t a question.
He answered it anyway. “Yes, of course I do.”
“Well, for me, everything’s different now. For me, the world is wide open again and I can be happy. I can love you and marry you, be your wife, help you take care of your beautiful children, give you more children...”
He needed to stop this. But of course, he knew he couldn’t. He knew it was already too late. So he gave her what he had, which was the truth. “I will never get married again. And I don’t believe in having children outside of marriage. However, if you became pregnant, I would love and accept the child.”
“I told you, I’m not pregnant. I’m very careful about contraception, so you can stop worrying about that.”
“I’m not worrying. I just wanted you to know.”
“Ah.” She stared at him for a long time, her eyes bright with unshed tears.
He couldn’t bear the silence. “I told you from the first that I wasn’t looking for a wife.” Defensive. Gruff. God, he hated himself.
“Yes, you did. You told me you would never marry again. What you didn’t tell me is why. Why won’t you take a chance on a real future with me? How is it that you’ve opened me up, given me the ability to love again, to dream again? And you remain the same. Closed off. Unchanged.”
“But I’m not unchanged. You mean everything to me.”
One tear fell, shining and pure, sliding slowly down her cheek. “You never talk about Sophia.”
“Lani—”
“No. Don’t cut me off. Don’t redirect me. I just need to know. Is it what people say? That you’ve had the perfect, forever love and nothing can ever come close so you’re never even going to try?” She shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense to me, somehow. It doesn’t feel true. You never say anything about her, nothing. No fond memories. Nothing about the good times you shared, or the hard times you got through together. You are silent on the subject of Sophia. What was it with her that makes it all such a mystery, that has you swearing off ever really trying again?”
He didn’t know where to start. He didn’t want to start. “Just because I don’t want to get married again doesn’t mean I’m not trying.”
She tipped her head to the side, studying him. “Okay. Maybe I was unfair. You are trying. Up to a point. But after that point, uh-uh. You’re done. And see, that’s the thing. You pried me open like a can of peaches, you know? You got inside my head and my heart and you found out all the bad stuff. I gave it to you and you took it with an open heart. I knew that it would make you despise me. But it didn’t. You were wonderful, tender, so completely accepting. I want to do that for you. I wish you would let me.”
“Lani.” He stood from the swing so fast that she gasped. “Stop.”
She gazed up at him as the swing bumped against the backs of his calves. And then she laughed. It was the saddest sound he’d ever heard. “You saw how it was with my parents and my brother. They want happiness for me, and I’m like them, as you’ve helped me to discover. I want what they want for me—a husband, a home, a family. And they’re going to keep after you. They want you to tell them that you’re ready, or at least close to ready, to give me what I want.”
“Are you saying you want me to leave you here and go back to Montedoro?”
She gazed up at him, the moon shining in her tear-wet eyes. “No. I want you to stay. I want you to stick it out. But I’m warning you, it’s not going to be a whole lot of fun for you if you do.”
They were at an impasse. What she wanted now for her life and her future, he would never give her. What she needed to hear from him, he would never say.
He should go home. But there was a bloody fool within him who couldn’t bear to lose her, who refused to surrender the field. “I’m not going anywhere, not until you’re ready to come home with me.”
She kept staring at him, steadily. “I want more than this, Max. I want everything, all of you. A lifetime together, to live with you and Nicky and Connie, to sleep the whole night in the same bed with you, to be in that bed with you on Sunday morning when the children come in for cocoa. The right to be there, as your wife, when you need me the most.”
There was no point in telling her again that she’d never get that from him. “Let’s go back to the house.” He held down his hand.
She took it without the slightest hesitation and she said softly, “It’s not going to be pleasant.”
“What isn’t?”
“None of it. You’ll see.”
* * *
They stayed in Texas, at her parents’ house, for a week. The Vasquez family treated him with kindness and a wry sort of affection. And they never stopped working on him to declare his intentions concerning his relationship with Lani.
He could have left. He knew that. Maybe he should have left. But something in him held on, refusing to let go. He knew if he left her there it would be over between them.
He did not want that. He wanted things as they had been: the two of them, free to live their separate lives, connected, but freely. Committed to each other not forever, not because of some ancient words recited before a priest, but anew every single day.
She used to understand that. He was furious with her for changing. And he felt somehow bested by her at the same time.
But he was not going to leave her in Texas without him at the mercy of her family. They would be bound to convince her that he wasn’t the one for her, that she needed to move home to Texas and find a nice American man, a man ready, willing and able to put a ring on her finger and baby in her belly.
After the conversation that night on the swings, she treated him as she had before—up to a point. She held hands with him and kissed him now and then, quick, chaste kisses. Alone on the back deck with him in the evening, she would laugh with him over the things that had happened that day. They might get into some debate over a minor point of Montedoran law. In front of her family, she showed him affection and tenderness.
But beyond safe discussions of her father’s quick recovery and the final turning point in the last novel of her Montedoran trilogy? Nothing. He knew that was very much his fault. He wanted to speak more intimately with her, but that was too dangerous. It would only lead back to that night on the swings, to what she wanted that he didn’t, to why he
was holding on when she needed more and more was not something he would ever share with her.
As to physical intimacy, there was nothing beyond the occasional fond touch, her hand in his, those infrequent chaste kisses. Even before that night in the park, he hadn’t expected to make love with her there, in her father’s house. But he’d hoped that maybe they might sneak away to a hotel once or twice....
So much for that idea. She had been right. It was not pleasant, being so close to her and yet feeling that she was somehow a million miles away from him. It was a lot worse than not pleasant, actually. It was a whole new way of living in hell.
And yet he stayed. He couldn’t make himself give up and go.
Four days in, the paparazzi found them. So for the final three days, every time he left the house, there were photographers waiting. That first day they showed up was the worst. They came running up the walk at him, waving microphones. So he gave them an interview right then and there. It was like being interviewed by Lani’s parents. Just about every question added up to: Was he there to propose and had she said yes?
He answered as vaguely as he’d answered the Vasquezes.
That appeased them enough that most of them went away. There were still the lurkers, the ones who tried to get shots of him and Lani from a distance whenever they were in open view, but it was bearable. He ignored them.
The Vasquezes seemed to take the whole thing in stride. They laughed about it over dinner and teased Max that he should just marry Lani and make all those reporters happy.
The final days in Texas went by at last. They flew home on Tuesday, leaving the house before dawn. Carlos and Martina had gone home to San Antonio two days before. But Iris and Jorge got up early to say goodbye.
Lani promised she would return in a few weeks, just for a day or two, when she flew to New York at the end of the month. There were hugs and kisses and Lani and her mother cried.
Jorge hugged Max and whispered, “You treat my daughter right.”
And Iris grabbed him next. “Just be happy together,” she commanded in his ear. “That’s all we ask.”
And then, at last, they were out of there, rushing down the stone walk to the waiting car.
* * *
He thought it would get better once they were home in Montedoro, that they would slip back into the happy, fulfilling life they’d shared before.
But it wasn’t the same. She started actively avoiding him. She was too busy to have him visit her apartment in the evenings. She came to the palace to see Sydney and her family, and to be with Gerta and the children after school. But if he tried to join them, she always had some reason that she had to be going.
They were all over the tabloids. The journos made up all kinds of ridiculous stories about the trip to Texas. The headlines gave a whole new meaning to the word absurd: “Prince Max and the Nanny: Their Secret Engagement” and “The Prince’s Cinderella Bride” and “The Naughty Nanny Snares the Prince.” He wanted to talk to her about those stories, to laugh with her over them. He wanted to go with her and the children to the beach on the weekend. He longed to make love with her for hours.
None of that was happening.
Sunday, she said she couldn’t make it to the family breakfast. The next week was the same. The children and Gerta saw her practically every day, but if he appeared when she was with them, she would simply get up and leave. She wouldn’t spend the evening out with him and she just didn’t have a free moment when he might join her at her place.
He never got a chance to talk her into making that trip to New York with him. How could he? He never got a chance to talk to her at all.
On April 20, he flew to JFK, spent the night at the Four Seasons and then spoke at Columbia University the next day. That evening, he had dinner with his brother Damien and Dami’s fiancée, Lucy Cordell. Lucy and Dami lived together right there in Manhattan, where Lucy was attending fashion school. Max tried to be good company, but mostly he just wished Lani could have been there. He arrived home on the twenty-third to find that she had left that morning. Gerta told him she would spend two days in Manhattan, then go on to Texas to see her family.
She returned the following Tuesday.
And by then, he’d had enough. They needed to talk.
Wednesday, he called her. She let the call go to voice mail. He left a message for her to call him back. She did no such thing. Thursday, she came to see the children. He tried to get her alone for a moment, but she’d learned a thing or two about evasion since that February morning when he’d caught her in the garden and dragged her to the gardener’s cottage.
At the sight of him, she was up and out of there. He almost took off after her. But the children were watching and he didn’t want to alarm them. He still had the key to her place and he considered the pros and cons of letting himself in and refusing to leave until she talked to him.
But even desperate for her as he was becoming, he could see the wrongness of that. A woman’s home, after all, was her castle. A man was not allowed to simply break in to get to her.
Next, he thought he might take up a position in front of her building and not budge until she talked to him.
Was he moving into the realm of stalkerdom? Probably. He could see the headline now: The Naughty Nanny’s Stalker Prince.
It had to stop.
And he knew what to do to stop it. He’d always known, but he’d been holding out, hoping she wouldn’t make him go that far. His bluff had failed. He would go that far if there was no other way to get near her.
When he called her Thursday evening and got her voice mail, he said, “All right. I will tell you about Sophia.”
She called him back five minutes later. “I’m here. Come on over.”
Chapter Fourteen
Lani sat on the worn sofa and he took the chair. He stared across the low table between them, drinking in the sight of her in old jeans and a worn white T-shirt that clung to her glorious curves, her hair a cloud of dark curls on her shoulders, just the way he liked it best.
All he wanted in the world was to get up and go over and sit next to her. Such a simple thing. But her expression warned him against such a move.
He thought of the night that she’d told him about her past. Of how furious he’d been with her, how he’d demanded she make a choice: give him her new address or never call him again.
How had they gotten here from there? How had it all turned around, their positions reversed? Now he was the one forced to make a choice while she looked at him with cool reserve behind her eyes.
When she spoke, her tone was gentle. “You don’t have to tell me. You can just go.”
But he couldn’t go. It wasn’t an option. He’d missed her too much. If telling her about his marriage would a make a difference between them, he would do it. Besides, in the past few weeks, without her, he’d had way too much time to think.
He’d kept the reality of his marriage to himself for so long. To do so had become second nature. Also, in spite of everything, he’d felt a certain allegiance to Sophia’s memory, a duty to maintain the long-held fiction that she’d been an ideal wife.
He said, “I should have told you long ago. I see that now. I...want you to know.”
She drew a slow breath. And then she nodded.
And he began, “I married Sophia convinced that we were born to love each other. That we were meant to be together forever. I was my mother and father’s son in every way then. I believed in marriage, in true love between two people, love that lasts a lifetime. The problem was I didn’t know the real Sophia.”
Lani shifted on the sofa. “How so?”
“After we were married, I found out that Sophia had been out to catch a prince. She wanted become a princess. She wanted one of her children to rule Montedoro. She went after that goal with single-minded purpose.
Later, she confessed that her family had encouraged and coached her to that end. She was to marry the heir to the Montedoran throne.”
Lani’s cool gaze warmed—at least a little. “Oh, Max. I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “From the first time I met her—I believe we were both nine—she hung on my every word. Already I was interested in history, in writing. She listened, rapt, as I told her stories about my ancestors. She found me fascinating, or so I thought. For a decade, as we grew to adulthood, she treated me like her king. She laughed at my slightest attempt at a joke. When I kissed her, she always seemed about to faint from sheer excitement.”
“You’re telling me she played you and you fell for her act?”
He tried not to wince. “You have to realize, we weren’t together all that often. Never long enough or often enough for me to start seeing that maybe the Sophia I knew and the real Sophia weren’t one and the same. She always claimed she loved to hear me talk, that just to be near me was enough for her. I was young and inexperienced and arrogant, too. I became absolutely certain it was true love. I believed that she adored me and we were a perfect match.”
Lani shook her head slowly. But she didn’t speak.
He went on with it. “I proposed to her when we were both eighteen. She instantly accepted. My mother and father tried to get me to slow down, tried to convince me to wait, to grow up a little, to see other girls. But I was a one-woman man and I wouldn’t listen. I knew that Sophia was my great love.”
“So you got married in a fantasy wedding of state when you were both twenty.”
“That’s right. And as soon as the ink was dry on our marriage license, Sophia changed. Suddenly, talking politics made her want a long nap. We no longer found the same things funny. She had no interest in the college studies I was finishing up, or in traveling with me to my speaking engagements. Reading and discussing books bored her. She preferred to sleep till at least noon, and I couldn’t stand to stay in bed once the sun was up. As soon as we were married, there was essentially no way the two of us connected.”
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