by Amelia Autin
Chapter 14
“You...remember?” The note of intense happiness in his voice was overlaid with something she couldn’t place at first, until she realized it was...resignation. As if Marek had prayed devoutly for her memory to return, even if it meant the death of his hopes for them.
She shook her head. “No. I don’t remember. But Major Kostya took me to my apartment on Wednesday, after my checkup at the hospital, and—”
“You saw your surgeon? What did he say?”
“I’m fine. The X-rays all look good, and he’s still hopeful my memory will return. But don’t change the subject. I started to say I went to my apartment on Wednesday, and I...I found the notes you sent me.”
There was a long silence. Then, “I see.” He didn’t actually move away from her, but she sensed his inner withdrawal. “That is what you wish to discuss in private, of course.”
“Yes.” She searched for something to add to that one word but came up blank.
He leaned forward suddenly and opened the glass panel to the driver’s section of the limousine. She only understood one word in three he spoke to the driver, but then he closed the glass, sat back and told her, “My apartment is not far from here. So is yours, but I would not subject you to another confrontation with a man in the sanctuary of your own home, mariskya, even though I would never do what he did.”
Once again Tahra was touched by Marek’s thoughtfulness, his consideration for her feelings. No, there’s no comparison between them, she acknowledged. Marek was a true gentleman. Nothing like the man who’d attacked her. She was as safe with Marek as she wanted to be. Which made her ask herself—how safe did she want to be?
* * *
Marek’s apartment was exactly as she’d envisioned it would be after seeing his meticulously neat office. Everything in its place. Spotlessly clean. And almost spartan in appearance. There were no feminine touches anywhere, and though Tahra told herself she shouldn’t be glad, she was. Fiercely glad. No woman had ever lived here.
“Please be seated,” Marek invited, indicating the sofa, before going to stand as far away from her as he could. Leaning against the wall, one hand in his pocket. All expression wiped from his face.
Stoic, Tahra thought. That word perfectly describes him. She had no idea how she knew, but somehow she did—Marek was steeling himself against the pain he believed she was about to inflict.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she blurted out. “But I have to know. Why did you lie to me?”
She could have sworn he flinched. “To which lie are you referring?”
“How many are there?”
He didn’t answer at first. Then, “Only one lie—from which other...deceptions were...inevitable.”
“You mean the lie that we’re engaged.”
He nodded slowly. “And yet...when I uttered it, I did not think it a lie. Only afterward, when I begged your sister not to reveal the truth—”
“Carly knew?” Tahra couldn’t believe it. “Carly knew we weren’t really engaged and didn’t tell me?”
“She knew my intentions. And she knew I loved you.” A faint smile touched his lips. “She threatened me should anything happen to you because of me—but she agreed to keep the secret.”
Tahra suddenly remembered Carly kissing her goodbye in the hospital, saying, “You’re in good hands,” and those words that were no longer enigmatic, “Be kind to him.”
“Who else knew it was a lie?”
“No one, mariskya, you have my word. Alec and Angelina may have suspected, but they did not know. Only your sister, and only because you had confided to her everything that had taken place the night I proposed. The night you accepted my proposal...then rejected it. And me.”
Tahra drew a trembling breath at the unutterable pain in his voice when he said, “And me.” As if she’d taken a knife to his heart when she’d rejected his proposal.
“But you deceived me,” she pleaded, as if she had to justify her actions to him. “You didn’t tell me who you really were. And no, I don’t remember, but the notes make it clear that’s why I...turned you down.”
She waited for him to say something, and when he didn’t, she added, “I don’t know what I was feeling that night. All I can tell you is what I felt when I read your notes and realized what must have been going through my mind.” She swallowed hard. “I trusted another man once...to my eternal regret. I know you’re nothing like him. I know that. But it would have been a shock to learn you had deceived me, too. You broke my heart, Marek. I’ve known that for days now. Not that I remember, but I know.”
* * *
Her words hung in the air between them, and Marek drew a rasping breath. He’d never spoken of what he was going to tell Tahra—not even to those closest to him—because it was a shameful episode in his past he never wanted even to remember. He’d locked it away in the secret recesses of his heart. But it had shaped the man he was, and he owed it to Tahra to explain as best he could why he’d kept his identity secret from her.
“I was not quite twenty-one, and but a lowly second lieutenant,” he began in a husky voice. “With dreams of rising through the ranks in service to my country. Then I met Zorina. She was beautiful. Entrancing. Captivating in a way I had never known before.”
“I don’t think I want to hear—”
“You must hear, to understand why I kept my secret.”
Tahra breathed deeply, as if preparing herself to listen to what he’d once felt for another woman. It couldn’t be easy for her—no woman wanted to hear the details of how the man she loved had once been infatuated with another. But just as he needed to get this off his chest, she needed to hear it.
“I did not love Zorina, but I...desired her.” He paused for a moment. “More than that—I was bewitched by her.” Suddenly restless, he strode around the room, self-directed anger rolling off him in waves. “These things are not easy for me to say to you, you understand. A man can desire a woman...be enthralled by her...without loving her. Knowing he does not love her.”
He forced himself to look at Tahra and was surprised when her lips twitched with sudden amusement. “It’s the same for a woman, you know. She can desire a man without loving him.”
After a moment he acknowledged the truth of her words. “Yes. That is true.” He drew a deep breath, then continued. “In Zorina’s case, she neither loved me nor desired me. She merely...tolerated me at first. I did not know this at the time, but she desired only the things money can buy...and the men who would give them to her. When she learned I had money and a title, however, she set her sights on me. But I was not her ultimate goal. I was merely a stepping stone to bigger and better things. She planned her every move with a cold calculation to which I was blind...until she dragged my pride through the mud.”
“What did she do?”
A cynical smile touched his lips. “We had been lovers for less than a month when she made a play for the king, who was the crown prince at the time.”
“What?”
“When I first met Zorina, she was...uninterested in me until—fool that I was—I tried to impress her with my title. My wealth. I wanted her to know I was more than just a lowly second lieutenant. Then and only then did she seem to look upon me with favor. She deliberately set out to entice me, and I believed her lies. But she was just using me as an entrée to Prince Andre’s world. He was three years my senior, and—of course—would have been a splendid conquest for her. She did not know the crown prince was indifferent by then to all lures thrown out to him—the woman who is now queen already owned his heart by the time he was the age I was then.” His cynical smile grew. “When Zorina’s plans came to naught with Prince Andre, she turned her eyes on Zax—Prince Xavier. Who, in addition to being a royal prince, had inherited a fortune from his father that put my fortune to shame.”
“Oh, Marek.” Her tone conveyed her tender heart ached for the blow to his pride. Her yearning expression told him she longed to comfort that not-quite-twenty-one-year-old man he’d once been.
“Prince Xavier would have none of her, either. Not because he was not attracted to her—Zorina’s beauty of face and figure was considerable—but because he knew of my relationship with her. He is an extremely honorable man, and he would not poach on another man’s preserves.”
Tahra looked as if she were about to say that Marek hadn’t owned Zorina, and the attitudes of the two men left much to be desired. But before she could, he said, “But Zorina was nothing if not ambitious. When Prince Xavier turned her down, she switched her attention...and her charms...onto Niko—Prince Nikolai. Who was not the man his brother, Prince Xavier, was. As a royal prince Niko was exempt from the military service required of every other Zakharian male—something he had accepted as his due when he turned eighteen, unlike his brother. Unlike the king. They both served in the Zakharian National Forces. But not Niko.”
This last was said with a touch of contempt. Then he mentally girded his loins to finish his confession. “Prince Nikolai and Zorina became lovers barely a week after they met—while Zorina was still pretending to care for me. And he...taunted me with his conquest. I had known nothing...seen nothing...until that moment.”
* * *
All Tahra could say was “Oh, Marek” again. That wouldn’t have been just a blow to his pride—it would have cut to the bone.
“Only then did Prince Andre and Prince Xavier tell me how she had tried to entice them before she settled for Niko,” he continued, in that same determinedly detached voice. “They are— You are not a man, so perhaps you cannot understand just how much they tried to spare my pride by not speaking up earlier. A man does not tell another man things like that...especially one to whom you are related by blood and have known since childhood. It was only later—after Zorina chose Prince Nikolai over me—they tried to cushion the blow by informing me of her true character.”
His face hardened. “But I did not need their explanations to understand what Zorina had done. Choosing a man like Prince Nikolai—a man with no honor—over me... Not that I thought myself perfect. Please do not think that. And one should never speak ill of the dead. But if you had ever known Niko, you would understand that—”
“Knowing he taunted you over Zorina tells me all I need to know about him.”
A flash of something that looked like gratitude came and went in his eyes so quickly she wasn’t sure it had even been there before he continued, “I swore then no woman would ever have an opportunity to use me in that fashion ever again. No woman would ever know I was anything except an officer in the Zakharian National Forces.”
His blue eyes darkened. “That is why, Tahra. That is why I did not tell you who I was. I wanted you to love me for me...not for my title or my connections.”
She was silent for a moment, digesting everything. “I understand...probably more than you realize. And if you had told me later, after you got to know me, after you realized I— But you didn’t. You didn’t trust me. You wanted me to love you for yourself, but you didn’t trust I wouldn’t somehow be swayed by your title. Like Cinderella falling for Prince Charming just because he’s a prince.”
“I am not a prince, and I do not see—”
“Oh, Marek, must you take everything so literally?” She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. “All I’m saying is you didn’t trust me with the truth of who you really are.” Her voice faltered as the realization overwhelmed her for a moment, as the memory of the other deception and betrayal she’d suffered at the hands of a man she’d trusted came into sharp focus. But then she found the strength to add, “The notes I found make it very clear you didn’t tell me until I’d already agreed to marry you, thinking you were nothing more than Captain Marek Zale. Don’t you see what that says about how you see me?”
“Everything important about me you knew,” he said in an implacable tone. “You knew the man I am—my character. You knew that honor and duty go hand in hand for me. You knew I would die to protect you. What else was there to know? My childhood? I never lied to you about that. I had a happy, uneventful childhood. How I came to be in the Zakharian National Forces, how I came to head up first the queen’s security detail and then the crown prince’s? You knew that, too. The things I did not tell you are extraneous. They are not the man I am.”
In one sense he was right. But in another he was wrong. At least from her perspective back then. How to explain so he’d understand? In an intense undertone, she said, “My first reaction when I read the notes was, if you can deceive me about something like this, what else would you deceive me about? If you know what led to my almost being...raped, you know I believed every lie he told me. I was a naive fool, but I believed him. Only to find it was all lies—all of it.”
She’d dated the foreign diplomat for two months, believing him when he professed to be single. She’d gently refused to sleep with him, shyly explaining why, then had again believed him implicitly when he said he was looking for an “old-fashioned girl” like her.
None of it had been true. When she’d learned he was married, she’d confronted him. And fool that she was, she’d done it in the privacy of her apartment, wanting to spare him public humiliation.
But instead of apologizing, he’d turned ugly. She would have been brutally raped—she’d seen it in his eyes when he’d ripped her dress and tried to pin her to the floor. But she’d fought him off, then scrambled to her feet and run for the door. And when he’d blocked her escape that way, she’d made a dash for the kitchen and the knives in the butcher block her frantic mind remembered.
She’d almost lost her career over the incident, until Carly had come to her rescue...again. And Tahra had sworn then she’d learn to stand up for herself. That never again would she rely on someone else to rescue her, not even her sister. She’d saved herself from being raped—fighting for her pride and dignity should be child’s play after that.
She’d also sworn she’d never trust another man again. So learning that her trust had once again been betrayed would explain why she’d returned his ring. It would have been the death knell to her dreams of a life with Marek...but not her love. Nothing could kill that.
“There is no comparison between him and me. I would not lie to—” Marek broke off, as if he suddenly realized he had lied to her...ever since she’d woken up in the hospital. “I would not lie to you for my benefit.” His voice was very low. Very deep. “Keep a shameful secret to myself, yes. I admit that. But I would never take advantage of you as he tried to do.”
“I know.” She touched her hand to her heart. “I know it now. Maybe I needed to lose my memories of you to realize how different you are from him. To understand the kind of man you are. Maybe I needed to understand myself better, too.”
He looked puzzled. “In what way, mariskya?”
“If you’d told me eighteen months ago that I would risk my life to save someone else...I wouldn’t have believed you.” She struggled to find the right words. “I never saw myself as...as brave, I guess is the right word.”
“But you are. You are the bravest woman I know.”
Tahra’s heart turned over at the simple way those words were spoken. Not as if Marek was trying to convince her, but as if they were merely a statement of fact recognized by everyone.
“As brave as Angelina?” At his startled expression, she rushed to explain. “You told me how she saved the crown prince. And she— You admire her. I can tell.”
“Are you honestly asking me to compare you to Angelina?” he queried, incredulous.
Tahra wasn’t prepared for how swiftly Marek moved. And she wasn’t prepared for the way he snatched her up, or the way his arms tightened around her. “There is no comparison,” he insisted, once he had her in his embrace. “
Angelina is a trained soldier and a bodyguard. I would expect no less of her than exactly what she did. But you—you are not a soldier or a bodyguard. Yet you placed your body between danger and those children in the playground without hesitation. That is the definition of bravery, mariskya. Overcoming fear in an instant to do what must be done to save others, even at the risk of your own life.”
He kissed her eyes, her cheeks, the curve of her chin. Everywhere except her lips. “You are the bravest woman I know, bar none,” he breathed. “And I have nothing but pride in you for what you did. If you had died... I have said this before, but I will say it again. If you had died, I would also have died. And while I would have taken that risk for you if I could, I would not wish for you to do other than you did, because you were the only one who could do it. Can you understand that?”
Tahra was lost in a world of emotion and swirling desire, things she always felt when Marek kissed her. But she heard his words in a distant recess of her brain and they gladdened her heart, because she wanted Marek to be proud of her. Because she wanted to be the kind of woman he admired as well as loved.
Her gaze met his, and she knew what she wanted. She loved Marek. Would always love him. And despite the lies and deceptions, he was an honorable man at heart. A man who deserved to be loved. She just had to convince him she loved him for the man he was. “Please,” she whispered, twining her arms around his neck. “Please.”
* * *
He couldn’t let her go.
Marek had tried so hard to chain the wolf inside him, but he could almost hear the chain snap when Tahra touched him that way. When she placed her lips on his lips and pressed her body all along the length of his. When she whispered, “Please.”
He swung her into his arms and carried her into the bedroom, setting her down on her feet and taking a step back. “Are you sure, mariskya? If you are not sure, please tell me now. I have waited so long, and I...”