by Cindy Gerard
When Anna said nothing, Janine sat down beside her on the stone bench by the fountain. “Have you told Gregory?”
Anna searched the woman’s face for anger, or disgust, grateful and confused when she found none, yet still unable to answer her.
“He looks...” Janine said quietly before her voice broke. Her eyes misted. “He looks exactly like Gregory when he was that age.” She drew a deep breath, composed herself, then met Anna’s gaze. “I need to know if you’ve told my son yet,” she pressed with gentle but firm determination.
Anna physically felt the longing in Janine’s voice. Weighted by a guilt that crushed like a vise, she shook her head, ashamed.
“But you will.” There was steel in Janine’s voice, cloaked in velvet, cushioned by compassion, but steel, nonetheless. “Or I will,” Janine assured her, as only a mother who loves her child could.
“You must hate me.”
Janine was silent for a long moment. “I would find it difficult to hate the woman my son is in love with.”
Anna lifted her head.
“Yes, dear. I know my son. He loves you. And he’s already half in love with William.”
Anna closed her eyes as the pain closed in.
“Tell him,” Janine insisted. “If your reasons are compelling, he will forgive you. And so will I.” After a long pause, she touched a hand to Anna’s, a hand that trembled as much as her own. “Please make it soon. I want to know my grandson. I want him to know me and his grandfather.”
She left her then. Left her knowing, as she had always known, what she had to do. Understanding, as she never had, that she could put off the inevitable no longer. Accepting, yet still desperate to deny, that when she told Gregory, she risked losing everything.
The chopper lifted off like a Texas whirlwind, all riotous sound and swirling dust. Behind, it left a starstudded sky. Beneath the sky stood a man who felt he had everything in life he could possibly want—except for the formality of a commitment from the woman he loved. The woman who, unaccountably, looked so lost when what he wanted for her was to feel found. By love. By family. By their future together.
“I told you they were overwhelming,” he whispered, turning her into his arms and holding her, just holding her close. “Blake wore Will out. He dropped like a stone an hour ago.”
“He was wonderful with him. They were all wonderful. They are wonderful,” she murmured against his chest as her arms twined around his waist and she burrowed close.
“They think you’re pretty special, too.”
A deep, weary breath was her only response.
He ran his hands up and down her back, needing more from her, letting her know with the brush of his lips to her brow. “So do I. I think you’re very special. Anna...” He cupped her head in his hands, tipped her face to his and, in the moonlight, saw the moisture clinging to her lashes. “Baby. What? Tell me what’s wrong.”
Those misty green eyes searched his with such urgency, then demanded with such greed. “Make love to me. Make love to me.” She plunged her fingers into his hair and pulled his mouth down to hers. “I need you...so much...so much...right now.”
And her need, her need, became his, as she took his mouth with hers, dragged him under with her hunger, pulled him deep into the flash fire her passion sparked.
He was lost to resist her. Swept up in the rush of the ride. Somehow they managed to stumble into the house still knotted in each other’s arms, mouths fused, hearts wildly beating. They fell on his bed together, tugging on zippers, shoving at clothes, finally gorging themselves with the thrilling feel of skin on skin, heat on heat.
She was wild for his touch on her body, made him wild in return. She was mad for the length of him, the thickness and the heat of him ... in her hands ... in her mouth. Moaning her name, devastated by her glorious torture, he lifted her above him, his hands moving from slender shoulder to silken hip as he impaled himself inside her, driving deep.
And then he let her have her way with him. She took all of him in, let him fill her completely, then set the pace, a hard, frenzied coupling that demanded and commanded all that he had to give, all that she wanted to take. He gave until they were both exhausted; he gave until they were both quivering masses of spent flesh and hammering heartbeats. Heartbeats bursting with a desperate love that only this rough and ragged mating could assuage.
On a shimmering sigh, she stilled above him, her climax arching her back, wringing out a moan, as she clenched him within her body and rode on the swells of a savage release. Her orgasm flowed through him, wound around him, robbing him of the strength to stay the pleasure any longer.
“Anna,” he breathed on a strangled groan as he gave over to the need, spilling his seed inside her body and his soul into the liquid depths of her eyes.
The Texas moon peeked through the bedroom windows, floating like a translucent magician’s globe suspended on the inky backdrop of a star-speckled sky. Anna knew Gregory was awake beside her. She sensed the wakeful rhythm of his breathing even before his big, gentle hand began an absent, stroking caress along the length of her thigh.
“You okay?” he whispered, his breath falling softly against her brow.
She stared into the night. And prayed it wasn’t their last one together. “I’m okay.”
He was silent for a while before he rose up on an elbow and looked down at her. The moonglow highlighted his strong profile, lent an aching vulnerability to the bold lines of his face. The face that she loved more than life.
“Is it William’s father?” he asked so softly but so abruptly that she felt herself flinch before she could stall it.
“Is that what this is about, Anna? I’ve felt you pulling away since my parents arrived. I’ve seen your heart ache through your eyes. And I’ve wondered ... I’ve wondered if you’re missing him. If you’re loving him still and wishing it was him, not me asking you to share his life.”
Above the pounding of her heart in her ears, she heard the pain in his voice. A pain she had no choice but to increase. A pain she could no longer forestall. The opportunity was here. The window had sprung up before her, and it was Gregory who had unwittingly opened it.
She shifted away from him, felt the loss of his heat, sensed the hurt in his eyes. Bracing for what was about to happen, she pulled the sheet up over her breasts, drew a deep breath and prepared herself to begin the end.
“When I found out I was pregnant,” she began, hardly recognizing her voice as her own as the words echoed hauntingly off the walls in the room where she lay. With the man she loved. With the man she would lose. “When I found I was pregnant, my parents were furious. They made threats.”
His big body tensed beside hers. “Threats?”
“Threats that ... well, it’s hard to explain, hard for anyone to understand. They are powerful people. And they are heartless. I don’t think anyone could understand how frightened I was, how badly I wanted to contact...to contact William’s father.”
She braved a look at him then, saw the veiled disappointment in his eyes and pressed on. “But I was afraid. For the baby. For him. For what they could do to him,” she stated, hearing the ominous ring in her words. “They could have done things, Gregory. Arranged things. They wanted his name. I wouldn’t tell them. If they’d known ... if they’d known who he was, they would have stopped at nothing to ruin him. At least I was convinced of it at the time.”
She paused, reflecting, searching even now for some way all this pain could have been avoided. She hadn’t known then that Gregory was a man of wealth. To her, he was her marine, her free-spirited working man. To her parents, he would have been a lowly commoner they would have crushed beneath the heels of their outrage. But she hadn’t known he’d had the means to fight back, not until she stumbled onto that article in Newsweek last year. Hadn’t known his family was as high profile in Texas as hers was in Europe.
A cold dose of reality swamped her, stole her doubts and cemented the inevitability of the choices she’d had to make.
She’d never expected to see him again, had been too frightened for him to ask for his help when she’d found out she carried his child a few months after he’d left Obersbourg. And she’d been certain that she had destroyed whatever love he may have had for her when, for his sake, she had convinced him she didn’t love him. For his sake.
“They arranged for an abortion,” she hurried on, swallowing back the memories, scurrying to keep ahead of the doubts. “When I found out, I ran. When they finally found me, thankfully it was too late. So they changed tack—threatened to take William away from me as soon as he was born.”
A rueful smile tilted one corner of her mouth. “Appearances are everything to my parents. And that fact was my only defense against them. I convinced them that I would reveal my ‘indiscretion,’ as they referred to it, to the entire world if they took William away from me. The humiliation would have killed them. I must have been convincing, because they finally just left me alone. They saved face by fabricating a story and feeding it to the media. They said that I’d been secretly engaged and was about to marry a high-ranking officer in the Obersbourg army who had tragically died during military maneuvers in Egypt. It didn’t give William legitimacy, but it gave him respectability and a sympathy factor that overrode any scandal.”
In the dark, only the sound of his breath, no longer even, but forced and deep, diluted the silence.
“You shouldn’t have gone through this alone. He...William’s father should have been there for you.”
She turned to him then, her vision blurred by tears she could no longer stall. “He couldn’t be there. He didn’t know. If he’d known, he would have tried to move heaven and earth to get to me. And he would have been destroyed in the process.”
“So you protected him and sacrificed yourself.”
“I felt I had no choice.”
“You had so little faith in him?”
Again, silence crowded into the bed, into her head, compelling her to finally disclose her secret. “I had every faith in him. I loved him. I loved him so much, I didn’t want to cause him pain.
“I love him still,” she confessed, her voice raw, her heart riding on the wings of that truth, sinking in the waves of despair as she touched her palm to his cheek and turned his face to hers. “And it seems that in spite of it all, I’ve ended up hurting him more than any man should be hurt.
“I’m so sorry, Gregory. I’m so sorry I had to keep William from you.”
She saw the moment confusion turned to understanding, understanding to stunned shock, shock to an anger so huge and anguish driven that he threw back the covers and bolted up in one swift, involuntary motion.
He stood naked by the bed, towering over her, tension coiled like knots in every sleek, honed muscle. “William ... William is mine?” Hope jockeyed with disbelief, hurt wrestled with elation, and all transitioned to a look of such bleak, stark betrayal she could only nod and watch him look away. Watch him rake his hands roughly through his hair. Watch him walk, tall and slim and strong, out of the room. Watch him leave her alone with an ache so huge she felt dwarfed by the size of it.
So this is it, she accepted rising slowly from the bed they had shared. She gathered her clothes like an automaton as she moved from the room. She didn’t have to look far to find Gregory. The soft glow from the nightlight by William’s bed silhouetted his broad shoulders. He stood as still as a statue. As rigid as an oak. Watching over his son. Watching over the son he had been denied.
Without a word, she turned, walked silently back down the hall and into the guest bedroom. And there she stayed. Alone. Awake. Conditioning herself to accepting that she had just lost everything essential in her life.
Somewhere around dawn, Greg left William’s side, dressed in riding clothes and headed for the barns. Like a distant echo of a truth he should have known, a secret she’d had no right to keep, Anna’s words replayed over and over in Greg’s mind.
A son. My God, he had a son.
As he saddled Skip, he still felt mired in a quagmire of emotions. Shock. Elation. Love for William. Such love for William.
And Anna. God help him, he no longer knew what he felt for her. He’d been ready to ask her to marry him. But this ... this bludgeoning sense of betrayal just kept hammering away.
Slipping a gate latch, he swung into the saddle and headed for the open range. And then he rode. And rode, not willing to admit that he was trying to outrun his anger and his pain.
She’d had no right. Damn her, she’d had no right to keep him from his son. She’d had no right to assume she was protecting him.
“Protecting me,” he roared aloud, sending Skip into a skittish dance that nearly tossed him from the saddle.
She hadn’t trusted him. Hadn’t believed in him. Hadn’t turned to him. And that sorry truth hurt more than anything she could have done. Anything except losing this time with William.
The overwhelming sense of loss underscored his anger, overrode his love in a consuming grief for the years he had lost, and escalated to a bone-deep rage.
Abruptly, he reined Skip around, headed back to the house at a fast run.
He found Anna in the garden. Looking pale. Looking wounded. Looking like a woman who knew guilt like no other.
“Why now?” he demanded, knowing he was lording over her, inviting her to cower, hating himself as much as he wanted to hate her for blowing a hole through his heart. “Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because you deserve to know. Because William deserves to know. He deserves to know you.”
“And I didn’t deserve to know four years ago? Four years, Anna. You stole them from me. You stole them from him.”
Anna met the wounded eyes of the man she loved and accepted that he was no longer the same man who had professed his love for her. This was an angry man. Righteously angry. Distant and confused. He was asking questions, but she understood that he didn’t really want to hear her answers. He wanted her to hurt. He wanted revenge. And she knew he was entitled.
So she didn’t try to justify what she’d done. What she did offer was the reason why, after all these years, she’d felt compelled to turn to him.
“I wouldn’t have been able to stall Ivan,” she said without preamble. “He was devious. He was determined to increase the size of his holdings by marrying me and merging Asterland with Obersbourg. I would have survived. William wouldn’t have. Ivan was already making plans to send him to boarding school. Which meant he would be raised by strangers. I couldn’t let that happen.” She looked down at her hands. Then back up at him. “I couldn’t.”
“So you called me.”
“I called you.” Just as pride hadn’t been able to stop her from contacting this man she still loved but couldn’t have, pride couldn’t stop her from saving William. And to save him from a man whose only motives for marriage were power and greed, she’d swallowed that pride and turned to Gregory for the strength she’d known he would offer.
“And what do you want from me now? Just what do you expect from me?”
“I expect that you will be the man I know you to be. I’ve seen you with William. I’ve watched you fall in love with him even before you knew he was yours. And I’ve seen him come alive under your loving hand.”
He looked away. Looked defeated.
“I’ve had to make choices, Gregory. From where you stand, they may not have been wise ones. They may not have been the right ones. But you weren’t standing where I was. You weren’t there—”
“I wasn’t given the chance to be there!” he ground out, his voice as raw as the look in his eyes.
She accepted then that it was well and truly over. He would not understand. And from his perspective, Anna conceded that he could not understand.
“I have to go back,” she said in a voice so quiet, she wasn’t sure, at first, if he’d heard her. “I have to go back,” she repeated as he met her eyes with a look of utter incredulity.
“To what? The loving arms of your family?” H
e snorted in disgust. “For what? A crumbling little country that nothing short of a miracle or an arranged marriage can save? Help me understand this.”
She drew herself erect. “I am a princess,” she said simply. “I have a responsibility. I have a duty.”
The rage in his eyes outdistanced even his disbelief. “They browbeat you, they threaten you—they barter you, for God sake, like a piece of property, like an object, like a possession whose only worth can be measured in dollars—and yet you go back to them.”
“I don’t expect you to understand.”
He stared at her hard, gathered his composure, lost it in the same breath. “You’re damn right I don’t understand. But you need to understand something. You will not...” he paused, slammed his fist on the table, visibly steadied himself. “You will not take him away from me.”
She felt as if she was bleeding. She felt as if she was dying as she met his eyes levelly, utterly defeated yet totally committed to do what was best for William. “No. I won’t take him away from you.”
Ten
Anna had come full circle. Once again, she was aboard Langley’s private jet. And once again, she had left by cover of night, this time to escape the unwanted attention of the press that continued to hound Casa Royale. The major difference between this flight and the last, however, was that this time, the course had been set to take her back to Obersbourg. After several solitary hours, she was almost home.
Home. Yes, she was almost home, yet everything inside her said it was home she had left behind in Texas.
As she felt the aircraft’s gradual descent, which heralded the approach to the airport, she could still see the troubled looks on the faces in the small crowd that had gathered to see her off. Blake and Josie had come. So had the Churchills, the Cunninghams, the Langleys. Even Manny and Sheila had come to say goodbye, smiling sadly. But it was the remote distance in Gregory’s eyes that haunted her. The confusion in William’s that clutched at her heart and twisted.