by Cindy Gerard
And with Blake tossing a wink over his shoulder, she led him out the door.
In grim silence, Greg watched them go. Happy for Blake—for what he’d found with Josie. Green with envy—and not much liking himself for it. He could have had that. He almost had. With Anna. Anna and William.
What he had now was William. And his pride. His damnable, stubborn pride.
Eleven
No one ever bothered Anna unannounced in her private office. Her mother never made an appearance, so when Royce rapped subtly on the door at 7:00 p.m., then opened it and announced that Queen Caroline wished to have a word with her, Anna could only stare in stunned silence as her mother stepped inside the room.
For a long moment, they stayed as they were, Anna assessing from behind her massive desk, her mother looking tentative and ill at ease.
“Yes? Was there something you wanted?” she finally asked, maintaining a cool reserve that she had perfected to an art over the past month and a half.
With reservations, her mother moved to stand before Anna’s desk. She averted her gaze from Anna’s to sweep the array of papers, the soft hum of an incoming fax, the cursor blinking softly but steadily from the notebook computer that lay open on the devastatingly well-organized surface of the desk.
What is it, Mother? I have several hours of work yet to complete tonight.”
“You work too hard,” her mother stated, meeting Anna’s gaze at last
Anna was stunned. Then suspiciously amused. “Your concern is misplaced—and far too late.”
She hated the hard, cynical edge that had become a part of her manner. And for some reason, she hated even more the wince of pain that fleetingly crossed her mother’s aristocratic features.
“My transgressions are many,” Queen Caroline stated, squaring her shoulders. “As are my weaknesses.”
She was quiet for a very long time as Anna searched her face and saw the sincere regret no longer masked behind a facade of indifference. You are making a grave mistake, Anna.”
Sensing, at last, what this meeting was about, Anna leaned back in her chair. “While usurping Father’s power may have been ruthless, I do not see it as a mistake.”
“I’m not talking about your father. While he fumes, I think he is silently relieved that he is no longer under the pressure of ruling Obersbourg. I’m talking about William.”
Had she knocked her to the ground, Anna couldn’t have felt less off balance. Or more angry. “William? When has my son, your grandson, ever been more than an inconvenient thought to you?”
While she did not blanch, a flicker of something very near to regret flashed in Caroline’s eyes. “You have every right to be incensed. What you do not have a right to do, is judge me.”
“As I have been judged by you all my life?” Anna shot back bitterly.
Queen Caroline met her daughter’s eyes squarely. “I have given up much for the sake of tradition. I have lost much for the sake of providence, for the sake of protocol in the guise of privilege.”
Intrigued, in spite of her resolve not to let the heavy remorse in her mother’s voice phase her, Anna held her gaze. “What are you talking about?”
“I, too, was once in love,” she confessed after a moment’s hesitation and with such wistful hopelessness that Anna involuntarily leaned toward her. With—with a rebel and a rogue,” she continued, the slight smile that lit her face telling of memories of a young love lost, a young life compromised.
“He was beneath me. In position. In everything that mattered to my family. They took me away from him. They arranged my marriage to your father. It was the accepted protocol. It was the...the established method of procreation of royal bloodlines.”
She looked quickly away from Anna’s stunned gaze, but not before Anna saw the thin mist of moisture glistening in her gray-green eyes. “I was given no choice. And yet...and yet I’ve always regretted that I didn’t...that I didn’t at least attempt to run away. To run to him. As you ran to your young man.”
She clasped her hands together, as if that fragile hold would prevent her from falling apart. “I haven’t shown it, Anna. But I have... I have admired your small rebellions.”
“Like you admired Sara’s?” Anna couldn’t stop the question. Couldn’t deny herself the opportunity to level the kind of pain she sensed her mother was vulnerable to for the first time.
Regret, however, for her cruelty was swift and humbling. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”
“It was deserved,” her mother replied, drawing from years of practiced control to move beyond the pain. “I was not what I could have been—not what I should have been for Sara, or for you. I cannot rectify that horrific error. I cannot justify. I can only ask you to consider that my heart closed the day they took me away from...from him...and forced me to marry your father.”
She drew on her reserves to square her shoulders, lift her chin. “Do not become him, Anna. Do not allow everything that is you—your kindness, your giving heart, your ability to love and be loved. Do not allow yourself to be lost in a void of your father’s making.”
Tears stung Anna’s eyes, clogged her throat as her mother laid herself bare, laid out a picture of the woman Anna feared she had already become.
“Why now?” she demanded rising to her feet, her hands fisted to her sides to keep them steady. “I’ve needed you for so long. Why do you come to me now?”
Queen Caroline closed her eyes, fought back tears both she and her daughter had thought she was incapable of shedding. “Because now,” she managed, facing Anna’s confusion and pain, “now is the time that matters most.”
“I don’t understand.”
Caroline walked slowly to the door. “You will. You have loved, Anna. You still love.”
“What love I had is lost.”
Her mother turned, met her eyes with a wistful smile. “There is someone here to see you, my dear. Please try to consider my words when you make your peace with him.”
She opened the door then, opened it wide—to allow Gregory to step inside.
Greg wasn’t entirely prepared for what he would say. He’d only known that a part of him had been lost since the day he’d let Anna walk out of his life. Seeing her now—her eyes full of shock, valiantly hiding a hope, fruitlessly masking a hurt—made him realize that seeing her again filled a hole the size of Texas that had been drilled through the middle of his heart.
Finding an unexpected ally in the Queen herself had been a stroke of luck he hadn’t counted on. He’d been prepared to scale the palace walls if necessary. He’d done it before, under cover of dark, under the auspices of heroism. He’d have done it today for love He’d have done it today out of desperation.
She opened her mouth as if to speak—then quickly whirled away from him, presenting her back, wrapping her arms around her waist as if stalling a chill that had suddenly come over her like an arctic wind.
“Your Highness,” he said, an acknowledgment, an address that brought her head around. “You look like hell,”
His thin smile was intended to soften the harshness of the words his concern had not adequately relayed.
“William,” she said without acknowledging any of the emotions roiling inside her. “Where is William? Is he all right?”
“He’s fine. He’s here. Whoa. Not so fast.” He stopped her with a gentle but firm hand on her arm as she shot for the door. “He’s in the kitchen—don’t ask me which one. He’s with your butler eating cookies. Your mother poured the milk.”
“I want to see him.”
No match for his grip on her arm, she was forced to stop, glare up at him.
“And you will. You will see him,” he assured her with a patience he didn’t know he had in him. “We need to talk, Anna. First we need to talk.”
She was edgy. She was alert—for Lord knew what, he thought—and he reined in his temper when he looked, really looked deep into her eyes.
In spite of the beauty of the face he had dreamed about every
night since he’d let her walk away from him, the strain of the schedule she’d been keeping, the pressure to perform and the burden of responsibility had taken their toll. Her expressive mouth was pinched and drawn. Those clear green eyes looked fogged from stress and lack of sleep.
“Sit, Anna. Please sit and talk with me.”
“I wasn’t aware that there was anything you wanted to hear me say,” she said, reluctantly capitulating by sitting stiffly on a damask side chair.
“Did I ever tell you,” he began as he pulled a matching chair around to face her, to lean forward and take her cold, fragile hands in his, “did I ever tell you that I can be a thickheaded fool if adequately provoked?”
She looked from their joined hands to his eyes, back to his hands again, but not before he’d caught the quick, telling shadow of hope. It was all the opening he needed.
“I wanted to hate you, Anna, for what you’d done. What you’d denied me.” Eyes on her lowered head, he watched her swallow, held on tight when she tried to pull her hands from his grip. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t hate you—the problem was, everyone knew it but me. Juanita drove me crazy. Blake—Blake does not yet know how close he came to having that ugly mug of his rearranged. More than once,” he added with a rueful grin.
The only acknowledgment that she was listening was a small easing of tension in the hands he held.
“Every night when you called William,” he went on, needing to get the words out, “it hurt. It hurt that you didn’t ask to speak to me. It hurt that you were functioning so well, when I was—well, let’s just say when I wasn’t functioning at all.”
Her head came up at that, and that small glimmer of hope had transitioned to a studied curiosity.
“After you left Texas, left your child—our child—the child that you loved more than life, I began to think back to some of the things you had said. Some of the things you didn’t say. I made myself take the time to rethink them.
“What I couldn’t understand was how you could be willing to give up everything—William, me—for your noble obligations—”
“You were not mine to give up,” she insisted. “You made it clear—you didn’t want me there.”
“I was angry. I’m still angry,” he confessed. “I’m angry for the time I lost with William. I’m angry for the time I lost with you. I’m angry, but no longer at you. It took a while, but I finally understand what compelled you. I understand what drove you.”
He shifted, leaning closer. “It’s not anything as simple as duty, is it? It’s not anything as basic as obligation. It’s your heart, Anna. It’s that honorable, incorruptible heart that makes you always take responsibility, take the blame, take on the task of setting a world full of wrongs right.”
He let his words, which had been so long forming in his mind, settle before he went down on one knee in front of her.
“I finally realized that it wasn’t a cold, calculating woman who could convince a young marine she didn’t love him in order to save him from a lifestyle she was afraid would smother him. It wasn’t a designing woman who could give up flesh and blood so they could have a chance at a life that would enable instead of disable them! And it wasn’t a selfish, aristocratic snob who would leave a simple life she’d grown to love, a country she had embraced, to return to a dying principality and try to save it from ruin.
“What you are, Anna,” he continued, bringing her hands to his mouth and pressing a soft kiss there, “is a proud and valiant woman who has taken more upon her slim shoulders than any one person should have to take.”
The warmth of her tears fell softly on their joined hands. He stood. Drew her up with him. Into his arms. Breathed a huge sigh of relief when she melted against him like warm honey.
“I let you down,” he whispered against her hair. “I sold you short. I ignored your love, stepped on your heart, took away your child. Can you ever forgive me?”
In answer, she wrapped her arms tighter around his neck and hung on. Just hung on.
Later, after she and William had enjoyed a tearful, sloppy, reunion, and Royce had fed them both, Anna and Greg tucked their son into bed in the room adjoining her suite.
Not long after, Greg had her naked and snug by his side under satin sheets and an antique lace counterpane. He glanced from the towering spires of the four-poster, the gilded, ornate molding that adorned the twenty foot high walls, the silk brocade wallpaper and the Louis the XIV dresser and side chairs.
“It ain’t much, but it’s home,” he said after a long, appreciative whistle.
She smiled against his shoulder, wove her fingers through his chest hair. “Texas is home.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “And one of the advantages of owning my own aircraft plant will factor in just fine. We’re all going to log a lot of air time scooting between here and Royal for, oh, say, the next sixty or seventy years.”
“You would do that? Commute long distance for me? What about your work?”
“An offshoot of all this soul-searching is that I’ve found I have very capable people who can handle several aspects of the business for me. In time, once you have everything set in motion here, you’ll need to select some key people you trust to run the show for you while you’re stateside.”
“With the Web, phone and fax, I’m planning on stateside being a major part of my life.”
“You miss the garden.”
“I miss the garden.”
“You know,” he said, hitching up on an elbow so he could look down into her precious, trusting face, “when I was trying to come to terms with who you are and why you did what you did, I’d find myself sitting on that bench by the fountain that had fascinated you so.”
Lazily, he toyed with a strand of her hair. “I think I know now why it had always drawn you. You saw parallels there. You saw yourself in the transplanted vegetation, saw that with determination, will and careful nurturing, even life alien to the rugged Texas terrain could thrive.
“You saw Will making the transition. What you didn’t see was yourself.”
He lowered his head to brush a kiss across her brow. “I’ll always see you there, Anna. I see you thriving. I see a delicate balance between your role as a princess and your role as my wife.”
“If that was a proposal,” she murmured, pulling his mouth to hers, “I accept.”
“It was definitely a proposal. And I wouldn’t have taken no for an answer.”
“How do you feel about big weddings?”
He looked deeply into those eyes he loved, knowing, as he did, that there was more to her question than a mere question. “Big weddings?”
“I’m thinking extravaganza. I’m thinking the fairy-tale wedding of the century between Europe’s most photographed princess and the Lone Star state’s most photogenic prince.”
His eyes narrowed in appreciation. “You’re thinking revenue.”
“Oh, am I. The press has capitalized from royalty for years. It’s time for me to take advantage of them. Can you imagine the tourist dollars a highly publicized wedding could bring to Obersbourg?”
He smiled.
“You don’t mind?”
“What? That you want exploit the expression of my undying love by making it into a media circus? All for the sake of helping bail out Obersbourg’s economy?”
“That pretty well sums it up.”
“Well, darling, let me sum up my admiration for your business savvy this way.”
He kissed her then. Long, deep, lovingly. “Go for it. But we have the real wedding back in Royal. At the Cattleman’s Club.”
“Deal,” she said and kissed him again—then struggled abruptly to get up. “Oh, my. Let me up. I forgot. I have a critical conference call scheduled in ten minutes.”
Lazily he watched her slip out of bed, appreciating the view, anticipating the night to come. “Conference call with who?”
“With the head of Avalon Air. We’re about to go to contract with them.”
“The contract for the aircr
aft plant? The one that will rocket Obersbourg’s employment rate into the ninety plus percent? The one that’s going to pad the royal coffers with approximately—” he paused, then stated the precise figure as he plumped his pillow and crossed his hands behind his head.
A pale-blue silk robe clutched to her breasts, she turned abruptly. “How did you know the exact figure?”
“A little bird told me?”
She crossed slowly back to the bed, her brows narrowed. “What do you know about Avalon Air?”
He stared thoughtfully at the ceiling. “Oh, I know it’s an up-and-coming corporation. A subsidiary of a major player in the aviation industry.”
“Subsidiary of what major player?” she asked pointedly.
“Hunt Industries,” he said with a grin.
“You—you’re the owner of Avalon Air?”
“Well, actually, yeah.”
He dodged the pillow she swung at him.
“What was that for?”
“For bailing me out behind my back, when it was important for me to—”
He snagged her wrist, pulled her down to the bed, dragged her beneath him. “When it was important for you to do this by yourself. Well I hate to let all this red-hot temper go to waste,” he said with a grin as he nuzzled her throat, “but you did do it by yourself.”
When she made a huff of disgust, he defended himself. “Hey, it’s a hell of an opportunity. I had to scramble like crazy to get up to snuff on the specs, then compile a bid that would outshoot the other guns and guarantee Hunt Industries a tidy profit. And yes,” he added before she could voice another protest, “I would have been in on this sweet deal even if you weren’t the one offering it up.”
“It’s a question of free enterprise, then.”
“Profit margins,” he countered with a grin so wicked it finally earned her smile.
“Are you going to make love to me?” she asked as she shifted beneath him, taking his weight, returning his kiss, welcoming him to the home they had found in each other’s arms.
“Oh, I’m going to make love to you, all right,” he promised, loving the feel of her beneath him as much as he loved the smile that had been so achingly absent in his life.