Lili brewed tea and opened a tin of cookies. Alex went to the bedroom to finish dressing and gather up their things. That gave her a few minutes alone with Jack.
“Take a break from fishing and go get your wife.” She took Jack’s weathered hand and tucked her big wad of kunas into his rope-scarred palm.
Jack had his pride. “That’s a lot of money. Too much.” He tried to give it back to her.
She only leaned back and put up both hands. “Believe me, I can get along without it. But you need Marina. And I have a feeling she needs you.”
Finally, Jack agreed to go and try to work things out with his wife. He also promised he would take good care of Bianka.
“See that you do,” Lili replied. “I love that goat.”
Jack said regretfully, “I would give her to you....”
Lili smiled. “But Marina loves her, too.”
“How did you know?”
“Just a guess.” She leaned close and kissed his cheek. “I’ve been meaning to ask where you got your Cadillac.”
“It was here when I bought the place.”
“Does it run?”
“Of course. Marina and I used to drive it round the island.” Jack’s eyes got a faraway look. “She loved that, riding in the Cadillac, with the top down. I haven’t had time to drive her around lately, though.”
“Make time.”
“I’ll try.”
“You know Montedoro, Jack?”
“I know it. Where the nobs go. I seen pictures of the Prince’s Palace and that big casino at Colline d’Ambre.”
“How about Alagonia?”
“Off the coast of Spain. A beautiful little piece of real estate.”
“Alex is from Montedoro. I’m an Alagonian.”
“Hold on.” Jack had paled a bit. “When I dropped my crew off on Korčula, I saw the papers. A missing prince and princess, lost somewhere in the Dalmatians...”
Lili nodded. “And you, Jack, have saved us.”
“You kissed my cheek,” Jack muttered in disbelief. “I seen the prince in the altogether, and got into a right fine scrap with him as well. He shook me hand....”
Lili said softly, “There will be a reward. It will be a large one.”
“But...” He held up the money she’d already given him. “This’ll more than do it, Your Grace.”
“There will be a lot more.”
“But all I did was to come home.”
“And you should come home more often. Spend a little more time with Marina. Promise me.”
Jack touched his cheek where she’d kissed him. “Your Majesty, if she’ll have me back, I swear to you, I will.”
* * *
They were ready well before the helicopter came. There hadn’t been much to prepare. Lili had her pack. Alex had told Jack where to find the raft and given him the survival pack to go with it. Jack promised to store them both on his boat. They might come in handy one day.
Just before the helicopter arrived, Lili said goodbye to Bianka. She cried a little to have to leave the sweet goat behind. And then the loud beating sound of the whirring helicopter blades had Bianka scrambling for cover. Lili dried her tears and let the little goat go.
Jack stood out of the way of the blades as Lili and Alex climbed aboard.
Moments later, they were lifting into the warm, clear morning air. Lili looked down at Jack waving them off, at the stone house and the barn and the two sheds. She had been so happy there.
Always, she would remember the house and the beautiful island as a place of true enchantment, the place where she’d found her heart’s desire. The place where she’d found Alex at last. Where she had discovered what it could be, to have her lifelong dream: a real marriage, a true partnership of equals.
Since April, every day had seemed like the worst day of her life. She’d given up hope, she truly had, that she would ever find the love she longed for. She, who always looked on the bright side, had truly despaired. How could she not? Tied to a man who didn’t even like her, with a baby on the way. She believed that marriage was for a lifetime. And then somehow, she had allowed herself to be bound until death to a man who would never love her.
But then they went out on the Lady Jane and got caught in the whirlwind and ended up stranded. Being shipwrecked was the best thing that had ever happened to her.
And to Alex, too, although she couldn’t be sure he would be willing to admit that. In fact, her stomach was definitely knotted with dread. Now that they were rescued, would he revert to the old Alex?
Would they end up miserable, living separate lives, barely speaking, right back where they’d started? Just the thought that he might throw it all away, turn his back on everything they had found together, put a gray cast to a bright and sunny day.
He’d damn well better not revert. If he threw their happiness away now, she was going to kill him.
She slid her hand into his. He didn’t pull away. In fact, he squeezed her fingers and even leaned close to give her a quick, brushing kiss.
She smiled at him, her heart lifting. But he was already turning away to say something to the pilot.
* * *
Alex expected a hugfest when they landed on the Princess Royale and he expected right.
Lili’s father was aboard, as were his own parents. They’d all flown to Dubrovnik and then boarded the yacht five days before, when the early searches had come to nothing.
It was a tearful reunion, but in a good way. They were all so grateful to have Alex and Lili safe again.
“We never doubted for a moment that you would be found,” Lili’s father said gruffly.
Overhead, helicopters hovered. And boats surrounded the Princess on all sides. The paparazzi were on the job, snapping away endlessly, getting shots of all of them hugging and crying, just like any ordinary family might do when two of their own came home safe after vanishing without a trace for days on end.
No one wanted to sail home on the Princess. That would take days. Jets were waiting in Dubrovnik, one for His Majesty and one for Her Sovereign Highness and family.
Lili insisted on a bath before she would go anywhere. “And poor Alex desperately needs a shave....” She granted him a look that dared him to disagree.
He rubbed his cheek. “My bride is right—but then, she always is.”
His mother was watching him. “Alexander, I believe I sense a change in you—a change for the better.”
He laughed. It felt good. “Lili has worn me down at last.”
The two of them retired to their stateroom, where they cleaned up and changed into fresh clothes.
Before they rejoined the others, he took her in his arms. “You look beautiful.”
She searched his face. “I’m afraid, Alex.”
He kissed the tip of her nose. “Of what? We’ve been rescued. We’re safe.”
“Am I going to lose you now?” The jewel-blue eyes seemed full of worried questions.
He cradled her face and kissed her, a quick press of his lips to hers. “No, you’re not going to lose me.”
She took in a ragged little breath. “Promise?”
“Promise.”
“You really are...better, then?”
“Better?” he asked, even though he knew exactly what she meant.
And she knew that he knew. “You know what I mean. Your mother noticed. You’re different, more open. You seem ready to get beyond whatever happened to you when you were captured by the Taliban.”
“Well, that’s good, then, isn’t it?”
She peered at him even more closely. “Yes, I think so....”
“But you still have your doubts about me, eh?”
“Alex, I didn’t say that.”
“You were thinking it—and it wasn’t the Taliban who captured me. My captors were just plain kidnappers in it for the money. Kidnapping is big business in Afghanistan. The plan, which they hadn’t thought through in any orderly way, was to ransom me.”
“I thought they were t
errorists....”
“No. Just street thugs who got lucky and grabbed a prince—and then had no idea what to do from there. We were unarmed and without security at the time. It was in Kabul, on a busy street. It was stupid of us. But after surviving the constant danger of the tribal areas, we made the fatal error of assuming we were reasonably safe in the capital.”
“You said they took you for ransom?”
“That’s right.”
“But there was never a ransom demand, was there? I thought you simply...vanished.”
“The thugs got cold feet when it came to the actual deal-making. They never made any demands, they simply traded us—up the line, you might say. Every time we were traded, our new captors took pictures and made videos of us—none of which they ever did anything with that I’m aware of. They beat us, interrogated us. But in the end, nobody seemed to know what to do with us. None of our captors had a network sophisticated enough to make a ransom demand of the Princess of Montedoro and to work out an executable plan to collect the money—let alone deliver the hostages. So there were more interrogations, more threats, more beatings. And sometimes, for months, there was nothing.”
“Nothing?”
He shrugged. “Long stretches of time would go by during which we were simply prisoners, half-starved, losing hope. Ignored. They didn’t even bother to torture us for months on end. It was after we were traded for that last time, three years into our captivity, that they killed Devon.” He said the words. They tasted bad in his mouth, but they conveyed nothing of the real horror of what had happened to his friend. “More months went by. And then, finally, after all that time, after four damn years—finally, when I’d given up and knew I would die there, in a hole in the ground near the Pakistani border, there was a raid by American troops. I escaped in the confusion and managed to make my way to the Americans. They got me out.”
She shivered. “I hate that you suffered. And I hate even more that you lost your friend.” She asked, so gently, “You went to Princeton with him, didn’t you?”
He took the question for exactly what it was: just one of many. He probably shouldn’t have told her anything, should have kept his silence on the subject.
But he didn’t want to keep his silence. Not anymore. Not really. Not with Lili, anyway. She honestly had changed him. Somehow, by some miracle of will and tenderness, she had done it, brought him, kicking and screaming and dragging his feet every step of the way, back into the world of the living again. He owed her. And he saw now that knowing the truth of what had happened to him was important to her; it mattered to her. He wanted her to have what mattered to her.
“Yes, Devon Lucas and I were at Princeton together,” Alex said. “We both majored in journalism. After Princeton, he worked for an American newspaper. He became a war correspondent—first in Iraq and then in Afghanistan. I wanted to write about the Afghan opium trade, to explore the cultural and financial ramifications of opium cultivation and smuggling as a way of life. I contacted Devon. He was still in Afghanistan and he already had a network of guides and sources. He said he would help me out, take me where I needed to go. He’d been planning to go home before he heard from me. He would have gone home if not for me.”
She was searching his face again. “You blame yourself for his death.”
“I am to blame for his death.”
“No.”
“Yes. Devon stayed in Afghanistan because I asked him to. He was kidnapped because he was with me. When we tried to escape, they beat me, but they cut off Devon’s hand.”
She swallowed. Hard. “Oh, my sweet God...”
He nodded. “I had ‘value’ to them because I was a prince and they still believed they would find a way to demand and get a big ransom for me. Devon’s only value to them was as a way to control me. And in the end, when they killed him, they did it to break me. They brought us both up out of the hole they kept us in and they shot him in the head in front of me.”
Her eyes were turbulent, swirling with outrage and sadness combined. “It was their fault. Those thugs who took you, traded you, tortured you. They are the ones to blame, Alex, not you.”
“Well, they paid—at least the men who shot Devon paid. They all died in the American raid.”
“Good. They deserved to die.”
“Lili.” He smoothed her gleaming, freshly shampooed hair. “I believe you have a bloodthirsty side.”
Staunchly, her blue eyes glittering now, she repeated, “They deserved to die. And it wasn’t your fault.”
There was no point in arguing with her over it. He told her tenderly, “I mean it. I’m all right.”
She almost smiled. “You realize what a big step you’ve just taken?”
“Oh, have I?”
“Yes. You’ve finally talked to me about the things you always refused ever to talk about, about your friend Devon, about the evil men who kidnapped you, about the terrible brutality you suffered while you were a prisoner....”
“See? I’m a changed man. All because of you.” He said it teasingly, even though it was true.
She studied him. “You have come a long way.”
“Yes, I have.”
And then she frowned. “But I still have this strange feeling that you’re holding back something important.”
He caressed her cheek and reassured her again, “I’m all right, Lili.”
She sighed then. “I don’t think I could bear it if you turned away from me now. That would be too impossibly cruel of you, to show me what it could be for us. And then to take it away.”
“I won’t turn away from you.” He said the words and then wondered at them. Somehow, even though he meant them, they seemed...not quite true. She’d given him hope again, made him see that there might still be a good and productive life ahead for him. But now that the fog of self-blame and numbness had cleared, he saw not only what might be for them, as a woman and a man, a wife and her husband, a queen and her prince. He also saw what he hadn’t done, the promises he hadn’t kept. He had to fulfill those promises before he could give himself completely to the future, to Lili, and to their child.
She said, “You won’t mind so much, then, being my consort, being the husband of a queen?”
“No, Lili, I won’t mind that at all. It’s become something of a habit for me—to be married to you. A good habit. One I’m finding I don’t want to give up.”
She caught his fingers, opened them, pressed them against her cool, velvety cheek and then turned her head a little so she could kiss the center of his palm. “Thank you. I needed to hear that. It’s been...like a miracle for me. Our disaster of marriage somehow turning into the kind of union I’ve dreamed of my whole life long. I love you, Alex.”
He wanted to answer in kind, but he knew he had yet to earn the right to speak to her of love. So he kissed her instead, a long kiss that, as always with Lili, only left him wanting more.
* * *
At the airport in Dubrovnik, Leo wanted Lili to return to Alagonia with him. She hugged him and kissed him again and said that she and Alex would be home to see him soon. But for now, she was going to Montedoro with her husband.
Surprisingly, Leo didn’t argue or bluster or insist she do things the way he wanted them done. He kissed her again and told her he loved her. He even shook Alex’s hand and commanded him to “Take good care of my little love.”
Alex promised that he would. Leo boarded his royal jet with only his attendants for company. A few minutes later, Alex and Lili were taking seats in the plane with his mother and father.
They spent the flight telling his parents all about the island, about the stone house and the little goat and the Cadillac in the shed. And about their inadvertent rescuer, Jack Spanner.
Actually, Lili did most of the talking. Alex sat back and listened. He admired the way she made a great story of it—a great story with a happy ending, which was the only kind of story of which his wife approved.
They were mobbed at Nice airport. There were ph
otographers everywhere, clicking away, and reporters shouting questions. He put his arm around Lili, keeping her close at his side, while his men did their best to push the crowds back a little.
In the end, they gave in and answered a good number of the reporters’ questions. Why not get it over with? The airport mob scene saved them the necessity of sitting through a formal press conference later.
They took a limousine to Montedoro, a convertible, with his men providing security in two other cars, one leading the way and the other behind. As they neared the Prince’s Palace, his mother ordered the top put down. Crowds lined the streets. Lili and Alex waved and smiled as the people cheered their safe return.
Inside the palace, once they’d been greeted by the staff, the doctors were waiting. Alex got a cursory once-over and was quickly declared none the worse for wear. Lili’s exam took a little longer. But in the end, the diagnosis was the same. Lili and the baby got a clean bill of health, too.
Later, there was a family dinner in his mother and father’s private apartment. It was good, Alex thought, to be with his family again, to have Lili sitting next to him, safe and sound.
Each of his brothers took him aside and said how good it was to have him back in the family. He knew they meant in more ways than simply his safe return from the island. They were glad to see him finally truly coming back from the bad years in Afghanistan. His sisters made much of him—and of Lili. They were hugged and kissed and exclaimed over repeatedly.
There was a time when all the attention would have had him running for his rooms, to lock the door, to be alone. But not anymore. He could hold up under the assault of kisses and hugs just fine. He could even give out a few hugs of his own.
It was late when he and Lili finally retired to their palace apartment. Rufus, his loyal longtime retainer, was there, waiting. He welcomed them home—and then left them alone.
He held out his arms to Lili. She came to him, kissed him, a kiss so slow and perfect and sweet.
When he lifted his head at last, she asked him dreamily, “Could it be?”
“Could what be?”
“Everything. All of it. You. Me. Happiness. The two of us sharing that big bed in the other room at last?”
The Prince She Had to Marry Page 16