by Kim Lawrence
He looked so offended by the mere suggestion and for a moment the surge of warmth and love she felt for this man swamped everything else she was feeling.
‘That would hardly send out the right message. Panic is the problem. My presence will hopefully help keep a lid on things. What are you doing? The helicopters are waiting. You need to get going and I need…’ You, he thought and shooed the thought away.
She swallowed. ‘You’re hurt.’ She walked up to him and touched the graze on his cheek that was seeping blood.
He moved back from her touch, a spasm of dismissal twisting his lips; he could not afford any distractions. ‘It is nothing. You need to hurry.’ He caught her wrists and looked down at her, allowing himself the indulgence for a moment of drinking in her lovely face.
‘Your grandfather isn’t going to go quietly.’ Yet another worry for his already overburdened, though very broad, shoulders to bear.
Dante fought the reluctance to release her wrists and stepped back. ‘He’s a stubborn old—But don’t worry,’ he added, moderating his tone. ‘We’ll make sure he’s all right.’
‘Yes, I know you will,’ she said, shaking back her hair and gathering it in one hand with a practised double twist of her wrist, then securing it in a haphazard ponytail on the base of her neck. ‘So, what do you want me to do?’
He stared at her as though she were talking a foreign language. ‘What are you talking about, Beatrice? I really don’t have the time for you to—How am I supposed to focus if I’m worried about you?’
‘I’m not going.’
‘Beatrice…!’
‘How about I trust you to take care of yourself, and you trust me? I can absolutely promise you that I have no intention of putting myself in harm’s way,’ she said, standing there with a protective hand pressed to her stomach.
After a moment of silence, she saw the flash of something in his eyes before he tipped his head in silent acknowledgement.
‘I haven’t got time for this.’
‘That’s what I was counting on,’ she admitted and drew a grin that briefly lightened the sombre cast of his expression.
‘All right. I’m staying, you’re staying. But if you—’
She waved her hand in a gesture of impatience. ‘Get under your feet? Faint? I get it. As always, your opinion of me is flattering,’ she observed drily. ‘Just go do your stuff, Dante.’
He stood there, his body clenched as duty warred with instinct. His instinct was telling him to carry her, kicking and screaming if necessary, to safety. His duty was to keep everybody safe, but how could he do that if he didn’t know Beatrice was safe? His normal ability to compartmentalise deserted him in the moment as he looked down at her. Despite his terror at the thought of her and their child coming to harm, a terror that only increased when he imagined not being there for her, his eyes glowed with admiration.
The next time anyone said anything about genes he would tell the bastards that his wife knew more about the meaning of service and duty than the rest of his family put together!
Still he hesitated, unwilling, unable, to leave her, all his instincts telling him it was his job to protect her.
‘Is that my protection detail?’ she said, as three uniformed figures appeared on the horizon.
He nodded. ‘Do as they tell you.’
‘I will.’
She saw him exchange words with the approaching detail as their paths crossed, but they were too distant for her to hear what was said.
All three of the tough-looking military types, not seeming breathless even though they’d been running, paused with brief formality to bow when they reached her.
One stepped up. ‘Highness, we are—’ He broke off and, one hand pressed to his earpiece, turned away, listening.
‘Is there a problem?’ Beatrice asked anxiously.
The men exchanged glances, as though asking each other if it was appropriate to respond.
‘My husband…?’
‘His Highness will have received the information. It is confirmation that the palace has escaped any real structural damage, so it is safe to return. Actually the first reports suggest that there is very little structural damage at all, but there has been a partial wall collapse.’
‘Inside the palace?’ Beatrice asked.
He nodded. ‘The nursery.’
The fine muscles around her mouth quivered. There were still wisps of panic floating through her head, but she was able to speak like a relatively calm person even if inside felt a lot less confident of her ability to cope.
‘Are there casualties?’ she asked, her thoughts quickly moving past her insecurities to the children she had seen on a visit earlier that week. She felt her eyes fill and blinked away the moisture as she pushed the now poignant memories away.
Tears were not going to help. Tears were for later, hopefully along with smiles. Right now she needed to focus.
‘By some miracle it seems not.’
The tears she had tried to suppress spilled out, along with a laugh of sheer relief.
‘Apparently they were all in the playground. There are scrapes and cuts, all minor, and a hell of a lot of hysterical parents arriving. The emergency services are having a lot of trouble. We need to keep them in one place. They need to take a headcount, but it’s like—and I quote—“herding cats”, which makes it really hard for them to assess the situation.’
‘The headmistress struck me as pretty competent. Is she still there?’
‘She is concussed and has been hospitalised, so the main priority is to move the children and parents out of the immediate area without losing track of any children, so that we can secure the building against any potential aftershocks. It sounds simpler than it is. It’s pandemonium.’
‘But someone is helping.’
‘Us, once you are safe, Highness.’
She held up a hand and wished she possessed half the calm she was channelling. ‘Why waste time? Take me with you.’
The military figure shook his head. ‘Our instructions are to—’
‘I’m giving you new instructions. What’s the harm? You said it’s safe.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
DANTE WAS ON the way to the airport, which luckily had suffered no damage, and he was speaking to his brother via speakerphone.
‘I should get there before your flight leaves. Do you have to fly straight out?’
‘I’ve got a meeting I can’t get out of tomorrow.’
‘Right. I should make it before your flight if there are no hold-ups.’
‘Is your heroine wife with you?’
‘Heroine… Beatrice, you mean?’
‘You got any other wives? They are playing the video on the big screens and there’s not a dry eye in the house. She had all the kids singing and she’s carrying the little guy—’
Dante could feel the pressure build in his temples as he tried to speak. He managed to get the words past his clenched lips on the third attempt. ‘Beatrice is at the nursery, the one where the wall collapsed?’ The news of a successful evacuation had reached him but not that his wife was involved in the process.
‘Well, she was earlier, but the parents are being interviewed now and all are singing her praises. You’re going to have to name a park after her, or put up a statue or something.’
Dante, who did not connect with the amusement in his brother’s voice, swore loud and fluently, cutting his brother off mid-flow. He brought the car around in a vicious one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn that sent up a dust cloud of gravel, and floored the gas pedal.
Beatrice spent a luxurious half hour in a hot shower, washing off the accumulated dirt and grime. Dressed in a blue silk robe, her long wet hair wrapped in a towel twisted into a turban, she walked back into the bedroom. She had checked her phone sixty seconds ago but she checked it again. Nothing since the missed call earli
er, but the mobile mast had been down for a good part of the day and there were numerous black spots on the island.
She sighed. At times like this a fertile imagination was not a friend. She knew that she wouldn’t be able to relax until she had contact from Dante again.
She walked over to the mirror, untwisted the turban and began to pat her long hair dry. She had picked up a brush to complete the task when the door burst open.
Dante stood there, his tall, lean frame filling the doorway, wearing fatigue pants that clung to his narrow hips; the vest that might once have been white was stained with dust and dirt. His dark skin seemed liberally coated with the same debris.
Relief flooded through her as her face broke into a smile of dizzy relief. ‘Dante!’ She was halfway across the room when she realised that something was very wrong. ‘Are you hurt? Has something happ—’
‘Quite a lot, it seems.’
She stopped dead. She could hear the flame pushing against the ice in his voice, and literally feel the raw emotion pulsing off him.
‘I asked you to stay safe, I asked you… You promised, and what do you do?’ He advanced a step towards her and paused, close enough now for her to see the muscle throbbing in his lean cheek. ‘I trusted you to take care of yourself and our baby and then what do I discover? That you decided to put yourself and…and our child straight in the path of danger, quite deliberately.’
She gulped. ‘The nursery, you mean? There was no danger. It was just, just…herding cats, that was all.’
‘You could have died,’ he rasped hoarsely.
She looked at this strange, coldly furious Dante and fell back on defiance. ‘You could die crossing the road.’
A hissing sound left his white clenched lips.
‘I told you to stay safe.’
Her chin lifted. ‘And I made my own judgement.’
‘You put our child in danger.’
‘How dare you?’ she cried, surging towards him, her hands clenched into fists, not sure in the moment if the anger fizzing up inside her was directed at the insulting accusation or the fact he was confirming that that was what this was about. It wasn’t her safety; it was the baby. It was always about the baby, this time and last time.
Suddenly she was angry with herself as much as him for wanting to believe differently, wanting to believe she was more than a means to an end, a person, not an incubator.
He watched as, hands outstretched, she backed away from him, her chest heaving.
‘How dare you even suggest that?’ she began, her low, intense voice building in volume with each successive syllable. ‘You are the father. Does it make you a bad father for putting yourself in danger today? No, that makes you a man doing the right thing. Well, I did the right thing today too. Women do not stay at home waiting for the heroes’ return and knitting socks these days…my child was never in any danger at any point!’
Unable to stop seeing her body crushed beneath a pile of rubble, her dead eyes looking up at him, the nightmare vision playing on a loop in his head, he barely registered what she was saying.
‘If it wasn’t for the baby…’ for me, the voice in his head condemned ‘…you wouldn’t even be here today.’ In danger and it was all down to him. He hadn’t been there for her; he had never been there for her.
Just as he’d never been there for Carl.
She flinched as though he had struck her. ‘I am aware of that,’ she said, hugging the crushing hurt to herself. Did he think she needed that pointed out?
‘Things need to change. Your safety is all that matters. You must come first.’
She stood there, knowing he meant the baby, but letting herself imagine for a moment how it might feel if the fierce protective emotion in his dark eyes was really for her, and when the moment passed she felt flat and empty. ‘Some things you can’t change.’ You couldn’t make someone love you and it was about time she started dealing with facts.
‘I have to go.’
‘Of course you do,’ she said flatly.
‘To the airport to say…things I need to say to my brother.’
‘Well, don’t expect me to be here when you get back because I’m going to keep my baby safe and I don’t feel safe here, with you.’ Like arrows, she aimed the words at his broad back.
Did he flinch at the impact? She didn’t know, but she hoped so.
Dante got out of the car in front of the airport terminal and realised he didn’t remember driving there at all. Now that couldn’t be a good thing, could it?
As he strode in he glanced at the departure board. He had just caught his brother. He dodged some airport officials bearing down on him and tried not to notice a group sharing their experiences with a camera crew.
He almost made it.
‘And here we have the Crown Prince himself, who was in the thick of it,’ an enterprising journalist said, shoving a microphone in his face. ‘Would you say this has been a lucky escape, sir?’ He started to trot as it became obvious that Dante was not slowing down. ‘The buildings here are pretty robust.’
‘And the people,’ Dante responded, walking on.
‘The rebuilding,’ the guy called after him.
Rebuilding. Dante’s pace slowed for the first time as the scene with Beatrice flashed before his eyes. He had not rebuilt; he had demolished the progress they had made in a matter of minutes.
Carl, who was scanning a laptop that lay across his knees, looked up when Dante entered, closing the door on his bodyguard who stood outside. He set aside the computer and got up, walking straight across to his brother, wrapping him in a brotherly hug, which Dante returned.
Carl stepped back and, though half a head shorter than his younger brother, retained his grip on Dante’s shoulders.
‘Thank you for this.’
Carl looked bemused by the warm words. ‘For what?’
‘For coming back. And I’m sorry. I should have said it before, but I am truly.’
Carl shook his head. ‘I hate to repeat myself, but for what?’
‘For not being there for you. I should have had your back.’
Carl looked astonished. ‘But you did.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘You were my younger brother. I couldn’t burden you with my problems, with the emphasis on “my”. It took me a long time to get to that point. I was either going to accept the status quo or take that leap of faith, and you know me, I’m not like you. I was never one to put my head over the parapet and risk having it knocked off. I was the “toe the line for a quiet life” son.’
Though Dante looked thoughtful as he listened to this ruthless self-assessment, his expression and emotions were locked firmly in self-condemnation mode.
‘I should have known how unhappy you were.’
‘It wasn’t about being unhappy. I was always just a wrong fit. I could never inspire the way you do. It’s true!’ Carl exclaimed when Dante shook his head, looking patently uncomfortable.
‘This was always my decision to make and for a long time I wasn’t brave enough.’ His hand fell from his brother’s shoulders. ‘I’m happy I’ve met someone. And you have Beatrice back. How is the heroine?’
‘I love her,’ Dante said in a driven voice. He looked shocked. ‘I love her,’ he repeated slowly. ‘Is this how it feels?’ he asked, a kind of wonder in his voice. ‘Oh, hell, I’ve been such an idiot.’
‘Have you told her any of this?’
‘She deserves better.’
‘Than what?’
‘Me! I’m a selfish bastard.’
‘I have to tell you, brother, I prefer you as a bastard than a martyr. Maybe Beatrice does too,’ he added slyly, and watched the hope flare in his brother’s eyes.
‘What are you doing?’
Beatrice gave a start and spun around, her blonde hair almost flaring out the
n settling in a silky curtain to her shoulder blades as she faced Dante, who stood with his broad shoulders propped against the wall beside the door.
Once she moved past the head-spinning blood rush of adrenalin that had her poised in ‘deer in the headlights’ mode, she realised that, though the anger he had been nursing earlier had gone, it had been replaced by an explosive quality. He made her think of a time bomb ticking down, every taut muscle and clenched sinew stretched to the limit.
‘I’ve just been packing.’
‘So, you’re running away?’
She turned away as she felt her eyes fill. ‘I’m moving rooms,’ she contradicted. ‘I’m not sure I could be termed essential travel. It’s ironic. I can cope with the petty official and your family, but, you’re right, I am leaving because I can’t stay with a man who doesn’t trust me. You’re not wrapping me in cotton wool, you’re suffocating me!’
He flinched. ‘I know I said some unforgivable things but when I knew that you had been… I just went like ice inside. I felt terror, real gut-freezing terror. I haven’t felt that way since you lost the baby. I felt so bloody helpless.’
Her eyes fluttered wide with shock.
‘I could see the pain in your eyes and I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t help you. It was the worst feeling of my entire life, seeing you hurt. And being the emotionally crippled mess-up I am, I had no words…’ He made a sound of boiling frustration between his clenched teeth as she grabbed his head in both hands. ‘I should have been able to make you feel better. I should have kept you safe. I failed you and this time… I cannot bear to see you go through that again.’ He swallowed hard, and captured her eyes with his agonised gaze. ‘I swore to myself that I’d keep you safe but all I’ve ended up doing is pushing you away—again!’
‘I’m still here.’
He extended his hands towards her and after a moment she took them. ‘Don’t leave me, Beatrice. Stay with me.’
‘I’m frightened too,’ she whispered.
‘But you are no coward. You are the bravest person I know, and now the world knows too. I am proud of you and even if there was no baby, I would love you.’