Royal's Untouched Love (12 page)

She couldn't stand to hear what she knew would be an obvious lie. "No!" she shouted. The force of her words echoed through the room, shocking them both. For a moment, they both paused.

"Get out," she said softly. "Get out. I don't want to see you."

"Heidi …"

Something inside her broke. Her rage gave way to tears, and as she stared at them, salt water on her cheeks, she couldn't stop the words from coming out.

"Get out, get out, I can't stand to have you here, please, please just get out …"

Her grief touched him like her rage wouldn't. His face pale, he dressed.

He left.

Alone in her apartment, Heidi fell onto the bed. She had felt alone before, but now after having Jaque in her life, she knew how the alternative felt. This loneliness struck at her heart in a way that she could barely understand.

She told herself that this loneliness was better than being caught up in Jaque's attempt to reclaim his reputation. It had to be.

So why did she feel like a part of her had died?

*

Jaque drove far faster than he should have. The honking horns around him told him that he was likely too pained to drive safely, but he didn't care.

It felt like it took hours to collect himself. It took hours before he could pull the memory of Heidi's weeping far enough away to think. When he could, he started to plan.

He could have cursed his mother for her poorly timed text, but if he were honest, he was the one to blame. If he had presented the truth to Heidi at the very beginning, he knew now she would have helped him.

Instead, he had betrayed her, and now he had to make things right.

He remembered her tears and her shouts, and for a moment, Jaque wondered if that was even possible.

He had done her a great wrong. Was it even possible to repair what they had had?

He shook his doubts off like water.

It didn't matter. He was going to make it right.

CHAPTER SEVEN

On Sunday, Heidi had managed to get dressed and showered, but eating still felt like too much of a challenge. She felt as if she had been shot through the heart, but the rest of her body hadn't gotten the message. Instead, her heart felt cold as ice while the rest of her tried to get on with the business of living without it.

She tried to read, and when that didn't work, she tried to play some games on her phone. She wished she knew someone who wasn't a co-worker, but even the idea of going out to meet someone felt difficult. She had already called Olga the night before, and though she knew that Olga wouldn't mind if she called again, she wanted to space out the bouts of hysterical crying that Olga had to put up with.

Finally, she simply curled up on her couch with a cup of hot chocolate, trying to will some of the warmth to bring her back to life.

It was almost noon when her phone notified her of a text. For a moment, she hoped against hope that it was Jaque, though she had no idea of what she would have done if it was.

Instead it was Olga, with a dozen exclamation points and a link.

CLICK THIS RIGHT NOW!

Frowning, she did as her friend's urgent directions told her to, and she was taken to a video conference of some sort. She gasped when she saw Jaque, almost painfully handsome in a crisp blue suit, come up to the podium.

He calmed the crowd with a few practiced lines, and then he started to speak.

"I know that there are those of you in this room that have been following my life for quite some time. You've seen me mess up more than a country should have to tolerate, and you have heard and perhaps believed some of the worst things about me. I'm not here to talk about those things today."

The murmur in the crowd was cut off by his next words.

"Not all that long ago, I was told that if I didn't straighten out, I stood to lose my right to inherit the throne of Sweden. If I had been unworthy, they would find someone else.

"Of course, I never wanted that, and so I resolved to mend my ways. At the same time, I met a woman who made me actually want to do exactly that. Some of you know who I am speaking of.

"Heidi Conrad is a woman of exceptional moral character, beauty, and wisdom. She taught me the joys and pleasures of being in a real relationship, and what it felt like to be loved perfectly and to be allowed to love someone else in the same way."

He looked down for a moment. The room seemed to hold its breath.

"I should have told her the stakes. I didn't, and I have never been sorrier for anything. She felt used, betrayed, and broken, and though it was never my intent, it is all my fault.

"So right here and right now, I am saying that the throne of Sweden can find me as it likes. I am not dancing by anyone's strings. Instead, I will go to the woman I love, and I will not leave until I convince her that what we have is real, until she can see how very sorry I am for what I have done.

"No questions."

He strode off the stage amidst the reporters' shouted queries, and the video cut to a woman speaking Swedish about the late-breaking news.

Heidi froze as she realized what the time stamp told her. Jaque had given the press conference just forty minutes ago.

Which meant …

Hurriedly, she threw on a camisole and a long skirt. She stepped into her shoes, and she raced to the door. She was ready to go meet him, wherever he was …

When she opened the door, there was Jaque, frozen as if in ice, hand poised to knock.

"Heidi …"

She wasted no time. Her small hand fisted in his shirt, pulling him inside even as her other hand slammed the door behind him. She pulled him down in a kiss that was everything she had ever wanted, everything she had ever needed.

His arms came up around her, and he was murmuring words into her mouth, promises to cherish her, to always tell her the truth, anything she wanted as long as she gave him another chance.

She pulled back, noting all over again how handsome he was. This man was hers, she realized. Completely and totally hers.

"Please," she whispered achingly. "I stopped you from saying it before … will you … can you say it now?"

"I love you," he said, staring into her eyes. "God, I love you, Heidi …"

She laughed, throwing her arms around him. He lifted her up in his arms, and she buried her head in his neck.

"I love you, I love you, I love you," she chanted.

Somehow, she knew she would be saying it to him for the rest of his life.

THE END

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The Royal’s Obsession

By: Sophia Lynn

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The Royal’s Obsession

By: Sophia Lynn

All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2015-2016 Sophia Lynn

Chapter One

The gallery opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was a star-studded event that attracted New York's best and brightest. Everywhere Anastasia McFadden looked, she saw another luminary, another genius, another gleaming socialite or eager playboy. She knew that fortunes and connections were going to be made tonight, and people's lives were going to change forever.

So why wasn't she more excited?

Anastasia was not a tall woman, but she always said that she made up for it by being enthusiastic. With chocolate brown hair that tumbled in an artful fall around her shoulders, wide blue eyes and a heart-shaped face, she had the looks and background to be one of New York's elite if, as her mother said, she would “just put a little more effort into it.”

As a matter of fact, her mother was heading for her right now, a slightly inebriated older man in tow.

“Anastasia, there you are. I've been looking everywhere for you!”

Holding her glass of punch as if it were a shield, Anastasia smiled weakly.

“Hi, Mom. I'm sorry—I was off talking with Senator Crawford about the clean water initiative going on in Boston…”

Her mother made a polite little noise that nonetheless managed to convey her entire lack of curiosity about what her daughter had been doing.

“Well, that's very nice, dear, but I've been wanting you to meet Jack here. Jack's the executive vice president of Goller and Sons, the chemical concern, and…”

Suddenly Anastasia's mother narrowed her eyes at her daughter and briskly turned to the man who was standing behind her and looking just a little confused.

“Jack, dear, don't move a muscle, all right? I just want to have a word with my daughter for a moment, and then I'll let you two get to know each other.”

The man started to say something, perhaps to protest, perhaps to simply ask which way to the bathroom, but her mother's gorgon stare froze him in his spot.

“Not one muscle!”

It was fascinating, Anastasia thought, how her mother could put so much threat into just a few words while she was smiling so happily. That smile dropped the moment she hustled Anastasia behind a tall pillar, relatively screened from the rest of the crowd.

“I did not bring you here so that you could trap Senator Crawford in a conversation that will not end about some dirty water.”

Anastasia smiled a little, because if there was anything that irritated her mother, it was someone who refused to cower.

“His fault, Mom. He started speaking about how rowdy the protestors were, and I just wanted to tell him all about why they were there.”

Her mother eyed her, a spark of anger in her blue eyes.

“You are acting as if you don't want to be here at all. This event is one of the highlights of the season, and you are kicking your heels like a girl trapped at a middle school dance.”

Anastasia sighed, because her mother wasn't wrong.

“I'm sorry. I know I'm out of sorts. I…I don't know what's going on with me recently.”

Her mother looked at her more closely, some of her ire being diluted with genuine concern.

“Your father and I have both noticed it, sweetie. You've been down.”

What could Anastasia really say to that? She had been. At twenty-five, it felt like she had been making the social rounds of New York for a lifetime. She did what good she could, she made friends, and she went to the parties, but it was all beginning to feel so false and tiring. She dated, of course, but it didn't help that the men that her parents kept introducing her to were all wealthy and fantastically dull. At best, they were amused by her conservation projects. At worst, they simply assumed it was an adorable hippie phase that she would grow out of once she had been “settled” with children.

“I think I'm just getting a little tired of New York,” she admitted.

Her mother seemed to take heart at that.

“Oh, well, you just need a new perspective. Come on, come talk to Jake, and…”

“I thought you said his name was Jack.”

Her mother made a waving motion of utter indifference, and Anastasia had to smile. Regardless of their differences in opinion, her mother really did have her best interests at heart. The only problem was that what they thought was best differed a great deal.

“Either way, he's a catch, dear…”

“And Amy Schillinger just walked off with him.”

Her mother turned towards Anastasia's prospective match and glared. Then she sighed, shaking her head and touching her daughter's hand.

“Well, sweetheart, if you're not having any fun, you're not having any fun. Why don't you take the car home for the evening? Your father and I are going to be heading out to the Hamptons with the Feinbergs tomorrow anyway, and we'll just go home with them tonight.”

Anastasia nodded with relief, squeezing her mom's hand.

“Thanks, Mom, that sounds great.”

“And when we come back on Thursday, I might have the scoop on Jeff Reynolds—you know, the man who designed that car retrieval app? He's supposed to be there.”

Anastasia loved her parents. She truly did. Her mother was old money, and her father was an entrepreneur who made his first billion before thirty. Together they had always sought to give her the perfect life. They wanted to give her everything that they could, and when they couldn't get her the perfect husband as well, they were increasingly confused.

She relaxed in the backseat of the Lincoln, gazing out at the lights of New York. She loved this town, but sometimes it moved too fast for her. It cared about things that she didn't care about, and sometimes it was simply too loud.

Anastasia shook her head. She wouldn't be the first one New York had run into the ground. Her feelings of restlessness weren't new, and if she let them become old, there was a better than average chance that she would find herself bitter and furious sooner rather than later.

Of course, that meant that she had to leave, but where would she go?

The vision that immediately came to mind was a place of clear water, bright sun, and soft breezes. The vision was so strong that she could nearly feel the way the breeze brushed against her skin, the way the sand would shift under her feet.