Her Secret Prince (15 page)

Numb once more, Jed inclined his head.

“How did Oscar tell
you?”

God. “He didn’t.”

“What?” Bafflement blinked around her tears. “But then…when? How?”

Finding words was like finding an answer to this hell-bound situation. “Felix looked into it and he…at the airport. Paris.”

“Paris.” She inhaled in a jagged gulp. “You mean you found out yesterday? And you didn’t tell me?” She shook her head. “That’s got to be a bad sign.”

Jed hated that he couldn’t
reassure her.

“I mean, you had the
Prince
pretend not to be a prince so you could keep lying to me. That is definitely a bad sign.” The words were directed to herself as her arms wrapped around her middle. “Really, really bad.”

“I didn’t know what to do.”

“Always trust a man who lies by default.”

That stung him. “I’m telling you now. I’ve been trying to get my head around being royalty, Dee.
I didn’t know what to do.”

“Yesterday,” she repeated, hurt pounding across her face. “But that means, last night…you knew.”

Shamed, he looked away.

“You promised me.” Confusion now, sweeping in to give his guilt no escape. “Last night you promised you’d come home with me. But you knew. How could you make a promise like that, when you knew you were secretly royalty?”

“I stand by my promise.”

Those smart blue eyes stared at him. Stripped of all good humor and easy-going acceptance, she stared. Then, “You’re lying.”

“No.” Jed balled his hands, trying to hold this decision firm. Dee was everything he wanted. So how,
how,
could he be thinking of staying? “No.”

Her face fell and the tears returned. “Don’t, please.” She shook her head. “Jed, don’t lie to me. You can’t make promises when
you don’t know what you want.”

He shoved a palm over his eyes.

Thickly, she said, “You need to make a decision. You have to know what you want.”

“But I’m so confused,” he whispered.

His turmoil intensified when she took his hand. What kind of woman offered support to the man making her cry? She squeezed, leaning forward and pressing her forehead against his chest.

“Then go talk to your dad.”

‡

T
he room was
deliciously warm. The bed was intensely comfortable. Even the tray of syrupy pancakes and hash browns sitting pleasantly on an ancient breakfast table, prepared “at the request of your companion”, should have been cause for delight. Dee enjoyed none of it.

She curled
up in the blankets, breathing in the unfamiliar scent of the castle and wondering why she always ended up alone.

Jed had gone to find Oscar. Gone to find out what he really wanted, because it seemed, he didn’t know whether Dee crowned the top of that list. She buried her chin into her chest, remembering his words from the night before.
I’ve never had a home anywhere. The closest I’ve ever felt
to contentment is being with you
. Gratifying words, spoken twelve hours too soon.

Then he’d come home to Leguarday.

He’d promised to make a life with her. She believed, then and now, that he’d meant it. But meeting his father, seeing this city, had opened a part of him that his mother had kept locked. A dramatic change could easily alter the importance of everything that had come before.

Dramatic
didn’t get much bigger than discovering he was a prince.

She’d previously resented their ten years apart; thought she’d doomed their future by moving too fast. How naïve she’d been, upset over a few drops when such a storm was gathering before her.

Jed was a prince.

She couldn’t understand it, let alone fight it. If he returned tonight, bearing the devastating decision to stay, she couldn’t
hold that against him. A man couldn’t be expected to rate a single person over the future of a nation.

Tucking her knees against her stomach, she hated the truth. That this was why he’d tracked her down in the first place—to prepare for meeting his father and solving a life of unanswered questions. He hadn’t prepared for a relationship. Their connection had been an unplanned side effect that
didn’t extend to this outcome. Even she could understand that a screenwriter from Los Angeles probably wasn’t cut out to support the head of a European principality.

With difficulty, she pulled her resolve to its feet. She wouldn’t make this any harder for Jed than it already was. She couldn’t imagine the burden he must be feeling. He didn’t need the added guilt of letting her down. She could
make it feel like the right decision before she went home, allow him that solace.

No.

In the midst of her heartbreak, realization stamped its foot. Hold up. This wasn’t right, acting as if losing Jed was beyond her control.

Her problem, Dee realized, was that she always supported people in what was important to them. She encouraged her parents to go to Haiti, trying not to think about how she’d
be without a family. She never said a word to Alexia about leaving her behind to be with Parker, because love trumped friendship. And here she was, bracing herself to accept Jed’s need to stay in Leguarday. At what point did
her
life become the most important thing? At what point did she stop supporting and instead demand to be supported?

She sat up, wiping her face.

Yeah. Screw this loneliness
nonsense.

It would stop the moment Jed walked back in the door.

*

Jed was directed
down several cold stone halls, up two wide staircases, and through an imposing set of wooden doors to reach the private royal living quarters of the House of Montaigne. A man posted just inside, back to the wall and chin level with the marble floor, indicated
that Prince Oscar II could be found in the drawing room.

The door was slightly ajar, so Jed knocked and stepped inside in time to see Oscar let go of Laurent’s hand. The private secretary stepped back from the couch, hands clasped behind him, head lowered slightly.

“Jed.” Oscar rose to his feet, surprised. “Come in.”

“I’m sorry.” He’d interrupted.

“No, please.” His father gestured towards
an armchair and Jed had to take twelve strides just to reach it. And this was a small room. Crimson carpets spread over the floor, large portraits hung from the walls, and a chandelier graced the center of the ceiling.

Oscar sat again as Laurent excused himself.

“Stay.” Jed sensed the man was more to his father than an advisor. “I could do with your opinion, too.”

With a smiled nod from Oscar,
Laurent sat down on the very edge of a third armchair.

Jed cut to the point. The tension squeezing him in half didn’t allow for anything else. “I have a choice to make. But I don’t want to make it.”

His father inhaled, straightening.

“I’ve been here for six hours. I’ve known you for six hours. Even after such a short time, my gut is telling me that I can’t leave again. There’s something—a connection
to this place that I didn’t anticipate. And you, Oscar, I want to talk to you. We have a lifetime to catch up on, and doing so across the world doesn’t feel right.”

His father took a moment to close his eyes and breathe, and Jed wondered whether he had braced for bad news.

“I understand this is not simple,” Oscar said. “It is beyond complicated. You have to go with what feels right—even if it
doesn’t seem it.”

Jed nodded. He thought of where they were sitting, in the heart of a palace. He thought of who was sitting opposite him, the heart of a nation. “Leaving again would both seem and feel wrong.”

“No one would think any less of you if you did. The burden of responsibility is heavy enough when you have your life to prepare for it.” Regret hung heavy from Oscar’s mouth. “To feel
the prospect of that weight unexpectedly, without time to prepare. Well. You would be human to back away.”

And there was that clench of belonging. It fastened him to Leguarday, just as it fastened him to Dee. A home in his blood and a home in his heart. Loyalty and love.

Could he not love and be loyal to both?

Laurent cleared his throat. “This decision can’t be made in a day, nor should it
be.”

“No,” Oscar agreed, and looked back at Jed.

“I don’t want to back away,” he said firmly. “That much I know already.”

His father nodded as happiness sprang across his face.

“There’s so much here. I can feel it. I want to stay and discover whether this life is for me. Granted, it might not be, but I want to know for certain. But Dee.” He met the darkness of his father’s eyes. “I can’t lose
her and I can’t force her to stay.”

“Ah.” Oscar shifted in his chair, sending Laurent a light grimace. “You seek relationship advice.”

Jed smiled wryly. “How do you two manage it?”

“Quietly,” Laurent murmured. “Leguarday is on the brink of equality, but is not there yet.”

“It can be difficult prioritizing the decisions of a nation over those of my own heart.” Oscar regarded Jed gravely. “But
you’re not tied to a nation, not yet. Trust me, the heart is always more important.” He clasped his hands and leaned forward. “So let us figure this out.”

*

Dee’s blue stare
found him the moment he walked in the door. It came from the pile of blankets on the bed, a quilted fortress to protect her from the attack she sensed was coming.
He hated how he’d left her, tear-streaked and alone, but he swore he’d never leave her that way again.

“I’m about to treat you appallingly,” he said, standing beside the four poster bed.

Sniffing, she sat up. She looked on edge, prepared for the worst. “Do it quickly,” she managed, words catching. “Then I’ve got something to say.”

He sat on the bed and found her hand. Her fingers lay limp in
his. “Tell me what you want most. And that’s what we’ll do.”

She blinked. “What?”

“I can’t see the forest for the trees. So you need to tell me what you see when you look at our future, and that’s what’s will happen.”

Shock seemed to sway her.

“I’m forcing this decision on you. I’m sorry. Our future is up to you.”

“Me.”

“Tell me what you want. Do you want to live in Los Angeles, in your
apartment? You don’t move around, you told me yourself. If that’s the only place you could call home, then I’ll call it home with you.”

Disbelief hung from her parted lips.

“If you want to stay here with me, while I figure out whether I could ever follow in my father’s footsteps, then I will cherish your hand in mine. And if, after my hesitation earlier, you don’t want to be with me anymore,
so be it. But know that there’ll never be a moment where I’m not thinking about you and wishing I hadn’t been so stupid.”

Dee’s breath was loud in the following silence. “You stole my high horse.”

He frowned. “What?”

“Before I answer,” she said weakly. “I want you to tell me something.”

“Anything.”

“If you’d known,” she said, words trembling like the quake in his heart, “that night in your
apartment, if you’d known you were about to leave me, what would you have said?”

He didn’t have to think. “I love you.”

Pain burst across her face. “And now?”