His Bride for the Taking (12 page)

“What should we do?”

He took his time answering. “I know I said I didn’t think that picture would make it to the papers, and clearly I was wrong. But I really don’t think anyone’s going to recognize you. Your face is largely obscured, and you really didn’t look like you. I only recognized you that night because I was there. Looking at this—” he tapped the paper “—if I didn’t know it was you, I wouldn’t guess it. You’re safe.”

“But you?”

His frown deepened.

“They’ve got it all wrong, suggesting it was something it’s not. They’re tarnishing your reputation, and bringing up all your earlier girlfriends.”

“Tarnishing my reputation?” He sat back in his chair and laughed. “My reputation is so blackened a little tarnish isn’t going to show. And as for
all
my other girlfriends—” he glanced back at the list “—I’d scarcely have had time for even half of the women mentioned.”

“It doesn’t make you angry?”

“Why waste the emotion on something I can’t change?
Like I said, some other news will come along and this will be forgotten.”

“What about Adam and your father?”

“What about them?”

“I thought maybe if I explained it to them?”

Rafe smiled. “To save my reputation?”

“Well, yes.” It sounded silly.

The smile softened, and a curious expression lit his eyes. “No,” he said slowly. “All you’d do is damage your own. And for no good reason. We both know what that was and wasn’t.”

She couldn’t figure him out. “Why do you let people think the worst of you? You did it with Adelaide and the frog and you’re doing it now.”

“The frog?”

“Arthur. Back when I was eight. I thought you threw him at me. That Adam had rescued me. I was so upset with you about it, and I’m sorry.”

“Lex, it was fourteen years ago. It doesn’t matter.”

“It must have mattered then.”

“Even if it did, it certainly doesn’t now.”

“I used to call you the Frog Prince.”

He laughed, that rumble that started in his chest. “So that’s why you kissed me. To see if I’d turn into a prince.”

She laughed, too. “Like you weren’t already one to start with.” Though it really had taken her a while to see that. “I’m sorry, anyway.”

“For what?”

“For believing the worst of you.”

His smile was gentle. “You’re too sweet for this life,
Lex. If you let what other people think get to you they’ll hurt you even if they don’t mean to.”

Just like she cared what he thought about her, and was doubtless going to be hurt by him even though he wouldn’t mean to?

Holding her gaze, he folded the paper and pushed it across the desk toward her.

Uncomfortable under his scrutiny, she felt sillier than ever. “So I should just say nothing?”

“‘No comment,’ particularly when you haven’t even been asked for one, is your greatest friend. But the pictures aren’t the real question.”

She wasn’t going to ask.

“Us,” he said.

Lexie couldn’t hold his gaze for fear of what she might reveal, so she looked out the window at the bright morning. For a moment she let herself entertain thoughts of the possible answers, possible outcomes. But in the end she gave the only answer she could. “Same strategy as for the pictures,” she said, pretending nonchalance. That’s what he’d want from her. No drama. “Ignore it. I’ll be gone soon and we won’t even have to see each other. There is no us. That’s what we agreed.”

“And that’s still how you want to play it?”

He gave no hint of the sentiment behind the neutral question, but she was guessing relief. “Unless you can think of a better way that doesn’t involve hurting anyone.”

“You mean Adam?”

And her. But she didn’t say that. “It’s going to be bad enough when news of the broken engagement gets
out. Can you imagine if anyone gets wind that you and I…”

“That we what?”

He was going to make her say it. “That we slept together.”

“Is that all it was?”

What was he playing at? “Of course that’s all it was. Just something we apparently needed to get out of our systems.”

“And did you? Get me out of your system?”

“Yes.” She might be a liar, but she wasn’t a fool. And if she admitted that sleeping with Rafe had done nothing to get him out of her system, rather had only shown her a deep pleasure and ecstasy she hadn’t known existed, that even now the needy physical part of her wanted him, wanted him just to hold her even, then he’d feel obliged to gently point out that they could never have a future.

She’d save them both that excruciating exchange.

This was the only way to play it. The only way to emerge unscathed.

As dawn began to win out over darkness, Lexie got up. It was no hardship when, after the nightmare yesterday had turned into, she hadn’t been sleeping anyway. She made her way through the maze of palace corridors, passing only a handful of quietly observant staff members whose expressions revealed nothing of what they thought, what they knew.

Outside, she took the path through the dew-covered rose gardens, too preoccupied to stop and smell them. The path led her, eventually, to the labyrinth.

A place of meditation and thought. A place to seek answers. She’d walked it once already a few days earlier. That time had been out of curiosity. This time she felt the need for its reputed calming and problem-solving benefits—the labyrinth’s famed metaphorical journey within.

She watched the path as she entered the circling waist-high hedges of the labyrinth and listened to the quiet crunch of her own footsteps on the gravel. After the first quarter circle the path turned back on itself and then took her deceptively toward the center. It was only then that she looked up at the spreading oak tree there.

Still and watching her from the bench that encircled the tree sat Rafe. Lexie didn’t so much as break her stride and she certainly didn’t turn and leave, much as she suddenly wanted to. Instead, she kept putting one foot in front of the other, following the path. She had to keep passing and re-passing in front of his line of sight, near to him and then far. She didn’t look to see whether he was watching her, but he was. She didn’t need to look to know it. She could feel it.

With all the turning back and circling, it took her a strangely long time to reach him, and then there was nothing else to do but sit beside him. Duke lay at his feet and lifted his head as she sat. “I didn’t realize you were here when I started.”

“That much was obvious from the doe-in-the-headlights look in your eyes when you first saw me.” She heard the smile in his voice.

“I don’t want to interrupt this time for you.”

“You’re no interruption, Lex.” Did he know he was the only one who called her that? He reached for one of the hands curled into fists on her lap, straightened her fingers and then enfolded her hand in his.

The sight and sensation of their joined hands pierced something within her. As she made to extricate her hand, his grip tightened. “I thought we weren’t going to…”

“What? Hold hands? I thought we weren’t going to sleep together again.”

“We’re not sleeping together again.”

“Then I’m holding your hand. There’s no one here to see us. And it would be pleasanter if you didn’t make a big deal about it. It fits so well in mine.”

Lexie didn’t answer, didn’t argue. It did fit well, like the most natural thing in the world.

She closed her eyes and leaned back and thought of everything that had happened since this man first took her hand on the croquet lawn back home and kissed it. So much, too much, and yet not enough.

She’d thought yesterday’s papers were something to worry about. Today’s were far worse.

“How did the meeting with your father go?” Yesterday Prince Henri had seen advance copies of today’s papers. News of the end of her engagement to Adam had broken like a dam bursting. No one knew where the leak had come from. It didn’t really matter now. Speculation was beginning on the Internet that somehow Rafe was involved. He’d told her of his summons to see his father and let her know that he’d be telling his father as much of the truth as he thought he needed to know. She hadn’t asked precisely how much that involved.

“He demanded that I marry you. He always does whenever I’m involved in a scandal. He thinks a big royal wedding will go a long way to fixing things.”

“Oh.” It hurt that he could be so blasé. That suddenly she was just one of his many scandals. “What did you say to him?”

“That I’d live my life according to my own dictates, not his.”

“Oh.” It was exactly what she’d known he would say. She’d never have married him just to please his father anyway, so there was no reason for the feeling of loss.

“Adam joined in the lecture, too. He’s very protective of you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You were worth it.”

Were? Past tense.

His thumb rubbed gently over the back of her hand.

“Did you hear from your mother?” he asked a short while later.

“Yes. I let her know that the rumors were starting and that they weren’t totally unfounded.” Suddenly pictures were appearing of every public exchange she’d had with Rafe, and somehow they all managed to look charged and intense. Probably because they had been.

“How did she take it?”

“Let’s just say that, whatever happens, one of our parents is going to be bitterly disappointed.”

“Let me guess. She demanded that you never see me again.”

“That’s pretty much it.”

“And what did you tell her?”

“I thought of you, and of how you’d react if someone told you what to do, and I told her that I was old enough to decide for myself who I saw and who I didn’t.”

“Good for you.”

“And then I kind of spoiled it by telling her that I’m coming home the day after the christening, anyway. I could go sooner, but it would feel like running away. And Adam and your father have both asked me to stay. I’m not sure why. Something to do with Marconis and Wyndhams never backing down from a challenge, and a strong offence being the best form of defense. And they mentioned dignity, too. They kind of lost me, but I said I would stay.” Rafe was the only one who hadn’t asked her to stay.

Even now he said nothing. Not that she expected a pleading, heartfelt
don’t go, stay with me forever
from this man, but a girl was allowed her daydreams. Lexie shook her head. She of all people should have learned her lesson about daydreams and fantasies and fairy tales.

“You’ve had a miserable time here, haven’t you?”

“No, it’s—”

“Have you done anything just for you, just for the sheer enjoyment of it?”

“That wasn’t the purpose of the trip.”

Shaking his head he stood and pulled her up with him. “Come on.” He started walking. “What? Where?”

“If we can’t please both of our families then let’s
annoy them both. And really give the press something to talk about.”

“What do you mean?” He was leading so fast through the labyrinth she was getting dizzy.

“Do you trust me, Lexie?”

“No.” She had no idea what he was planning, but was almost certain she wasn’t going to like it. And yet she hurried along beside him, her heart beating faster in exhilaration and anticipation.

He laughed, turned back and planted a quick hard kiss on her lips. “Wise woman.”

Forty minutes later, Lexie strapped herself into the seat next to Rafe, their shoulders touching.

“Ready?” he asked.

“No.” She gripped his hand.

“Too bad.” Photographers ran toward them, snapping pictures as the roller coaster of San Philippe’s only theme park began to gather speed and then shot them forward. Lexie managed not to scream until they were out of sight.

The photographers were still there, a hungry pack of them, snapping away as the roller coaster eased to a stop. Lexie’s hair had come free from her hair tie, helped, she suspected, by Rafe, and must surely look a fright.

Her mother would be appalled.

Lexie laughed at the prospect, suddenly not caring what people thought. Suddenly appreciating Rafe’s philosophy.

The photographers followed them, at a distance, almost all day long. Taking pictures of the most mundane
of things. Walking, talking, laughing, Rafe winning her a teddy bear in a shooting booth. It was all so clichéd. And all so much fun.

The only privacy they got was when Rafe managed to get a quiet booth in the riverside café where they stopped for dinner, the proprietor fiercely denying entry to anyone with a camera.

At the nightclub he took her to they danced till the small hours of the morning.

By the time Lexie fell into bed—alone—she was exhausted but happy. It was the best day she could remember, well, ever. Even with the repressed pall of sorrow that everything was ending. They’d talked of the present, never the future. Because, she knew, Rafe didn’t do futures.

A
mongst a sea of talking and laughing christening guests, Rafe reluctantly took hold of the baby. He was happy to be godfather—Mark and Karen were good friends—but why did people always expect that he’d want to hold their children? Although maybe godfathers ought to want to. Lex would doubtless have an opinion on the subject. Lex, whom he did want to hold, but couldn’t and wouldn’t because she was leaving tomorrow, going back to her old life. It was for the best.

They’d had yesterday, undoubtedly a mistake given the outcry in the media. But a mistake he couldn’t regret. He’d wanted it to last forever, wanted her smiles and her laughter.

He looked into the clear blue and strangely alert eyes of the child in his arms, who appeared, much like Rafe,
to be wondering why this strange man was holding her. Karen called to someone across the room and walked away, and Rafe had to stop himself from calling her back.

“If you cry now,” he quietly encouraged the child whose name he’d already managed to forget, “your mother will come back for you.” In Rafe’s experience, that was how this scenario usually played out. Unfortunately, this child didn’t know the drill and merely blinked. He was fairly sure she was a girl, though that long gown she, or he, had worn for the cathedral ceremony wasn’t necessarily a guarantee of femininity.

Conversation flowed around him, and the baby continued to study him. “I hold you responsible,” he said, and the baby smiled. “If it hadn’t been for this christening, I could have been in Vienna by now. Or maybe even Argentina.” And he wouldn’t have entangled his life and emotions with Lexie. Although he couldn’t bring himself to regret what they’d shared.

The baby’s stare turned accusing.

“Okay,” he admitted. “I stayed for her, too. But don’t you dare tell anyone.”

He heard a bubbling, sexy laugh and followed the sound to Lexie, where she stood talking with Adam and Karen. She wore a silky red wrap dress. He’d been pleased to see her in it. Pleased and turned on, but he ignored the second reaction. She’d at least stopped trying to hide her vibrancy behind fiercely elegant clothes. No point now, he guessed, given that she wasn’t marrying his brother. She was leaving. Her hair was pulled into a twist at the back of her head, its lushness contained.
That fact pleased him, too. He admitted to a proprietary attitude to her hair—it featured in so many of his fantasies.

She caught him watching her. Her gaze dipped to the baby in his arms and her eyes widened in surprise.
Yes, Lexie,
he thought,
I do know how to hold a child, it’s just not something I do voluntarily.
And Lexie was exactly the sort of woman who’d want children, who’d be a natural, loving mother. Which was why he had to let her go.

He looked around for Karen. Surely he’d done his godfatherly duty and could hand the baby back. And leave. “Okay, kid, where’s your mother?” Only now the child had closed its eyes and—he couldn’t believe it—gone to sleep in his arms. It was the strangest feeling. He held the warm bundle a little closer.

“You’re in trouble now.” He heard a soft, smiling voice at his side.

“Meaning?” he asked Lexie, wanting only to hand the baby away so he could fill his arms with this woman instead. Yes, he was in trouble all right.

“I understood you have a policy of never falling asleep with a woman, and I’m figuring that extends to letting them fall asleep in your arms.” She spoke quietly, her words winding sensuously around him.

“First time for everything.”

She touched her fingertip gently to the sleeping child’s cheek.

“You want children?” he asked, even though the answer was obvious in the softness of her smile, in the tenderness and longing that lit her face.

“Someday. Doesn’t everyone?” The smile widened with secret thoughts and plans.

“No. Not everyone.”

“Like Everest?”

“Exactly.” He smiled back, enthralled, held captive by what felt like an almost physical connection to her. The entire roomful of people could fade away and he wouldn’t notice. She felt it, too. This wasn’t one-sided. Which only made the situation worse.

“But don’t you? Want children.” She searched his face.

“It’s not something I’ve thought about.” And he was terrified that looking at her, children were something he could want. “Here, do you want to hold her?” He nodded at the soundly sleeping little girl. If Lexie was holding the baby, she’d stop looking at him. And the sight of her holding a baby would stop him thinking thoughts he shouldn’t. He couldn’t possibly lust after a woman holding an infant. It would just be wrong.

“Emma?”

That was her name, of course.

“Yes, please.”

He passed the sleeping child to Lexie. They had to stand close, almost chest to chest, only Emma between them, hands bumping and sliding.

“Babies aren’t your thing?” Lexie asked, not looking at him, as she took Emma’s weight, held her to her chest.

“Not at all.” His standard answer came to him. And yet he’d felt the strangest reluctance to let go of the small bundle. The child who had fallen asleep in his arms.

“You’ll be a great father. Once you give yourself permission to love,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be scary.”

Oh, but it was.

She couldn’t leave soon enough. It was torture seeing her. Seeing her hope, her optimism.

As Karen approached, Rafe took a flute of champagne from a passing waiter. He saw one of his few remaining bachelor friends and headed to talk to him. Preferably about polo or something equally safe, equally shallow.

Lexie rested her hands on the rough stone of the windowsill and looked out through the tall, narrow window. The day room was at the top of the castle’s southernmost turret. Rafe had mentioned it once, mentioned its forever views and its isolation. After navigating corridors and climbing endless winding stone stairs, Lexie could see why it was so was so seldom used. But the views over the manicured palace grounds and the rolling countryside beyond were worth the effort. The sky was a clear, bright blue, taunting her. It should be dreary and miserable to match her mood.

The room was just as she’d imagined. A contrast of textures and centuries. Leather couches, shaped to fit the circular space, lined the small room. A plush rug lay in the center of the floor.

She’d escaped the christening, escaped the sound of Rafe’s laughter with his friend, to come here. She’d lost track of how long she’d been standing, looking out and trying not to think, when the heavy door opened behind her. She turned as the man she’d been trying not
to think about stepped into the room. He paused, clearly not expecting to see her here. “Is the party over?” she asked.

“Still going.” He gave a half smile. “I bailed. Thought I’d come up here for a little time-out.”

Lexie took a single step away from the window. “You stay,” she said. “I was just going.”

But as he crossed to her she didn’t seem able to move any farther.

“It’s so beautiful up here,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, his gaze never leaving her face. He stopped in front of her and brushed a thumb across her cheek. Did that mean he’d seen the telltale tracks of her tears?

“I’m leaving.” She didn’t know whether she spoke the words for his benefit or for hers. The only thing she did know was that the prospect of her departure was a dark, yawning chasm. The thought of leaving San Philippe forever. The thought of leaving Rafe. Forever. It weighed almost unbearably on her.

“I know.” He lowered his head and placed the gentlest of kisses on each of her cheekbones. And then he pulled her into his arms and she went willingly. He held her tightly to him and she absorbed the sensation of being pressed against him, tried to commit it to memory, tried to detail each part of her that touched him and where and how, the feel of his cheek resting on her head, his arms around her.

She tilted her head up to look at him, to study his face. He returned her scrutiny for the longest time. And then he kissed her. Soft and gentle, the knowledge
of her leaving in his kiss. She tasted the faint trace of champagne on his lips.

What started out soft and gentle grew heated and hungry. Breathing hard, Rafe lifted his head. “We shouldn’t.
I
shouldn’t.”

She pulled his head back down. “We should.” She smiled against his lips, heedless. “I’m leaving anyway. What can it hurt now?”

“It can hurt you. You deserve better. Someone needs to look out for you, and if you won’t protect yourself from me then I have to do it.”

“I deserve this. After all you’ve put me through, I deserve
this.
”

But still he backed away.

Lexie pulled the silk ribbon that held the front of her dress in place and the dress fell open. “Don’t go.”

“That’s a low trick, Lex.” Rafe stopped dead. “It wouldn’t be humanly possible now.” He walked slowly back to her. “Have I told you red is my favorite color?” He looked into her eyes as he pushed her dress from her shoulders, smiled as it pooled at her feet, then trailed his fingers in its wake to touch the red of her bra, and then her panties. “Do you know what you do to me?”

“I’m hoping it’s something like what you do to me.”

As he slid his hands to her waist, and slowly up and round, she trembled beneath his touch. His fingers found the clasp they sought, and her bra whispered to the floor.

She gasped as he knelt before her and pressed a kiss
to the center of her panties. And then he drew the fine lace from her hips, over her thighs.

One more kiss, and another gasp. He trailed more kisses upward, another to her belly, between her breasts, her neck. With her eyes on him he undid his buttons. He discarded his shirt, his pants, his boxers. No pretence, no barriers. Till he stood before her, bathed in golden sunlight, strong and proud and hers.

For now.

Him. Her. Nothing else.

He reached for her hair, ran his fingers through its sun-warmed length, ran his hands over the curve of her shoulders, down her arms till his hands founds hers.

Holding her gaze, he lifted her hands and pressed a kiss to the back of each. Then, lowering his hands, he slid his fingers between hers, stretching them apart. Palms touched, breath mingled.

And then he touched his lips to hers, with a gentleness born of constraint.

She moved. Closed the gap between them till her breasts pressed against his chest and her belly pressed against his erection.

He pulled her closer still, hard against him, deepening the kiss at the same time, and they moved together, legs twining, hands searching, all the while each drinking in the taste of the other.

Kissing, they made it as far as the center of the room and then no farther. Dropping to their knees on the rug, hands and lips had free rein.

Lexie pushed him back and he pulled her with him.
She straddled him and then sheathed herself on him, loving the feel of him in her, under her. Loving him.

He was hers.

For now.

He lifted his hands to her breasts, caressed and kneaded. He pulled her forward so he could take a nipple in his mouth. His hands shifted to her waist, her hips, and he was pushing into her deeper, pulling her onto him harder.

She rode his thrusts, and he drove her higher, further, into darkness and light. And then she was gasping, whimpering. Her eyes flew open, locked on his, all beauty and blind passion, and together they cried out.

Lexie fell forward onto him, her hair curtaining his face, her body pulsing around his.

And he held her tight to him.

In the darkness, Lexie clung to Rafe’s hand, keeping close as he led her through the castle’s dimly lit halls. They’d made love again and again in the turret room. And then slept. And now, in the small hours, they found their way, stumbling and laughing, through corridors and downstairs.

He stopped outside a door, pushed it open and led her into a room. Lit only by the light of the moon, Lexie could still see it was a bedroom.
Rafe’s
bedroom.

Not releasing her hand, he crossed with her to the massive sleigh bed. He lifted his hands to her hair. “We should sleep.”

“Yes.” They should. She had no idea what time it was, knew only that it was late or very early. But she slipped
her hands around his waist, pressed her lips to his. She had this one stolen night with him. She wouldn’t waste it. She pulled him unresisting down with her onto the bed, reveled in the weight of him on her and over her.

And after the rug and the couch of the turret room, his broad bed was a novelty. Room to roll and tangle and laugh and touch.

Lexie woke with sunlight warming one side of her face and Rafe’s chest warming the other side. His heart beat strong and steady beneath her cheek. His arms rested loosely around her. As she woke fully, she basked in the magic, the beauty, of being with him.

She tilted her face up to see him watching her and then pulled away to see him better.

He let her go, his hands trailing from her.

Instantly, she regretted pulling away. When she’d been lying close, touching, eyes closed, anything had been possible. There had at least been a fragile hope of a glittering future. That they—she and Rafe—might be possible.

Now, lying on her side, she studied him. Rumpled hair, beard-shadowed jaw and a slow, sexy smile, but it was the wariness in his dark eyes that pierced the fragile magic of the morning, that sucked away her happiness.

And she knew in that moment that she should never have come to his room, should never have fallen asleep with him so that they then had to navigate waking up together. The memories of their night together would now forever end with this.

She’d given up her dreams because of him. But not
for
him. She knew not to allow herself to be that stupid. But she hadn’t been able to love his brother when her every thought had been of Rafe. When she had felt things for Rafe and wanted things from Rafe that she would never feel or want from Adam.

She was leaving today. And she knew he wouldn’t, couldn’t, offer her a future. And yet here she lay, wanting precisely that. A future. With Rafe.