His Bride for the Taking (13 page)

Not the man of her dreams, but the man of her realities. The man who understood her and made her laugh and made her want him.

The wariness in his eyes now froze her hopes, her heart. She could almost see the regrets and his questions and fears. Would she want to marry him now, want to have his babies, want to trap him? Already he was formulating words to soften his rejection.

She had wanted, desperately, to make love with him, but not to love him, to fall in love with him. She hadn’t wanted that. But heaven help her, looking at him now, feeling already the pain in her heart, she realized that she had fallen anyway. So the answer to those fearful questions in his eyes was—yes, she wanted to marry him and yes, she wanted to have his babies. And most of all she wanted him to love her. But no, she didn’t want to trap him.

“Lexie.” His voice had the sexiest early-morning rasp.

She touched a finger to his lips. “I don’t think you should say anything. I don’t want regrets or excuses, and I couldn’t bear false promises. I’m here, in your bed,
and I know that’s breaking all your rules, but it wasn’t planned.

“I’m going today, we both knew that, so we both knew last night was just…last night. And this morning is this morning. So don’t say anything. Unless of course it’s ‘make love with me right now.’” She tried to make it a joke. But even though there was only a hollow space where her heart used to be, the rest of her still wanted him. Just once more. And that need had slipped through in her voice.

She saw his hesitation even as he lifted his hand to touch her hair. The warm lips parted beneath her fingertip, but no words came out.

She slipped from the bed.

He made no move to stop her.

At the door to the bathroom she turned back and tried to smile. Giving up, she swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Last night was perfect. Thank you.”

R
afe stood on the lowest of the palace steps. Cloaked in the royal Marconi calm that revealed nothing of their private thoughts, his father, brother and sister were gathered around Lexie. She hugged each of them in turn, then looked for him. He stepped down. Neither royal protocol nor experience had prepared him to bid farewell to a woman like Lexie. A woman who meant the things Lexie meant to him.

Mere hours ago she had been in his bed. It had killed him, not asking—begging—her to stay, in his bed, in his life. But he’d shattered enough of her dreams. She deserved her fairy tale. Despite his title, he was no one’s fairy tale, and never would be.

Dry-eyed, she walked to him. Pale and strong and…the most beautiful woman he’d ever known. A soul-deep
beauty, rare and precious. He couldn’t stop himself, he touched a hand to her hair, her jaw, tried to commit to memory the feel of her, even though forgetting her was critical to his future happiness. He hadn’t been going to embrace her, but she stepped into his arms, and if his life had depended on it, he couldn’t have avoided wrapping them around her for the chance of holding her to him one last time.

She was the one to break the contact, stepping away from him. For a moment he saw the question and hope in her eyes. The same look he’d seen when she woke up in his arms this morning.

Then she smiled, and it was the saddest smile he’d ever seen. Clenching his fists, he kept his hands at his sides. “I didn’t mean to make you sad, Lex,” he said quietly. “If I could take back last night, for your sake, I would. We should have ended with the day before yesterday. That was what I wanted to give you.”

If anything, her smile grew both sadder and brighter. “I wouldn’t,” she answered. “That day was perfect. But last night was even better.”

“You’ll find a good man. One worthy of you. One who’s everything he should be. Better than Adam. Better than me.” Someone who loved her for who she was. Someone who could offer her marriage and the family she wanted. Someone who’d treat her with respect and reverence. Not someone who couldn’t even wait till they got to the other side of a room but dragged her down to a rug on the floor.

“My only requirement is that he loves me.”

“He’d be a fool not to.”

“There’s no shortage of fools.”

She got into the waiting car and he watched it pull away, seeming to pull a piece of him with it.

Lexie’s departure was vastly different from her arrival. No eager, waving crowds waited at the airport. A fact for which she was deeply grateful. A handful of photographers loitered at the barriers, doubtless waiting to document the fact that the woman who’d spurned their favorite prince and been spurned in turn by the other one did actually leave their country.

Joseph, the head of security, escorted her across the tarmac and up the stairs to the jet. She knew it was meant as a courtesy. It felt like she was being seen off the premises, that like the press, he wanted to make sure she really did go, that there would be an end to the havoc she’d wrought.

She wanted that end, too, to the havoc of her personal and emotional life, though she knew the pain was only just beginning.

On board she sank onto one of the deep cream couches and did up her seatbelt at the gentle prompting of the hostess. Lexie had deliberately chosen the couch because it didn’t face a window. She closed her eyes and waited. Finally the tone of the jet’s engines changed and they began to taxi along the runway. She resisted the urge to take one last look at San Philippe as they gathered speed and then became airborne. The wheels locked back up into the undercarriage with a thudding finality.

She’d expected tears, but they never came. All she felt was a great, welling hollowness.

So much for not making a spectacle of herself. She’d done that and so much worse.

She heard a sound in the cabin. The hostess. If only she could be left alone. “I’m fine, thanks,” she said. “I don’t need anything.”

“Or anyone?” a deep, achingly familiar voice asked.

Her eyes flew open and she drank in the sight of Rafe as he smiled down at her and then lowered himself onto the couch beside her. “What are you doing here?” She was almost afraid to ask. “How did you even get here?”

He took her hand, held tight to it. “The second question’s easy to answer. I took a leaf out of your book and came by motorbike. I passed you just before the airport.”

“And the first question?” She clung to his hand like a lifeline. So much depended on his answer. Hope filled her, but she’d had her hopes dashed before now and the prospect of it happening again terrified her.

“A, I’m not a fool and B, I’m not a martyr.”

That was no answer. At least not one she understood. “Meaning?”

“I said only a fool wouldn’t love you. And clearly I’m not a fool because I do—love you. I don’t know when or how it happened. I wanted you almost from the start, from the time I first saw you in the nightclub, no surprise there. I’d wanted women before, so I didn’t think it was anything I couldn’t control.” He made a derisive sound.
A laugh cut short. “But the wanting that started that night has only grown stronger, become something more than I even believed existed—love.” He shrugged, but the grip on her hand tightened. “And the love is well out of my control. I’ve got no idea how it even happened and only one idea of what to do about it.” He ran gentle fingers down a lock of her hair, reverently touched her face.

The hostess appeared, took one look at them and just as quickly disappeared.

“I didn’t mean it to happen, Lex, but it did. And till half an hour ago I thought letting you go was the right thing to do, which is when I remembered I’m not a martyr. I’m not willing to sacrifice my happiness while you look for someone worthy of you. I want to be the one you wake up with every morning. Though I know I’m not your fairy tale.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but he silenced her with a finger to her lips. “Let me finish, Lex. This isn’t easy for me, but I need to say it, need you to hear it.” When she nodded, he continued. “I know I’m not the one you wanted to love. And I know there are better men out there than me. But I can’t let them have you. At least not without offering myself to you first. I want to marry you, to be yours, to make you mine. I want all the things I never thought I would. Knowing you has changed so much for me, for the better. But it was only the awful prospect of actually losing you that forced me to see it.”

He searched her face and then in a sudden movement swooped in, covered her lips with his and kissed her.
And she clung to him, kissed him back, drank in the taste of him, reveled in the feel of him. She didn’t have the willpower or even the desire to deny him.

Too soon, he broke the kiss, rested his forehead against hers. His hands cupped her jaw, his fingers threading into her hair. She held him, breathed in his scent, drew it deep within her, resented having to exhale and lose that part of him she’d captured. Her weakness for him was absolute.

He took her hands again, folding strong, sure fingers around hers. “Say you’ll have me?”

She was desperate to say yes and yet she couldn’t. “Rafe—” she clung to his hands, the contact imperative “—you haven’t thought this through. You once said you were trying to protect me from you. But it’s you who needs to be protected from me. Think about your father and your country. Think about what the press will say.”

“I don’t care what anyone other than you says. And, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m still waiting for a yes here.”

“I care what they say about you. They’ll vilify you.”

“Not just me.” He smiled. “You, too. But not for long. And at least we’ll be in it together. I’ll get us through it. Trust me, I’ve had practice. Besides, you haven’t seen this morning’s papers, have you?”

“No. I couldn’t bear it anymore.”

“It’s not all bad news. Some bright spark in the press corps has realized that my father only ever said he had given permission for his son and Alexia Wyndham Jones
to marry. He never said which son. So along with all the photos of you and me together, the press are speculating that this is what Dad, the master manipulator, meant all along, that he was playing them. They’re rewriting history to suit themselves. And Dad’ll be happy to go along with it.”

“He couldn’t possibly have had any idea that we’d fall in love.”

“So you do love me?” He studied her face.

She paused, unable to deny this man a moment longer. “With all my heart.”

“And do you mind if we don’t do the big royal wedding thing?”

“I don’t mind at all.” She was still trying to process what was happening. That Rafe loved her, that he wanted to wake up with her every morning.

“Good.” He smiled. “Because my father’s not the only wily one. I have it all figured out. The pilot’s already changed the flight plan. We’re heading to Vegas. And we’re getting married. Today. May as well give the press something to get really worked up about. We can be San Philippe’s Rebel Royals. And in tricking them and denying them all their royal wedding, we’ll have sunk so low that the only way to go will be upward in the public’s opinion. And as soon as you have my babies everyone, but me especially, will be happy. All will be forgiven and forgotten.”

He lifted her hand, covering it with his other so that it disappeared within his clasp. “Lex, you’re a part of me that I hadn’t even realized was missing. The best part.” Tenderness shone in his dark eyes. He released
her hand to cup her face, and she pressed her cheek against the warmth of his palm. “Alexia Wyndham Jones, Lexie, my Lexie. I love you. You are my Everest, my everything.”

Finally, finally he kissed her again and she knew despite what he’d said, she had her fairy tale.