His Bride for the Taking Read online

  And here in public, with camera lenses trained on the whole royal party, she couldn’t go to him and apologize. Nor could she go to him in private. The risk there was entirely different and far graver.

  She couldn’t go to him at all. It was her only option.

  Lexie looked in horror from the newspapers spread out on her bed, to the card in her hand, to the phone beside her and then back to the papers.

  Staying away from Rafe was not an option now. She had to do this. Taking a deep breath, she reached for the phone and slowly dialed the number.

  Three rings. It was too early to be calling. But she couldn’t leave it and risk missing him. Four rings. One more and she’d hang up.

  “Rafe.” A single rough syllable.

  Her throat dried up.

  “Who’s there?” he asked, a little more gently, but still with a husky, sleep-filled inflection. “Lex?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. I can call again later.” She tried not to recall the image of him sprawled and slumberous in this very bed.

  “I’m awake now. What’s wrong?”

  “Aside from the fact that we slept together?” She looked again at the pictures in the papers.

  Silence.

  “Can I see you? It’s the papers.”

  “To which you should pay no attention.”

  “Please? You should see this. I don’t know what to do about it. I mean, I know I have to tell Adam, but I thought you should see it first. That was all.”

  A ray of sunlight slanted through her window, highlighting the very picture she needed to show him. Outside, she heard the notes of the mockingbird whose bachelor’s song had disrupted her sleep throughout the night.

  “You know where my office is?”

  “Yes.” His office was relatively neutral territory, nice and official, not tempting.

  “Can you be there in twenty minutes?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  When she got there, she waited outside the door to Rafe’s office and forced herself to stand still. She’d pulled on the first clothes to hand, jeans and a white blouse, and come straight here. She was at least five minutes early, undoubtedly a mistake because now she was loitering in the corridor where any of the staff or family, if they were up, could see her and wonder what she was doing, why she was waiting for Rafe. Had gossip already spread through the castle? As far as she knew no one had seen them, but…

  She clutched this morning’s San Philippe paper and yesterday’s American paper in her hands. Both had been delivered early to her room, as they had been every day she’d been here. The first had caused her to spill her coffee, the second to forget her coffee altogether. She’d only looked at each once before quickly closing them. And she hadn’t yet dared check the Internet.

  Her first panicked impulse had been to call Rafe. Not only because her predicament involved him, but because he’d know what to do. He’d dealt with scandals before, and for the first time she could see some benefit in that.

  And like her, he didn’t want his brother to be hurt.

  She was on the verge of walking away, planning to come back shortly, when Rafe strode down the corridor. His hair was damp, and his white linen shirt revealed a vee of tanned skin. He wore black jeans and he looked masculine and earthy. The sort of man her mother had warned her about. She should have listened. But more important, she told herself, he looked calm and capable. Some of her anxiety eased. She’d made the right decision. He’d know what to do, how she should handle this.

  “Lex,” he said by way of a greeting. She wasn’t sure whether she imagined the same longing in his voice that she was unable to quell. For all the lectures she’d given herself, she still thought about him, dreamed about him.

  His gaze traveled leisurely over her, and she had to hide the physical reaction, the leap of her pulse, that his presence inevitably caused. His eyes seemed to linger on her hair, which because of her distraction still lay loose around her shoulders. A frown creased Rafe’s brow and he swallowed. Clearly she should have taken the time to put it up. She remembered too well how much he loved her hair, how he had run his fingers through it, arranged it over her shoulders, her chest.

  “I’m sorry about this,” she said, clutching the papers tighter. “I didn’t want to bother you. I just didn’t know who else to ask for advice. And you did give me your phone number and say to call. This isn’t about a fork or anything, but it concerns you, too.”

  He turned from her and tapped a code into the keypad by the door. After pushing it open he stood aside for her to enter. “You can call me anytime, Lex. You don’t need to apologize.”

  She stepped past him. She’d seen his office once before, a glance as she’d passed by, but she hadn’t had a good look at it, partly because her attention had been caught by the man who’d occupied it.

  She looked now. It was a beautiful room, dominated by a massive, intricately carved desk, its surface clear of anything. The paperwork that had covered it the time she’d seen him in here working was nowhere in sight.

  The walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling book-filled shelves. Plush carpet cushioned her footsteps as she crossed to the window she knew to be bulletproof. A view over the palace grounds and beyond to the rolling farmland and forest greeted her. And in the distance, golden sunlight bathed mountaintops still capped with snow.

  “How bad is this situation?” he asked. “Do I need to close the door?”

  Lexie turned at the reluctance in his voice. He still stood by the door, watching her. She hesitated. “No. I don’t think so.” A closed door would be bad. That would suggest she—they—had something to hide. And it could also too easily lead to temptation.

  “Sit down—” he gestured to one of the leather chairs in front of his desk “—and tell me what’s wrong.”

  As he spoke he crossed to his desk and sat behind it. He looked remote and strained, not the friend she’d thought she had in him. But remote was good. Remote worked for her. She could have friendship with Adam and Rebecca. For now all she needed was to let Rafe know what had happened and get his opinion and his advice.

  She’d be gone from here soon. He, on the other hand, would have to stay and deal with the fallout. Lexie put the newspapers on the desk. He smoothed out the creases her clutching had caused. And she remembered those hands on her body. To distract herself, she turned over the first page of the San Philippe Times. Rafe raised his eyes to hers briefly before scanning the page before him.

  It was covered almost entirely in the story of her supposed engagement to Adam. There was one picture of her unadorned left hand and some speculation as to the possible reason for the delay in the appearance of a ring.

  “This was expected,” he said. “There’ll be more when the news that you’re going home—permanently—breaks, but then that, too, will pass. Something bigger always eventually comes along.”

  As bothered as she was by all the talk of an engagement that no longer existed, that wasn’t why she was here. “Bottom right photo. The one of you.”

  His gaze tracked to the photo in question.

  “And…me. Together.” It had been taken in the nightclub in Boston. And it looked like he was holding her to him. His lips were close to her ear. It looked intimate. Nothing like what had really been happening. Although Lexie clearly recalled how it had felt, how even then her brain had fired off frantic warning signals that she hadn’t fully understood about the unfortunate chemistry Rafe caused to spark into life.

  “And could an engagement be in the offing for our other prince?” he read the caption aloud. The small piece went on to answer its own question, speculating that this was just the latest dalliance for a man with more than his share of oats to sow. It asked when the second prince was going to grow up and settle down. It listed Rafe’s previous girlfriends and then went on to wonder at the identity of the mystery woman.

  A tap sounded at the door and it opened slightly. Rafe nodded for a woman in the palace staff uniform
, carrying a silver tray with two coffees, to come in.

  He waited till she’d left again. “I didn’t know whether you’d had time for your coffee.”

  “I started one, but I spilt it.” She pointed out the stain on the second paper.

  Rafe passed her the coffee, made just how she liked it.

  “Thank you.”

  He sat and leaned back in his chair, swiveling to look out the window as he sipped his own coffee.

  “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.