Modern Romance Collection February 2025, #5-8

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘Y OU DON ’ T HAVE to go home just because mother and father say so.’

Ana lounged on an outdoor chaise on a secluded terrace of Isolobello’s famed palace, with Cilla on a lounger next to her. Ahead of them a view of the vibrant sea glittered to the horizon with a colour which carried painful reminders...

She caught her thoughts, stopping them from leading to their inevitable conclusion. Instead, she sipped a fruity cocktail as she and her sister watched the world sail by. Ocean liners, super-yachts of the rich and famous and fishing boats. If she didn’t think too hard about it, Ana could almost pretend that she was on some holiday, rather than trying to escape what a wreck her life had become.

A cool breeze drifted over them, still fairly warm here on the Mediterranean, rather than with the crisp bite of early winter at her home in Halrovia. Or a rustic farmhouse in rural France... She shut her eyes, but she couldn’t escape the last ugly argument with Aston. His rejection of her. His seeming disdain.

How broken her heart was. All she could do was ignore it, because surely hearts mended, given time? Though it had been two months. She thought the pain would have blunted by now. It hadn’t. It still caught her unawares, slicing like a paper cut, as fresh as the moment she’d walked out of the door of Aston’s farmhouse and asked one of his security team to take her far, far away.

Cilla had offered her a soft place to land when Aston had simply let her go.

‘And you don’t need your sister here, getting in the way of wedding preparations.’

‘Since you’re part of the wedding party, and my maid of honour, it’s your duty.’

‘Since I failed so spectacularly at my own engagement, I wonder why you’d want me.’ Ana rubbed her ring finger, where her beautiful ring had once sat, still gripped by the constant sense that something was missing, something she doubted she’d ever find again.

Cilla sat up.

‘Don’t. You didn’t fail at anything. If I know you, you tried to do what was good and right and that...’ her sister flapped her hands about as if lost for words ‘...that man, if I can even call him that, didn’t deserve you.’

Her support meant everything to Ana. Once, her sister had been all uncertainty—the ‘plain princess’, as the press had unfairly dubbed her because she didn’t look like the rest of the family. Dark hair to their blonde. Petite to their height. Now she’d come into her own.

Ana peered over the rim of her glass filled with the fruity elixir and decorated with a jaunty pink paper umbrella, to glimpse her sister frowning. Priscilla pushed her glasses up her nose. Even through that look of disapproval, Cilla bloomed with a beauty that radiated from within. Love had transformed her, made her believe in herself. A kernel of warmth lit in Ana’s heart. Cilla had always been a gentle, studious soul, hard-working, underestimated. It had only taken the right man finally to see her...

All that warmth was snuffed out. Ana had thought she’d found that man for herself, one who saw her, someone she could love and who would love her in return, but it had all been cold and calculated. All to protect an inheritance. Well, she deserved more, so much more, which was why she’d walked away. She hadn’t wanted to lose him, but if he didn’t appreciate her and couldn’t love her, what point was there?

In the end, she knew if she stayed she’d have become a shell, as she’d been before the accident, trying to be perfect. She would always have tried to be the woman he wanted, rather than woman she truly was. In the end, staying with him hadn’t been safe. Walking away had been.

‘Then why does it hurt so much?’ Ana’s voice cracked.

Cilla left her own sun lounger and came and sat next to her. ‘Because unrequited love is the worst. You do love him, don’t you?’

Ana feared she still did, irrevocably. Because she suspected that, no matter how cruel he’d been, he’d given Ana her life back, and for that she needed to be thankful. Whilst leaving him might have meant the end of her security, one of his personal protection officers still went wherever she did. Cilla had tried to shoo him away, but the man was resolute, so they let him follow her about, looming whenever anyone looked at Ana sideways.

Then there had been a letter from Count Hakkinen. She’d refused to read it but Cilla had. Apparently it was an apology and a promise that he’d never be even in the same country as her.

In her weaker moments she knew she had Aston to thank for this, for her safety, though she shouldn’t give a damn what he did ever again. He didn’t love her back, so there was no point.

‘You know I do.’

‘Because I know you. Anyway, let’s give him something to think about.’

‘I don’t think he thinks about me at all.’

Cilla grabbed her phone and held it out. She hesitated then plucked Ana’s cocktail umbrella from her drink and put it behind Ana’s ear.

‘Rubbish. He might not be worthy of you, but he’ll be looking. How could he not ? Being awesome is always the best revenge. Now, get that drink in frame and smile like you gleefully burned your last bridge.’

Ana burst out laughing as Cilla took the shot and then showed it to her. It appeared to be a moment of joy, and maybe one that proved she was going to be okay, broken heart and all.

‘What are you going to do with it?’

‘I’m sending a copy to you, then posting this to my social media, because you look hot in that bikini, and that’s what sisters are for. Messages need to be delivered.’

Cilla had become a bit of a darling of social media since her arrival in Isolobello, now granted administrator privileges over the Santori royal accounts. An adoring public constantly tried to guess which posts were written by Cilla, and which ones were courtesy of the family’s official social media manager. This shot would likely cause another flurry of interest.

Ana thought she looked like a woman who’d just lost the love of her life, but Cilla had told her earlier, ‘Put on some sunglasses and lip-gloss and suck it up, Princess.’ So at least she had a little colour to her, though the bikini did make her feel bold. It was the first thing she’d bought for herself on coming to Isolobello, almost a shout to the universe: just you watch me now . Before she’d collapsed in floods of tears, weeping on her sister’s shoulder.

Cilla held up the final photo for her to see. ‘Okay?’

The shot had been cropped so the scars on her arm didn’t show, though that hardly mattered any more. Ana knew now they weren’t a measure of her worth—just another thing to thank Aston for...

‘Go for it,’ Ana said, finishing her drink and putting the glass on a side table.

‘Done!’ Cilla looked so blissfully happy, full of joy. Ana hoped one day that she could find the same for herself. It had been so hard, thinking she had and then having it fall apart and crush her like an avalanche. If only she could see the world through rose-tinted glasses again. That view had been so beautiful, so full of hope.

But loving Aston Lane had been a fool’s errand. Like trying to tame the winter winds, or hold back spring meltwater with nothing more than one’s hands as it rushed down the mountains. That love would eternally have slipped through her fingers as she’d tried to hold on tighter.

Anyhow, he didn’t want to fall in love. He was truly like the god Bacchus at the Spring Ball, which seemed so long ago now. Whilst he might intoxicate her, he’d always remain free.

‘Excellent!’ Ana said, trying to sound enthusiastic. ‘Now let’s talk about these wedding preparations.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘One hundred percent.’

It was a masochistic kind of distraction, Cilla chatting about her dress, about Ana’s. About the pomp and ceremony that would overtake Isolobello on the day. About the joy it would bring this island country—the Santori family’s beloved heir marrying Halrovia’s youngest princess. Ana tried to let Cilla’s happiness fill her empty heart with talk of flowers, carriages and the fairy tale, when all Ana felt was somehow small and broken.

There was a gentle knock on the door leading into the palace and courtier walked onto the terrace.

‘Your Highnesses.’

He bowed, walked to Cilla and murmured in her ear, then stood back, as if waiting for instructions. Cilla frowned.

‘Problem?’ Ana asked.

Cilla’s eyebrows raised. ‘It seems Mr Lane is at the palace and has asked to see you.’

Ana’s stomach churned with the ferocity of the waves hitting the rocky cliffs below them.

‘I can send him away,’ Cilla added in a rush. ‘Just say the word and he’ll be gone. You don’t need to do anything you don’t want to.’

Yet that would be putting off the inevitable, the coward’s way, and she didn’t want to fear anything ever again. Ana took a deep breath. Her whole problem was that being here with Cilla was safe and familiar. In many ways, she’d reformed and burst out in a new skin, yet she still didn’t really know who Princess Anastacia was. And she wasn’t sure she’d ever discover her, hiding away.

That thought had her rising from the chair. She had desires. She had needs. She had choices . She just needed to move forward, and confronting Aston was the first step towards closure.

‘I’ll see him.’ Ana looked down at what she wore, at the bikini top, matching sarong wrap-tied low on her waist. She wasn’t dressed to receive visitors, particularly not Aston Lane. ‘But I should probably...’

‘Put on your armour?’

Her armour...the facade she’d hid behind. Hair, make-up, clothes. First to project perfection, then to hide her scars. In that way, she realised now, Cilla had been always so much freer than her. She’d lived her life eschewing the expectations her mother had tried to force upon her. In the end, her sister had been more true to herself than any of their family.

‘What else do I have?’

Cilla stood and placed her hands on Ana’s shoulders. She was inches shorter and eighteen months younger, yet Ana felt like a child.

‘Yourself,’ Cilla said with a patient, knowing smile. ‘And she is enough.’

Aston didn’t hear a door open—and there was no announcement that anyone had arrived—yet he could feel something. A strange sensation, an awareness of another person with him. There was a change in the atmosphere. Aston turned slowly, his gut churning, filled with anticipation and dread. Knowing with certainty who it was, afraid of who he would see, because of how much he had to atone for. It didn’t even seem enough to beg forgiveness after the things he’d said that last, terrible morning. If Ana sent him away without a backward glance, then it would be wholly deserved. Aston could only hope she’d listen.

Ana came into view, standing there in a bikini top and sarong. Her appearance affected him as always like a punch to the solar plexus, forcing the breath right out of him. Today, the scars on her arm were unhidden. After how she’d been with him the first time they’d made love, her reluctance to show them to him, he was filled with pride at how far she’d come. She stood so unashamed, shoulders back, gaze cool and regal. The ego in him, one he tried hard to quash, wanted to believe that he’d played a part in her fearlessness today, but he knew that wasn’t the truth. It was all her. Her strength and her resilience was despite him, not because of him.

Aston might have smiled had he thought she’d welcome it, because she also had a jaunty little paper umbrella behind her ear. It made him realise that this was yet another sign she’d likely moved on. He wouldn’t blame her if she had. Yet he could see the grey shadows under her eyes, how her normally plush mouth was a thin, tight line.

He wanted to go to her. Wrap her in his arms and tell her he was sorry for all the pain he’d caused, but this was no warm welcome. Not that he’d expected it. He considered himself lucky that he’d been allowed in at all, after turning up unannounced. Only some fast talking about how he was Princess Anastacia’s fiancé had garnered him any kind of attention.

‘Aston. How are your parents?’

So cool, so polite—the consummate princess, the woman from before . Before she’d allowed him a glimpse of how deep her passions ran, and that was fathomless. He tried to be heartened by the fact she’d used his first name but knew that, after everything they’d been through, she wouldn’t have been petty enough to call him Mr Lane. Should he tell her about his mother? He didn’t want her to think he was using it as a way into her good graces, but if he wanted only truth they had to start somewhere, and here was the right time.

‘My father’s well. My mother’s been in hospital.’

Ana started forward, forehead creased in worry. She checked herself, as if some invisible tether had pulled her back. ‘I’m so sorry. Is she well?’

His mother’s doctor had called Camille ‘her miracle’. ‘Yes...now.’

‘I’m pleased. When you go, please send them my regards.’

Her words stung like the slap of an icy wind. She was the perfect princess, the ice princess. There was not an ounce of warmth in her. Yet he knew how she simmered, what she hid underneath. How he craved to experience it again.

‘You could tell them yourself.’

Her eyes widened a fraction, her throat convulsing in a swallow.

‘What are you doing here, Aston? I thought you’d said all you needed to. Your message was quite clear.’

The things he should have said instead... How she’d been right. How he loved her. So many opportunities had been missed to build something towering and eternal when all he’d done was to try and tear things down—self-sabotage at its finest. Time to attempt a repair of what he’d so callously broken.

‘You were right.’

Ana’s teeth began to worry her lower lip. She wrapped her hands reflexively round her waist, then loosened them to drop them by her side.

‘In what way? There were so many.’

She’d been right in every way.

‘I’m a coward, hurting you to protect myself.’ He shook his head. ‘I love to climb, but I don’t want to climb Everest. I don’t want to climb any of those mountains. The thought exhausts me.’

‘Then why...?’

Now was when he had to lay the card showing one of the most painful days of his life on the table. To give her a glimpse of what had in some ways made him but, in more, had broken him. He’d never really faced Michel’s death, even though he’d thought he had over the years since. He’d fooled himself into believing he’d moved on, all the while being stuck in the past as that desperate, guilt-ridden twenty-year-old who’d carried those scars into his future. Though he’d not fooled Ana. She’d seen right through him.

He motioned to an uncomfortable-looking antique couch. ‘Would you like to sit?’

She shook her head. ‘I’d prefer to stand.’

‘Do you mind if I do?’ He wasn’t sure that his legs would hold him through the retelling of this story.

She shook her head and he lowered himself onto the sofa, wanting to hide his face so she wouldn’t witness the pain. But he’d been a coward with her before. He refused to be one now.

‘The day Michel died, I was with him. We’d been climbing. Preparing one day for the trip of our lifetime to Everest. To climb the mountain my father had failed to.’

Though that was something only he and Michel had thought. In all the time he’d spent with his father, Aston realised now, Simon had never seen his inability to reach Everest’s summit as a failure. Instead, he’d seen his survival in that terrible climbing season as a success, a second chance.

‘You know I said Michel lost focus?’

Ana winced. He had no doubt she remembered that conversation, and he hated to bring her more pain, but the past had informed every day of his present and it was time to put it behind him, if she’d allow it.

‘It was an error both of judgement and equipment. He fell, was injured—mortally. I... I couldn’t save him. He died in front of me as we waited for rescue.’

He couldn’t look at her any more. Didn’t want to read what she saw on his face. His eyes flooded. He blinked the tears away. Beside him, the seat dipped. Through a blur he saw Ana seated next to him. He felt the warmth of her hand on his thigh. There was comfort in her touch. She was so generous, he didn’t deserve it.

‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘Nothing. You don’t have to say anything.’

All the words that needed to be spoken were his.

‘He knew he was dying. Just before he passed, he said, “I’m dying...live for me”.’

The ache inside his chest was a yawning one, a chasm that would never be filled. He chanced a look at Ana and tears brimmed in her eyes then overflowed. One tracked down her cheek. He wanted to wipe it away, but he had no right to touch her, especially not to comfort. It wasn’t his place, not yet. If she saw fit to afford him some grace, to forgive him, only then would he have earned the privilege.

‘Don’t cry for me. I don’t deserve it.’

‘I think you might.’

‘It had always been Michel’s dream to climb Everest, and the rest. To conquer the world’s tallest, hardest peaks. I carried it from the moment he spoke those words to me. But I didn’t stop to think.’

His brother had said, ‘Live for me’. Not, ‘Climb Everest’, or Annapurna or K2 or Nanga Parbat. Simply, ‘Live.’

‘Instead of living my own life, I tried to live Michel’s—fulfil what I believed were his dreams, rather than my own. I didn’t even know what mine were any more. Working towards Michel’s is what kept me moving forwards.’

If he’d been truthful to himself, he would have recognised it years ago. He realised it was what his parents had been trying to tell him, in their own way. To look into the heart of himself to what he wanted, not live his life for others. He could now thank them for the push that had allowed Ana to burst into his life. Calling on him to reflect on everything he thought he’d wanted.

‘You were young. His death wasn’t your fault.’

‘I was broken, and I was a fool. I felt guilty. My parents saw it. They hoped marriage would make me settle down, accept life as it was. And then I met you.’

His chance to make the life for himself he’d been told to live. With a woman whom he admired, whom he loved. Because of fear, he’d thrown it back in her face. He’d hurt her, when he’d promised to keep her safe.

He took a chance and took her hands in his. They were cold. He wanted to show her love, to keep her warm. To keep her with him, if she’d allow it.

‘You challenged everything I thought I was meant to do. I’d mistaken Michel’s dreams for mine for so long that letting them go would have been like losing him all over again, a second death. In the process, I accused you of things, broke something—us. Something real and right. Something perfect, although I know you hate the word. And for that I’m truly sorry.’

Ana shook her head. ‘I never wanted to hold you back, or force you to settle .’

He squeezed her fingers. She squeezed back. That one, tiny moment gave him hope.

‘With you, I could only ever look forwards. The person holding me back was myself. But no more. I loved you. I love you —jusqu’à la fin de mes jours . I don’t care about an inheritance. I don’t care about Girard. All I care about is you.’

I love you—until the end of my days...

Ana looked at where their hands were joined. Somehow, their fingers had twined together as if of their own accord. It felt so right. It was everything she’d wanted, as if they should never separate again. And yet the thought still rang through her head that he couldn’t love her. Why couldn’t she simply believe instead?

‘What are you saying?’ she asked.

Aston rubbed his thumb gently over the back of her hand. The touch caused a shiver of pleasure to run through her.

‘I want you as my wife, if you’ll have me. I’ve never wanted anything more. I was living a half-life, and you brought me back, like a shock to the chest. Made me look at myself, to realise what was important. You—loving you—is what I wanted more than anything, yet pushing you away seemed like the only option to protect myself.’

‘And now?’

‘It’s all down to you. The decision’s yours. I’ll spend my whole life proving that I’m worthy of you, if you’ll let me.’

She looked at him. He was so earnest, open. Nothing was hidden, not any more. The shutters on his heart and soul had been lifted. She saw the love in the softness of his reverent gaze. Did she want him? Could she forgive him?

If he held open his arms... Ana knew she would always run into them.

‘Would you catch me?’

The corners of his mouth curled into a slow smile that kindled a flame deep inside her. One she’d never thought she’d feel again.

‘ Mon amour . Come running, and you’ll see.’

My love...

‘I don’t need to, because I know . I love you, Aston. For the way you believed me—believed in me—protected me. You had my heart before I even realised it could be possible.’

He let go of her hands and reached into his trouser pocket. She missed his touch immediately. She needed him to hold her, never to let her go. When he pulled his hand from his pocket he held a ring box.

‘Is that...?’

‘The ring, if you want it. Or I’ll buy another, if you need a different memory. Only remember, I didn’t buy you. I know your heart was never for sale.’

Ana didn’t need to think. She held out her left hand, which trembled as Aston removed the ring from the box and slipped it on her finger.

‘I like my ring there,’ he said. She smiled, turning her hand in the light so that it glittered.

‘Me too.’

He reached out and slipped the cocktail umbrella from behind her ear, twirling it between his fingers.

‘Been having fun?’

‘I hope to.’

He grinned. ‘I’ve asked you once, but I’ll ask you again, because it’s what you deserve. Will you marry me?’

Ana tapped her chin. She knew the answer, but making him wait wasn’t a bad thing... They had the rest of their lives to spend together, after all.

‘Are you a betting man, Mr Lane?’

His pupils darkened. ‘I’ve been known to take a risk or two.’

‘Then today you should lay all your money down on my becoming your wife.’

Aston cupped her cheek and lowered his mouth to hers. ‘And that, my goddess, is a fairy tale I cannot wait for.’