Chapter Ten #2
Defence was the best form of offence. But he didn’t have to react to her ridiculous claims. He didn’t have to prove anything.
She sat down opposite him, her jumpsuit at least hiding more of her than her pyjamas had done.
‘So if we’re not going out, maybe we could use this opportunity to learn more about each other.’
‘Like what?’
‘You were married, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you loved her?’
‘Of course I did.’
‘And she loved you.’
‘Princess,’ he said, his voice thick. ‘Where is this going?’
‘But she did, right?’
The words felt like they’d been wrenched from his soul. ‘She did.’ Not that he’d been able to honour that love, not in the end.
She seemed to contemplate that for a minute. ‘What did that feel like—to have someone love you so much?’
‘It was—perfection.’
‘I love that,’ she said. ‘That is everything every person wants.’
And Theo knew exactly where this was going before she’d even uttered her next words.
‘Because that’s what I want. To feel someone to love me so much and me love him that it’s perfection.’
‘It’s a worthy goal,’ he said, intentionally keeping his distance.
‘My father promised that I could marry for love. I was never going to accede to the throne, so he promised me that I could make my own way. But how am I to find that love, how am I ever to feel that same feeling, if my brother is to marry me off to someone I don’t love. Someone I could never love?’
Her voice was rising. ‘Princess—again, you’re becoming over melodramatic.’
‘You don’t believe me,’ she said. ‘You don’t believe what my brother has in store for me.’
‘There are no indications.’ He’d had nothing back on his request for information but given the threadbare Wi-Fi and the weather, that was hardly surprising. Then again, maybe it was because there was nothing to find.
‘No indications? What are you waiting for? Of course he’s not going to “give you indications”. He needs you onside. He needs you to deliver the goods. And that’s all I am to him. The goods. The ticket out of his massive debts.’
He said nothing. Given the lack of any evidence, there was nothing to say. She sipped her coffee and he assumed she was done.
He was wrong.
‘My brother has always had a mean streak,’ she said, flopping into a chair, rubbing her forehead with one hand.
‘It was always tempered when my parents were alive, but even when they weren’t around he’d find ways to bully me.
I thought once he acceded to the throne, he’d have enough on his plate to worry about and he’d forget about me. But I was wrong.’
Theo looked up. A bully? There had been something in the dossier that had hinted at the Prince’s authoritarian personality, and his strong need to control, but this had been painted as unsurprising, given his station and the leadership role expected of him.
But could there be something darker behind it?
‘Did he ever hurt you? Physically, I mean.’
She sniffed. ‘No. Not me. Nothing that would show. But I had a six-month-old puppy called Coco. My parents had given her to me for my twelfth birthday.’
Chills skittered down Theo’s spine. ‘What happened?’
‘I couldn’t find her one day. I called and called but she didn’t come.
And then Rafael appeared, holding Coco. It was wrong.
Coco hated Rafael, she growled whenever he was around.
But now she was crying. Whimpering. And I could see that one of her legs was just hanging.
Limp. She fell down the stairs, Rafael told me, and then he smiled.
And I knew—I just knew that he’d done it.
My parents believed him—maybe they just wanted to believe him—because my father visited me that night while Coco was being cared for in the veterinary hospital.
He hugged me tightly and told me that he was sorry for how the way things were.
He told me that things would be different one day.
He promised me—’ She pulled her legs up onto the chair and wrapped her arms tightly around them.
And Theo’s senses were stretched piano-wire tight. He ached to get up and wrap his arms around her and comfort her—but that was because it provided him with the perfect excuse to do so. To do exactly what he wanted to do. But he couldn’t reach out. He couldn’t afford to make a move.
Her story might be compelling. Heart-rending, even. But convincing? And did it even matter? She was a rescue. He was a bodyguard. She was his mission. No matter what he felt right now, emotions didn’t come into it. His job was to get her home, no matter the sob stories along the way.
No matter how hard it might feel.
Nothing was working. Izzy rose from her chair to pace the suite.
She didn’t know how to break through the walls that Theo had erected around him, walls that seemed to offer a crack, a crevice, a mere promise every now and then to let her in to get a glimpse of the man and let him see her, only to have him plaster over those walls, raise the drawbridge and withdraw into the inner sanctum.
One night. One more night was all she had to convince him not to take her home. She took a deep breath as she looked out the window at the grey skies, the swirling clouds around the tops of the mountains and the swaying palm trees of the rainforest below.
But she wasn’t done with trying yet. Maybe she just needed to try a different tack…
‘So,’ she said, turning, ‘you were married.’
He looked up from the messages he was reading on his phone that the trickle of internet had finally allowed through.
There was a crisis developing in a recovery happening in Istanbul, a complication with another in Athens, and he was still waiting on information he’d urgently requested about Prince Rafael, but his attention was now one hundred per cent focused on the question this woman had just asked.
Where the hell had that come from? Unless this was another tilt at the fifty-year-old fiancé thing. He half expected her next question to be, ‘How old was she?’
‘I think we’ve established that I was married, Princess.’
‘And you’ve made love with a woman.’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘You’re right. Silly question. You were married and of course you would have made love with your wife, and probably a bunch of women besides.’
‘Not while I was married to my wife.’ Not since, for that matter. ‘Now where is this going, Princess?’
She shrugged. ‘Only that you’re a man. And you look like someone who would know how all the bits might work.’
There was no preventing his eyebrows shooting north. ‘I doubt there are many adults alive on this planet who don’t know how “all the bits might work”. I’m equally sure your education, not to mention your recent experiences, will have filled you in on the necessary details.’
‘Well, of course it did, I just wondered what it felt like from the male point of view.’
‘Didn’t Mateo or Luke or whoever else there was bother to share that information with you?’
Isabella’s interest spiked. Theo remembered their names? That was interesting.
She shrugged. ‘I guess I was too caught up in the moment. I didn’t think to ask. So now I’m asking you.’
He bristled on his chair. ‘I wish you wouldn’t. I’m not comfortable talking about this with you, Princess. It’s not appropriate.’
‘Not even in general? I’m not asking for specifics. I’m not asking for a blow-by-blow analysis.’
He shook his head. ‘Believe me, that’s the last thing you’re going to get.’
‘Right. So, what can you tell me?’
‘Nothing,’ he said. He slammed his laptop shut. Twenty-four hours had never seemed so long. ‘I can’t stand another moment of this.’
‘So, you agree, we’re going out?’
It wasn’t his first choice. His first choice would be to lock her in her room where she couldn’t constantly needle him with her perfect body and her smart words. But locking her in her room, even if it was possible, was crossing a line he’d never expected to want to cross.
What was it with this woman?
‘Well?’ she said, looking decidedly more sheepish but not giving up, her hands clasped innocently before her. ‘It has to be better than staying here with you getting on my nerves and me getting on yours.’
It was ridiculous. Going out in this wild weather was ridiculous.
But maybe she had a point. Staying here with this woman in this apartment for however long the storm was going to last was impossible.
He might not be attracted to her—he refused to admit the truth that he was attracted to her—but just being in her proximity was on his mind—and her nerves—one hundred per cent of the time.
‘What did you have in mind?’
Ten minutes later they pulled up at the island’s visitor centre. The rain had eased although the winds were still high, the palm fronds thrashing above their heads. ‘So why are we here?’ Theo asked.
‘To learn,’ she said, ‘it’s interesting.’
Theo doubted it, but what else did he have to do? And maybe it would give him a break from the constant headache that was trying to exist in close proximity to this woman.
Inside there was a café and store that sold books and all manner of souvenirs. A family sat at a table in the café, eating lunch.