Chapter Sixteen
IT TOOK SOME twenty-four hours before the money transfers had been successfully concluded and they were on the plane and out of Rubanestein airspace. Finally, Theo allowed himself space to breathe.
His nerves had been on a knife-edge ever since that dinner invitation.
Ever since finding that report in his inbox, ever since seeing the Princess sat beside an older man that she’d clearly not wanted to have anything to do with, his sickening spidey senses had told him that the Princess had not been lying.
And that Theo had personally delivered her. He might as well have wrapped her up in a sparkly gift box wrapped with a big red bow.
But now the jet and they were safely away. Theo unclicked his safety belt and stood. He needed to walk. He needed to find a way to burn off this nervous energy that had surrounded him for too long.
The Princess he could see was sleeping in her seat. She’d fallen asleep the moment they’d taken off.
God knows what the last few days had been like for her. Afraid of her impending arrival back in Rubanestein. Afraid of the impending nuptials her brother had planned. Afraid the Prince might change his mind again, after he’d agreed to take Theo’s money in place of the Count’s.
She’d had more at stake than he’d ever had, and he knew how nervous he’d been this last twenty-four hours.
He hated himself for delivering her lock, stock and barrel into a marriage she wanted no part of.
A marriage she’d warned him was going to happen if he returned her to Rubanestein.
And yet, he hadn’t believed her. Even though he’d been swayed, wanting to believe her, she’d then lied to him and that had turned him against her.
He was wrong.
So wrong.
He just hoped that one day, she might forgive him.
An hour later the Princess stirred. Refreshments were served. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.
‘Better,’ she said, cradling a cup of tea. ‘Relieved.’ Then she looked up at him. ‘I haven’t had a chance to properly thank you yet.’
‘Don’t thank me. I did you no favours. I should have believed you. There were times I wanted to, but it seemed so mad, so unbelievable that your brother would want to do that to you.’
She smiled. ‘My not so darling brother. I’m sorry to leave Rubanestein and its people, but I’m not sorry to leave him.’ She shuddered. ‘And the Count. You know, I actually believed you were going along with the Prince at the banquet. Do you know how much I hated you in that moment?’
‘I knew. The look in your eyes made that crystal-clear.’
She shook her head. ‘And then you pulled a rabbit out of a hat. Two hundred million US dollars. Where did you even get that kind of money?’
‘The rescue business pays well—so long as you can rescue people, that is. I make it a point of rescuing people.’
‘You save people.’
‘I try to. I made it my job. And when there were too many cases or one person, I expanded my business. Nobody realised how many cases there were. Missing babies. Sons and daughters gone missing. Partners disappeared. Princesses disappearing off the face of the earth.’
She looked up at him. ‘Did you have many princesses disappearing off the face of the earth?’
He shook his head. ‘Only one, and she proved to be the case to end all cases. She evaded all and every attempt to track her down. We’re going to have to rewrite the book about runaway royals after this.’
‘You found me,’ she said.
‘You didn’t make it easy.’
She laughed and smiled up at him, ‘I’ll take that as a compliment. But I’m so glad it was you who found me.’ But where did that leave them? Where did they go from here?
‘So, what happens now?’ she asked, licking her lips. ‘I owe you for what you’ve rescued me from, and you bought me, so do you own me? What do you expect me to do?’
He shook his head. ‘Nothing. I don’t own you. You’re a free agent. I bought you your freedom, not your life, and certainly not your servitude. And after what I did, you owe me nothing. Accept your freedom as my apology. You now have all the freedom you always wanted.’
She nodded. Freedom. It sounded good. It sounded like exactly what she’d been seeking.
Except…
On a deeper level it was also disappointing. She paused, searching for the right words, knowing this moment was make or break. ‘What if I don’t want to be a free agent?’
‘What?’
The Princess licked her lips. ‘What if I’d prefer to spend my life with someone else?’
The growl rumbled deep and dark from the back of his throat. ‘You’re still thinking about Mateo or Luke or whoever else there was?’
She smiled. ‘I’m touched you remember their names.’
He shook his head. ‘Look, I don’t care who it is. I don’t want to know. You’re free to be with whomever you like.’
‘Except I don’t know if it’s possible. I don’t know if this person feels the same way.’ She tilted her head. ‘Would you agree to take me on, for better, for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health?’
‘Wait. What? Are you proposing to me?’
She swallowed. ‘I told you once before that my dream was to marry the man that I loved. Are you the man I’m going to marry? Are you going to make my dream come true?’
‘You don’t marry someone because of a dream.’
‘No. You marry someone because you love them, and you want to spend the rest of your life with them.’
It took Theo but a moment for her words to register.
He understood now why he had such a visceral reaction when the Count had pawed the Princess at the banquet.
He understood what had been staring him in the face ever since he’d taken her to his bed on Lord Howe Island.
He understood what had been building ever since she’d tumbled into his arms from her bedroom window and what had driven him crazy every time she was close. Every time she was near.
He’d fallen in love with someone he should never have fallen in love with.
He’d fallen in love with Isabella, but now he could finally admit it.
He pulled Isabella from her seat and into his arms. ‘Princess,’ he said, his mouth hovering over hers, ‘Isabella, I love you so much.’ Their lips met, and Theo felt something powerful crack open inside him, the stone walls that had surrounded his heart since he’d lost Sophia, and now his heart was open. Open to welcome Isabella.
But kisses were not enough. He needed to show her just how much he loved her. Needed to finish off what they had only just started at. He swept up her legs and carried her to the bedroom, closing the door behind him with his foot.
He laid her on the bed so tenderly, like she was made of porcelain, fragile and delicate.
He knew she was far from that; she had an inner strength that belied her age and upbringing.
She was clever and resourceful. Bold and beautiful.
But to him, in this moment, she was the most precious creature in the world.
Looking back, Isabella couldn’t quite remember the order of things, who shed their clothes first, whether it had been her to tug off his shirt and pants or whether she’d been too busy in the tangle of arms and limbs and seeking hands tearing her own clothes off.
But then they’d both been naked and it was magical.
Skin against skin. Lips and hot mouths against skin.
Senses overloading. Need spiralling, until Isabella was spiralling with it, losing her mind, losing control.
When he entered her in one long thrust, this time he met no resistance, she felt no shock of pain. Instead, she welcomed him into her depths knowing that this man was the one she’d been waiting for her entire life. Knowing that he was the one. The only one.
He built momentum with each thrust, building the desperation, the madness consuming her, until with one final thrust he sent her over the edge, and she was flying, literally and figuratively into the sky.
He followed, juddering into her, rolling her climax into crested waves of paradise.
Afterwards they lay together panting, their shared breath fanning across the heated skin of their bodies. It was bliss to share this time together while their bodies hummed down from their peaks, a magical time that had been denied them last time.
He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. ‘I love you,’ he whispered, smoothing back loose tendrils of her hair.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I love you too.’ But his heartfelt words had brought tears to her eyes. She swiped the dampness away.
‘You’re crying?’
She sniffed. ‘Happy tears,’ she said. ‘Happy because I’m with you.’
He kissed her. ‘I think I must be the happiest man in the world to find love not just once, but twice.’
And because Theo had brought the subject up, Isabella felt emboldened to ask, ‘How long were you married?’
‘Six years.’
‘No children?’
He shook his head and sighed, probably not even aware that he was stroking Isabella’s hair. ‘It didn’t happen,’ he said gruffly, ‘not until it was too late.’
Isabella felt a wall of longing and pain behind the simple words he’d uttered, but she wasn’t about to ask what he meant.
‘What was she like?’ she asked instead.
‘Sophia had dark hair and even darker eyes. She was beautiful, inside and out. She was perfect.’
Isabella pressed her lips together. It was ridiculous to feel envious of a dead woman, but it was impossible not to. If Theo felt even a fraction of that emotion for her, she’d be happy. But Sophia had set the bar so impossibly high.
‘How did you two meet?’
‘At university in Athens. We studied economics and international relations together.’
Isabella nodded. She sensed there was a world more pain behind his tortured eyes and strained words.
She smoothed his brow with one hand, trying to ease whatever pain he was feeling—whatever pain he was remembering—and after a while, he sighed.
‘She was the daughter of an international banker. She was kidnapped and held for ransom. The police bungled the recovery. She was killed when they stormed the building where they discovered they were keeping her.’
He sighed. ‘The autopsy discovered she was pregnant.’ He looked at her then, his eyes tortured, his brow twisted. ‘She hadn’t had a chance to tell me.’
‘Oh my god, I’m so sorry.’ She raised herself up on one elbow and looked down at him, her fingernails tracing through his chest hair, and there, in the depths of his dark eyes, she witnessed the extent of his loss. ‘And that’s why you do what you do?’
He pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘That’s when it started, but I think the seeds were planted years before when my younger sister drowned. We were at the beach together, caught in the same rip and though I tried, I couldn’t reach her. I couldn’t save her. I hated that I couldn’t save her.
‘And then, when Sophia was killed, I made a solemn vow to do my utmost to prevent anyone else suffering the same fate.’
‘You can’t be blamed for failing your sister.’
‘I know.’ He took one of her hands in his, and kissed the back of it. ‘But it made me realise what loss felt like. Coupled with the loss of Sophia, it made me want to save others from that pain.’
‘I get that,’ she said.
He shook his head. ‘Sophia was amazing. I was the boy from the country. I never knew what she saw in me.’
Isabella was in no doubt. ‘I know what she saw,’ she said. ‘Sophia saw a man of honour. A strong man. A protector. A man who would fight for what was right. She saw that in you, I know. Because that’s what I see in you. That’s who you are.
‘And that’s who I know you to be. Because you saved me,’ she said, ‘from a life of bondage and enslavement in a marriage I never wanted nor could be happy in. I can never thank you enough.’
‘No.’ He raised himself up to push her down on her back.
‘It is I who needs to thank you,’ he said.
‘I was stuck in a life of endless guilt for failing to save my sister and my wife and trying to make up for it every day since. I was stuck in a life chasing my tail and never catching it. And for forgetting about the simple things in life. Like what it felt like to have fun. You reminded me what fun was. You reminded me what it felt like to laugh. You reminded me what it felt like to love.’
He pressed his lips to hers. ‘You saved me,’ he said, before he kissed her thoroughly again. ‘And I love you forever for it.’
Isabella was breathless by the time they paused for air. But there was one question she still needed to ask. ‘By the way,’ she said, ‘you never answered me.’
‘About what?’
‘Will you marry me?’
‘Do you want my answer in words, or deeds?’
‘How long have we got before we land?’
He smiled, looking hungrily down at her. ‘Hours and hours.’
She scrunched up her nose, wove her arms around his neck and pulled him down to her. ‘I guess there’s no harm trying deeds.’
He kissed her lightly on the lips. ‘That’s the right answer.’