I Married A Prince. Kathryn Jensen
Читать онлайн книгу.
“I’m sorry,” he said tightly. “That’s one reason I came back...to apologize for the way I treated you. I want to make it up to you. Come out with me for dinner.”
She threw up her hands, veered away from him, and started marching down the beach. She was so angry she could have strangled him. Or better yet, put a blunt instrument to good use.
“Incredible,” she muttered to herself. The man steals your heart, relieves you of your virginity, and ditches you after getting you pregnant...then he wants to buy you a meal and make nice. She knew she couldn’t have said another word to him, she was so furious. The words would have vaporized like steam from her lips.
“Alli!” he shouted after her. “Listen to me!”
She ignored him, kept on walking, the sand sifting into her shoes, between her toes, making each step feel gritty and slow-motion awkward.
A hand roughly gripped her arm, taking her by surprise. She hadn’t heard him chasing her. She recovered and faced him, her shoulders ratcheted back, her eyes brittle with emotion, seething with hatred. But her chin trembled, giving her away. She blinked back hot tears.
“Listen...” he hissed at her, and started to say something more. But he changed his mind and quickly bent down to press his lips over hers.
The heat and intensity of his kiss shocked her. It was the last thing she’d expected from a runaway boyfriend who’d lied his way into her heart, then disappeared without a trace. Why was he doing this to her?
Allison was trembling from head to foot when his lips finally brushed away from hers. His grip on her wrist loosened, but he closed his muscular arms around her in a warm embrace. She thought for a brief moment how strange his body felt, wrapped around hers, as if he was holding himself up as much as he was restraining her from running away again.
He kept her there, pinned tightly against his chest, as he began talking in his perfect English with the almost indistinguishable hint of an accent that had intrigued her from their first meeting. “Please just let me explain and try to do this right, for a change.” He didn’t wait for her response. “Yes, I lied. But not about being a grad student at Yale. I was enrolled there...under a different name.”
“Your name isn’t Jay?”
“My American friends sometimes called me that. Occasionally, it suited other situations. My name’s Jacob.”
“Jacob,” she repeated, feeling the need to test out the sounds. The name suited him, although why, she couldn’t have said. “Jacob Thomas?”
“No.” He hesitated, and she sensed a growing tension in his neck and arms, as if he was having second thoughts about continuing. “Do you read the gossip columns in grocery store tabloids?” he asked.
She blinked up at him, wondering what one thing had to do with the other. “No, why do you—”
“What about newspapers?”
“The front page and local news, occasionally. I don’t have a lot of reading time with—” She stopped herself from adding, with a full-time job and an infant to raise.
He sighed and adjusted his hold on her, and she began to wonder if he actually feared she’d take a swing at him if he released her. “Promise you’ll let me finish.”
She felt like screaming. “Just say what’s on your mind, Jacob, or whoever the hell you are, and let me get on with my life!”
He took a deep breath that she could feel through her ribs, pressed against his.
“My real name, my entire legal name as it appears on my birth certificate is—His Royal Highness, Jacob Phillipe Mark von Austerand, Crown Prince of Elbia. That yacht out there is mine, and I want you to have dinner with me on it, tonight.”
Allison closed her eyes, feeling numb from head to toe. She said nothing, didn’t move an inch. After a minute Jacob dropped his arms and stepped back to observe her expression. She focused on the strong angles of his face, which seemed perfectly composed and serious. Pursing her lips, she folded her arms over her chest and smiled sweetly up at him.
He tentatively lifted one corner of his lips in response.
“And I am Queen Elizabeth,” she stated calmly. “Get a life, Jay.”
Before he could reply, she was jogging up over a sand dune, toward the road. The last she saw of him, he was staring after her, a stunned expression on his handsome face.
Two
Crown prince, indeed. “A college grad like you ought to be able to come up with a better line than that!” Allison huffed as she threw herself into her car and drove toward Diane’s house.
Maybe she’d hang around for an hour or two, help her sister with the day-care kids. She had been exhausted when she left the library, but her fury had energized her. If Cray was feeling better, she could give Diane a hand with the chores. Besides, delaying her return to the beach house might be wise. If Jay was feeling particularly pigheaded, he might try to intercept her again at her home. She didn’t think Jay...Jacob...whoever, would remember where her sister lived.
Allison pulled up in front of the tidy driftwood gray Cape Cod three blocks back of the water and halfway across town. She didn’t lock the car, but on second thought took the keys with her. Nanticoke was a small, peaceful town, but she didn’t believe in tempting fate or some teenager looking for a joyride. Just last week, two fifteen-year-olds too lazy to walk to school had “borrowed” her neighbor’s car. The police had found it parked in the high school parking lot. Dumb kids.
She let herself in through the kitchen door without knocking, plucked an apple from the red plastic bowl on the table and bounced down the cellar stairs to the finished rec room where Diane spent most of her days with her charges.
The children were clustered around her, sitting on a mat on the floor, while Diane read to them from a picture book with a comical bear on the cover. Allison crossed her ankles and lowered herself to the floor, munching on her apple, feeling her pulse slow to a calmer pace. Cray spotted her and pushed himself up from the floor. He toddled over, grinning and chattering unintelligibly, and trustingly dropped into her lap.
Allison wrapped her arms around her little boy and hugged him, rocking back and forth. “You make everything all right, you know that?” she whispered into the feathery tufts of dark hair above his ear.
He gurgled contentedly as she swept stray bangs off his forehead. His skin felt cool and the feverish glaze over his eyes was gone. She was relieved to see him looking better.
After the story was over, Diane deposited each child in a high chair. Allison helped her pour juice and pass out pretzels for a final snack of the day. She felt herself gear down another notch and chuckled softly. Times like this, she thought, a girl really has to keep her sense of humor.
“What’s so funny?” Diane asked.
“Hard to explain,” Allison replied, shaking her head. “You wouldn’t believe me anyway.”
“Try me.”
She drew a long breath. “I saw Cray’s father.”
Diane dropped the bag of pretzels. Crumbs scattered across the playroom floor. “Jay?” Her cheeks flushed red and her eyes narrowed dangerously. “That creep. The nerve of him crawling back now. What does he want?”
“I’m not sure,” Allison said, thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t trust him under the best of conditions. But he told me a weird story about his being a prince and living on a yacht.” She laughed out loud. “Prince of Elbia! You’d think he could come up with something more believable, if he wanted to impress a girl.”
Diane stooped to pick up the plastic bag that had split down one side. “Elbia? Isn’t that the postage-stamp-size country near Austria that’s been in the news lately?”
Allison