The Wedding Party And Holiday Escapes Ultimate Collection. Кейт Хьюит
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“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.”