The Wedding Party And Holiday Escapes Ultimate Collection. Кейт Хьюит
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certain points.
Liana was in her element, and that was brought home to him no more so than when she looked up and smiled her welcome.
‘I’ve just been going over my schedule—it looks like a very busy week!’
‘Does it?’ The secretary, Christina, excused herself, and Sandro closed the door, leaning against it. ‘So what are you doing?’
‘Well...’ Liana glanced down at the typewritten sheet. ‘On Monday I’m visiting the paediatric ward of the hospital here in Averne. Tuesday is a lunch for primary caregivers of disabled and elderly. Wednesday I’m meeting with a primary school, and Thursday I’m officially opening a new playground in the city’s public gardens.’ She looked up, eyes sparkling. ‘I know I’m not inventing a cure for cancer or anything, but I like feeling so useful.’
‘Surely you felt useful before, when you worked for Hands To Help.’
‘Yes, I did,’ Liana answered after a moment. ‘Of course I did. But sometimes...’ She trailed off, and, intrigued, Sandro stepped closer.
‘Sometimes?’
Liana gave a little shrug. ‘Sometimes it hurt, working there. It reminded me of—of my sister.’
‘Do you miss her?’ he asked quietly and she blinked rapidly, needlessly straightening the papers in front of her.
‘Every day.’
‘It must be hard. I didn’t think many people actually died from epilepsy.’
‘They don’t.’
‘So Chiara was just one of the unlucky ones?’
And for some reason this remark made her stiffen as if she’d suddenly turned to wood. ‘Yes,’ she said, and her voice was toneless. ‘She was unlucky.’
Sandro stared at her, saw how the happiness and excitement had drained from her, and felt guilt needle him. Damn it, he’d done that. He shouldn’t have asked those questions, and yet he’d just been trying to get to know her all over again. Get closer.
Yet you keep your secrets to yourself.
‘I’m sorry I’ve been a bit—distant lately,’ he said abruptly, and Liana looked up, startled.
‘At least you noticed.’
‘And you have too, I assume?’
‘Yes.’ Her voice was soft, sad. ‘I know we’ve been— Well, the nights have been—’ She laughed a little, shook her head. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘I certainly do.’
‘But we haven’t talked, really. Not since California.’
Not since they’d sat across from each other on his bed, naked not just with their bodies but with their souls. He sighed. ‘Returning to this palace always brings back some bad memories for me. It’s hard to combat them.’
‘What memories, Sandro?’
He dragged his hand across his eyes as words burned in his chest, caught in his throat. How much to admit? To confess? ‘A lot of memories.’ She just waited, and he dropped his hand. ‘Memories of my father always telling me how he was counting on me,’ he said, his voice expressionless now. ‘Counting on me to be a good king. Just like him.’
‘Just like him?’ Liana repeated softly, a slight frown curving her mouth downwards. She knew, just as the whole world did, that his father hadn’t been a good king at all. He’d been dissolute, uninterested in his people, a spendthrift, a scoundrel, an arrogant and adulterous ass.
And Sandro had idolised him.
‘He was my hero, growing up,’ he said, and then laughed. ‘Which sounds ridiculous, because you know as well as I do there was nothing heroic about him.’
‘But you were a child.’
‘I believed that until I was eighteen.’ He winced just saying it aloud. ‘I insisted on believing it, even when boys at boarding school taunted me with the truth, even when I saw the newspaper headlines blaring about his affairs, his reckless spending.’ He shook his head. ‘I convinced myself they were jealous or just stirring up trouble. I insisted on believing he was a good man, even when everything showed me otherwise.’
‘That’s not something to be ashamed of, Sandro,’ Liana said quietly. ‘Believing the best of someone, someone you love.’
‘But that’s it, isn’t it? Because I was so desperate to love him, and believe he loved me back. I wanted to impress him with how good I could be—as good as he was. I wanted to believe the reason I hardly ever saw him was because he was so busy with his important duties, not because he didn’t give a damn. Not because he’d rather screw and spend his way through Europe than spend one unnecessary moment with his son.’ He broke off, nearly panting, the old rage and hurt coursing through him so hard and fast he felt as if he couldn’t breathe.
And he felt so ashamed—ashamed that it still made him angry, still hurt. Ashamed that Liana knew.
She rose from her desk and he stiffened as she put her arms around him, drew his head to her shoulder as if he was still that desperate, deluded, and disappointed child.
And maybe he was.
‘Oh, Sandro.’ She was silent for a moment, stroking his hair, and he closed his eyes, revelling in her acceptance, her comfort even as he acknowledged that he didn’t deserve it. ‘What was the final straw, then?’ she asked and he stiffened.
‘The final—’
‘What was the thing that made you leave?’
He drew a shuddering breath. ‘I found out the truth about him when I was eighteen, at university. It was the first time I’d really had any freedom, and everything about it made me start to wonder. Doubt.’
She nodded slowly. ‘I know how that feels.’
‘And then one afternoon my father’s private secretary called me up and asked me to issue a statement that he’d been visiting me that week when he hadn’t. It didn’t make any sense to me, but I did it. I started really doubting then, though, and the next time I was home I asked my father why he’d wanted me to do that.’ He was silent for a moment, recalling the look of impatience on his father’s face. ‘He’d been with a mistress, some pretty young thing my mother was annoyed about, and he knew there would be a big media fuss if the tabloids got wind of it. He told me all of this so matter-of-factly, without so much as a flicker of guilt or remorse, and I suppose that’s when the scales really fell from my eyes.’ Sandro let out a long, weary sigh. ‘But I didn’t actually leave until three years later. Three years of going along with it all, corroborating his stupid stories, lying to the press, to him, to myself, about everything.’
Liana’s gaze was wide and dark. ‘And then?’
‘And then...’ He’d told more to this woman than he had to anyone else, and yet he still felt reluctant to reveal all. Reveal himself, and his own weaknesses. ‘And then I just couldn’t take it anymore. I hated who I’d become. So I told him I was renouncing my inheritance, that I wanted to start my own business and live my own life.’ It sounded so selfish, even now, after all these years. ‘The funny thing is,’ Sandro made himself continue, ‘I didn’t really mean it.’
He saw surprise flash across Liana’s face. ‘You didn’t?’
‘No, I was just—testing him, I suppose. Pushing him. Because I expected him to beg me to stay, admit he loved me and it was all a mistake and— I don’t even know.’ He let out a ragged huff of laughter as he raked his hand through his hair. ‘How stupid can you be, eh?’
‘I don’t call that stupid,’ Liana said quietly. ‘Desperate, maybe.’
‘Fine. I was desperate. Desperate and deluded right to the end, because of course he