Snowbound with the Prince, page 14
Today, after a long day of sightseeing, Erin lay on a blanket. She was wearing a bikini that a few weeks ago she would not have worn. But a new her—a bolder her—was confident in herself and her body, that confidence born of the fire in Valentino’s eyes when he saw her in bathing suits. She found she quite enjoyed tormenting him, pushing him to break out of the chaste prison his position put them both in.
The waves came up and he grabbed a surfboard.
“I’ll show you how,” he said.
For all the age-old beauty of his country, for all that she loved every minute together, how could she not love these moments best of all? Alone. Playing. Touching each other.
Standing on the surfboard was a lot harder than it looked. Soon, they were both soaked, gulping down water as they gurgled with laughter. Erin had finally just managed to stand when she saw a little gray head, bobbing toward her. Harvey had fallen in the water!
“Valentino! Save him!”
Valentino hurled himself through the water, but as she watched the rescue, she realized her crazy cat was paddling around, perfectly content.
She was laughing so hard, she had to hoist herself up on the surfboard. “Have you ever seen anything like that before?”
His laughter joined hers, and he made it to the cat. He scooped Harvey, soaked, out of the water, came back and placed him in front of her on the surfboard she had straddled.
“Tigers swim,” he told the cat. “You wonderful old warrior. You are part tiger, aren’t you?”
Harvey preened.
And then Valentino put his hand on the back of Erin’s neck and tugged her mouth to his. The kiss tasted of the sea. And of sand. Of the sun’s warmth. Of things new. And of things ancient. The kiss tasted of promises.
It had a texture of its own: Erin could feel her future painting itself as his mouth claimed hers. The euphoria intensified until it was like a physical tingling inside her skin trying to get out.
They had been building to this moment for days, the anticipation of it razor-sharp between them. Now it was here, every physical longing, like too much water in a dam, suddenly bursting free.
She was hungry for him. Starving. And he was hungry for her. His mouth ravaged her willing mouth. He kissed the sun-warmed tops of her breasts, owning her, claiming her, letting his lips tell her I need you. I can’t live without you.
It felt as if she could not live one more moment without the beautiful intimacy between them. She drew his head from her breast, claimed his lips, tasted him.
And then a drone came overhead and swooped down toward them, buzzing like a bothersome fly. She lost her balance and the surfboard tilted, sending her and Harvey into the water. She surfaced, sputtering and gasping.
Valentino rescued them both, one arm holding the cat, the other protectively around her shoulder as he got them back to the sand.
As he broke away from her, he sent a fearsome glare to the drone and then gave her a look, impotent and furious, at the pleasure denied them once again.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
VALENTINO AWOKE AND was aware of an ache of need within him. His first thought was of Erin and how his need to touch her, to kiss her, to have her, had been thwarted.
That drone, yesterday afternoon. He sighed. The reality of the world. His world.
Mostly, though, he loved showing her that world.
Loved her wonder, her enthusiasm, her delight. He was experiencing his realm through her and it seemed as brand-new and as shiny as a bright copper penny.
But he missed waking to her in the morning, as if he had done it his whole life, not just for a few days in a cabin in the middle of nowhere.
It occurred to him he was edging closer.
Not edging, really. Barreling. He had seen the look in her eyes when he had held that baby. He wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. He wanted her to have his children. He wanted her to be his queen.
There was a soft rap at the door.
Milo came in bearing a tray with coffee and a selection of local morning papers. Valentino would take breakfast in the garden, later, with Erin. He was aware that he was eager to see her, as if the gold of her hair and the green of her eyes were as new to him as that bright penny.
Today, they would go to see the olive groves in the south. He hoped to get her on a horse. She had never ridden before, and there was no better way to see the groves. He couldn’t wait to share this activity that he loved with her. He hoped she would take to it, that someday she would ride as wonderfully as she skied...
Finally, he came out of his thoughts and noticed Milo was still standing there, a funny look on his face.
“Is something the matter?”
“Sir, the papers—” Milo looked so distressed.
Valentino picked up the first paper.
He looked at the front-page picture. It was of him and Erin in the water, just after they had kissed. Even though they had missed him lowering his head to her breast, it was a shamelessly intrusive photo.
The press—still hoping to milk a little more from both his and Angelica’s lives—tried to follow them every time they stepped out of the palace. Thankfully, the staff had become masters at distraction, sending them in the wrong direction, dispatching decoy cars so that Erin and Valentino weren’t always on display. No drones were allowed in the air within a mile of his entourage.
But yesterday that one had slipped in from the other side of the island, coming over that cliff before he’d been able to protect Erin from it.
Valentino frowned as he saw that something had been circled in the picture, and that an arrow showed an inset picture with a blow-up of the circled item.
It was Harvey, soaked, looking like a drowned rat, sitting between Erin’s legs on the surfboard.
In his language, the headline blared Crazy Cat Lady!
There were several papers here, and he looked through them all. Each one had the same photo—sold, no doubt, to the highest bidders—and a variation of the crazy cat lady story.
It filled him with fury like nothing he had ever felt. How dare they miss her incredible beauty, her wonder at life, and expose something so banal? How dare they zero in on this minute detail about her, and blow it up cruelly and with such exclusive focus? Why wouldn’t they see her love of an aging cat for what it was? Tender? Compassionate? Good.
His rage intensified when he realized he was powerless against it.
He looked at Milo. They had come a long, long way since that day when Milo had gleefully announced to Erin that Valentino was going to marry someone else.
Valentino was fairly certain that Milo was nearly as enchanted with Erin as he himself was. He adored the cat!
Milo gave him a look of pure sympathy, understanding the prince’s position, maybe before he, himself, fully got it.
Valentino loved her.
He loved Erin O’Rourke madly and beyond reason. He would do anything for her. He would die to protect her.
He was suddenly and sharply aware of the demands of holding a position in a royal household. Could he invite Erin, someone he cared about deeply—that he loved deeply—into the kind of life where the public pressures could be so cruel and unrelenting? Angelica had rejected it, and she had been born to it. How unfair would it be to ask someone who didn’t know the full weight of it to share this life with him?
Share this life with him?
He had become too caught up in it all. The passion had swept away his ability to be rational. The joy he had felt in her presence had made him, selfishly, just want more and more and more.
Of laughter. Of conversation. Of wanting with an unholy need.
How could he even consider the possibility of her and him together—forever—when he would never be able to protect her from this? From her life being put under a microscope; for her eccentricities to be exposed to a mean-spirited world.
She had told him about withdrawing from ski racing because she was so sensitive to her father’s criticism, the expectations placed on her by the press.
How much worse would this be? A collective critical spirit aimed right at her. The person she was—who had grown up in the sanctuary of those beautiful mountains—could be destroyed by this relentless attention, this cutting meanness, this desire to focus on fault.
It was a repeating story within royal families.
The outsider was brought in. Some fool thought love would be enough. And it never, ever, was.
It had already started. With the cat. Then it would be her hair, or a dress she chose, or an extra pound put on, or a gaffe at a royal function. They would tear away at her like vultures on carrion, making her smaller and smaller...
He could not stand the pain of what he was seeing as her possible future if he brought her into his world. He threw down the paper and gave Milo a look.
“How can you love someone and do this to them?” Valentino asked, his voice hoarse with pain. “Ask this of them?”
He supposed he hoped Milo would have an answer, would hold out hope, would help him see things from a different perspective.
Instead, the man looked absolutely crushed—as if he had just seen a place of complete light turn dark—as he turned and left the room.
* * *
Erin looked at the note from Valentino. He had canceled their plans for today. She had been so looking forward to the olive groves. He had been going to show her how to ride. The thought was terrifying. And exciting. That was exactly what her feelings were of late: terrified and excited.
Every single thing they did together shone with a light.
He said he would be busy today, that something unexpected had come up, but if she would join him for dinner in the garden, he would be honored.
She had a lovely day. Despite being shadowed by security, she finally was able to go to a market. She had a rich and chocolatey cup of coffee and a sumptuous pastry at a local café. No one paid the least attention to her.
She felt as if she was absorbing Valentino’s country through her pores. What she noticed was the softness of it, in stark contrast to her own home of harsh climates and landscapes.
Here, everything was soft: the light, the heat, the rolling landscapes, the flavors. She was falling in love with Valentino’s beautiful island nation every bit as much as she was falling in love with him.
That truth warmed her, as rich and delightful as the drink she was sipping.
She loved him. Loved him. Loved him. Loved him.
The phrase was still repeating in her mind on an endless delicious loop as she entered the garden just as dusk was falling. The perfume of flowers was heavy in the air. A table had been set on the lawn. It was romantic, with a beautiful linen tablecloth, flickering candles, places already set. The stars winked like diamonds in the black-velvet sky above the garden.
Obviously, Valentino had planned a romantic dinner for two.
Her heart stopped as she saw him pacing back and forth near the back wall. He seemed nervous, and it was so unlike him. Her eyes went from him to the beautiful table setting.
He was going to propose.
He saw her and stopped. For a moment, she saw something in his face that terrified her—a sadness so acute, she wondered if someone had died.
“No Harvey tonight?” he said as he came and greeted her with the traditional kiss on each cheek.
“Milo is quite taken with him. The feeling seems to be mutual.”
He glanced toward the sky. “Let’s hope for some privacy,” he said. “If a drone comes, we’ll move inside.”
The thought of the drone seemed to upset him, added to an almost agitated air about him. Something she was not accustomed to.
They sat and he poured wine. He drank his too fast, in two gigantic gulps. A feast had been put before them. It sometimes seemed as if the kitchen staff were trying to outdo themselves in their efforts to show her the wonders of their island cuisine. It was so endearing. She had made a point of going to the kitchen after every meal and discussing it with them. Thanking the chef.
Why was Valentino so not himself? Was he going to propose? Somehow, she would not have imagined it like this.
Had she imagined it? Him proposing?
Of course she had! She had imagined him on one knee, his eyes—those oh-so-familiar deep brown eyes—resting on her face, filled with tenderness and hope.
Will you...?
Yet tonight his expression was anything but tender.
Finally, she could not get on with the pretense of enjoying dinner any longer. She set down her fork.
“What is wrong?” she asked.
He hesitated. He looked anywhere but at her. But then he did look at her, drew in a deep breath, set his shoulders.
“We’ve made a mistake.”
Her mouth fell open. This was so far from what she’d expected.
“I’m sorry,” she stammered. “What?”
“Not we. Me. I’m sorry. It’s unfolded too quickly.”
She stared at him, not believing what she was hearing. This was the same man who had trailed his fingers across the heated surface of her skin. Insatiable. Who had stood on top of an igloo with her. Who had swam, laughing in the sea with her just yesterday, splashing her, chasing her around through the waves. Who had stolen kisses as if he could not get enough of her.
The man who had held that baby and filled her with the most terrifying thing of all...hope.
“I don’t understand,” she said. His face was so remote, the Valentino she thought she knew replaced with the suave and distant stranger.
She said she didn’t understand. But she was beginning to, she just didn’t want to.
Her life was playing out in a constant, nauseating loop: she expected one thing and the exact opposite happened.
Twice now, she had expected a proposal and gotten this instead.
Why was she so surprised? Had she really thought she was a girl who could hold a man like Valentino’s interest?
Even Paul, the most ordinary of guys, had seen her for what she was.
Beyond ordinary.
Boring.
Valentino wouldn’t even look at her. He looked at his hand. He was grasping the stem of his wineglass so tight, it looked as if he might snap it.
He said, “Erin, there’s someone else.”
She heard shame in his voice. And defeat.
Love turned to hate in the blink of an eye. The euphoria that she had been floating on since she had arrived at Valentino’s home hissed out of her, air out of a pricked balloon. She could feel everything inside her collapsing—as if a bomb had been dropped—into the space that had been filled with wonder, with discovery, with bravery, with a sense of adventure.
How could he do this to her?
How could he bring her all the way here to cut the legs out from under her like this?
The awful truth hit her. She had never known him. Not at all. She had believed what she’d wanted to believe, built a fairy tale around him.
The only part of the fairy tale that was true was that he was a prince.
She should have obeyed her instincts. They had warned her he was an ass. She would not give him the satisfaction of spitting those furious words at him, of letting him know how deeply she was wounded.
She got up carefully from the table. With her spine ramrod-straight, she walked away from him. She did not look back.
* * *
Valentino watched her go. Shored up by some innate dignity, by a strength she might not have even been aware she possessed, it struck him that Erin O’Rourke moved like a queen.
He turned away from the sight, from her absolute bravery in the face of his betrayal. He was afraid if he watched any longer, he would scream No, I didn’t mean it. It was all lies. Come back.
He shouldn’t have said the last part. The most awful lie of all, about there being someone else.
But he needed Erin not just to go but to never look back. He needed what had flashed through her eyes for him: pure and primal disgust. Maybe even hatred.
He needed those things because, if she looked back, he was not sure he would be strong enough to do what he had to do.
He needed to save her. And that meant letting her go.
If he loved her, truly, he needed to send her back to her old life before it was too late, before she was so notorious that—because of him—there could never be an old life to go back to.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ERIN WAS NOT even sure how she and Harvey got home. The journey was a blur. Somehow she had been back on that jet. Valentino must have arranged that in his eagerness to erase his mistake, to get rid of her.
For days after arriving at the resort, she felt as if she was in a fog. She could not bring herself to go to the cabin, to see if anything remained of their igloo and angels.
She went over the day before his horrible announcement with a fine-tooth comb. What had she said? What had she done that was so wrong? Why had he pulled the plug so suddenly? How could there be someone else when they had spent every waking moment together?
It must be someone from his past. Someone who had come forward after they had heard about his split from Angelica. It had to be someone more suited than her.
Erin also tried to figure out how she could be feeling one thing—she loved him, loved him, loved him—and he quite another. How was that possible without her awareness? And yet it was an awful, awful repeat of what had happened with Paul.
During the day, she was able to turn her mind to work, to other things, but in her dreams, she was with him, laughing. She would awake to a sense of grief.
