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The Prince's Cinderella Bride
Amalie Berlin
Operation Marriage…Prince Quinton Carlow’s life was turned upside down the day his divorce was filed and his military papers were executed. Seven years later, the embittered soldier returns, only to walk straight back into his ex-wife!But when Quinn discovers he’s still married to the one woman who could claim his heart, he realises he must tackle the past for the future he wants…the future Anais wants too. But can he convince his Cinderella bride to fight for their love?
Operation Marriage...
Prince Quinton Corlow’s life was turned upside down the day his divorce was filed and his military papers were executed. Seven years later, the embittered soldier returns, only to walk straight back into his ex-wife’s life!
But when Quinn discovers he’s still married to the one woman who could claim his heart, he realizes he must tackle the past for the future he wants...the future Anais wants, too. But can he convince his Cinderella bride to fight for their love?
Quinn stood at the podium in front of a
sea of reporters, cameras rolling, with a
patience she couldn’t believe he possessed.
But the Playboy Prince wasn’t smiling. Not joking. Not
charming them into letting him get away with murder
“Today I want to speak to you about my wife, Dr. Anais Hayes—or, as she’s been known since returning to Corrachlean, Dr. Anna Kincaid.”
Her anxiety beast reared up in her belly and started
chewing.
“Oh, sweet mercy, don’t do this, Quinn,” Anais
whispered.
“What’s he doing?” her mom asked, the question also
whispered.
“We’ve never had a divorce, and we’re not going to have
one now. I’m asking you to give us the space we need
to fit our lives back together. I’ll do whatever I need to
protect her. I came home to fulfill my duty to my family,
and she is my family, so I’m starting with my wife. If we
have to leave Corrachlean to have any kind of peace
together, to have the family we were always meant to
have, we’ll leave. I don’t want that to happen.”
“Did he just threaten to abdicate?” her mom asked.
“He’s not going to be King...” Anais murmured, even
though she’d heard his intention clearly. “He can’t
abdicate, but I think maybe he’s threatened to renounce his title.”
Why in the name of heaven would he do that?
He seemed done talking, and once again stood stoically
for the cameras, waiting.
Then the questions began...
Dear Reader (#u7354719b-6721-5535-9380-5ea87b8c1749),
I am fascinated by the concept of royalty—even if it also kind of horrifies me (I’m American—sorry). I love the drama, the history, the pageantry... And I also kind of hate myself for it.
This is probably something to do with the reason why my royalty stories always end up involving duty versus desire concepts. It’s my duty as an American to see the world as �everyone is created equal’—and I do—but I also desire the fairytale. What can you do?
This book is probably one of the hardest I’ve ever written because I had to put it down in the middle to write a different book, then go back to this one... And then pretty much rewrite it. A couple of times. But sometimes characters won’t let you go, and I couldn’t put Quinn and Anais away without finishing their story.
Actually, even after finishing I’m having a hard time letting go. Quinn’s still talking to me louder than my new hero. And let me say—even though I know it makes me sound insane—I’m sort of hoping he moves out of my head and into the reader’s head soon so Gabriel (my new hero) has a chance. If Quinn shows up on your mental doorstep, good luck! He’s housetrained, but a bit of a handful...
Amalie xo
AmalieBerlin.com/Contact (http://www.amalieberlin.com/contact)
Facebook.com/AuthorAmalie (http://www.Facebook.com/authoramalie)
The Prince’s Cinderella Bride
Amalie Berlin
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
AMALIE BERLIN lives with her family and her critters in Southern Ohio, and writes quirky and independent characters for Mills & Boon Medical Romance. She likes to buck expectations with unusual settings and situations, and believes humour can be used powerfully to illuminate the truth—especially when juxtaposed against intense emotions. Love is stronger and more satisfying when your partner can make you laugh through the times when you don’t have the luxury of tears.
Books by Amalie Berlin
Mills & Boon Medical Romance
Hot Latin Docs
Dante’s Shock Proposal
Desert Prince Docs
Challenging the Doctor Sheikh
The Hollywood Hills Clinic
Taming Hollywood’s Ultimate Playboy
Return of Dr Irresistible
Breaking Her No-Dating Rule
Surgeons, Rivals...Lovers
Falling for Her Reluctant Sheikh
Visit the Author Profile page
at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.Harlequin.com) for more titles.
Hina Tabassum:
Your enthusiasm for my books is something I return to
on hard days. Thank you for that. And for your
smart reviews. Always a good day when one pops up!
Laura McCallen: Thank you for two years of hard work,
dedication and enthusiasm. You will be missed.
Praise for Amalie Berlin (#u7354719b-6721-5535-9380-5ea87b8c1749)
�Amalie Berlin has proved she’s one of the best Medical
Romance authors of today, and her stories will for ever
have a place on my reading shelf!’
—Contemporary Romance Reviews on
Return of Dr Irresistible
Contents
Cover (#uc7867045-a419-5f59-a39c-1213547c563e)
Back Cover Text (#u8541dfc8-0cb1-5be7-8301-fb6302e6858f)
Introduction (#u623f344e-5904-5e42-889a-3224aace9467)
Dear Reader (#u6717317f-c4e4-5a65-8863-00f18a374fad)
Title Page (#ua879d517-5955-54fb-bfa9-f85bf6e326b7)
About the Author (#u16f9b854-44bc-50e2-a13d-dfd10f1707a8)
Dedication (#uf9ee0e40-4bb0-5eb0-a105-8692cdf3c226)
Praise (#u84536521-480e-521a-9e52-7db2b719486a)
CHAPTER ONE (#uc8b2ec75-fd57-5a5d-8e55-f7263470c5ed)
CHAPTER TWO (#u31d84c3c-ad28-5f8c-8ec2-e04e71a54f3b)
CHAPTER THREE (#u153231f7-975f-5a9c-a738-eabc9c3c0ded)
CHAPTER FOUR (#uaa630fc3-94ca-549d-ba60-13d2e0275de3)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#u7354719b-6721-5535-9380-5ea87b8c1749)
IT WAS A strange sort of medical facility, but the changes made to Almsford Castle since ex-Princess Anais Corlow’s last visit made it seem almost like a new place. Or at least like an alternate version of reality that she could pretend she’d never been to, and never run away from...
Sometimes for several seconds at a time.
Dr. Anna Kincaid—as she was now known—checked her watch. Twenty minutes left in her lunch hour, right on schedule. She climbed onto the gym’s treadmill closest to the exit. She could run for fifteen minutes, shower like lightning, and be back in time for her first patient of the afternoon, same as yesterday.
As soon as she got the belt moving, she increased the speed until she had to push herself to keep up. Not a sensible way to exercise but, no matter how determined she was to remain in the new job that allowed her to stay in Corrachlean with her mother and the quiet life they’d built, every minute she was at Almsford she felt the need to run. It built over the day, faster when she wasn’t busy helping patients than when she sat alone in her office with just her memories.
Anais had more or less died the moment she’d left Prince Charming, Quinton Corlow, second son of Corrachlean. Without her husband, she’d had no title—something she’d never cared to have anyway—but she’d also lost her country, her home, for the last seven years.
Almsford Rehabilitation Center now belonged to Corrachlean’s soldiers, people who wanted her there. People who welcomed her, maybe in even greater proportion to how unwelcome she’d been the last time around. The people made it possible for her to set foot in the grounds. The physical changes to the building made it possible for her to stay, but running in one place kept her from running away.
Protective sheeting covered the stained-glass window running along the top half of the twenty-foot western wall in the ballroom-turned-gymnasium, adding another little barrier to her past, to keep those soul-crushing memories from overwhelming her.
To let her—almost—put it all away.
Laughter, warm and masculine, danced up the corridor that branched off the gymnasium to the first-floor patient rooms.
A sparkling sensation, like the meeting of a million tiny kisses, sprung to life at the top of her head and spilled in a cascade down her back, tickling across her neck and over her shoulders, all the way to her thighs, effectively wiping every thought from her head.
Everything but the thrill, everything but the smile she felt over the thrum of her muscles and the murmur of the machine.
Somewhere inside, part of her soul sat up, and a surge of excitement blossomed in her belly. Images of silk sheets and a field of daisies filled her mind, the brush of green leaves tickled her bare calves as she half ran, half danced through them...
She knew that laugh.
Oh, God.
She stumbled and would’ve fallen off the treadmill if not for the safety bars.
Not him. Not here.
She wrenched herself from the machine and careened backwards, her legs boneless and quaking.
Quinn’s voice came from some distance away, but he might’ve been walking down the corridor towards her. She could poke her head out to check and smack straight into those famed dimples.
Which way? Gardens?
Too exposed.
How awkward would it be if Corrachlean’s beloved, rascally soldier Prince came waltzing down the hallway and saw her there after seven years of self-imposed exile? She’d done her best to change her appearance, even beyond the ways the world and their divorce had changed her. Maybe he wouldn’t recognize her, at least long enough for her to skirt past him?
The patients hadn’t recognized her, and she’d stayed away from anyone who’d known her except for Mom.
He wasn’t supposed to even be in the country—the last she’d heard he was still on tour. At the very least, he should be in another country, castle, the palace or somewhere, with a svelte model on his arm, if gossip rags were to be believed... And why wouldn’t they be? They’d been right about their marriage spiraling down the drain, no matter how painful and horrible it had been for them to publicize it in increasingly callous ways.
She’d been back four weeks. It might be a small island nation, but she should’ve been able to avoid him for a year at least. But one month? Four weeks? Thirty measly days?
Anna shouldn’t have any feelings about Prince Captain Quinton Corlow one way or another. Maybe—if she followed the pattern of most of the heterosexual women who encountered the caramel-haired devil—she should swoon at his movie-star looks if he happened by. Swooning involved paling, so that could seem legit.
But she definitely should not be breaking out in a cold sweat and considering whether her heart rate had reached a fast enough pace to require cardioversion.
Before she could muster the courage for a mad dash to her office, another blast of his voice ricocheted up the corridor, cutting escape from her mind.
Not laughter.
Not words spoken with joy. His voice trembled with alarm and the hoarse expletive that followed either shook her or the building.
A breath later came a terrible bellow for help.
“Quinn...”
Her heart lurched, and by the time her thoughts caught up with her body she was running again, down the long hallway.
He’d sounded far away, but she couldn’t tell how far. As she pounded past each open door, she slowed down to peek inside for signs of distress, then spent time dodging people as they limped and rolled out of their rooms.
The residents turned further down the hallway, and she relied on their reactions to direct her.
Three rooms from the far end on the right-hand side, a door stood open and people were gathering around it, forcing her to wiggle through.
“Sorry. Sorry...” she said in passing, and didn’t stop until she was through the door.
Even from behind, even despite the changes seven years as a soldier had made to the breadth of his shoulders, every atom in her body recognized him, crouched over someone on the floor.
Her Quinn. Her husband.
No. Once, maybe. Not anymore. As she absorbed his presence, the rest of the room came into focus.
The bed sat upended and had a raggedly cut bed sheet tied to the bars of the headboard.
Hanging.
She moved around Quinn and crouched over the patient on the floor. His skin was still tinged cyanotic.
“Lieutenant Nettle?” She said his name and reached to check the pulse of his carotid, narrowing her focus to the most urgent place: her patient, not her ex-husband.
Before she could count ten seconds, a large hand clamped onto her wrist, yanking her gaze from her watch’s face to Quinn’s.
The shock of recognition blazed across his heartbreakingly handsome features, made only more devastating by the years that had passed. His caramel hair, once short and smart, had begun to grow out, but it was his stormy gray eyes that slapped her like an accusation.
She forced her gaze away, down at the patient, mentally scrambling for what she should be doing.
“Don’t.” She said the only word she could wrench from her mind and, seeing pink returning to Nettle’s face, pulled her arm away and stood back up. “I want him off the floor.”
“I want his neck stabilized first,” Quinn bit back, but the incredulous way he looked at her said he was having as hard a time navigating this sudden overlap of two realities as she was.
But he was handling it better. Of course Nettle should be stabilized first. “I’ll... I’ll get a brace.”
In contrast to the way her body had responded to his laughter, what dug its talons into her now was far darker even than that rise of panic that had bid her run.
Guilt. Sorrow. Anger. Fear.
Nasty beasts that tore at her competence, her professionalism.
* * *
The familiar tang of fear and rage settled like rot at the back of Quinn’s throat.
Prior to his tours, that acrid combination had hit so infrequently he couldn’t have named the emotions without examination. Now he knew them the second they descended. The only thing he didn’t know was which person before him had summoned them this time—the best friend he’d found dangling by his neck, or the ex-wife who’d abandoned him.
He knew one thing: Anais didn’t deserve the space in his head right now, even if she well deserved his rage. Ben was the one who mattered.
“Be still, man,” he said, as Ben struggled beneath his hands, then looked at Anais. She could come back into his life as quickly as she’d left it, but that slapdash, incompetent disguise wouldn’t fool anyone.
She stood still, staring at him as if she’d lost all her sense.
“Collar,” he repeated to break through her shocked expression.
Don’t think about her shock. It couldn’t be anything more than fear that he’d yell at her—out her, maybe—but right now she only mattered inasmuch as she could help Ben.
He quickly smoothed his hands down his thighs, drying the suddenly sweaty palms, and then fixing them around Ben’s head to keep him from moving it as she finally broke into motion out of the room.
Discipline had been drilled into him after the King had ordered Quinn’s divorce and enlistment. He’d learned to follow their orders and he’d taught his body to follow his own. Self-discipline would see him through this, no matter how wrong it had been to see Ben hanging there, no matter how wrong it was for him to finally see Anais again like this, no matter how wrong it was that she’d changed so much. Falsely brown hair, eyes, tanned skin... Wrong. All of it.
The resolve to speak evenly was all that let him banish his anger as he turned his attention to Ben—who obviously didn’t know who she was. “What’s the doctor’s name?”
“Anna,” Ben answered.
A brown name for a bizarrely brown makeover.
Grasping for the only way he knew how to face such a situation, he attempted some levity to try and take the bleakness out of his friend’s eyes. “The good news is, your arms still work great. I’m fairly certain I’ll have a black eye later.”
“You should’ve left me be,” Ben said, his voice a painful-sounding rasp that could only come from an injured throat.
“I don’t think so,” Quinn muttered and then looked at the door. “Rosalie would be doomed to treason if I had, after she’d murdered me slowly in retribution.”
Where the hell had Anais gone to get the brace—across town?
“What are you even doing here, Doc?”
“You’ve been avoiding my calls worse than my ex-wife,” he said just as Anais came back into the room, the sounds of tearing straps accompanying her ripping the collar open, and perfectly complementing the color draining from her face. She’d heard him. Good.
He focused back on Ben, and that anger instantly diminished. “I came to see you, idiot.”
Quinn accepted the collar and fitted it around Ben’s neck for stability. Only when it was in place did he help Ben into the wheelchair.
Having tasks to do helped. Not looking at Anais helped. If he looked at her, the way his heart thundered in his ears, he’d say or do the wrong thing. That was something about the military that had worked for him—he’d never had to worry about how to say something, just whether he should say it or not. Soldiers appreciated blunt honesty more than diplomats. Something his brother Philip would remember after Quinn’s first royal function.
“You should’ve let me hang,” Ben said again, the words sinking into the middle of Quinn’s stomach.
He shook his head. “I came to see you before I met with the King, which should give you some idea of my priorities right now. You’re the last person in this room I’d let hang.”
She’d hear that too. And she’d hear this... “Maybe even the last person in the world, though I might have to make an exception for any of GQ’s cover models. Even May’s, and you know how that ended.”
Petty. But it felt good to be just a little bit mean. Not that it could be all that mean—she was the one who’d left. And it made Ben almost smile, even the slight quirk of his lips was better than the desolation he’d seen in his friend’s eyes.
“You’re going to have to suffer me checking you over.”
She’d returned with a bag, wearing a white jacket over what he could only classify as workout clothes, the shoulder of the jacket embroidered with the lie that she claimed as her name. Dr. Anna Kincaid.
Kincaid. Family name. Just not her maiden name. Or his name.
From the bag, she produced a stethoscope and handed it to him without his asking, but not without her hand trembling.
Afraid? Maybe she trembled with sympathy or worry for her patient, if she could even feel those human emotions.
He snatched the device, fitted it in his ears, and went about his job. His former job. He wasn’t a medic anymore; yesterday had been his last day as a soldier.
Concentrating on the fast but steady thudding he heard through the ear pieces took more willpower than he’d have thought he had to spare. The urge to throw Anais over his shoulder like a caveman and take her somewhere to make her give him answers was just as strong. Maybe stronger. He’d been waiting seven bloody years for answers, and he’d never gotten a satisfactory one. He’d wait until he’d helped his friend, because today his luck had changed. She was here; answers were a matter of time.
Breaths sounded ragged but normal, all things considered.
“Let’s get out of here. I think we could use some fresh air.”
“Qui—Prince... Captain? There is a protocol...” Anais said from behind him.
He turned and looked pointedly at her embroidered shoulder. “I’m sure there is. Send whoever will be coming out to the garden, Anna.”
“Yes, sir.” She didn’t flinch, though he noticed she also didn’t look him in the eye.
Grabbing the handles of Ben’s chair, he maneuvered them both right out the door and down the hallway. He knew the way to the garden.
He’d loved a girl in those gardens. A girl who apparently no longer existed.
How the hell had she managed to sneak back into the country under a different name, and start practicing medicine at a government facility, of all things?
Once they wheeled out into the fresh air, Quinn angled them to a bench so he could sit and be on eye level with the person he’d actually come to see. The one who obviously needed to talk.
Parked in a patch of summer sunshine, he waited. It wasn’t the time for pushing. It wasn’t the time to tell Ben he should want to live, or to tell him anything about his own condition. He’d listen. And he’d talk about other things. Be a friend. Be present.
Call Ben’s fiancée and family as soon as he left.
Leave this Anais nonsense to figure out later. It wasn’t really important. There was nothing she could say to him to make any of what had gone on between them better.
I never loved you.
I stopped loving you.
You were never that important to me...
What could she really say to explain leaving?
The desire to know was just a natural reaction to seeing her again, a summoning of that anguish he’d moved past at least a few years ago.
It didn’t really matter. She didn’t matter anymore.
* * *
Three hours and at least a hundred self-reminders not to think about Anais later, Quinn found himself outside the shut door to Dr. Anna Kincaid’s office.
Anna Kincaid. Anna. Kincaid. The name summoned bile to his throat. Seven years might as well have been seven minutes for the crush of desperation that had him wanting to claw through the door to reach her.
He’d managed to shove her to the back of his mind—for part of the time—and been present for his best friend, but it wasn’t good enough. He’d heard the sparse number of words Ben had been able to speak, but in the long silences she’d filled his head again and again. When the psychiatrist had found them he’d been allowed to stay, but he hadn’t learned much more about what had driven the attempt. All he really knew was what his eyes could tell him, and the memory of the strangeness he’d felt when he’d lost comparatively insignificant pieces of his own body to service. Some days still, he was shocked when he looked down at his hand and saw that not only the fingers but his wedding ring were gone. Some days, he still expected to find her beside him in the morning when he woke.
What he should be doing right now was making calls and going to the palace—where they’d expected him a few hours ago. Instead, he stood at her shut door. He couldn’t hear her inside, but he could feel her in there, like heat on his skin.
If he felt like admitting it to anyone else—he barely felt like admitting it to himself—he’d felt her at the old family castle the moment he’d stepped into the building. At the time, he’d put it down to memories haunting him more than something in the present. But, standing there, he didn’t even have to touch the door to feel her on the other side. His mangled hand hovered over the knob, and it heated his palm like light...
His hand wavered; he had to pull back from the knob. His arm felt seconds from a cramp, riddled with tension.
He didn’t know which was worse—not knowing still, or that he could be so daft to even think for a fleeting second that anything about her could still warm him. The heat was long-simmering rage and pain. Nothing light about it.
If anyone noticed him standing here, feeling the energy emanating from her door when any rational person would just go inside...the psychiatrist would want to spend some time alone with him next.
He opened the door and it slammed directly into something, halting his forward march.
She stumbled out from behind the door, looking disoriented, but her stagger gave him room to enter and he took advantage of it, shutting the door directly behind him.
“Why were you standing there?”
“I was thinking about locking the door,” she said without preamble. Then, redirecting his question, “Why were you standing outside the door?”
“Anais, I’ve had a hell of a day. I paused because I wanted to make sure I had control of myself and didn’t come right in here and shake you hard enough to knock the brown off of you. What the hell are you playing at with this drab makeover and the name-change? Are you in the country illegally?”
She flinched, then shrugged back from him across the distance of her tiny office. He’d struck another nerve. That shouldn’t please him, but the pink that flashed in her artificially tanned cheeks and the way she smoothed her hair down felt almost like satisfaction. He had seven years of jabs in reserve and, by the look of things, it wasn’t going to get boring anytime soon.
“Of course I’m not here illegally. I had my name changed. Legally. Then I changed my appearance. My mother is getting older—she’s got diabetes and had a heart scare last summer, not that I should have to explain myself. This is my country too, and I shouldn’t have to lose it forever because I married poorly when I was young and naïve.”
A tic in his right eyelid flickered at her return volley.
Definitely different from the Anais he’d known.
“How...?”
“Your brother changed my name for me quietly.” She rubbed her cheek and he knew where the door had clocked her, but she stayed standing there, close enough—only because of the wall behind her—that he could reach out and touch her if he wanted to.
He did want to, so he shoved his hands into the well-worn fatigues he preferred these days, comfortable clothing he’d soon lose as he picked up a new mantle of duty.
“I went with Anna because it’s close enough to Anais for me to still save myself if I start to say my old name. Kincaid is my grandmother’s maiden name, so I have some attachment to it. Doctor, however, is legitimately mine.”
Softness had always abounded in Anais. Tender heart. Soft, free-flowing wavy strawberry-blonde hair. Curves that bewitched him. Gentle aqua eyes. Youthfully plump cheeks and lips... Soft.
A red mark darkened that formerly plump cheek, outside the blush that had already faded. She’d had her ear to the door listening when he’d slammed it open. Not locking it. Or maybe not locking it yet, whatever she’d claimed.
She made herself sound even harder than she appeared. That physical angularity was by far the biggest change, and the one that had momentarily thrown him when she’d come into Ben’s quarters. Not her hair color, her eye color, the glasses, or that suspicious tan... It was how square her jaw seemed now, the gauntness of her cheeks, and the now slender but apparently strong body supporting it all. Anna Kincaid was hard.
He didn’t know what else to say.
For seven years, he’d had a million questions for her—mostly in the first couple of years when everything was hardest. But now, standing here, he didn’t want to ask her why she’d gone. Those old wounds could pop back open with the slightest prod. His chest already ached just looking at this shadow of his brightly colored Anais.
“Are you living back in Easton?”
“No. Are you still at the penthouse?”
“Yes,” he answered. Why it had been so important to him to come find her after speaking with Ben? “Is there something you want to say to me?”
Like I’m sorry?
She shook her head, then seemed to change her mind as the shaking turned into a nod, her voice going quieter. “How do you know Lieutenant Nettle?”
“Served together. First tour,” Quinn answered again. Did she feel anything for him anymore? Besides anger? Somehow, he’d earned her anger? Her anger, and the fact that she wanted him gone was all he could make out. Her eyes used to sparkle when she saw him, even the last time she’d seen him—which she’d no doubt known would be the last time—they’d still sparkled. But with them hidden under those unremarkable brown contacts, he couldn’t see it. Or it wasn’t there. A wife who had feelings for her husband...her ex-husband even...wouldn’t look so hard when he’d never wronged her. Never done anything wrong but love her. Even a friend would look kindly upon a soldier returning home after seven years in a war zone, but she just wanted him gone.
Over the course of his tours, he’d learned to fight his way out of dodgy situations. Fight and survive first, complete the mission second. He couldn’t fight his way out of this. He didn’t even know where to start.
He could make her feel anger, maybe some polite curiosity, but nothing else. Touching her would just hurt him; there was no Braille hidden on her flesh that would tell him the truth, or what he wanted to hear: that she regretted leaving, that she’d suffered because of it, that she was sorry.
He forced his arms to relax, then thought better of it and wrenched his mangled left hand from his pocket to present to her.
“Ben was there to help when my fingers were shot off.” Seeing her blanch only emboldened him. With as much detail as he could summon from that day, he described the way the wedding band he’d still worn had become platinum shrapnel Ben had to pull from the remains of his palm. The way Ben had to cut away his dangling finger. “And that still hurt less than you.”
Her eyes went round, with his hand held up for her inspection, and her breathing increased in speed and force; soon the heated air fanned his hand across the distance. The two fingers, thumb, and partial palm felt the flutter like the barest breeze.
“Get used to seeing me around here. I’ll try to keep the cameras away, for Ben’s sake.”
Her open-mouthed breathing turned to choking, and he realized she was going to be sick a half-second before she turned and flung herself over her office trash bin and retched. Her whole body convulsed with the force of each spasm.
His stomach lurched too.
Damn.
They’d both changed. The last vestiges of the man who’d married her, who’d loved her, felt sick too, wanted to look away.
But the realist he’d had to become couldn’t feel too badly. What had even made her sick? Hearing how he’d lost his fingers, or the idea the cameras that invariably ended up following him might catch sight of her?
As if it mattered. He should leave her there, let her get on with it, savor the little thrill of revenge that had run through him at her visceral reaction.
He wouldn’t pull her hair aside and soothe her back. He wouldn’t apologize for not softening the brutality of that situation for her, the way he’d softened it for his family.
She wasn’t his family anymore. She’d been the one to leave. And he’d never gotten to say anything to her about it, since his family had shipped him off to boot camp directly afterward.
What was a little vomiting in that context?
CHAPTER TWO (#u7354719b-6721-5535-9380-5ea87b8c1749)
NEVER BEFORE IN his homeland had Quinn felt so tense while riding in the back of a car. Every prior leave, he’d been able to disconnect that hyper-alert state traveling in a Humvee usually triggered while on duty.
First Ben, then Anais—both wrecked him. But going home for real—not just another leave—was the cherry on top of a terrible day.
Despite his late arrival—and he hadn’t missed the fact that it had grown dark—Quinn had been requested to arrive by the main entrance. Usually he’d have gone around to a smaller, more private entrance.
It was showtime for the press.
But it looked relatively empty now, only a few cameras lingering to the side.
If he had to climb the grand entrance to go inside, he’d let himself out of the car. Quinn jumped from the back as soon as it stopped, thanking the driver over the seats, closed the door and jogged up, waving in passing at the few tenacious photographers who’d waited. No talking. No posing. He barely smiled.
Once inside, he bypassed servants, ignoring the familiar opulence he’d been raised in, and hurried across the foyer to the King’s wing. Within two minutes, he knocked and opened the door to the King’s study, but found Philip sitting behind the desk.
“You’re not the King,” Quinn murmured, making sure to gently close that door too.
His youthful habit had always been to bound through doors and expect them to close behind him—the same tactic he’d used with nearly everything: bound through, expect it to get sorted out in his wake. A tactic his family had spent years trying to talk him out of, and which his divorce and sudden soldier status had actually accomplished. Now he paid attention to doors. It was something small he could always control, and doors often presented a hazard or added protection. Doors now mattered.
Philip rose, checking his watch, but smiling anyway. “And you’re not here at noon.”
“No, I’m not.” He should try to be amiable, but at that precise moment all he could hear was Anais’s confession that Philip had changed her name. “Why didn’t you tell me Anais was back in the country?”
He tried to sound calm, but even a dead man would’ve heard the bitterness in his voice.
Philip had rounded the desk, hand out to shake Quinn’s, but he dropped it to his side with the question. “I was going to tell you when you got here. It seemed like an in-person kind of conversation to have. You’ve seen her already?”
“She’s working at Almsford Castle with amputees. I went there to visit my friend, Ben Nettle; I told you about him. And that’s...a story I really would rather not get into right now. But you know she’s not fooling anyone by dipping herself in brown dye.”
“She fooled me.” Philip shrugged, and then reached out to grab Quinn by the back of the neck and pull him into a hug.
“That’s because you’re an idiot.” It didn’t feel like a time for hugging to Quinn, but he went along with it. A little brotherly ribbing was as playful as he could get right now. Clapping one another on the back a few times, they both retreated and Quinn went to help himself to a Scotch.
“She’s changed more than that. I was surprised when she told me where she was going to work. I don’t think she realized that the new facility was at Almsford Castle,” Philip said, returning to his seat. “How was it to see her?”
Quinn eyeballed three fingers of booze since he had two fingers on that hand to measure with, and took it to the front of the desk to sit. “I don’t know. Unpleasant. I guess. I don’t want to talk about Anais.”
“You brought her up.”
“I did. Now I’m bringing up Grandfather. Is he here or did he go off on vacation for his rest?”
“He’s here.” Philip sat up straighter suddenly, his voice growing suspiciously softer.
The hairs on the back of Quinn’s neck rose. This apprehension was more than he’d felt when deciding he needed to start serving the family and the people again as a prince. Something was wrong. “Where is he?”
“Sleeping. He spends most of the time sleeping now.”
Those words had never fit their grandfather. Despite his advancing age, he was a vibrant man, always on the move. But the sober tones in which Philip delivered the news gave them weight, gave them truth. And gave him that feeling in the pit of his stomach for the third time that day.
The heat returned and he knew it for what it was: helpless anger.
“Was that something else you wanted to tell me in person?” He truly hadn’t come home to fight with anyone, but it seemed to be all he’d been doing since he’d stepped foot into Almsford Castle.
The grimace that crossed Philip’s face confirmed his suspicions.
“He didn’t want you worrying when you were away,” Philip admitted, his voice trailing off.
Quinn noticed for the first time the three-day growth of beard his always immaculately groomed brother now wore.
“He has good days and bad days, but is usually awake for a few hours in the late morning, early afternoon.”
When Quinn had been supposed to come earlier.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s an old man, Quinn. Time catches up to everyone.”
He felt his head shaking before words—demands—began pouring out. “How, specifically, has it caught up with him? Heart failure? Some kind of cancer? Stroke? What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Kidney failure is the big one right now. There are other more minor diagnoses, but his kidneys are the biggest worry. He’s on dialysis, but he’s too old for a transplant, and his body isn’t holding up well to dialysis.”
Quinn took a deep pull on the drink, considered draining it, then carefully placed it upon the desk.
“What does that mean?” He’d had training as an EMT in the military—hence Ben calling him Doc—but he wasn’t actually a doctor. He hadn’t dealt with dialysis in combat situations, so he didn’t know anything about it. If he’d never gone into the military, he would’ve been better equipped to understand, assuming he’d gotten into medical school as he’d—as they’d both—planned.
Another life. He’d enjoyed his life as a soldier; it was his life as a prince that was stressing him out.
“Some people live a lot of years on dialysis, but his body just isn’t strong enough. He’s had the access port moved twice now. Keeps getting infected and he’s running out of places to put it or the will to let them try another location. He’s already said he won’t be having another one placed.” Philip headed for the decanter and poured his own drink.
After their parents’ unexpected deaths when they were children, Grandfather had stepped up to fill the father role—even when he was busy running the country. Quinn just didn’t know how to process this information. One more thing. A third person to save.
Well, second. Ben and Grandfather. He wasn’t trying to save Anais, and what could he even save her from? Another bad spray tan?
“Not to put pressure on you, but I’m hoping that having you around will give him the urge to fight a little longer,” Philip muttered. “Then I wonder if that’s selfish of me, but I can’t help it. It’s not looking good. I’m glad you’re home. We need you. I need you here.”
“I want to see him,” he said, redirecting his thoughts to what mattered at this precise moment. He could only deal with what was before him.
“He’s sleeping.”
“And I want to see him. I can sit quietly at his bedside, Philip. I will be here tomorrow when he wakes, but I want to see him now. Let me prepare myself so I don’t go in looking at him like he’s a dying man when he sees me for the first time.” He added, more quietly, “Let my first shock be when he can’t see it. I’ve already had two shocks since I got home. I don’t think I can look a third person I love in the eye like that.”
A third person he loved. God help him, he’d done it again.
“Loved. Someone I loved. You know what I mean.”
“Who was the second?”
Not Anais.
“Ben. I should feel bad that I didn’t come here first and see Grandfather, but if I had Ben would be dead. He tried to hang himself in his room this afternoon, and I got there in time to stop him, get help, get him cut down... Which is why I have to see Anais again tomorrow, because I need to go back for Ben.”
And he needed to make those calls still. God, this day really sucked.
His brother nodded to the nearly empty second tumbler. “Drink the rest first. Sounds like you’re going to need it. Will you be staying here tonight?”
“No,” he said first and then, after finishing his drink, shrugged. “I don’t know. Should I? I was going to go to my flat. Unless you think I should stay to see when he wakes?”
Philip shook his head. “You don’t need to stay, but you look rough, Quinn. Your room is prepared if you want to stay. Might do you good.”
Sleep would do him good. He stood again, but it took all the strength in him to follow his brother down the hallways to the King’s suite.
Before they’d even entered, he heard the soft hums and beeps of life-saving equipment and knew Philip had been trying to soften the blow.
But Quinn smelled death. He knew the scent of it by now.
* * *
Anais stood at her favorite treadmill—the one she hadn’t been on since Quinn’s terrible cry for help had shattered her will to hide and sent her running toward him for the first time in years.
Her work day had ended over an hour ago, and Quinn was still on site, still with Benjamin Nettle as far as she knew—as far as everyone knew. A prince couldn’t spend hours a day for three days straight in the building without word getting around.
What she didn’t want to get around? That she’d been waiting for him today. Was still waiting for him. That knowledge would trigger too many questions and the conclusions she needed no one to reach if she wanted to stay. And she had to stay. Her departure from Corrachlean had meant leaving Mom, and they’d spent seven years apart. Visits had been impossible before Anna Kincaid had been born.
Quinn hated her Anna look—she could tell by the way he’d looked at her, as if she’d sprouted some horrifying, self-induced deformity. But she liked it in a way. It made her feel invisible. After fitting in—which she’d never truly done anywhere—being invisible was the next best thing.
But he hated more than her new look. He hated her.
And, really, what could she expect? Aside from expecting to not see him for a long, long time—or ever, if she’d had her way.
The treadmill whirred beneath her feet, and she took one of the safety bars to steady herself as she inched up the speed and the incline. Maybe exercise could wipe her mind, help her zone out and forget she was waiting for him.
The only way she’d kept going after they’d fallen apart was to practice willful amnesia. Not letting herself wonder about him or how he was doing, never thinking about how he felt or if he ever thought of her. She couldn’t do that and keep going. Which probably made her the second person who hadn’t been thinking about how Quinn felt—he never dwelt on anything that hurt. Not for himself. Not for her. Not for anyone, at least when they’d been married. She’d spent darned near a year trying to work him out, and all she had was: he liked sex with her and hated responsibility.
Then, two days ago, she’d learned something else—something that took her breath every time it replayed in her head, hundreds of times per day: losing his fingers hurt him less than she had.
Was he still suffering in the way she never let herself wonder if he was suffering?
She didn’t want to believe it was true. His hatred was real, and he’d definitely wanted to hurt her, so it would be better if she could stop lingering over it. No matter what, her leaving had been kinder to both of them in the long run. If she’d stayed with Quinn until Wayne had followed through with his threats, Corrachlean’s people wouldn’t have been the only ones to think terribly of her; Quinn’s opinion would’ve plummeted into earth too. At least he hated her now for something that was ultimately kinder. Even if she never wanted him to know that.
Maybe that was why, despite knowing he’d been at the facility the past two days, she hadn’t been able to drag herself to Ben’s room to ask him to speak with her. Or maybe it was something more cowardly. Maybe she was afraid that Ben would know who she was now, and she couldn’t blame Quinn if he’d told him. He’d never promised to keep her secrets, and what loyalty did he owe her? Sharing something that was going on in your own life could be a kind of currency to get your friends to talk when they needed to.
“You’re leaving notes for me now?” Quinn’s voice cut across the cavernous ballroom-gymnasium, jolting her from her thoughts so that she had to grab the safety bars again to steady herself.
Would his voice always jolt her?
Heart hammering, she shut off the machine. At least she had the exercise to blame for the way her words came out, breathy and with effort. “I waited for an hour in the foyer, long past the time it started to look weird that I waited for you. Then I decided to write a note. The envelope was sealed, the front was as formal as could be.”
Grabbing a towel, she dried herself off as she walked to meet him, pretending her legs wobbled because of the running too.
* * *
“I noticed.” Quinn thrust the envelope back at her, and looked around the ballroom to make certain they were alone. The last thing he needed this week was to have to explain why he was ogling the doctor or being overly familiar. “And I’m here. What do you want?”
The nod to revenge he’d felt on leaving her there bent over the trash bin hadn’t even lasted until he’d gotten out the door—and that hadn’t even been a version of Anais who looked like his wife. While her hair and eyes remained the wrong color, her glasses were now gone and the hair pulled back from her face let him almost see her. Almost.
Her hand shook a touch when she took the envelope, and he swallowed the urge to lash out at her again, to shock her with some other brutality from the frontline—he had a thousand such story grenades to hurl.
“I just want to talk to you about something. Will you come to my office?”
“Why not here?”
“It’s private.”
Their last conversation had been on repeat in his head since it had ended. While he’d met with his brother. While he’d found out the new family secret: the King was dying. Even sitting by his grandfather’s bed, he’d had her on repeat, enough to riddle out what had set her off.
She’d paled before he’d even mentioned the cameras. She’d been sick about him, not about herself. She still felt something, no matter what she pretended.
It would’ve been so easy to tell her to go to hell, ignore her, as he’d been more or less doing since that first day. To come when she was at lunch, leave when she’d gone home, and continue driving Ben up the wall by refusing to leave him alone in his misery.
But she wanted to talk. And, God help him, he still wanted to talk to her. Maybe this was his opening. Apologies started with regret and, whether she’d admit it or not, he could see she had regrets.
Quinn waved a hand for her to lead the way, and the relief on her face notched his hope higher. He had to pick up his usual leisurely pace to keep up with her and, directly in her wake, her scent channeled to him.
Sweaty, but she still smelled fantastic. Clean, but sweet. Sexy.
Her long, heavy locks had been pulled up high on her head, and the straightening she’d inflicted on it had come undone in the dampness. Waves stretched up from the bottom, where the mass had brushed against her bare back, gathering sweat. A shiver racked his body, raising chills all over him, and Quinn had to thank fate he was walking behind her rather than in her line of sight.
Getting wrapped up in hormones wasn’t the right tack for this conversation—whatever it was going to be about. Before she’d left him, he could’ve easily made any private conversation with her about what his body wanted.
He pulled his gaze to her feet, which seemed safest. Only feet attached to slender ankles, and then his eyes tracked up over the soft skin covering the newly acquired definition in her calves. Her thighs. Her rear...
The shorts she wore clung in a fantastically distracting manner and, just below, he could see the dark little mole that always wanted to be kissed, peeking and retreating from the hem of her shorts on the right as her clothing moved with each step.
By the time they reached her office he had to keep reminding himself of the objective, but every reminder was a little quieter than the hunger for her that had him shaking.
“It’s hot in here,” he muttered, dragging his jacket off and tossing it onto the back of one of the guest chairs.
“It gets warmer in here at night. Sorry. Would you like something to drink first?”
“I’m fine.” He dragged the chair back and sat down, nodding for her to do the same. Hopefully outside of his reach. “But take out the contacts first.”
“What?” She stilled, her expression shifting to something uncomfortably close to fear. “Why?”
As if she had anything to fear from him. Aside from something he might say to upset her...
“You want to talk to me? Great. I don’t want to talk to Anna. I want to talk to Anais. When you’ve got them in, it’s like I can’t see you, but you can still see me. You want me to stay? Take them out.”
“Anna wants to talk to you.”
Anna. Right. This wasn’t about them. This was about work.
Grabbing his jacket again, he rose and headed toward the door. Only a romantic idiot would’ve gotten his hopes up. It angered him that he’d gotten them up without even realizing it. She’d been gone for seven years, now she suddenly wanted to reconnect? Sure. Dumbass.
He’d reached the knob before she cracked. “Wait.”
The sound of rustling came from behind him: drawers opening, things being dropped on the desk top. When he looked back, she had a contacts case and some fluid on the desk. Half a minute later, she had the contacts out and a tissue blotting her eyes.
“Still not used to them?”
“They’re fine.” She dropped the tissue on the desk, squared her shoulders, and came back around to sit as he’d done, chair turned, facing him. When she finally looked at him, his chest squeezed. Blue-green, like the southern seas on sunny white sand. Even with all the other changes, she was truly his wife in that moment. His eyes burned at the thought and he let his head bow forward until the burning passed, needing to get on with things, to keep from reaching for her, his tropical songbird masquerading as a pigeon.
And with the door closed, he couldn’t smell anything but her.
God, this was a mistake.
“What did you want?”
Don’t touch her.
Don’t touch her. Don’t touch her.
“I wanted to talk to you about Lieutenant Nettle.”
Ben. Right. Good. He’d spent all that time at the facility for Ben, and she was one of his doctors. Made sense, if someone had a functioning brain.
Rather than saying anything else, he nodded. The sooner he let her get on with it, the sooner he could leave.
“I think it’s been really great for him to have you here. I’m glad you keep coming back. Not just because you averted disaster; he wouldn’t see anyone but staff otherwise. But now he’s talking a little, mostly to you, I think. But he’s having you stick around when the therapist comes, right?”
“Right,” he said, then added, “What does Ben need? Just spit it out.”
She shifted, tried to sit up straighter, but her shoulders already nearly reached her ears because of her stiff posture.
“It’s not my place to say this—it has nothing to do with his limbs. I treat bone injury, not...soft tissue. But, since he’s allowed you to become part of his care, I’m taking the liberty on the chance that you can help him.”
* * *
Anais waited for his nod of understanding, and swallowed past the lump of fear in her throat. Since her mad scramble out of the country, she’d made a point of being good at eye contact. When you looked someone in the eye it established a connection that usually helped you in some fashion—intimidating muggers, letting professors know you meant business, letting patients know you were there and cared about what happened to them. Helpful.
Looking Quinn in the eye, she felt small. And hideous. The contacts didn’t change her vision in any way, but they made her feel hidden, and unseen was safe. Now she had to dig deep for the courage she hadn’t even glimpsed since she’d seen him.
One piece chipped free from her Anna armor, and she was stuttering with tears burning.
“He’s got more damage than just his legs.” Her voice was too high, too shaky.
Quinn’s stormy eyes lifted to hers again, narrowed. “I haven’t seen his chart and getting him to talk about his injuries is almost impossible. Was he shot? I know about the IED. They throw off shrapnel.”
“He wasn’t shot. There were a few abdominal wounds from shrapnel, but most have healed nicely.” She should’ve rehearsed this. The words didn’t even want to move through her throat. “He lost one testicle.”
Anna would be stronger. She’d look him in the eye again.
It took force, and strength she didn’t really have at the time, but she met his gaze. The description of damage took the disappointment out of his eyes; he’d focused on Ben, just as she’d hoped.
“They were able to restore urinary function. But there’s more...” She saw understanding dawn on his face and, the second it came, she wished she hadn’t needed to tell him.
CHAPTER THREE (#u7354719b-6721-5535-9380-5ea87b8c1749)
“MORE TO RESTORE?” Quinn’s words came slow and low, as if tension and gravity made him pause for a breath after each word.
“Repairing areas with vascular damage.” She clarified, “They did what they could the first time, but it didn’t heal properly. The surgeon is confident he can restore full function, but Nettle—Ben—won’t talk to anyone about it. I even tried once, early on, because the staff GP said he’d gotten nowhere either. The psychiatrist also had no luck. He shut me down really quickly.”
Quinn took it in dead silence.
Was he getting it? She couldn’t tell if it was his usual tactic—letting the bad wash over him like water off a duck’s back—or if he was processing. There was concern on his face, but his silence didn’t give any hint to his thoughts. She’d have to put it to him straight.
“I think if you talk to him about the procedure and why he should have it, he might listen...”
He reached behind him and rubbed the back of his neck, finally pulling his gaze away from her for a moment. “He’s talking a little, but I don’t want to push him. It’s a delicate balance, right now.”
Like Quinn was talking a little. It was only an opening, but one she’d never got before. Talking about problems, at least his friend’s problems, might be within his capabilities. He hadn’t said no. He just needed convincing.
Anais stood and dragged her chair closer to him, close enough that their knees almost touched.
“He’s got a chance at a normal life if he has the procedure. I doubt he feels like getting married knowing he won’t be able to father children, or...be...with his wife.” Don’t linger on the sex, even if she knew Quinn would definitely get that rationale. “I think that particular injury is an even bigger one mentally to him than his legs. It’s the reason for how you found him, I’m sure of it.”
Quinn’s expression hadn’t changed—concerned, maybe a little out of his depth and horrified at the idea of talking to his friend about something so personal. But what got more personal than asking your friend to cut your dangling fingers off?
She kept going. “With the surgery, he could have a normal life. We can work with him on his mobility—his life won’t ever be entirely normal because he’s a double amputee, but he could have a family.”
A family. Something she’d wanted with Quinn. Something she still wanted, but had never been able to picture with anyone else. The word had become like a weapon, a word that could hurt them both. But if she couldn’t reach Nettle, she had to reach the person who could.
Whatever it took.
Before she could think too much about it, she took his left hand, forcing him to look at her again.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his stormy gray eyes sliding from their hands to her eyes, but lingering heavily over her mouth.
He started to pull away.
“Wait!” She transferred his hand to lie on her palm and traced the jagged edge left after the blast. “If you could have back these parts that were taken from you, if you could have them, fully functional, wouldn’t you want it? I know this was terrible for you, and I haven’t—” she swallowed “—I can’t close my eyes without seeing it.”
Her throat squeezed so hard she could barely breathe, let alone talk. Blessedly. Those weren’t the words she’d needed to say. This wasn’t about her. It was about him. About Ben.
“Imagine you could have a place for your wedding ring, the next time you married.” She felt tears slip as she said the words. “Wouldn’t you want that? I know...it didn’t...go the way...either of us hoped it would, but sometimes...”
“I have no desire to get married again.” The words dropped like lead.
A sharp jerk pulled his hand from hers and she lifted her eyes to his, not even trying to hide the tears quivering in her vision.
She’d messed it up, yet more proof they never knew how to talk to one another. This wasn’t supposed to be about them. How had it become about them?
Pressure on her neck made her lift her head, and the next instant his mouth covered hers. The moment stretched out and she measured it in breaths and heartbeats. One breath she was in her chair, the next she was in his lap, her sluggish mind struggling to catch up.
All she knew in that moment was an ache that seared into her. His mouth, hot and desperate, on hers echoed the frenzied need crouching in her own breast since the moment she’d heard his laugh. She was a silly, naïve twenty-year-old again, starved for his kisses, for his touch, for the heat of him against her.
When she opened her eyes, it hurt to see him. His brows were wrenched, as if touching her hurt more than helped. As if he tortured himself with every kiss, but couldn’t stop.
She didn’t want to stop. She didn’t want to feel him shaking or the mingling of pleasure and bitter need that twisted her insides. But she couldn’t stop.
Her arms came around his shoulders, pulling him close, reveling in his solidity, the breadth of him. His face had matured; his body had as well. He was a new man, but still the same.
His arms around her waist bent her toward the floor, and he paused only long enough to shove chairs violently away, making a space for them.
There was no way for reason to intervene, not when his unfamiliar and heady mass pressed her into the cold wood floor, and his hands began frantically pulling at the material separating them.
Her tank top came up and her front-clasp bra popped open at his insistence. He only took his mouth from hers to turn his attention to her breasts.
Her breath left her and she moaned so loudly that he lunged back over her, covering her mouth again with his own, absorbing every tortured gasp he ripped from her.
Before she registered movement, he’d stripped her from the waist down. She could only hold his mouth to hers, needing his kisses to continue blocking out the world. Needing to fill her lungs with him.
Tenacious, unhesitating, he pulled her legs around his hips, and launched himself into her.
Dizzy and breathless, only his mouth kept the broken sobs of her regret and need from echoing through the whole facility.
Like a wild thing, he set a thundering pace, hollowing her out and tearing down those carefully constructed walls of protection. Anna was gone. Anais was too. All thoughts gone. Nothing left but this need to get closer, to wrap her legs around him and pretend that the years in between never happened. Forget the bad times. Forget the end. Even forget the wedding. Pretend she didn’t know it was only lust and anger driving him. This was hate sex for him. That horrible need to be closer. They might never be cured of it but it had been twisted by her leaving, and by his never showing up to begin with.
Still, she hung in that heartbeat where she’d still believed they could have that future she’d so desperately wanted. With this man—the only man who could bullhead through her reservations and convince her to act against her best interests.
He was with her, connected, inside her, but leaned away until it was his idea to return for another desperate, suffocating kiss. That frequent distance kept her from reaching for him until he deigned to return to her.
The last time she’d held him, he’d still been a boy. A decidedly handsome, sexy boy, but now, broad-shouldered and deliciously heavier than he’d been, he still felt like hers. Angry, but hers. Wanting to punish her, but still part of her.
It was wrong. All of it. The sex. Wanting to see him. Wanting to know him... Wrong. Stupid and wrong.
Stretched too taut, the thread of her pleasure snapped, and the first wave of her climax blasted through her, but she was too far gone for moans or any sound. It was all she could do to keep breathing.
When he stiffened and jerked, his broken breaths told her he’d come with her, and there had been no barriers in those few moments. Not even the sort that would prevent pregnancy.
Pretend it was still then. Back when they’d had a future. When she’d have felt only bliss at the idea of having his child. Before she’d learned how much to value a quiet life.
Quinn relaxed against her, his stubble-roughened cheek to her shoulder, rapid breath fanning her hair.
What were they doing? Why had she kissed him back?
Her hands ached to smooth over his back, to relearn the body she’d once known. To comb through his hair, trace his jaw and feel the rasp of his whiskers against her fingertips. She wanted to luxuriate in the tactile experience his body could bring. Just hold on and pretend for a little longer.
Instead, she curled her fingers to her palms to keep from stroking his skin. As soon as she got control of her thoughts, of her mouth—as soon as she could stand the idea of him looking at her again—she’d push him away. Off her, out of her...
No words came from her, not out loud, but it was as if he heard her anyway. Quinn lifted himself, off and away from her, severing their connection before he’d even gotten control of his heart.
On his knees between her legs, still mostly dressed, he rested and silently looked over her naked body. A heated look, at least. He still wanted her. This could be the first in a long, tangled back and forth—something she wouldn’t be strong enough to withstand. Or it could be another sign that it was once again time to run.
She pulled her tank top down to cover her breasts, and scooted back to sit up, legs together. As if that would make her less bare to him.
What could be more heady than knowing how little effort it had taken to have her? A kiss. Just one kiss. And she’d practically begged him.
“I need my shorts.” She didn’t want to crawl past him to reach them, but she would if she had to.
Without a word, he shoved the crumpled garment at her, and climbed to his feet, righting himself. Tucking in. Zipping up.
“If you’re wondering, that was goodbye,” he announced as he bent to look under the desk for his shoe. “That’s all.”
The goodbye she’d denied him.
“Right,” she managed, no words coming to mind that would provide her with the same emotional distance. He’d just announced the end of whatever they’d had, as if it hadn’t ended once already. That was what he’d been doing—ending things?
He’d had a goal, but why had she gone along with it?
Because...chemistry.
Because she was still vulnerable to chemistry. Because in some ways she’d be forever stupid.
It had blinded her before. Blinded him too. They’d tried to build a marriage on chemistry—the height of bad reasons to get married.
If he’d loved her, if he’d ever felt anything for her besides lust, he would’ve listened when she’d tried to tell him about the photos, her blackmailer. He would’ve helped her. Helped them. He would’ve cared what was happening to her. But he hadn’t. Everything always just magically worked out in Quinn Land. Fate was kinder to him than it had ever been to her, and he took it for granted.
One last anger-filled time was his version of goodbye. There weren’t feelings attached. For either of them. She had regret, and chemistry, and that was plenty. How much worse would it be to still love him and have him never able to feel the same?
Even weakness and chemistry-fueled unprotected sex on her office floor was better than that.
Snagging the shoe, he straightened his sock and crammed the shoe back on.
Following his lead, she shimmied into her underthings and stood.
“Are you going to talk to Nettle?” There. Those were words. The thing she’d actually wanted to talk to him about before all this insanity happened.
“I’ll talk to him.”
She turned to grab her shoe and heard the door close.
Whatever. She sat down and put the shoe on.
Showering, changing, and going home would help. Get the scent of him off her. Clothe her far too bare form. Drink tea while not letting on to Mom that anything was wrong. And sleep...
Leaning over the desk to get her bag, she noticed the large envelope she’d prepared for this talk.
He’d left without the literature. Of course he had.
Snatching the envelope from her desk, she ran out after him.
Just before he got to his car, she made her way through the door at the front of the building. “Quinn... Prince Quinton.”
Get it together.
He turned and looked at her, left the car door standing open and met her halfway. “What else?”
“You forgot this.” She pushed the envelope into his hand—the lights in front of the building harsh against the falling darkness.
No contacts. No freaking real clothes. Hair back. Proof yet again that fate refused to do her any favors.
Except one thing: no one was really about to notice her eye color, or how closely she resembled the former Princess. No one outside his employ, at least. Five cars parked in front of and behind his. How much security did he need to come to a rehabilitation center for soldiers?
“It’s literature on the procedure. How it’s done. Case studies. So you can prepare your talk.”
With Nettle. It was on the tip of her tongue to call the soldier by his last name again—it was a distance tactic she’d been relying on, and had noticed it bothered Quinn—but she couldn’t take a single drop more drama and hostility between them. Not until she had time to think. Until she had time to prepare for the possibility that she could’ve just irresponsibly conceived with her ex.
Once his hand closed on the envelope, she spun and headed back inside. Shower. Shower first stop. Then get the hell out of there.
* * *
When Quinn had agreed to come home, he’d thought it would go a little differently.
Summer had arrived, so naturally he’d assumed there would be loads of parties to attend where he would meet women. Drinks. Philip would fill his schedule with meetings, dinners, and appearances, telling him what to do, when, where, and what was expected of him. All that.
All he had so far was news of his grandfather’s terminal illness, a friend who’d tried to kill himself, an ex-wife he couldn’t keep his mind or his damned hands off, and now a tricky emotional situation he was utterly unequipped to deal with.
And a distinct lack of drinks.
Slamming the door to his penthouse, Quinn tossed the envelope Anais has shoved at him onto the counter, and made a beeline for the fridge.
He grabbed a tumbler, threw some ice into it, and turned toward the liquor cabinet, only to stop. That route out of his kitchen had been blocked by large lidded plastic crates. Stuff he was supposed to deal with too. Seven years’ worth of junk that people had just been sticking into crates for him...and he’d been ignoring for every leave.
But it was better duty than that penis conversation.
He backtracked and went the other way around the kitchen to reach for the rum, which would at least get the taste of her out of his mouth.
Instead of kissing her, he should’ve asked how to start this conversation.
He drained the glass entirely, felt his stomach lurch, and put the glass back down.
The man knew what parts were malfunctioning. It was his body. They’d told him that he could probably get it fixed. He knew these things already.
How would Philip handle this task?
Something heartfelt. Make an appeal to his better nature—whatever that would amount to.
He poured himself another glass and took another pull on the rum, and put the tumbler down.
Anais had never approved of drinking, for any reason. No wine with dinner. No beer after an arduous exam. Strip poker was fine, but not with shots. Not for her. And when she’d gone he’d thrown himself into spirits whenever the opportunity presented itself. Boot camp and deployment had probably saved him from becoming an alcoholic that first year.
He should watch the drinking since she’d strayed back into his life.
He turned his attention to the first crate, lifting the lid and riffling through its contents.
At the bottom of the stack of papers requiring his attention was a large yellow envelope, crammed with documents.
He flipped it over and read: Divorce of Prince Quinton Corlow and Princess Anais Corlow nГ©e Hayes.
Right. Bloody timely. He flung the packet over his shoulder in the vague direction of the sofa, and went back to the crate.
Gifts.
Books.
Things to be looked at later, when he’d not drunk enough rum to make his eyes go blurry.
A photo album filled with pictures taken during their whirlwind marriage.
Half a crate’s worth of quasi-attentive sorting painful garbage was enough for one night. There really wasn’t enough rum in his place for further torture.
Flopping one leg over the edge of the crate, he pushed the remaining material to the far end to make room for what he had to put back in.
A white-handled gift bag tumbled out of the moving pile of stuff, hit the bottom of the crate and spilled a small unopened package wrapped in pale blue paper and a silver bow onto the floor.
His heart stopped the moment he saw it.
It must’ve been the first crate the palace staff started packing for him. Copies of divorce papers. The gift he’d bought Anais for their first anniversary—the one they hadn’t made it to—an engagement ring she’d never gotten before the wedding because they’d impetuously eloped.
He swallowed, then kicked the small box back to the side. Stuffed into a crate by someone who didn’t know its value. He put it right back there, suddenly too bitter to care about the small fortune buried under papers by his boot.
Enough of that.
He began dumping the bits he’d sorted out right back into the crate. Too much. All too much to deal with tonight, when all he really wanted was a shower and some sleep.
CHAPTER FOUR (#u7354719b-6721-5535-9380-5ea87b8c1749)
STILL MARRIED.
The words rattled around in Quinn’s head, as they’d been doing since he’d seen the morning news.
Sitting across from his ranting brother on the naughty schoolboy side of the King’s desk at least made the news feel real, if still unpleasant. He’d never inspired his brother to rant before. Father, Mother, even Grandmother, God rest them. The King never ranted, though that sad, disapproving shake of his head always hit harder.
But, as he watched his brother pace and growl at him, he fully realized how things had changed.
Grandfather was dying. Philip now worried about these things, and felt as if he’d inherited a problem.
Quinn had always done his best to care when he was being lectured, but he never really had. Things always worked out, somehow.
Well, except for his marriage.
His day had started with a phone call and a number of emails, all directing him to programs and pages with the kind of annoying news reports they’d always lobbed at Anais, whether she deserved them or not.
They had always been big on inappropriate sex and full of tales of devious female conniving. And big on underestimating him—though they weren’t wrong about him having wildly inappropriate...
Who was he kidding?
It was appropriate.
It felt appropriate.
It felt like a damn lightning bolt—illuminating to the point of scorching.
One enterprising journalist had caught a picture of them together and had gone off to investigate the court records of their divorce. Although apparently there were no court records. It must be a mix-up. It had to be a mix-up.
“Are you listening, Quinn?”
“Yeah, I hear you. You’re angry. You don’t know how it could have happened. I wish I had the answer for you.”
Philip sat back down and stared hard at the photo of Quinn and Anais. “What’s she wearing?”
“Workout clothes. She...runs. Or maybe boxes. I don’t know. She works at the rehabilitation facility. She probably exercises all the time. It wasn’t some kind of cheap ploy to get my attention.”
Even though it had gotten his attention, or just focused his attention.
“When did you start defending her? You never...”
“You never attacked like this before. I know you’re stressed out, but she literally did nothing wrong.” Nothing that was caught on camera, he prayed. “She’d been working out when I left Ben for the evening, and since she wanted to talk to me about his care, I went to speak with her. The documents she’s handing me in that photo are something to do with the medical care. I haven’t read them yet.”
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