Читать книгу: «I Married A Prince»

One

Time was running out, and Jacob knew it.

In all the world, there was precious little his money couldn’t buy. Happiness itself had seemed within his purchasing power. He’d used the von Austerand fortune for twenty-nine years to satisfy his whims, lusts, real and imagined needs. Now the fun was coming to an end.

“Damn!” he growled, crumpling the message and letting it fall from his fist into the blue-gray water lapping the hull of the sleek motor yacht. A brilliant orange September sun was already halfway up a cloudless sky. It beamed down on the snug cove nestled in the Connecticut shoreline, where the Queen Elise had anchored the night before.

“Bad news, Your Royal Highness?” a voice colored by a deep British accent asked from behind him.

“The worst, Thomas. The worst.”

“The king? He’s had another stroke, has he?”

Jacob swung around to face his bodyguard, who doubled as chauffeur, private secretary and self-proclaimed social adviser. Thomas was also his closest—some claimed only—true friend. Anger frothed up inside Jacob. The heat generated by his turbulent mood made his head hurt far worse than the hangover he’d woken with should have.

“My father is in better health than most of his cabinet—better than I am, at this moment.” He gingerly pressed the heel of one hand to his forehead, as if to hold its contents securely in place.

“I’ve prepared a pitcher of Bloody Marys in the galley, Your Royal Highness. Shall I bring it?”

“Knock off the ‘Your Highness’ crap,” Jacob snapped. “You only do that when some reporter is around to hear, or when you’re irritated with me.”

“As you wish, Sir,” Thomas said with a shadow of a smile. “Shall I bring the beverage?”

“No.” Jacob shook his head, then groaned at the wave of dizziness the motion produced. “No, it will wear off soon enough. Black coffee would be better.”

When Thomas returned with a steaming mug of fragrant dark java, Jacob took a quick sip, then three more...and the world seemed to steady itself. Somewhat. They stood for a while as crew members in white T-shirts and canvas pants bustled around them, then finally disappeared below the polished decks of the Queen Elise. The luxurious two-hundred-foot, ocean-going yacht had been a present from his father for his sixteenth birthday. Whenever Jacob could get away for a while, it was his chosen home. But this morning it seemed little comfort to him.

“You deserve that hangover after last night,” Thomas commented dryly, as he stood at the rail, smoking a thick black cigar.

“I suppose.” Jacob sighed. Aside from his father and Frederik—the old man’s chief adviser, who had been with the family since before Jacob’s birth—Thomas was the only person who wasn’t intimidated by Jacob’s money and title. Thomas never pulled punches. And his father never gave up when he wanted something.

What the King of Elbia now wanted...no, demanded, was that his only son marry by Christmas, only months away now. Just because he, Karl von Austerand, had been forced to wed before his thirtieth year and his father before him...and his grandfather before that. For over five hundred years the crown princes of Elbia, a tiny European country even smaller than Liechtenstein, had dutifully followed the laws of succession. Now it was Jacob’s turn, and he viewed the prospect of a political marriage as medieval idiocy, a trap he had always somehow meant to elude. But now the time had come...and there seemed no way out that wouldn’t cost him his inheritance.

“He’s sticking to his guns, Thomas,” Jacob muttered, gripping the polished brass railing until his knuckles ached. He leaned over the yacht’s side to watch white-tipped swells lap the hull. “He says I’ve had plenty of time to choose a suitable wife. That—” he gestured to where the sheet of paper had submerged “—was his latest list of young ladies he deems equal to the task of becoming Elbia’s next queen.”

Thomas stepped to the young prince’s side. “You knew this day would come. This is no surprise.”

“Yes. But it always seemed so far away...before now.”

“As the sole heir to the throne of Elbia, you must provide an heir,” Thomas said softly. “If the von Austerand line were to end...your country would perish.” Thomas had always been and would always be an Englishman, but he nevertheless acted protective of his employer’s homeland... just as he felt protective of his employer.

Jacob raked a hand through his glistening black hair and glared at the beach. He knew what Thomas said was true. He’d been tormented for most of his adult years by guilt at the thought, but his natural willfulness fought tradition.

A pearly gray-and-white seagull swooped from the sky and soared above them on a warm air current, rising effortlessly with it. Jacob’s thoughts wheeled with the bird. He had ordered the yacht to anchor late the previous night in Long Island Sound, after dropping off the last of his guests this side of New York City. Something had drawn him back to this place. Something had made him want to come here again, if only to be alone for a little while and watch the sun rise from this familiar curve of sand and rocks called Nanticoke Bay.

A slender ribbon of peace stretched over his frustration and anger. His grip relaxed on the handrail. The tension knotting his neck slowly released. He breathed in the salty air.

The geography was so different here from landlocked Elbia. The tiny eastern European country had survived German aggression during two world wars and Russian intimidation in the cold war that followed. Elbia, like Monaco and Liechtenstein and only a handful of other modern countries, remained a monarchy, an anachronism in today’s high-tech world. As Thomas had so wisely stated, only his country’s traditions separated her from becoming absorbed by larger countries or falling into impoverishment. She offered little in the way of valuable resources. She had no oil, no diamonds, no major crops or industries. Her borders included neither a port on open water nor easy access to other rich lands. But she did possess spectacular lakes, breathtaking mountains and ancient castles of unparalleled magnificence. Tourism kept Elbia alive, but without the glamour of the royals and the glitter of the many annual events in her capital city to attract the thousands of visitors who came each year she would be ruined.

Jacob pressed his fingertips against his temples and closed his eyes. “The bottom line is, the king says I must return and take a bride. Immediately. That piece of paper listed his personal top ten choices.”

“And?” Thomas asked, an amused lilt in his voice.

“I want none of them.”

“If they are the same young ladies your father has mentioned before, each is quite agreeable. Of royal blood...well-moneyed families...socially flawless...Several are quite beautiful.”

“Then you marry them.” Jacob waved an impatient hand. He finished his coffee and tossed the mug down on a chaise that had been occupied by a New York actress with exceptionally long legs and a willing smile the night before. “They leave me cold.”

“Nevertheless, you’ve had...shall we say, relations with several of the ladies, I believe.”

“I’ve slept with dozens of women in nearly every country in the world,” Jacob stated flatly. “Having sex with a woman doesn’t make her someone I’d want to live with for the rest of my life.”

Thomas laid a hand on the prince’s shoulder. His calm tan-colored eyes observed him from above rotund cheeks and a tidily trimmed Henry VIII beard. “Other men have fulfilled far more distasteful obligations on their countries’ behalf,” he commented gently.

Jacob nodded. “Don’t get me wrong. I’ve always understood my duty, and I intended to do it when the time came. But now that it’s here—damn it, I can’t! I don’t know why, but I can’t.” He hesitated. “There was one...once...but she—”

“One? A woman?” Thomas’s eyes brightened.

“Yes. She was special. She was...” What exactly had she been to him during that summer over two years ago? The American girl with the enormous blue-green eyes and hair that had flowed like pale champagne to her shoulders. She had been sweet, simple, loving—and he had found himself utterly charmed by her. No woman had affected him so deeply before or since.

But she was a commoner—and an American on top of that, which was even worse in his father’s eyes. Jacob had known, even as they’d lain in each others’ arms, he’d have to leave her. It had been the hardest single moment of his life, walking away from her bed that night. Just leaving. Without so much as a goodbye. Without explaining to her who he really was and why he couldn’t stay with her.

He’d been a physical and emotional mess for weeks after. But then he’d returned to school and forced himself to concentrate on his studies, which were grueling at the graduate level, and the months had passed. He’d survived.

The only problem was, his relationships with women had changed in a troubling way. More than two years after he’d left her, he still didn’t feel in another woman’s arms the sweet and total satisfaction he’d found in hers.

Jacob turned his gaze on the stony line of beach, glowing amber in the autumn sun. The water was still warm enough for swimming, but it wouldn’t be for long with winter approaching.

“This woman,” Thomas began cautiously. “Is she why we came here last night, when it would have been easier to dock in Greenwich?”

Jacob scowled. He dropped his head in a reluctant nod. “Her name was Allison,” he whispered. The sea breeze pulled the syllables from his lips, whisking them away. He hadn’t spoken her name since the night he’d left, but he’d thought of her often. Too often.

“Is she not a possible wife?” Thomas asked.

“No.” Jacob let out a raspy laugh. “She was as far from princess material as any woman could be. My father would never allow it.”

“I see.” Thomas drew a deep breath. “Do you intend to see her again?”

Jacob squinted at the row of beachfront cottages, so perfectly New England with their white clapboard fronts, breezy porches and dark green storm shutters. “Yes,” he said firmly. “I need to see her just once more. Then I’ll stop obsessing about her, comparing other women to her. She couldn’t be as...” He struggled to put his thoughts into words. “I don’t know what she was any more. She’s just clogging up my mind with ridiculous thoughts!” He lashed out angrily, bringing his fist down violently on the brass rail in front of them. “She’s unfinished business, Thomas. That’s all she is. I’ll find her—she lives in Nanticoke. One more time, just to get her out of my blood.”

“You mean, you’ll have another affair with her?”

“If that’s what it takes,” Jacob snapped. “Then I’ll return to Elbia and decide what must be done.”

It hadn’t been the worst day of her life, but it hadn’t been the best, either.

When Allison Collins had left for work that morning, little Cray was running a fever and crying fretfully, clinging to her as she tried to escape through the front door. Her sister, Diane, had her hands full with her own three kids—trying to get two of them off to catch their bus for school, while dressing the third. Within a few minutes her three day-care children would arrive, and she’d have a full house again. Tending a sick fifteen-month-old baby wouldn’t make her day any easier.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t leave Cray with you when he’s like this,” Allison apologized.

“Don’t start on the guilt trips again,” Diane said. “He’s just going through a clingy stage. I’ll give him some Tempra and he’ll be fine ten minutes after you leave.”

“I don’t know, maybe I should take the day off and keep him at home.” That sounded so good. More days than not, it was what Allison wanted to do anyway. Every time she left Cray, she felt as if a vital part of her were being torn from her body. She missed being with him, but what was a single mom to do? She was lucky Diane had been willing to add him to her houseful of little ones at half her usual fee. Day care was so expensive, and a librarian’s salary in a matchbox town like Nanticoke didn’t go far.

Their parents had moved to Florida, when they’d retired five years earlier, leaving the beach house to Allison. She felt grateful for being able to stay there. She still had to pay taxes on the property and manage utilities, food, clothing, medical bills and other necessities. Somehow, she squeezed out the pennies and stayed out of debt—but just barely. She wouldn’t have minded all that much. It seemed a lot of families had to struggle to make ends meet, these days. But she never felt as if she had enough time for Cray, and that she did mind.

At least they had a roof over their heads, she reflected. And Cray was a healthy, normal baby. Perhaps that was why leaving him when he wasn’t feeling well was so difficult for her. He didn’t seem himself. She felt like a heartless witch for deserting him when he needed her.

Finally, she extricated herself from Cray’s chubby fingers and made a dash through the kitchen. Before the storm door slammed shut, she could hear his wails of protest. Biting down on her lower lip, she threw herself into her little compact car and fled.

Her morning story-time group of elementary school children was waiting for her in a circle on the carpet when she arrived. She snatched up the two books she’d prepared the previous day and read with as much enthusiasm as she could muster, still exhausted from being up most of the night with Cray.

After the children left, she switched to her other job—cataloging new contributions to the library’s collection of first editions. A few hours later, she covered for other staff members during their lunch breaks. Afternoons, following school dismissal, were always busy. The children’s corner often turned into an informal baby-sitting service when parents dropped off their kids and left to do errands. It was a practice the staff was trying to stop, since youngsters left unattended sometimes got out of hand and required supervision from staff members who should have been helping patrons locate books or research materials.

By the time five o’clock rolled around, Allison was barely able to see through the dense cloud of fatigue that enclosed her.

“You look beat,” Miriam, one of the senior volunteers, remarked as Allison passed her at the checkout desk.

“All I want to do is pick up my baby, go home and sit on the porch with a tall glass of iced tea,” she murmured without slowing down. She didn’t even have enough energy for a decent conversation.

Tripping wearily down the library’s steps, Allison watched the worn granite slabs pass beneath her feet. Chips of color—quartz, feldspar, obsidian, she thought vaguely. Home...just get me home, car. She hoped she had enough gas.

“Alli?”

She froze where she stood on the bottom step. A flash of ice replaced the warm blood flowing through her veins. But her cheeks immediately flamed up. She didn’t need to lift her eyes to place the rich baritone colored with the faintest Germanic and British overtones. Her heart crawled into her throat. Her hand flew up to cover her mouth before the cry of dismay working its way to her lips could escape.

Only after taking four controlled full breaths, did Allison dare look up...and up...and up into the blue-black eyes of the man standing in front of her. “Hello, Jay,” she said, amazed at the control she was able to exert over her own voice.

He smiled.

She frowned.

“Not happy to see me?” he asked.

“Why should I be?” she clipped out. Stepping to one side, she tried to dodge around him, but he mirrored her side step, effectively blocking her path to her car.

He stood there, looking confident and handsome in casual tan chinos that hugged his hips and a turquoise golf shirt. The muscles of his chest stretched the fabric when he drew a deep breath.

“We were pretty good friends once,” he pointed out. His eyes teased, reflecting hidden meanings she understood all too easily.

Lord, she thought, after all these months, how can he make me feel like this? “That was a long time ago,” she stated crisply. “Now I have to get home.”

His glance dropped to her left hand, then flashed back up to her face, looking satisfied. “I see you haven’t married, either.”

“Why should I?” She faked to the left. He fell for it. She slipped past him and sprinted for her car, calling over her shoulder, “I can just keep on having meaningless affairs with guys like you! Great sex, no commitments, no responsibilities.” She didn’t care if she sounded bitter. She wanted to make him go away. Forever.

She was running now, and so were her thoughts. They rushed at her, in troubling abandon as she bounded across the parking lot. Why had he come back? Why? Just when she thought she’d moved on to another part of her life—one without painful memories of him and how it had felt in those heady, wonderful weeks he’d stayed with her at the beach house. What a fool he’d made of her!

She reached her car, jammed the key in the lock. A wide hand sprinkled with dark hair fell over hers, stopping her from turning the key.

“Don’t you dare touch me,” she ground out between clenched teeth. “I swear, if you—”

He immediately lifted his offending hand and held it up for her to see, as if demonstrating its innocence. “Fine. I won’t touch you. I just want to talk.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

She spun around and glared at him. “Why not? We were lovers for nearly two months, Jay! Then you pulled a disappearing act. Or don’t you remember?”

“I remember,” he said softly. For a second, she thought she saw a tender radiance lighten his dark eyes. But before she could be sure, it was gone. He looked hardened, determined again.

“Then you also must remember that you didn’t leave a note, you didn’t tell me you wouldn’t be back the next night, you never said goodbye. You just walked out of my life.” She fixed him with a challenging glare, daring him to deny any of it.

“I...” He shrugged and let out a halfhearted laugh. “Guess I didn’t know how to say, ‘so long.”’

“Yeah, right,” she snapped. Shoving him hard in the chest, she took advantage of his startled attempt to regain his balance. Allison swung open the car door and dove into the steamy interior. The sun had been strong all afternoon, heating up the closed vehicle, and the air-conditioning hadn’t worked in three years. The ride home would be stifling, but at least she’d be on her own turf, where she could pull herself together.

“Alli, stop!” His angry shout rocked her, even through the barrier of glass.

Instinctively, she cringed, as he yanked open the door and hauled her into the sea air as easily as if she’d been a sack of groceries. She was shaking as he backed her against the car, then stood so close she couldn’t maneuver to break free again.

“What do you want from me?” she shouted, her voice breaking as tears clung to her pale lashes.

He had already taken so much from her. He’d been the first man she’d ever let touch her like that. Her first love. Her only, to this day. And he’d left her carrying his baby inside her. The heartbreak of his desertion had been almost too much for her to bear.

Unloved. Abandoned. He’d left her alone, to care for a fragile life—the baby they’d created on an amorous night on the beach, when she’d believed with all her heart that he loved her.

After he left and she discovered she was pregnant, she’d made the necessary decisions and preparations, and kept herself busy. She told herself if she could just get through that one year, she could handle anything life threw at her. She hadn’t bargained on ever again having to face the man who had done his best to destroy her life.

“I just want to do something nice for you,” he said stiffly.

Something told her he’d practiced that line. Suspicious, she squinted up at him. “The nicest thing you can do for me, Jay, is stay out of my life.”

“Uh-uh.” He shook his head; the breeze off the ocean caught the one stray black curl over his forehead and played with it. His shadowed eyes fixed steadily on hers.

She was terrified that their closeness was exciting him. She contemplated screaming for help, then dismissed the idea. Something about the little-boy glint in his eyes made her slightly more curious than afraid.

“Walk with me on the beach,” he said. “I have something to tell you. I guarantee you’ll like it.”

She sighed and cast him a rueful glance. “Is this the only way to get rid of you?”

“Only way.” He grinned.

“I must be out of my mind,” she mumbled. “All right. Ten minutes walking on the beach, then I’m out of here. And so are you.”

“I’ll let you decide about that after I’ve had my say,” he said, stepping back to let her move away from the car. “Hey, wait up!”

She was already sprinting across the road, toward the beach. He had to take enormous strides to keep up with her energetic pace. She was used to speed-walking for exercising, while pushing Cray’s stroller ahead of her. And now she felt the urge to move, fast.

The beach hugged Long Island Sound and formed a cupshaped cove along the coast, sheltering tidal pools of periwinkles, miniature crabs and silvery fish smaller than her little finger, among clumps of shiny green and brown kelp. Soaring gulls and sea terns pecked among glassy-smooth pebbles, wave-polished fragments of colored glass and chunks of artfully deformed driftwood. At this time of year, all the sunbathers had left.

Allison breathed in the air, thick with brine. The cries of the sea birds nearly drowned out the steady slosh and scrape of the waves on the stony beach. As always, the ocean had a calming effect on her, taking her temper down a notch and returning a portion of her sanity. I don’t have to let this jerk rattle me, she told herself. I can simply tell him the time we spent together was fun but I’m not interested in taking up where we left off.

Why give him the satisfaction of discovering how much he’d meant to her?

She could even be a little creative, claim she had a boyfriend. Or tell him she was married and had a baby...No, she couldn’t do that! She wouldn’t dare give him enough information to let him guess the truth.

Allison stopped halfway between the sidewalk and the ocean, her body trembling at the thought of how close she’d come to making a horrible mistake. It was dangerous to tell him anything of what had happened after he’d left. She stared down at the damp grains of sand, then braced her fists on her hips and looked out across the water, hoping he’d say what he’d come to say quickly. Two sailboats played among the white caps offshore. The marina, in the next cove, was full of pleasure boats, large and small. In another month, nearly all would have been pulled out for winter storage. Anchored a little apart from the other craft was a long, low white ship that must have been three times the size of the largest yacht in the marina. It floated majestically, barely moving on the water, as if unconcerned with waves or wind.

“Oh, my,” she let out, unintentionally.

He stopped behind her. “She’s something, isn’t she?”

Allison nodded. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything that big in Nanticoke Cove.”

“She’s called the Queen Elise. She can cross the Atlantic a whole day faster than the QE2.”

Allison let her glance drift downward from the immense yacht to stare at the wavelets rippling closest to her feet. “You’re full of it, Jay.”

He laughed out loud this time. “What?”

“You heard me. You have no idea what the name of that ship is. You’re just experimenting with another pickup line.”

“I’m not, Alli. Honest.”

“Baloney!” She couldn’t help sounding spiteful now, couldn’t pretend to be callous and modern about relationships. “Two years ago, you told me you were a graduate student on summer break. You claimed you were studying for your master’s degree in political science at Yale.” New Haven was less than an hour’s drive to the east, along the coast of Connecticut, so his story had seemed reasonable to her.

“I was.”

“Don’t lie, Jay!” she shouted, spinning around to face him. Her rage nearly made it impossible for her to form words. “You never were a student at Yale,” she choked out. “I know because I checked.”

He stared mutely at her.

She was close to tears now, as she remembered how desperate she had been to contact him. Even if he hadn’t wanted to come back to her, she’d wanted to tell him about the baby. She’d been so confused, so frightened and alone. But he hadn’t been there for her. In the end, all she’d wanted was to let him hear her decision—that she intended to keep their child. Maybe he had somehow guessed he’d impregnated her, and that was why he’d left. But on the more likely chance that he hadn’t known, her strong sense of fairness demanded she tell him that he was going to be a father. Then he could make his own decision about taking on the responsibility or not.

“Shut up!” Allison said when he started to open his mouth. “I’ll save you the trouble of asking. I called the college registrar’s office and argued with three different clerks, insisting there must be a Jay Thomas in the student body. But they said no one under that name was registered.”

He looked more amazed than angry. “You did that? You actually tried to track me down?”

She glared at him.

“Ouch,” he said, and looked out at the water.

“You deceived me, Jay. You used me. All you wanted was a summer fling. And I was too naive to guess that what we were doing could be that ordinary and simple.”