Crown Jewels (Off-Limits Romance #1)(90)

“Acushla. I’m so fucking sorry…”

“He’s not your real father.” It’s all I can think of. I feel Liam’s body go still at the words. “He and his daughter were talking. You were how he felt betrayed by your mother. I guess…her being with your father…made him angry.”

Moaning floats on the cool breeze from where Ronald is lying. Liam’s hands cover my ears, pressing my head against his chest.

“I’m sorry, Lucy. I’m so sorry.” He repeats the words as we both shake and hold each other. “We need to get off the island, but the boat is broken.”

“His daughter could be around.”

“I’ll swim back to shore.”

“I thought you said it was a strong current.”

“I can do it.”

“No way. Liam—that seems like a bad idea.”

“Fuck. I’ve got to get you off the island.”

“Maybe we should try to take the boat,” I suggest.

Liam wraps me tightly in his arms and holds me against him. “Lucy, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“No… It’s not your fault.” I stroke his arms and touch his bleeding lip. “It’s not your fault, Liam. None of this is your fault.”

“You don’t know.”

“I do know. I had to listen to those idiots for hours.”

Liam is shaking. “I was so scared…”

“Me too.”

“That I’d lost you,” he rasps. “So scared. Lucy…let’s sit down. I’ll leave in just a minute. I can find a place to hide you here.”

I think he’s still talking, but I can’t hear his words. Not over the roar of a helicopter. White and navy blue—just like Liam’s private jet.

Liam jumps up so fast my eyes can’t track him, picking up the broken boat and rushing toward the shore. He pushes it into the water, and the helicopter flies over it.

Trying to get their attention, I realize.

I hurry down the beach behind him. When the helicopter drops a rope, Liam shakes his head and waves his arms.

“I can hold on,” I shout.

“Can’t risk it! Hang on, okay?” He kisses my cheek. “Just hold on, Lucy.”

The ladder is drawn up. A minute later, a stretcher is lowered.

“I’m not lying down and dangling from a helicopter!”

“What if I lie down with you?”

“Can we do that?” I’m crying now, from sheer exhaustion.

“Yeah, Lucy.” He holds me close to his chest. “We can. Here, I’ll show you how.”

I see the bottom of the helicopter, with its Gael insignia, in my dreams, and hear its loud blades. I feel Liam’s arms wrapped around me, and I never know if that’s the dream or real life.





EPILOGUE Lucy





“When you’re about to give birth to a little prince, you need a lot of clothes!”

“We’re living in a cabin, Am, beside a remote lake. We almost never leave unless it’s going sailing. I don’t think he needs four versions of the same gown. Even though it’s very beautiful and thoughtful,” I add gently.

Amelia hmphs over the phone line. “Well, I’m getting two, because the BOGO sale. So there. One blue, one white.”

I can’t help laughing at my BFF. She’s gone shopping crazy, ever since we found out at twenty weeks that Ollie is a boy.

“Are you still going with Oliver Willahelm?”

“Sadly for poor Ollie, yes.” I smile. “I want to name him after Liam.”

“Last name Clary?”

“You know it is.”

“I just feel like it should be Gael.”

I laugh. “I’ll let Liam know that. Maybe when he takes over what duties he’s going to take over, he can put in a petition to change the royal surname.” Then I snort, because of course not.

Amelia sighs. “When are y’all coming back across the pond? I want to see you with my eyes and not a picture.”

“We’re thinking of flying over one last time when I’m thirty-two weeks.”

“So—in two weeks?”

I grin. “Yep.”

“You better send a new bump picture!”

“If you send me more storyboard for the movie, it’s a deal.”

“Deal,” Amelia says.

I push the table beside my rocking chair in front of me, and put my feet up, looking out at the lake where Liam’s kayaking. I’d been going with him every day until this week. I’m just so tired—and huge.

“So how are things?” Amelia asks.

“Still really good. Which you would know if you ever emerged from that studio of yours at a time we’re both awake.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“I’m just kidding.”

“Not entirely.”

“That’s true,” I admit. “I do miss you.”

Three weeks after news about the Sheep Island shooting got out—it broke Twitter and set off a worldwide obsession with Liam and me—Liam and I said a temporary “goodbye” and he moved into the largest tree house on Pirate Island. He brought a small staff with him—rehab nurses, a therapist, and a mindfulness guru—and he stayed there with them for three weeks while I visited my family in Concord and appeared as a guest on The Rhodes of Concord, spilling all the beans I could, from Bryce to baby Clary to my new romance with Liam.