A Royal Wedding(37)

“Your attempt at compassion is insulting,” Lara managed to say, her hands clenched tight into the bag she held. Part of her wanted to fling the sack at him as he stood near the trunk of her sensible sedan. And then run. Only the fact that he probably expected that reaction kept her from it.

“Nonetheless, it is real,” he said. His storm-colored eyes moved to hers, and darkened. “It would never have been my choice to confront you in this way, with this news. I regret the necessity. But it does not change anything.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Lara said after a moment, her temper kicking in—replacing the wild swirl of far trickier feelings. Anger was better. Anger felt better— more productive. “And more important? I don’t care.”

“Yet you must listen,” he told her. So quiet. So sure. And she could only stare at him. And obey. “I am sorry for that, too, but so it is.”

There was something about the way he looked at her then that … bothered her, in a way she couldn’t quite categorize. As if he could see the buried truths she’d denied existed for years. The old dreams. The yearnings for a life, a family, the kind of things other girls took for granted while she trailed around after Marlena, cleaning up her messes. The way she’d felt about him all those years ago, the things she’d dreamed they’d do together—

Lara blinked, and steeled herself against him—and the surprising swell of something like grief that she would have sworn she’d never feel.

“What, then?” she asked, her voice too rough, as she fought back the unwieldy emotions that shifted and rolled within her. “What is it you think I need to hear?”

“You have a choice to make,” he said again, and the worst part, Lara realized in a sort of horror, was that his voice was kind, his eyes the same. As if he understood exactly what she was going through—as if he knew.

And yet he was continuing anyway, wasn’t he? He was an Alakkulian male. An Alakkulian king. Just like her father, he thought only of himself. That much was blatantly obvious, no matter how kind his eyes might seem. No matter her memories of his smile, of his tenderness.

“The only choice I will be making,” she told him, enunciating clearly, deliberately, with razor-sharp precision, as if sounding tough would make her feel that way, too, “is to get in my car and drive away from here. From you. From this ridiculous conversation. I suggest you get out of the way, unless you’d like me to run you over.”

“You did not merely promise to marry me, as any young girl might,” Adel said in the same calm, commanding tone, as if she had not just threatened him. “You entered into a binding legal contract.”

“I was a teenager,” Lara retorted. “No court in the world would ever hold me to it. It’s absurd you would think otherwise—this is not the Stone Age!”

“You overestimate the progressive nature of the world’s courts, I think,” he replied, something almost like humor flashing briefly across his face. But she did not want to think of him as human, as capable of humor as he’d been before, and ignored it. “But in any case, it does not matter. Your father signed for you when you were too young, as is the custom. When you came of age you did not withdraw your consent from the contract—which, according to the laws of Alakkul, means you thus agreed that you entered into the terms of the contract of your own free will.”

“I will not marry you,” she said. Her shoulders tightened, her chin rose like a fighter’s. “I would rather die.”

“There is no need for such theater,” Adel replied in a faintly reproving tone. Yet his mouth curved slightly—as if he found her amusing. It made her temper kick in again. That, she told herself, was the feeling that pounded through her, shaking her. “You may break the contract, if that is your wish. But there is a price.”

“Let me guess.” Lara scraped her heavy curls back from her face with an impatient jerk of her hand. “My honor will be smeared? My family name forever muddied? Isn’t that how you people think?”

“By ‘you people,’” he asked, his voice staying even though a cold fire blazed to life in his gaze, “am I to understand you mean your own people? Your countrymen?”

“I’ll live with the dishonor,” Lara told him, not wanting to admit the twist of shame she felt move through her. Much less the odd urge she had to reach over and touch him. “Quite happily.”