A Royal Wedding(62)

Lara was still half-asleep, perhaps—or just confused in general, so she almost forgot to ask, again, where they’d landed. The nervous tension she’d felt disappeared when the woman named a small Baltic country far to the north and west of Alakkul, and she realized that she’d suspected the plane had simply returned her to Alakkul while she’d slept. She told herself she was delighted to be wrong.

There was not much to see of the country so late at night. She was escorted into a waiting car, and whisked away to an elegant hotel in a city center not twenty minutes away from the air field. Lara felt suspended—at loose ends—and knew it was because she had to stop here and think about what she was doing. That had not been her plan. She’d wanted to be firmly back on American soil, deeply ensconced in her old, comfortable little life again before she had to think about the ramifications of her abrupt departure from the new life she’d been living all summer.

She had not even spoken to Adel. She had not given him any warning. She had simply seen the royal physician, confirmed what she’d known must be true, and had plotted her immediate escape.

But as the elevator took her toward the penthouse suite, one more luxury she would forgo the moment she returned to the real world, she could not help but ask herself if what she was doing right now was any different from what Marlena had done so many years before. Was it different because the child she carried was not yet born? Wouldn’t the child be the heir to the throne just as Lara had been? Wouldn’t this same cycle play itself out all over again? Could she really be responsible for inflicting this much pain on her own baby?

She had no answers. And, as she stepped into the suite, she took a deep breath, noted the expensive displays of flowers and the subtly elegant furnishings, and realized—with a start and a leap of something like anticipation in her belly—that she was out of time.

Because a man stood there, half concealed by the shadows deep in the room, watching her approach as if he’d summoned her.

Adel.

He could not remember being so angry before. Ever. Because he could not recall ever caring this much—about anything.

His gaze tracked her as she walked toward him, then stopped. She flinched as she recognized that she was not alone. She looked tired—dark smudges beneath her eyes and her skin too pale in the warm glow of the lamps that lit the large room. He was so furious it was all he could do to keep it locked inside of him. To keep from shouting at her. To keep from demanding she tell him that this was not really happening—that she would not leave him like this, taking so much with her. Surely she could not really do this. Surely it was a mistake—a misunderstanding.

“Be easy,” he said quietly, but even he could hear the lash in his voice. “I will not put my hands on you when I am this angry.”

Her gaze flared into a bright blue blaze, as if he’d deeply offended her. But how could he have done?

“I take it this is all some complicated charade,” she bit out. “There is nothing wrong with the plane, is there? There is no mechanical failure!”

“That rather depends on your definition,” he replied icily.

“I would categorize an abdicating queen as a failure of the highest degree.”

She let out a small noise, too rough to be a sigh, and turned her head away. She sank down on one of the butter-soft leather couches, but did not seem to see it. She wrapped her arms around her torso, and still, did not look at him. Something hard and heavy, like a stone, fell through him.

She was really doing this. She had done it, and he had only managed to engineer this stop at the last moment. She was leaving him, and taking his child with him. His child.

He was a man of action, of deeds and solutions, and he could only stand there, frozen. What had she done to him? How had he been reduced to this? Why could he think of nothing save how to comfort her?

“I cannot do this,” she said in a low voice. “I gave you your throne. What else can you possibly want?”

“I want you,” he said, the words torn from him. Painful. “My queen. My wife.”

“Your pawn,” she countered, her head whipping back around so that her gaze could meet his. He was shocked by the pain he saw there, the darkness. “Do you know something, Adel? I have been the pawn of one king or another since the day I was born. I am sick of it.”

“You are not a pawn,” he began.

“How can you say that with a straight face?” she demanded. She surged back to her feet. “Did you chase me across the world because you liked my personality? Because you thought about me at all? No—you wanted what only my particular parentage could give you. My special genetic make-up. If that does not make me a pawn, then I do not know the meaning of the word.”