A Royal Wedding(89)
‘I understand. You have to be there for Gemma and your dad. But the last few days have shown me that we have something amazing here, Katie—and don’t even try to deny it. We could be happy together, and that usually does not come around twice.’
His fingers were on her forehead now, stroking her hair back from her face, and the pleasure was so heavenly that she could have died with the wonder of it. She longed for him to keep going. But she couldn’t—not when she was so close to the knife-edge between leaving and staying. This time she had to be the strong one.
‘You’re right. I am still as crazy about you as I ever was. But things are so different now, Simon. You have your responsibilities to your people. I have my sister to think about, and we come as a two-for-the-price-of-one package deal. If I moved here so would Gemma, and we both know that would never work. It has taken years for us to find a perfect school for the deaf, and Gemma loves it there. Moving her away from her friends and studies at this stage would be way too traumatic. She needs that special help and I promised her that it was all going to be okay.’
He started to protest. ‘No.’ She pressed a fingertip to his lips. ‘Please don’t make it even worse. It is better for me to go with the knowledge that we still care about each other. That’s something we can take with us wherever we go.’
His hands cupped her face as he leant in and kissed her with such gentleness and tenderness that she almost lost her nerve. It was if he was pouring every special memory of their life together into one kiss, and she sank into it with all of her heart.
It was the most wonderful kiss she had ever received, and she knew that she would never forget it.
And then her cell phone rang, and she pulled back and smiled, fighting off the tears as his fingers slid away from her skin, probably for the last time.
‘That’s probably Molly with my transport. She’s arranged for me to spend two days doing field work out of town.’ She paused and tried to form more words, but her mouth and throat were not co-operating. Instead she smiled and brushed her lips against his cheek, and fell into his arms, hugging him, embracing him, eyes pressed tight shut, desperate to capture how his touch felt so that she could remember how it felt to be loved in the cold winter days to come.
Seconds seem to last for as long as the years they had been apart, but finally Kate pushed herself away from his body and stood back on wobbly legs.
‘You are going to make a wonderful King. I love you. And don’t you dare forget that.’
She had done it. She had told him she loved him. And the words had been just as heavy and wooden and as awkward in her mouth as she had imagined they would be. Her pain and regret felt as exposed as if she had ripped open her chest and cut her heart out, then presented it to Simon on a platter crafted from her stubborn pride and sacrifice.
Before she could change her mind, Kate flung her bag over her shoulder, snatched the hotel room door open and ran away from the man she loved so very much. And it broke her heart all over again.
Simon stood on the balcony of his hotel suite until the Jeep carrying Kate away from him was nothing more than a hint of red dust in the air lifted by the old tyres.
Watching her load her bag into the boot and slump dejected into the passenger seat had been one of the hardest things he had done in a long time.
Molly and some of the conference delegates had come out of the hotel to see her off, and she’d waved farewell to them through the open window, smiling at their laughter, but he’d only had to catch a glimpse of her face to see that her heart was breaking as much as his.
Seeing Kate again had reminded him what it felt like to be with someone who knew you and loved you for yourself, despite your faults. And he had plenty of those. Oh, Katie. The only girlfriend he had ever truly loved.
How could he have been so selfish and blind to her needs, to the burdens that she had been carrying back then?
He had been so very, very selfish and self-centred. It was a wonder that she had stuck with him at all. And now she was gone.
He had to do something—anything—so he paced back and forth across the room before picking up the dossier he had worked on with Kate. On the front cover was a photograph Paul had taken of the new schoolroom they had built in his village. In the picture the children were crowded around Simon, chatting and eager for his attention. Their energy and enthusiasm seeped out from the image and helped him shed a little of his pain with the memory of the touch of each small hand in his. This was his life, captured in a small photo on the page of an official report.