Married for the Sheikh's Duty(33)

“I never lied to you,” he said, his dark eyes burning. “You created the story you wanted to believe.”

She let out a feral growl and rushed past him, heading out the door as quickly as she could, feeling like a disgraced hooker walking out of his hotel room in the middle of the night, wearing high heels and a beautiful dress that she was going to have to burn now.

It wasn’t until she was outside, until the cold wrapped itself around her, overtaking her, that she fell apart. Completely, utterly. She sank to her knees in the snow, sobbing until her throat hurt.

It felt like her life was over. And right now, she did not have it in her to put herself back together.


Three months later

I’m sorry, Bailey. But I can’t have a waitress falling asleep in the kitchen in the middle of her shift. Especially not a fat waitress.

Her boss’s voice played over and over in her head as she trudged back to her apartment. She had been right, that night three months ago when Raphael had broken things off with her. Her life pretty much felt like it was over.

She was so far behind in her classes it didn’t look like she had the credits she needed to graduate, she didn’t have a job anymore and she was so sick and tired she barely cared about either.

Now she was going to have to tell Samantha that she couldn’t make rent. Well, this was the crowning achievement on the past months’ humiliations, really. She had become everything she had felt so far above for most of her life.

When she had left home, left town, she had blistered her mother’s ears with her rant about how she was off to make a better life for herself. One that wouldn’t be all about men and an intense dedication to being a victim.

She’d gotten the hell out of metaphorical Dodge. Leaving behind that life of destitution. Where she’d been nothing but unwanted. Nothing but resented, and she’d vowed to do better.

She’d been wise to men, and what they might say to get into your pants, from the time she was way too young to know any such thing. Because she’d heard her mother rant at length on the subject after whatever boyfriend had broken up with her. As a result she had imagined herself as inoculated against such things. Had imagined that she was immune to that kind of behavior.

The truth of it was, she simply hadn’t met a man who made her crazy enough. Then she met Raphael. And now, here she was, single, out of a job and pregnant. And all at the age of twenty-two.

She was the cycle. The cycle that she had so proudly and grandly told herself she wouldn’t perpetuate. Now here she was. Perpetuating. She was a statistic. A sad statistic wandering around in the chilly, early spring air with nowhere in particular to go.

She stopped, turning to face the small general store across the street. Candy. She needed candy. Since she couldn’t have wine. Damn pregnancy.

She ducked into the store and made her way to the nearest candy aisle, stopping abruptly when her eye caught the tabloid just above the chocolate bar her hand hovered over.

The man on the cover looked...far too familiar.

Prince Raphael DeSantis jilted by Italian heiress Allegra Valenti just weeks before royal wedding!

“What the actual hell?” The shoppers around her startled when she all but shouted the words, but she didn’t care. She reached out and grabbed the magazine, flipping through it with shaking fingers.

Raphael. Prince Raphael.

She flipped the pages until she saw it. The article about the scandal that was apparently rocking the principality of Santa Firenze, a tiny dot on the map of Europe. One she’d never even heard of.

It was him. There was no mistaking it. With his arresting good looks, more like a god than a man, and his incredible body...a body they had on show in the article, thanks to a few creeper beach pics. Those broad shoulders, washboard abs and lean hips...

She knew that body better than she knew her own.

“Oh, my...” She reached into her purse and pulled out a stack of tip money, throwing a ten down onto the counter. “Keep the change.” She ran out with the candy bar and the magazine, her entire body starting to shake.

What Twilight Zone episode had she stumbled into? What kind of a joke was this?

By the time she got back to her apartment she felt like she was going to be sick all over the floor. And, given the theme of the last couple of months, she wouldn’t be surprised if she did. Attempting to keep food down was sometimes a superhuman feat. Not that you could tell by her expanding waistline. Which her ex-boss had made clear to point out along with the firing.

She was tragic. So tragic that all she wanted to do was throw herself down on the bed and sleep for the rest of the day.

She made her way into the living room, where Samantha was sitting, looking wide-eyed.

“Are you okay?” Bailey asked, mostly to stave off the question of whether or not she was.

“You have a visitor,” her roommate responded.

“Who?” she asked, feeling like the only possible option was that it was someone from the IRS telling her she owed back taxes, or maybe a police officer letting her know she had a warrant for a parking ticket she didn’t know she had...something awful. Because that was the theme of the day. The theme of the past few months, really.

“He’s here,” Samantha said, sounding dazed.

There could only be one he. There was only one he that would make a woman’s voice sound like that. Only one man Bailey had ever met who could render a woman completely stunned by his very presence.

And, as Bailey was processing that bit of information, she heard shoes on the hardwood floor and looked up, up into the dark eyes of Prince Raphael DeSantis just as he exited her bedroom.

He was here. In her crappy little apartment. Looking as out of place as a lion among house cats.

She wrapped her coat more tightly around herself, doing her best to conceal her figure. To hide the bump that she knew was pretty plainly visible without her woolen shield.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. She realized she was also still holding the tabloid with his face on it. She looked down at the magazine. Then back up at him. “What are you doing here?” she repeated.

“I came to tell you that I wanted to start seeing you again,” he said.

“Oh, please.” This exclamation came from her roommate, who had watched Bailey weep into her pillow for weeks now.

“What she said,” Bailey affirmed, crossing her arms even more tightly beneath her chest.

“Could we have a moment?” He directed the question at Samantha, then, without waiting for a response, grabbed hold of Bailey’s arm and guided her back into her bedroom. He closed the door, enclosing them both in the space.

And for a moment, she was completely lost in him. In his strength, in his very presence, which reached to every corner of the room, and around her. She wanted to lean into him. To rest her head against the solid wall of his chest and release hold of all of the heartbreak, fear and stress she had been enduring for the past few months.

She just wanted to fall into his arms and lose it all. Lose herself.

But that was impossible. He was...he was a liar. On so many more levels than she had realized.

“My engagement is off,” he said, as though she were not holding a magazine in her hand proclaiming exactly that. “And, given that, I see no reason why the two of us can’t resume our liaison.”

“Our...liaison. The one where you come and visit me every couple of months for sex?”

“Bailey,” he said, his tone exceedingly hard done by. It made her want to punch him. “I have a certain life, certain expectations, and...”

“These expectations?” She turned the tabloid around, thrusting it toward him. “You’re a prince? What strange fairy tale did I fall into, Raphael? You said you were a pharmaceutical rep.”

“You said I was a pharmaceutical rep, Bailey,” he said. “Don’t you remember?”

“I...” She remembered everything about the night she met him. The way that her world had stopped completely when their eyes had met. How out of place he looked in the sleazy diner that she worked at, Sweater Bunnies, where the waitresses all wore sweaters with plunging necklines and short shorts, with glittering tights and high heels.

His plane was delayed because of the weather. He had come into town on business. They had ended up talking. And then she had done something she had never done before in her life. She went home with him.

They didn’t have sex. Not that first night. But he had kissed her, and she had...well, she’d learned an entirely new definition for the word want. Her entire body had caught fire with the touch of his lips, the touch of his hands. They had been talking one moment, and then the next, he had her down on the bed.

“I’m a virgin,” she said.

“I don’t need you to be,” he responded, his voice rough, his hands tangled in her hair. “We don’t have to play that game. Unless you want to.”

“No,” she said, “I really am. Like, a really, real virgin. Who has never done anything like this before, ever.”

He sat up. “Never?”

“Never. But, I like you. And...maybe if the weather is bad tomorrow...”

“You want to wait, but you might be ready tomorrow?”

“I don’t know.”

“We’ll wait,” he said, kissing her cheek.

And he hadn’t thrown her out. Instead, he had poured her a glass of soda and then continued to talk to her.