“Do.”
This doesn’t change what has to happen. Xavier should have told her this was going to happen. How dare he use her up last night, thinking this would be okay.
* * *
Trella woke thick-headed from a heavy nap to hear Xavier’s hushed voice, “Give him a bottle if he needs it.” A door closed.
She jackknifed to sit up and shot a look to the travel cot she’d had Gerta bring down from the nursery. It was empty.
Sucking in enough breath for a scream, she leapt from the bed and stumbled into the lounge, wearing only the oversized T-shirt she’d thrown on for sleep. Xavier was there, but no one else. No Gerta, no Adona, no Tyrol.
“Oh, hell no,” she informed and rushed after her son.
“Trella.” He caught her arm and reaction kicked in. She used the momentum to round on him, heel of her hand aimed straight for his nose.
He deflected, tried to catch her into a hold, but she expertly twirled out and broke his grip, the movements ingrained in her muscles from years of practice. Knocking a lamp in his direction to force him to leap back, she backed up too, out of his reach, neatly balancing on the balls of her feet, breathing in hisses as she gauged the distance between him and the door and how she would take him out in order to get there.
“I didn’t know,” he growled, holding himself in ready stance. “Calm down.”
“Bring him back.” She reached for a slender vase and flicked its three tall irises at his feet, spattering water on the bottoms of his pant legs, then tested the heft of the blown glass as a weapon.
“You’re going back to the room you were in, next to mine. I sent him up because he needs a bath. I stayed to tell you that and keep you from throwing a righteous fit when you woke and saw he was gone. Calm the hell down.”
“You should have told me last night this could happen. This, by the way, is how you put up a fight.” She shook the vase at him, mocking his lame attempt to turn her away last night.
“This was always going to happen!” He pointed at the door. “If not today, soon enough. In a few weeks, you’ll move out of the palace and he’ll come and go between us. That is reality, Trella. I have damned well made that clear to you. More than once. You came to my room, last night, knowing that. Don’t pretend this is news.”
She threw the vase at the fireplace so it shattered and droplets of water made the dancing flames sputter and crackle. Then she stared at the destruction, chest heaving.
“Is this bringing on an attack?”
“Don’t pretend you care if it does.”
“I care,” he bit out. “Why the hell do you think I’m here?” He looked positively tortured as the words escaped him. He wiped his expression away with a stroke of his hand, releasing a heavy sigh.
“I’ve just been raked over the coals for one photo.” He held up his finger. “And because a debate has sprung up online. Team Trella or Team Patrizia. My fault.” He turned his hand to tattoo his chest with his finger. “I promised to undo all of that, as if it’s even possible, and walked back to my room to learn you’d been sent here. Do you know how much furniture I wanted to break? Do you understand what I’m doing, taking you back there? It’s pure weakness!”
No, it wasn’t. That’s not what caring was. He wasn’t ready to hear or believe it, though, and she was too angry and hurt to explain it.
“Why does she hate me so much? Why—?”
He closed his eyes. “I keep trying to tell you. Emotion has nothing to do with it. It can’t. That’s the point.”
“The crown is all that matters.”
“Yes.”
“I hate your crown! I hate that our son will be raised with this same hard-hearted attitude.”
“Hate away. It changes nothing.”
“And you want me to come to your rooms again, anyway.”
“Yes.”
“Even though it won’t change anything, either.”
“Yes.”
Mouth trembling, she knew that, like him, she didn’t have a choice. She would go with him and believe what she believed, that he would change, and one of them was going to lose.
She nodded jerkily, but before she could step forward, he leapt to meet her, not letting her walk through broken glass to get to him. Then he was cupping her cheek, tilting her lips up to the hungry weight of his own. She moaned, knowing what that taste was now. That narcotic that filled her with hope when he kissed her. Love. She was madly, deeply, hopelessly in love with him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“YOU’RE NEGLECTING YOUR DUTIES. The Australian agreements have completely fallen apart.” His grandmother had called him on the carpet before he’d even digested his breakfast.
“Both parliaments have risen for the year. The committees adjourned,” he said.
“Yet I am informed the deadline is the end of the year. If it’s not finalized, we start over in the new year.” She held out a missive.
He took it and quickly gathered how certain opportunistic corporations were manipulating the fine print, trying to push Elazar into a stress position and a renegotiation that would be advantageous to their own interests. She was right. He should have caught on when the meetings had begun experiencing delays two weeks ago.
“This is the first I’m hearing of this,” he muttered.
“Because you’ve been distracted. Dating. Shopping.”
He gritted his teeth. Trella was preparing to move her design house’s head office to Lirona. The fashion industry was waiting with baited breath for her to purchase her property. Real estate and tourism would boom the minute the new fashion district was born. Squiring her to potential locations, ensuring the choice worked as well for Elazar as it did for her, fell right into Xavier’s trade negotiation bailiwick.
His grandmother ought to be thanking Trella, but she only said, “Mario has set up an emergency meeting of the council. You’re expected at ten o’clock. We cannot afford to lose this, Xavier.”
Duty. It was killing him. Quite literally chipping away at his flesh. His belt had had to go in an extra notch and the scale had him four pounds under his usual weight. He had no appetite. Of course, he was on his wife like a stallion with a mare every chance he got. No wonder he was skin and bones.
Bristling with culpability, he returned to his apartment. He would have to hurry to make the meeting, but he was more aware of the clock ticking down on his marriage.
In a few days it would be Christmas, his one and only with his son’s mother. Then their marriage would melt away like snow under rain. Gone, gone, gone.
He nodded at Vincente to leave his jacket on the bed and dismissed him, then he went through to Trella’s room, where he slept every night with her naked body resting against his. They tried to keep a low profile but were fooling no one, except possibly themselves. Despite the intensity and excruciating pleasure and profound satisfaction they gave each other, they had to keep rising and moving apart.
Soon that would be permanent.
Not yet. His hand closed in a tense fist. He wasn’t ready.
“I have to run to a meeting—” he began as he entered.
She sniffed and turned with surprise. She had showered while he’d been to see the Queen and wore only a slip. She was on the phone.
“Esta bien, Mama. Te amo,” she finished and signed off, then swiped her cheek.
His heart lurched. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She turned away for a tissue. “Ramon and Isidora arrived safely at Sus Brazos. Gili and Kasim will be there tomorrow.”
And this was her first year apart from them. She was homesick. She didn’t have to say it. He watched her wither daily, saying nothing because they both left many things unsaid, aware their days with each other were numbered. They didn’t want to waste them with animosity and problems they couldn’t solve.
Guilt assailed him, though. He was stealing time with her. Neglecting his duties while he neglected her needs. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “If you want to spend Christmas with them, you should.”
“With Tyrol?” She brightened.
“Bella.” He hated saying no to her, but it echoed in his voice. “You’re upset. You miss them.” She was going to need them more than ever soon.
“I can’t leave him! He’s still feeding in the night. I would miss him.” She waved in the direction of the nursery, where a nanny took him for a bath every morning while they ate breakfast and started their day. She softened her tone, her expression so vulnerable she put an ache in his chest. “You could come.”
You’re neglecting your duties.
“No, I can’t.” This was it, he realized. The fracture that had begun working its way through him on their wedding day began to cleave open, tearing him apart. But he had no choice. “The Deunoros spend Christmas here.”
“And I’m not a Deunoro. Why should he spend Christmas with her? She hasn’t even looked at him since—”
“Leave it.”
She buttoned her lip, but the glare she sent dropped the room temperature lower than it had been on the sleeting day of Tyrol’s christening.
He couldn’t let her bring it up because he was ashamed of his grandmother’s behavior. Rather than the traditional pomp of open-topped carriages and a public stroll with the future monarch back to the palace, they’d all traveled by car. His grandmother had come in her own, arriving last and leaving first. Exactly one photo had been taken of Queen Julia standing with her grandson at her side and her great-grandson in his bassinet. Trella had been left out of the picture.