A more practical woman than most, he had hopes there would be no awkward “breakup” scene.
* * *
“Yes, Nana, I think tonight’s the night,” Gillian said into the phone mashed to her ear with her shoulder as she hopped around the room trying to get her shoes on.
“Has he told you he loved you yet?” Evelyn Harris, Gillian’s nana and the woman who had raised her, asked.
“No.”
“Your grandfather has told me every night before we go to sleep for the last forty-eight years that he loves me.”
“I know, Nana.” But Maks was different.
He held his emotions in check like it was a royal imperative, and ever the dutiful prince, he obeyed. They came out when he was making love, though. After a fashion.
Maks made love with the single-minded intensity of a man who was thinking of nothing else but pleasing and getting lost in the woman who shared his bed.
For the past seven months, that woman had been Gillian.
They’d dated a month before he took her to bed the first time. She’d found that odd at the time, considering his reputation, but later she’d realized that, as unbelievable as it might seem, Maks was looking for more from her than a casual bed partner.
And while she’d been more thrilled than shocked, she’d been stunned all the same.
She didn’t belong in his circle. She was not rich, famous, or powerful, but Gillian’s father still liked to see her when he was in town. That inevitably meant going to some function or other on his arm. He couldn’t dedicate time simply to visiting her, so he included Gillian in his schedule.
As the famous news correspondent’s unremarkable daughter, Gillian had attended more than her fair share of diplomatic and high society events.
No one had been more shocked than she when it turned out that Crown Prince Maksim Yurkovich of Volyarus seemed to like unremarkable. Several comments made by him, and a couple by his mother on the few occasions Gillian had met the queen, had made it clear that royalty did not look for notoriety when choosing a mate.
Though regardless, she would have thought Maks would be looking for someone with more personal cache than Gillian to bring into the royal family. Apparently Volyarussians did not have the same requirements for pedigree in a mate than other royal families of the world.
And there couldn’t be anyone less notorious than the small-town girl from Alaska who made her living as what her father termed a “chocolate-box” photographer.
There was nothing objectionable, or even questionable in Gillian’s past. Her parents hadn’t stayed together and neither had been interested in raising her, but they’d entered into a short businesslike marriage prior to her birth and hadn’t filed for divorce until a year after.
“I may as well hang up now, your mind is clearly in the clouds again, child,” Nana said over the phone line.
Gillian shoved her blond hair behind her ear and adjusted the phone. “I’m sorry, Nana. I didn’t mean to—”
“I know. You get to thinking about Maks and the rest of your brain shuts off, especially the part attached to your ears.”
“It’s not that bad.”
Her grandmother’s snort said the older woman did not agree. “You make that boy tell you that he loves you before you agree to be his wife.”#p#分页标题#e#
“He’s hardly a boy, Nana.” Gillian had made the same protest before, but to little effect.
“I’m seventy-five years old, Gillian. He’s a boy to me.”
“Some people never say those words,” Gillian pointed out, returning to the subject she knew her grandmother considered most important.
“Some people have less sense than God gave a gnat then.”
“Rich doesn’t say it, but he loves me.” Even as she said the words, Gillian knew she wasn’t actually certain that they were true.
Her father wasn’t an affectionate or demonstrative man. Rich Harris had made little more than a moderate effort to be part of her life, but he’d also been the one to make sure she had two people to raise her who loved and cared for her. The two dear people who had raised him.
“Your daddy is an idiot, no matter what those Pulitzer Prize people say.”
Gillian laughed, knowing her grandmother didn’t mean the words. Nana was hugely proud of her world famous son and still held out the hope that one day he would take on the role of Gillian’s father.
That ship had sailed a long time ago, but Gillian would never say so to the older woman.
She owed too much to Nana to hurt her in any way. “Don’t you let him hear you say that. He’ll take back the motor home.”