Strictly Taboo(166)

I wrote him a note telling him I’d be back in a few hours and left it next to the ultrasound. I walked out and told the nurses desk he was sleeping and I’d be back if he asked, and let them know where I’d left his note in case he didn’t see it.

Pulling my phone out, I called my mother and found a dark, empty lobby on another floor in the hospital. Telling her everything that had happened, I started to cry.

“I was so worried mom, I thought I’d get here and he’d be dead or something awful.” I told her.

“He’s going to be okay, I’m glad he wasn’t more seriously injured and it’s definitely a good thing that the girl can’t shoot to save her life. I’m sorry you had to deal with an experience like this. People think being royalty is easy, but we will always have a target on our back, you can’t let it stop you from living your life, but it will make people who are likely to do something stupid focus their attention on us.” She told me, and I understood what she was saying, but for a moment, I wondered if raising a baby around a lifestyle like this was a good idea.

“Mum, do you think it’s safe to have a baby and raise it as royalty if someone might try to harm them?” I asked her quietly, wiping a tear off my cheek.

“I think that because of public scrutiny, your child is safer in a lot of ways. Everyone will know what your kid looks like, predators are less likely to target your children because they wouldn’t get away with it, but on the other hand, you’ll be dealing with other things. It all ends up in a risk or reward ratio that you’ll have to consider and learn to cope with. Rupert was raised as royalty and he turned out okay. You may not have been a princess, but you were raised as an upper class woman, with a title. It’s really not that much different honey.”

“I guess, I am just getting cold feet and seeing my husband to be in the hospital hooked up to machines and seeing that he got shot definitely makes me question the sanity of everything right now,” I muttered and then shook her head. “I love him mom, I do, but I can’t protect him.”

“Honey, it’s not your job to protect him. You just have to trust and have enough faith in life that it will work out. Live, love, laugh. Don’t focus on things you can’t control, focus on the good things and learn to embrace whatever life throws at you.” My mother gave me advice, and I understood her words, but sometimes it wasn’t so easy to accept things like seeing the man you love be shot.

“I’m going to go back down and see him soon mum, is there anything you want me to tell him for you?” I asked her, changing the subject now that I was calmer. At the very least, she’d helped me regain some emotional composure with our talk.

“Yes, tell him if he’s too sore to get married on Saturday, I’m going to be grumpy with him.” My mother told me and then laughed, I wasn’t sure if she was entirely kidding. My mom had worked hard to make the wedding go smoothly to the way Rupert had wanted it to happen.

“Okay, I’ll pass the message along,” I told her and then hung up the phone. Slipping it into my pocket, I headed back to the fourth floor to find his room and see if he’d woken back up yet.

Rupert was awake when I got there and I walked over to him and hugged him again, being more careful this time not to hurt his shoulder.

“My mum says hi,” I squeezed his hand and kissed his cheek. “She also said you’d better be able to have the wedding or she’ll be mad at you.”

Rupert laughed and then winced. “There’s nothing short of being dead that would keep me from marrying you Lara, so tell your mother not to worry.”

“You scared me,” I told him. “Seeing you in a hospital bed like this, it terrified me. Please don’t do this to me again.”

“I’ll do my best not to get shot again, that shit hurts,” Rupert said and reached out and brought my knuckles to his lips. He pressed a gentle kiss to my knuckles and then rubbed his cheek against them.

A few minutes later the nurse came back in with the doctor to go over everything with Rupert and talk about when he could be discharged. I sighed in relief when they told me they planned on letting him go home in the morning as long as he was stable through the night. I could live with that.





Chapter 5

Rupert had been out of the hospital for a couple of days now, and he was moving around okay. His shoulder was still bothering him a lot, but I tried not to baby him or comment to much. He didn’t like being reminded he was injured. I was being laced up in my wedding gown, today was our wedding. We were getting married out on the lawn behind the palace. It was a big beautiful affair with lots of political parties invited. I really didn’t know any of them and part of me wished we could have just done a small, intimate family event. But when you marry royalty, you often suck it up and do things for the public. In this case, our wedding was also a political event.