Читать книгу The Prince's Cinderella Bride - Amalie Berlin - Страница 13

CHAPTER FOUR

STILL MARRIED.

The words rattled around in Quinn’s head, as they’d been doing since he’d seen the morning news.

Sitting across from his ranting brother on the naughty schoolboy side of the King’s desk at least made the news feel real, if still unpleasant. He’d never inspired his brother to rant before. Father, Mother, even Grandmother, God rest them. The King never ranted, though that sad, disapproving shake of his head always hit harder.

But, as he watched his brother pace and growl at him, he fully realized how things had changed.

Grandfather was dying. Philip now worried about these things, and felt as if he’d inherited a problem.

Quinn had always done his best to care when he was being lectured, but he never really had. Things always worked out, somehow.

Well, except for his marriage.

His day had started with a phone call and a number of emails, all directing him to programs and pages with the kind of annoying news reports they’d always lobbed at Anais, whether she deserved them or not.

They had always been big on inappropriate sex and full of tales of devious female conniving. And big on underestimating him—though they weren’t wrong about him having wildly inappropriate...

Who was he kidding?

It was appropriate.

It felt appropriate.

It felt like a damn lightning bolt—illuminating to the point of scorching.

One enterprising journalist had caught a picture of them together and had gone off to investigate the court records of their divorce. Although apparently there were no court records. It must be a mix-up. It had to be a mix-up.

“Are you listening, Quinn?”

“Yeah, I hear you. You’re angry. You don’t know how it could have happened. I wish I had the answer for you.”

Philip sat back down and stared hard at the photo of Quinn and Anais. “What’s she wearing?”

“Workout clothes. She...runs. Or maybe boxes. I don’t know. She works at the rehabilitation facility. She probably exercises all the time. It wasn’t some kind of cheap ploy to get my attention.”

Even though it had gotten his attention, or just focused his attention.

“When did you start defending her? You never...”

“You never attacked like this before. I know you’re stressed out, but she literally did nothing wrong.” Nothing that was caught on camera, he prayed. “She’d been working out when I left Ben for the evening, and since she wanted to talk to me about his care, I went to speak with her. The documents she’s handing me in that photo are something to do with the medical care. I haven’t read them yet.”