Читать книгу The Wedding Party And Holiday Escapes Ultimate Collection - Кейт Хьюит, Aimee Carson - Страница 103

CHAPTER TEN

SANDRO STARED UNSEEINGLY down at the various letters he’d been given by his secretary to sign. The words blurred in front of him and wearily he rubbed his eyes. He’d been working in his study all day, reviewing fiscal plans and budget cuts in preparation for a meeting with his cabinet tomorrow.

He could see Leo’s mark on everything he read, from the proposal to extend broadband to most of the country—something his brother felt passionately about, just as he did—to the necessary budget cuts in the palace. Leo clearly would rather go without a few luxuries than cut anything that affected his people.

He would have made a good king, Sandro thought, not for the first time. If the press hadn’t uncovered the whole marriage masquerade debacle, his brother would have been a great king. And he would have been king, because Sandro would have stayed in California. He wouldn’t have come back. Wouldn’t have married Liana.

Wouldn’t have had any of it.

Sighing, he rubbed his temples, felt the beginnings of a headache.

A quick knock sounded and then Leo opened the door, closing it behind him.

‘I’m heading home, but I just wanted to make sure you didn’t need me for anything?’

‘No, I think I’m ready for tomorrow.’ He tapped the papers in front of him. ‘I can see you’ve done a lot of good work here, Leo.’

Leo shrugged. ‘Just doing my job.’

Sandro nodded, even as he felt that tension and awful uncertainty ratchet up inside him. And it had been Leo’s job, for fifteen years. A hell of a long time. ‘You did it well.’

‘Thank you,’ Leo answered, and Sandro heard the repressive note in his brother’s voice, felt a pang of sorrow. Once, they’d been close, two small boys banding together. Now he felt a distance yawn between them and he had no idea how to close it.

He stared down at the papers again, wished he knew the words to say, and had the courage to say.

‘Sandro?’ Leo asked for a moment. ‘Is everything all right...between you and Liana?’

‘Between me and Liana?’ Sandro’s voice came out sharp. ‘Why do you ask?’

Leo shrugged. ‘Because I know you married for convenience, and yet I’ve seen the way you look at each other. Something’s going on.’

‘We’re married, Leo. Of course something is going on.’

‘Do you love her?’

Sandro felt his throat go tight. ‘That’s between Liana and me, isn’t it?’

‘Sorry. I don’t mean to be nosy.’ Leo sighed. ‘I just want you to be happy.’

‘And since you’ve just fallen in love you want everyone else to as well.’

‘Something like that, I suppose.’

‘Don’t worry about Liana and me, Leo. We’re fine.’ Sandro spoke with a firmness he didn’t really feel, because they weren’t fine. Not exactly. Ever since returning to Maldinia, he’d felt the emotional distance yawn between them. Physically things were amazing, exciting. But emotionally? He might have been honest and vulnerable and all that in California, but here? Where the memories mocked him? When the fear that he didn’t deserve any of this, couldn’t live up to it, suffocated him?

No, not so emotionally available now. Here. Even if, in a moment of weakness, he’d told her he loved her.

‘Okay,’ Leo said after a moment. ‘Well. Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight.’

It was early evening and a purple twilight was settling over the palace and its gardens as Sandro left his study a few minutes after Leo. He and Liana had a dinner engagement that evening, something official and most likely boring at the Italian embassy.

But before he got ready for it, he wanted to see Liana. Talk to her...although he had no idea what he was going to say.

He found her in the pretty, feminine little room she used as her own study, going over her schedule with her private secretary. Sandro watched them for a moment, two heads bent together, smiling and chatting as they reviewed certain points.

Liana was in her element, and that was brought home to him no more so than when she looked up and smiled her welcome.

‘I’ve just been going over my schedule—it looks like a very busy week!’

‘Does it?’ The secretary, Christina, excused herself, and Sandro closed the door, leaning against it. ‘So what are you doing?’

‘Well...’ Liana glanced down at the typewritten sheet. ‘On Monday I’m visiting the paediatric ward of the hospital here in Averne. Tuesday is a lunch for primary caregivers of disabled and elderly. Wednesday I’m meeting with a primary school, and Thursday I’m officially opening a new playground in the city’s public gardens.’ She looked up, eyes sparkling. ‘I know I’m not inventing a cure for cancer or anything, but I like feeling so useful.’

‘Surely you felt useful before, when you worked for Hands To Help.’

‘Yes, I did,’ Liana answered after a moment. ‘Of course I did. But sometimes...’ She trailed off, and, intrigued, Sandro stepped closer.

‘Sometimes?’

Liana gave a little shrug. ‘Sometimes it hurt, working there. It reminded me of—of my sister.’

‘Do you miss her?’ he asked quietly and she blinked rapidly, needlessly straightening the papers in front of her.

‘Every day.’

‘It must be hard. I didn’t think many people actually died from epilepsy.’

‘They don’t.’

‘So Chiara was just one of the unlucky ones?’

And for some reason this remark made her stiffen as if she’d suddenly turned to wood. ‘Yes,’ she said, and her voice was toneless. ‘She was unlucky.’

Sandro stared at her, saw how the happiness and excitement had drained from her, and felt guilt needle him. Damn it, he’d done that. He shouldn’t have asked those questions, and yet he’d just been trying to get to know her all over again. Get closer.

Yet you keep your secrets to yourself.

‘I’m sorry I’ve been a bit—distant lately,’ he said abruptly, and Liana looked up, startled.

‘At least you noticed.’

‘And you have too, I assume?’

‘Yes.’ Her voice was soft, sad. ‘I know we’ve been— Well, the nights have been—’ She laughed a little, shook her head. ‘You know what I mean.’

‘I certainly do.’

‘But we haven’t talked, really. Not since California.’

Not since they’d sat across from each other on his bed, naked not just with their bodies but with their souls. He sighed. ‘Returning to this palace always brings back some bad memories for me. It’s hard to combat them.’

‘What memories, Sandro?’

He dragged his hand across his eyes as words burned in his chest, caught in his throat. How much to admit? To confess? ‘A lot of memories.’ She just waited, and he dropped his hand. ‘Memories of my father always telling me how he was counting on me,’ he said, his voice expressionless now. ‘Counting on me to be a good king. Just like him.’

‘Just like him?’ Liana repeated softly, a slight frown curving her mouth downwards. She knew, just as the whole world did, that his father hadn’t been a good king at all. He’d been dissolute, uninterested in his people, a spendthrift, a scoundrel, an arrogant and adulterous ass.

And Sandro had idolised him.

‘He was my hero, growing up,’ he said, and then laughed. ‘Which sounds ridiculous, because you know as well as I do there was nothing heroic about him.’

‘But you were a child.’

‘I believed that until I was eighteen.’ He winced just saying it aloud. ‘I insisted on believing it, even when boys at boarding school taunted me with the truth, even when I saw the newspaper headlines blaring about his affairs, his reckless spending.’ He shook his head. ‘I convinced myself they were jealous or just stirring up trouble. I insisted on believing he was a good man, even when everything showed me otherwise.’

‘That’s not something to be ashamed of, Sandro,’ Liana said quietly. ‘Believing the best of someone, someone you love.’

‘But that’s it, isn’t it? Because I was so desperate to love him, and believe he loved me back. I wanted to impress him with how good I could be—as good as he was. I wanted to believe the reason I hardly ever saw him was because he was so busy with his important duties, not because he didn’t give a damn. Not because he’d rather screw and spend his way through Europe than spend one unnecessary moment with his son.’ He broke off, nearly panting, the old rage and hurt coursing through him so hard and fast he felt as if he couldn’t breathe.

And he felt so ashamed—ashamed that it still made him angry, still hurt. Ashamed that Liana knew.

She rose from her desk and he stiffened as she put her arms around him, drew his head to her shoulder as if he was still that desperate, deluded, and disappointed child.

And maybe he was.

‘Oh, Sandro.’ She was silent for a moment, stroking his hair, and he closed his eyes, revelling in her acceptance, her comfort even as he acknowledged that he didn’t deserve it. ‘What was the final straw, then?’ she asked and he stiffened.

‘The final—’

‘What was the thing that made you leave?’

He drew a shuddering breath. ‘I found out the truth about him when I was eighteen, at university. It was the first time I’d really had any freedom, and everything about it made me start to wonder. Doubt.’

She nodded slowly. ‘I know how that feels.’

‘And then one afternoon my father’s private secretary called me up and asked me to issue a statement that he’d been visiting me that week when he hadn’t. It didn’t make any sense to me, but I did it. I started really doubting then, though, and the next time I was home I asked my father why he’d wanted me to do that.’ He was silent for a moment, recalling the look of impatience on his father’s face. ‘He’d been with a mistress, some pretty young thing my mother was annoyed about, and he knew there would be a big media fuss if the tabloids got wind of it. He told me all of this so matter-of-factly, without so much as a flicker of guilt or remorse, and I suppose that’s when the scales really fell from my eyes.’ Sandro let out a long, weary sigh. ‘But I didn’t actually leave until three years later. Three years of going along with it all, corroborating his stupid stories, lying to the press, to him, to myself, about everything.’

Liana’s gaze was wide and dark. ‘And then?’

‘And then...’ He’d told more to this woman than he had to anyone else, and yet he still felt reluctant to reveal all. Reveal himself, and his own weaknesses. ‘And then I just couldn’t take it anymore. I hated who I’d become. So I told him I was renouncing my inheritance, that I wanted to start my own business and live my own life.’ It sounded so selfish, even now, after all these years. ‘The funny thing is,’ Sandro made himself continue, ‘I didn’t really mean it.’

He saw surprise flash across Liana’s face. ‘You didn’t?’

‘No, I was just—testing him, I suppose. Pushing him. Because I expected him to beg me to stay, admit he loved me and it was all a mistake and— I don’t even know.’ He let out a ragged huff of laughter as he raked his hand through his hair. ‘How stupid can you be, eh?’

‘I don’t call that stupid,’ Liana said quietly. ‘Desperate, maybe.’

‘Fine. I was desperate. Desperate and deluded right to the end, because of course he didn’t do any of that. He just laughed in my face and told me to go right ahead. He had another son who would do just as well.’

And so he’d gone, proud and defiant and so desperately hurting. He’d gone, and he’d stayed away for fifteen years, only to come back because he’d thought his father had finally seen the light. Would finally admit he was sorry, he’d been wrong, he really did love him.

Blah. Blah. Blah. None of that, of course, had happened. But he’d told Liana enough, and he didn’t feel like admitting to that.

‘I’m sorry,’ Liana whispered, and brushed a kiss across his lips. ‘For all of it.’

‘So am I.’ He kissed her back, needing her touch, her sweetness. Needing to forget all the hurt and anger and disappointment he’d just raked up with his words.

And she did make him forget it; in Liana’s arms he didn’t feel like the sad, needy boy desperate for love. He didn’t feel like a man racked by remorse and guilt for turning his back on his duty. He didn’t feel like a king who didn’t deserve his crown.

He just felt like a man, a man this amazing, wonderful, vibrant woman loved.

And that was all he wanted to be.

* * *

That night Liana lay in bed with Sandro’s arm stretched out across her stomach and felt as if the first of the past’s ghosts had been banished.

But what about hers?

She recalled Sandro’s innocent question, so gently posed. So Chiara was just one of the unlucky ones?

She hadn’t told Sandro the truth about that. About her. Chiara had been unlucky because she’d had a sister who had gone blank and still and unmoving when she’d needed her most. She’d had Liana.

And while part of her craved to tell Sandro the truth, to have him know and accept her wholeheartedly, the rest of her was too afraid because there were no guarantees. No promises that Sandro would accept her, would love her, if he knew how badly she’d failed someone she’d loved.

Her parents hadn’t. Her father hadn’t spoken to her for months after Chiara’s death; even now he never quite looked at her when they talked. And he never showed her any affection. They’d never been the most demonstrative family—Chiara had cornered the market on that—but since her little sister’s death her father hadn’t touched her at all. Not one kiss or hug or even brush of the hand.

And could she really blame him?

She was a hypocrite, Liana knew, for wanting Sandro’s secrets, his pain and shame and fear, and keeping all of hers back. If she’d been able to accept and love him, why couldn’t he do the same for her?

Because your secrets are worse, your sins greater.

And yet not telling him—keeping that essential part of her back—felt like a cancer gnawing at all of her certainties, eating her heart.

How could she keep something so crucial from him?