Читать книгу The Royals Collection - Ким Лоренс, Rebecca Winters - Страница 55
ОглавлениеDARKNESS SURROUNDED CHANEL as she stood on the balcony overlooking the now-silent grounds of the palace. The reception was long over, the last guest’s car having left the drive thirty minutes before.
Temperatures had dropped since that morning and she shivered in the cold air, but she did not go back inside.
Before leaving her to read over the will and relevant places in Bartholomew Tanner’s diaries the queen had marked for Chanel, Oxana had told her that her favorite place for solitude was this balcony.
“The bedrooms do not have security cameras in them, but they do have infrared monitoring. The public rooms and hallways are all covered with video feed, though. The only two places in the palace where you can relax unmonitored in any way are the public address balcony and the one outside Fedir’s rooms.”
“Isn’t that a security risk?” Chanel had asked.
But Oxana had shaken her head. “The walls and every approach are covered.”
Which meant that Demyan would eventually find her because Chanel’s path to the balcony would have been tracked by video monitoring once she left the secret passageway.
She could have left the palace completely. Chanel was a resourceful woman and there had been dozens of cars departing the grounds over the past few hours.
But she wasn’t a coward and she’d never hidden from the truth, no matter how much it might hurt to face.
What that truth was, however, wasn’t entirely clear. Not after reading the will. Not after remembering Demyan’s words in the carriage that morning.
Not after having Oxana tell Chanel exactly what promise she’d extracted from her son over the love thing.
Not until Chanel asked Demyan the only question that really mattered.
“Chanel.”
She turned at the sound of her name on Demyan’s lips.
He stood framed by the light from the hall. He reached and flipped a switch. More golden light flooded the balcony.
“Turn it off,” she said, angling her head away so he could not see the damage tears had done on even the indelible makeup job her mother’s professional artist had applied.
“No. We do not need more shadows in our relationship.”
She swung back to face him head-on, anger making her muscles rigid with tension. “The shadows are all you.”
He nodded, his expression as tortured as she felt, if she could believe the evidence of her eyes.
She wasn’t sure she trusted her own perceptions at all, though, not after how easily he’d taken her in. However, she didn’t think he could fake the parchment-pale of his complexion, the way his black pupils nearly swallowed the espresso irises or the way he breathed in what she would consider panicked gasps in anyone else.
“That day in my lab. It was planned.”
“I needed to meet you. You are not a social person.”
“So Yurkovich Tanner donated five million dollars to my department for research. That’s an expensive introduction.” Though nothing in comparison to what the Yurkovich fortune stood to lose if she had made her claim on the Tanner shares in the company.
“It also ensured you were predisposed to look on me favorably.”
“Your idea, or the king’s?”
“Does it matter?”
“No.”
“You’ve read the will.”
“Oxana told you.”
“I saw you go into the personal archives library on the video monitor feedback.”
“Oh.”
“I spent two hours watching the tapes, trying to find you.”
“We used the secret passages.”
“Yes. You only showed up for brief periods on the video monitors and there were too many extra people in the palace to track you with the infrared body counter and placement.”
“Poor you.”
“Cha...” Her name choked off and he stepped forward, stumbling, though she knew the stone floor was smooth with no hindrances.
“You never needed your glasses.” For anything.
He stopped a couple of feet from her. “I told you that.”
“But I thought you needed them as an emotional crutch.”
“I do not use crutches.”
“No. A man without emotions doesn’t need crutches for them, does he?”
“I am human, damn it, not a puppet. I have emotions.”
“I bet it was the king’s idea to approach me looking like a corporate geek to match my science-nerd personality.”
“He believed I would be too intimidating in my usual way.”
“That man, the corporate shark, he’s part of you.”
“Yes.”
“But he’s not all of you.”
“I thought he was.”
“Until when?” she pushed.
“Until I met you.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I’ve never meant anything more.”
“You lied to me.”
“I am ruthless when it comes to protecting my country and those I love.”
“I noticed.”
“There is little hope that will change.”
“No. It’s part of your nature. You would have made a very good Cossack.”
“We still have the elite in our army. As tradition dictates, I spent two years training with them before going to university.”
“Wasn’t that Prince Maksim’s job?”
“He wasn’t the oldest son to the king.”
“But he is heir to the throne.”
“Yes.”
“Does that bother you?”
“No. I hate politics.”
“I hate being deceived.”
“I will not do it again.”
“Can you really promise that, with your ruthless nature?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I think you do.”
If anything, his face paled further. “Don’t, Chanel.”
“Don’t what? Make you admit your vulnerabilities. If you have any, that is.”
“I do.”
“I’m not stupid by any stretch, you know. Legalese may not be science speak, but I understand it well enough.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. Bartholomew Tanner’s will is unambiguous. My marriage to you negated all claim I, or any of my children, had to Yurkovich Tanner.”
Demyan nodded.
“The prenuptial didn’t need to spell that out at all.”
“No.”
“You had that paragraph added as a kind of warning to me, didn’t you?”
He shrugged.
“You also made sure I would be taken care of financially despite the fact that legally I would have no way of pursuing any monetary interests in the future.”
“You are my wife. I wanted you provided for.”
“I bet the king just loved the terms of the prenup.”
“He agreed to them.”
She was sure there was a story there, but right now she wasn’t interested in hearing it. “You came after me with the intention of securing Volyarussian economic stability, no matter the cost.”
“Yes.” The word sounded torn out of him.
“You could have just asked me to sign the shares over and I would have done it. Especially after reading my grandfather’s diaries.”
“His diaries?”
“He spelled out his intention of leaving the shares to the people of Volyarus, but at first he was still holding out hope your great-uncle would marry my great-grandmother, then he got his hopes set on the next generation. He died before he could try to make that alliance happen.”
“I am aware.”
“What you didn’t know was that he’d written my great-grandmother and told her that he planned to leave his interest in Yurkovich Tanner to the Volyarussian people. I never would have tried to undermine his clear wishes.”
“Your stepfather would not be so sanguine. He might well have convinced your mother to bring suit on her deceased husband’s behalf.”
“A suit that wouldn’t have gone anywhere without my cooperation, and I wouldn’t have given it.”
“We did not know that.”
“You had to have realized, as you got to know me.”
“Once I commit to a purpose, I do not change my direction on a whim or the hope of a different outcome.”
“Maybe you decided you wanted to marry me.” It was hard to say the words, to put it out there like that, but this man was about as in touch with his emotions as the puppet he was so adamant he was not.
“I did want to marry you.”
“Why?”
He stared at her, his expression so open she wanted to cry. Because it showed so much that he so clearly didn’t know how to express verbally. One thing was really obvious. This man did not know what to do with his emotions.
“We are very compatible.”
“Are we?”
“You know we are.”
“You’re a prince. I’m a scientist.”
“Those are our titles, not who we are at the core.”
“Okay, then you’re ruthless and I’m insecure. We’re both emotionally repressed.”
“But you are more secure about yourself with me.”
“And you are less ruthless with me?” she asked, already knowing the answer.
Looking back on it, she saw that the prenuptial agreement was practically a love letter from Demyan.
The uncertainty in his expression was heartbreaking. “Yes?”
She couldn’t hold back from touching him any longer. She stepped right into his personal space and he wrapped his arms around her like it was the most natural thing in the world to do.
“Yes, Demyan. Yes.” His ruthlessness wasn’t always a bad thing, but she brought out the best in him, too.
Now, if she could just get him to realize what that meant.
“You turn me on like no other woman ever has.” He spoke as if that fact confused him. “I don’t like being without you. Not even for a couple of days. It makes it hard to focus.”
“I’m glad to hear that. I feel the same way.”
“I miss you,” he stressed. “Every hour we are apart. Even when I am working.”
No matter how this thing between them had started, it had caught Demyan in the whirlwind of emotion right along with her. Which was the conclusion she’d finally come to after a lot of pain-filled soul-searching and examination of every memory from the moment they’d met.
“It hurt finding out about the will and your reason for marrying me from your sperm donor.”
Pain twisted Demyan’s features. “I am sorry.” He reached up to wipe along the tear streaks on one cheek. “You cried.”
“At first, all I could think was that you’d tricked me into loving you when you felt nothing for me at all. That you probably planned on getting rid of me as soon as the ink was dry on the marriage certificate.”
“No!” He kissed her, the connection between their mouths infused with a desperation stronger than anything she’d ever felt from him.
It was a magnified version of the feelings that emanated off him at night when making love since their arrival in Volyarus.
She did nothing to stop the kiss for a long time, needing this connection as badly as he so clearly did.
But eventually, she broke her mouth away. “Were you going to tell me?”
“Maybe someday. I do not know. I did not want to.”
“You were afraid.”
“I am never afraid.”
“Not usually, but the idea of losing me scared you.”
“Have I lost you?” His arms tightened around her even as he asked the question.
“No.”
“No?” he asked, his voice breaking so the word sounded as if it had two syllables.
“Definitely not. Yet.”
His big body went absolutely rigid. “Yet?”
“It all depends on your answer to a question.”
He stared down at her.
“You never break your promises, right?” She let her body mold completely to his, trying to give him strength.
That’s what people who loved each other did—they lent their strength when it was needed.
“Right.”
“Tell me you love me.”
The tension emanating off him increased exponentially.
“Your mom told me what she made you promise her.”
Demyan’s expression was haunted.
“You promised not to say you love me unless you really mean it,” Chanel reminded him. “You can say it now, Demyan. I will treasure your love forever, too.”
“But...”
“You love me.”
“I do?”
“That stuff you were saying earlier, about missing me, being afraid to lose me, even the way you changed the prenuptial agreement, it all means one thing.”
“It does?” Comprehension and acceptance dawned over his features, making him smile with heartbreaking happiness. “It does. I love you, Chanel, more than my life as a prince. More than anything.”
More tears filled her eyes, but these didn’t burn or hurt her heart. “I love you, too.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean...we don’t have to live with the whole royalty thing. I know it’s not the life you want. I can abdicate my role.”
It wasn’t an empty promise and it would not come without significant cost to this amazing man. Especially after finally acknowledging his true role as son of Oxana and Fedir, but Demyan was entirely sincere in his offer.
“No. I love you, Demyan. Ruthless prince. Corporate king and shark. All of you.”
“I love you for all that you are, too, Chanel, and that includes the woman who has never aspired to be a socialite.”
“I’m not going to be one now, either.”
“My uncle...father is not going to know what to do with you.”
“He’ll probably call me princess just to annoy me.”
Demyan laughed, the sound freer and filled with more joy than she’d ever heard from him. “You may well be right.”
“So long as you call me love.”
“Koxána moja,” he said, calling her his love in Ukrainian. “Always and forever. You are the very heart that beats inside my chest.”
And then he took her back to the rooms they would share whenever staying at the palace for the years to come and made tender, night-long love to her, using those words and so many others to tell Chanel that this man truly loved her and always would.
Later she snuggled into his body and yawned as she said, “I guess it’s a good thing you’ve got a sneaky, underhanded side.”
“Is it?”
“Yep.”
“Why?”
“We never would have gotten together otherwise. You snuck past all my barriers.”
“It is only fair, since you destroyed mine.”
Two broken people who had not even realized they were broken had been made whole by love.
Yes, Chanel thought, that was exactly right and fair.
“Love you, Demyan.”
“I love you.”
“Always.”
“For the rest of our lives.”
“And beyond.” Eternity would not end a love so strong.
“And beyond.”
