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“How is our good friend Alejandro?” Zale asked, taking a step into the room and closing her bedroom door behind him.
Hannah’s heart thudded hard and she darted a panicked glance at the now closed door. “W-w-who?”
“Emmeline.”
“It wasn’t what you think.”
“Of course you’d make it a game. Nothing is ever straightforward with you.” He walked to the bed and sat down on the edge and then patted the mattress beside him. “So come, sit, we’ll try to make this fun.”
He smiled at her but his expression was cold. Angry. “Shall we play twenty questions? I’ll ask, you answer—”
“Zale, it wasn’t a man. It wasn’t Alejandro. It was one of my girlfriends.”
“And you expect me to believe that?”
“Yes.”
“I know what I heard. You were begging him to come get you and take you home.”
“No! That wasn’t it. I promise. Cross my heart—”
“Don’t.” His voice dropped, his tone pitched low and dangerous. “Don’t do that.”
Hannah crossed the carpet, shaking from head to toe. She thrust her phone out to him. “Call. Call the last number back. See who answers. It’s not a man.”
But he refused to take the phone and it fell between them, hitting the mattress and then sliding onto the floor next to the bed.
She’d never seen him this angry. He seethed with fury, amber eyes glittering like cut stone. After a moment he rose from the bed, circled her where she stood.
“Every time I get comfortable with you, you do this. Every time I commit to you, you play me for a fool.”
“No.” She laced her fingers together, skin prickling with unease. He was dangerous like this. Unpredictable. “I would never do that to you. Never.” And then she heard herself and her vehemence and realized she was playing him for a fool. She had ever since she arrived.
Pretending to be Emmeline.
Pretending to be working out the differences in their relationship.
Pretending to get to know him before they married, when in reality, she wasn’t even the one he’d ever marry …
“You’re not a damsel in distress, Princess.” He spit the words out as if they hurt his mouth. “There’s no lock on any door. No guard keeping you here. If you want to go. Go. As for me, I have things to do and I’m not going to stand here and waste another minute with you.”
“Zale—”
He lifted a hand to silence her. “Enough. Have some respect. Please.” Hand still lifted, he walked out the door.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ZALE left his room and returned to the old castle keep, crossing through the once grand medieval hall still lined with heraldic banners and suits of armor, to the new wing on the far side, a wing which he’d had built five years ago to house his personal gymnasium and sport facility.
The sport facility was really a world-class sport complex, containing a regulation football field on the first floor with real grass, nets and stadium lighting. The second floor was divided into various sport courts—one for tennis, basketball and handball—plus a weight room where he still trained every other day.
A locker room adjoined the weight room, outfitted with a sauna, a whirlpool and a massage table for rehabilitating injuries.
Not that Zale got injured anymore. But it made him feel connected to the person he’d been, the one who’d lived and breathed sport above everything. The sport facility hadn’t been cheap, either. It’d cost him millions to build, but he’d used his own money and he maintained it with his own money, too. In this part of the palace he wasn’t a king but a man. A man who needed nothing but a ball, a net, an expanse of grass.
In his locker room he stripped out of his dress shirt and trousers, changing into sweatpants, a T-shirt and his running shoes.
Today he wouldn’t run on the treadmill. Today he ran on the track that circled his field, running fast, hard, one kilometer and then another and another but no matter how fast he ran he couldn’t escape himself.
Couldn’t escape his thoughts.
It was madness to have trusted her. Madness to have cared.
They hadn’t signed the prenup and they had had sex. But she was cheating on him, still seeing Alejandro. It was within his rights to send her away. But ending it with Emmeline wouldn’t be a small thing. It would be a huge crisis, personally and politically. But once she was gone, and once the shock of the news had worn off, people would move on. He’d move on.
But when Zale imagined her leaving, when he imagined her gone, he didn’t feel relief.
He felt … pain.
Loss.
Her fault, he thought. The hollow emptiness within him, this sense of loss, was her fault. She was a witch, not a princess, and she’d cast a spell on him.
