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‘Okay, Juno. Once you’re ready we can head back to Severene. We can discuss things on the way,’ he said, determined to make her see reason. ‘There are many things about this situation I don’t think you understand.’ Things he would make her understand calmly and sensibly, once she’d digested the news.
She wrapped her arms around her midriff, as if she were shielding herself from him, and nodded. ‘Thank you.’
It was hardly an agreement, but it would have to be enough, for now. Calling her names and losing his temper weren’t going to make this situation any less volatile or easy to control.
Even though it was one of the hardest things he had ever had to do, he turned and left the room.
He headed straight to the lodge’s study, to contact Severene’s flight control centre so he could plot a flight path back to the palace. The sooner they got back, the sooner he could get Juno to accept—by whatever means necessary—that the only solution now was for her to become his Queen.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TEN MINUTES LATER, Juno crunched through the snow towards the back of the lodge. She shoved open the door to the garage. Her hands shook and her breath misted the air as she lifted the hood on the snowmobile Leo had used earlier in the week and ripped out the belt drive.
She pressed a hand to her abdomen, cocooned in the snowsuit.
A child grew inside her. A child who she could love. A child who would love her even if Leo could not.
What she had to do now was go home. Back to Monrova—which was less than fifteen miles across the border. And then back to New York. Back to her real life.
Her Cinderella story was over. He didn’t love her, had told her he could never love her, and being pregnant with his child couldn’t change that.
She hid the belt drive under a tarp at the back of the garage. Then she mounted the snowmobile parked nearer the entrance.
Frozen air filled her lungs as she drove the cumbersome machine out of the garage and hit the freshly fallen snow.
She headed past her family of snowmen and into the drifts that had fallen the day before—as she and Leo had made a Christmas feast together. And thought of that moment when she’d thought she could have it all, just by asking. What a fool she’d been.
She heard a shout from behind her. But refused to look back.
‘Juno? Come back here. What the...?’
The curse words were muffled as the snowmobile headed into the trees and she revved the throttle to increase her speed.
What else could she do but run? She couldn’t give him the power to destroy her. The way her father had destroyed her mother. Especially not when her child was at stake.
But as she sped into the forest, took the path towards the border, the tears fell freely down her face, chapping the exposed skin.
And she mourned, for a future that might have been real.
If only he’d been able to love her the way she loved him.
Leo swore loudly as he slammed down the snowmobile’s hood. The words Juno had left for him on a notepad in the bedroom still echoing in his head.
Please don’t follow me, Leo. I will be in touch. But I can’t be your Queen. I’m so sorry.
J
‘Damn it, Juno. What have you done?’
He ran into the house, the fury he had tried to keep at bay earlier, when they’d argued, starting to consume him. But beneath it was the black, agonising, all-consuming wave of fear.
How the hell was she going to navigate her way to Monrova, which was surely where she was headed? She didn’t know the terrain, and she was pregnant, damn it.
Was the thought of being his Queen, of having his heir, really so terrible?
Grabbing the satellite phone kept in the lodge’s office in case of emergency, he stabbed in the number for his chief of staff at the palace.
‘André, we need to send out search-and-rescue helicopters to the area
