AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And, of course, she replied with that smile that went nowhere near her eyes. When once upon a time, it had transformed her whole face—and him, too.
But he knew of only one way to pry it from her lips, and she wanted totalkinstead.
“I have excellent news,” she told him, and he knew, instantly, that he would not agree with that description. “I have been in touch, cautiously, with Delaney Clark. The true Crown Princess, heiress to the Ile d’Montagne throne.”
“I know who Delaney Clark is, Amalia.”
She acknowledged that with the faintest inclination of her head, though gave no sign that she could hear his foul tone of voice. Which made him feel precisely how he did not wish to feel—like a grubby commoner who might ruin the fine lady’s hem with his peasant fingers.
Not a feeling he had ever anticipated having in a flat last valued to the north of eight million quid. That he’d paid for in cash.
“I liked her during our single interaction back on the island,” Amalia was telling him. “But it was hard to tell, really, what I felt about anything. That single interaction was a performance, and everything around it was...fraught. Anyway, after going to Kansas, it began to seem silly that she and I weren’t some kind of resource to each other.” Her lips twisted into something rueful. “She was the one who reached out, actually.”
“That makes sense,” Joaquin said, feeling his way to solid ground again. “It is far easier to step into the shoes of a farm girl than a princess.”
She looked at him a moment or two too long. “Well. Precisely. I’m glad that was so obvious to her and to you, apparently. It had not occurred to me.”
“Because you were the one who was demoted, Amalia.” And he meant that kindly. Even his voice was softer, of its own accord. “Nobody has a roadmap for Cinderella stories in reverse.”
And he could have sworn that Amalia looked...stricken, then. She swallowed, almost as if it hurt, and he waited while she took a sip from her wineglass.
Though he could admit that he was not saddened to see something—anything—on her face that was, if not the light he wanted, something different. Something that broke through her composure in the way he’d long thought only he could—and usually only in the bedroom.
“Delaney has offered me a position,” she told him.
And of all the things he might have imagined Amalia wanted to say to him, none of them were that. “I beg your pardon?”
“She and Queen Esme wish to appoint me to a newly formed role. As a minister.” And he watched, as if from a great distance, as she sat straighter in her chair. Squaring her shoulders the way she did when she wasworking.As if this conversation was ajob. “Delaney needs someone who can prepare her for the role she must assume, but it must be someone she trusts. Someone without ambition, or the desire to sell her out to the tabloids. There is really only one person alive who fits the bill.”
“Why should she trust you?” His voice dropped the temperature in the room by at least twenty degrees, which at least matched the chill within him then. “She is the reason you were cast out of the only home you have ever known.”
“That is not exactly true.” Amalia folded her hands in front of her. “Delaney is as much a victim of circumstance as I am. It was her husband who uncovered the truth about her parentage and mine. He is the one who went to Kansas to fetch her and put all of this into motion. She had nothing to do with it.”
“Then you are either the most altruistic saint who has ever blessed this earth,” he growled at her, “or a fool.”
“Thank you,” Amalia retorted, her voice clipped and her eyes ablaze—but at least that was light. “I appreciate your support, Joaquin. In this and all things.”
And everything inside of him...imploded.
All that fire. All of these bleak weeks that he should have enjoyed to the fullest. The way she had haunted him across five years, and haunted him still, though she was right front of him.
The way she’d cried in a pool in Singapore and denied it, right to his face.
And all the while there was that ache inside him that he could not vanquish, no matter how he tried.
If he could have, he would have roared loud enough to shatter all the glass in this penthouse of his. In all of London, come to that.
Instead, he focused on Amalia.
On the way she watched him, too shrewdly, as if she knew every single thought that crossed his mind. As if she could feel all those things inside of him herself.
As if she knew, damn her, and was doing this anyway.
“I take it that this is not a remote position,” he managed to bite out. “If you wish to leave me yet again, Amalia, I wish you would come out and say it.”
“How?” she asked him, and he had never heard her use that tone before. It seemed to knock him over, though he knew he was upright. He was winded, and it took him a long moment—and a roaring in his ears—to understand why. It was the softness in her voice. It was the starkness of her gaze. It was as if he had never seen her before, not like this. Unadorned. Without her armor. “How do you think I ought to reach you, Joaquin? When you do not wish to be reached?”
He wanted that to be a slap. A fight. But it wasn’t.
