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That statement went through her like a lightning bolt. And it hurt.
She’d imagined he’d issue a tasteful statement, released quietly sometime after the world had grown used to the return of the king. Not...here, now. With so many people as witnesses.
Brittany had to remind herself that the whole world was watching. That this was not for her or even about her. This was about a kingdom that deserved better than a stripper queen. Better than an infamous woman who had only ever learned how to make money and headlines. She reminded herself that Cairo was not hers. That he had never been hers, not really, no matter that she carried their baby inside of her or wore the Heart of Santa Domini on her hand.
He belonged to his people. He had only ever been on loan.
But she cradled the precious ring with the fingers of her other hand anyway, as if she thought someone might come and try to take it from her right there where she stood. She would give it back when asked, of course. She would do the right thing.
Until then, she’d pretend this was the fairy tale that deep down she’d always dreamed about, no matter how many times life kicked her in the teeth instead.
She lifted her chin. In front of her, Cairo smiled, then turned back to his subjects and all those cameras.
Brittany braced herself. And she smiled.
“I made her my queen and she made me a man,” Cairo told the world. “And as I learned to be the kind of man who deserved such a queen as Brittany, kind and true, strong and brave, I understood what I owed not only to her, but to you, the people of Santa Domini. I did not know if I would claim my throne or lose my life when I returned here. I only knew that I could not live with myself if I stayed in hiding, forever on the run, forever a man unworthy of both his queen and his country.”
He lifted his arm and raised it toward the crowd. “I pledge to you that I will always strive to be the king you deserve, and to serve this country with every breath and bone in my body.”
Then he turned.
King Cairo, resplendent and fierce in the clear mountain air, with thousands of adoring subjects cheering him on from below.
Today, Brittany knew exactly what that glorious mouth of his tasted like, and how it felt against every part of her skin. She knew the heavy silk of his dark hair and how it felt to run her hands through it. She missed the careless scruff he’d shaved from his astonishingly handsome face, the better to show off that perfectly cut Santa Domini jaw.
And, oh, his eyes. They were caramel and they were wicked and they were focused on her as if there was nothing else in all the world but the two of them.
He held her gaze for a moment.
Then the rightful king of Santa Domini dropped to his knees before her. Her heart stopped. Then pounded into her, wild against her ribs, so hard she almost toppled over.
“Brittany,” he said, as if they were alone, though the microphone on his lapel transmitted his words around the globe, “I love you.”
The crowd roared. And Brittany didn’t have it in her to fight the tears that spilled over and poured down her cheeks.
“No,” she told him, because she had to. Because he deserved a real queen. A good one, who was proper and good and had never been featured in a burlesque ensemble in a tabloid—much less on a reality television program. “You can’t. You’re a king.”
“And you are a queen,” he replied, the maddening man. “My queen.”
And Brittany forgot the crowds, the cameras. She forgot where they were. They might as well have been back on their own private island, with nothing for miles in all directions but the deep blue sea.
Cairo held out his hands, then waited.
Brittany pulled in a breath, then let it out. She needed to walk away. She knew she needed to walk away. She knew she didn’t deserve to be here, with him. She was supposed to be the joke he played on the world. She couldn’t stay with him and let him become the joke because of her...
But she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
She didn’twantto walk away from him.
So instead she reached out and took his hands, feeling the heat of his instant, sure grip go through her, warming her like the sun.
“You married an exiled royal with a terrible reputation,” he said, his voice low and sure and his eyes on her. “And you made him into a king. You wear the Heart of Santa Domini on your hand and you hold my own heart between your palms. I want you to marry me again, in the cathedral where generations of Santa Dominis have pledged their lives to each other, so I can make you the queen in my people’s eyes that you have always been to me.”
She opened her mouth to refuse him. To sacrifice the very thing she wanted most, the only man she’d ever loved and the only person she’d ever let get close to her—but she looked into Cairo’s warm, steady gaze, and she found she couldn’t do it. Not to him, not to their baby.
Not to herself.
The truth was simple. She didn’t want to live without him.
