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There is a text from my mother, however, that I wish I could unsee.
I glance over at Bella. I’d rather wake her up and slide the covers off her and cover her naked body with kisses.
But I’d better see what my mother wants before she hunts me down.
Did you look at what I sent you?her message says.
I suppress a groan. Yesterday she sent what I’ve come to call the eligible noble lady’s PR packet. They are literally brochures of women. Each has professional photographs and a CV detailing education, work experience, likes, dislikes, and, worst, lineage.
It also has thinly veiled suggestions as to their… prowess and particular abilities. My mother’s a very, very, very high-class madam.
I looked,I text back.
What did you think of number five?
Ugh. My mother ranked her choices in the note she sent. I look at Bella. She looks like an angel.I think none of them compares to you,I tell Bella silently.
The erection I woke up with is starting to ache. Would it be so wrong to make love to her one more time?
Yes. No. I don’t know. I swing my legs off the bed with some difficulty and walk into the bathroom, turning on the shower.
“After tonight, it’s over,” I tell myself.
She’ll be fine. She told me, with her usual steel resolve, that she knows we don’t have a future. We both have known that all along. I just didn’t expect her words to feel like such a stab to the heart.
When the water hits me, the scent of her rises. God, I’m going to miss that smell.
“But will she miss me?” I grab the shampoo.
It’ll be a nice memory for her. Like a keepsake that she has in a box. She gets to live out every woman’s fantasy of being wooed by a prince, taken on fantastic adventures, and escorted into a palace full of servants. And the best part is she gets to walk away when it’s over. No gilded cage.
It isn’t always as grand as it seems. The obligations require sacrifice. You have no privacy. Protocol is the same as religion. Family and kingdom above the self.
I can’t blame Bella for wanting to have some fun and then to get the hell away from here. At times, when she looked at me with a certain expression or touched me a certain way, I held out hope that she might decide to stay with me. But now, I don’t know if I can do that to myself anymore when it seems like she couldn’t be more eager to go home.
Or could she? I have no idea. I’m a terrible judge.
As I dry off, the urge to gather her in my arms and wake her with a kiss is overwhelming. I could see her by my side forever.
My family would find my sentimentality amusing. According to them, marriage is a political strategy. That’s what they all say until you’re the one on your deathbed begging for your lover one last time after thirty years apart.
It’s just fun for her,I tell myself. She said so. But what have I told her in the course of this excursion? When I put her on the plane back to the States, I want her to leave smiling. My heart can break enough for both of us.
I force myself to leave the room. After shutting the door quietly behind me, I text Nicolai to let him know I’m on my way.
Already here,he texts back. He’s so good at his job.
When I get there, he has my coffee ready. I tell him I need a minute while I go into my office.
I sit down at my desk and pop open the hidden drawer where I stored my mother’s catalog from yesterday. I had an irrational paranoia that Bella would find it, along with a pretty rational idea of what her reaction would be.
I flip to number five. She’s pretty. Well educated. Her hobbies include ‘competitive English riding.’ I slam the folder shut.
Yes, it’s a difficult discipline that takes training and dedication. But it can’t possibly compare to the feeling of racing down the trail with Isabella.
Hearing the hooves pounding, feeling the horse move under you, and urging him to go faster and faster. That adrenaline rush can’t be matched by prancing around a ring.
Like the difference between marrying for love and marrying for status.
