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Her body shook, and he gently touched her arm. “But, Princess, everything else I told you was a lie. Holding you, loving you, letting you love me—those were never part of my assignment.”
She shuddered. “But you let them take...photographs,” she whispered in a voice that trembled and broke on the last word, a voice that betrayed the depth of her humiliation.
“No,” he said, wishing with all his heart he had never let her believe that. “There were no pictures. That was a lie, too. Do you really think I could do that to you?”
She didn’t speak, and he wondered what else he could say to convince her. Trust, once lost, might never be regained. He cast about frantically in his mind. Then it came to him. “Do you remember the day we went to Mount Evans, when that tourist took your picture at Summit Lake?” A faint murmur of assent answered him, but she still refused to raise her face. “Do you remember how I made him give me the camera—how I erased the picture from the memory card and told him he was a dead man if he ever took your picture again?”
“Yes,” she answered in a tiny, muffled voice. “I remember.”
His voice was low and deep when he said, “If I wouldn’t let him have even an innocent picture, do you think I could let anyone take intimate pictures of you?” Slowly her hands fell away and she raised her face to his. Her expression told him she wanted to believe...but the uncertainty refused to be banished.
“That first day in my cabin...from the moment you told me there is no such thing as a bastard child, I knew I loved you. I fought it, but it was a losing battle. Then you gave yourself to me so sweetly, so completely. I knew I was the first man to touch you that way, and I wanted to make it so perfect for you. I wanted to give you that gift, so you would always remember your first time as a wondrous thing. So you would always remember me that way—as the man who gave it to you.”
Her eyes, her lovely green eyes told him she did remember it the way he’d intended, despite everything, so he went on. “Then you let me give myself to you. Oh God, you touched me as if I were a priceless gift, and I...” His voice was husky with emotion, and for a moment he couldn’t continue. “You gave me your trust. Do you have any idea what that meant to me? You were like a dream of perfection. My dream. My princess.” His eyes held hers steadily. “There are no pictures except in my memory.”
She closed her eyes for a moment and a sigh shuddered out of her, and when she looked at him again, her eyes swimming in tears of thankfulness, he knew she finally believed him. “After you left...after I drove you away...I had nothing,” he went on. “I didn’t even have the certainty that I had done the right thing...for you. Because I realized then it was all me—the whole time I thought I was protecting you from me, I was protecting myself from you. I can’t explain it, but it’s the truth. I just didn’t realize until afterward. But cutting you out of my life didn’t protect me—you were always there in my heart. And in my dreams. I couldn’t escape from loving you, and I realized deep down I didn’t want to. I was just afraid.”
He thought for a moment, considering, and then discarding her brother’s warning not to tell her the truth of how he’d arrived here. He wouldn’t lie to her ever again. “Then your brother had me kidnapped and brought here.”
“Andre?” He saw the returning doubt in her eyes, the sudden suspicion. “Oh, why did he do it?” she cried softly. “Now it is even worse...”
Trace rose slowly to his feet, staring down at her. “No,” he told her. “He did the right thing.” Later he would tell her about the plane ticket he’d already purchased. Later he would tell her other things, too, the thoughts that had run through his head as he stared at his gun in the desolate emptiness of his cabin—the place he’d first realized he loved her, the place that had become like a tomb to him without her there. For now, something inside tore loose and set him free to let her see him as he truly was. No defenses. No secrets. In fluent Zakharan he said, “For such is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men.”
She gasped.
Still in Zakharan, he told her, “I was that foolish man,” letting her see his pain. “Too ignorant, too blind to see what your brother was wise enough to know—that the only truth that mattered is I would gladly die to keep you safe. Now and always.”
He reached down and pulled her gently up into his arms. She came willingly. He pressed her head against his shoulder, letting her hear the thud of his heartbeat, letting her know his own uncertainty where she was concerned. He switched back to English. “If you can still love a man so blind, Princess, if you can still trust him...”
