Wedded for His Royal Duty (12 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

T
HE
MOOD
IN
the palace was celebratory when Alex and Eva arrived home two weeks later. Everyone had gathered in the king’s quarters to greet them, so they headed there first.

Her mom enveloped her in a huge hug, a hug to rival one of Rose’s hugs, and Eva laughed. “I see the Sancho family is rubbing off on you.”

Karen took a glass of wine from King Ronaldo who was enjoying an afternoon of playing bartender.

Eva turned to Alex and whispered, “Your dad’s in a weird mood.”

Alex watched him mixing a martini for Rose. “I have a vague memory of him liking the job of bartender.” He frowned. “If I’m remembering correctly, I think that’s how he played host—”

He stopped abruptly. Eva wound her hand around his upper arm. She waited until he looked at her before she said, “Before your mom died.”

His face shifted as if something had clicked into place for him. “It’s so amazing to see him becoming himself again.”

Just as it was probably amazing for the king to watch Alex become the prince he was always meant to be. Eva didn’t say it, but pride for Alex surged through her, along with the abysmal realization that this family she was becoming a part of, this man she was so in love with, would soon be gone.

She pulled in a breath. “You know what? I’m a little bit tired. Do you mind if I go back to my quarters.”

Alex whispered, “You can’t go back to your quarters. We’re married now. Staff will have already moved your things to mine.”

“Oh.” And the break she was hoping for flitted away.

“It’s no big deal. We’ll figure out how to handle it.”

“Yes.” She straightened her shoulders. “I’m sure we will.”

“I can walk you back now.”

She looked away. “I can find my own way, remember? I’ve been there for plenty of pretend lunches and suppers.”

She knew that sounded bitter, so she faced him and said, “Sorry. I’m just very tired and getting a headache. Let me go get settled. You enjoy your time with family.”

He nodded but walked her to the door of his father’s quarters. He said, “Maybe you should take a nap.”

She said, “Sure. That’s probably what I’ll do.”

As she turned to walk away, she noticed Alex motioning to one of the guards to follow her to the apartment, and suddenly she was very, very tired.

She entered Alex’s apartment, working not to remember the casual dinners they’d shared where she’d slowly but surely fallen in love with him.

Given that the staff believed they were married for real, she knew that her things were in Alex’s closet, so she walked to her room deciding she could take a nap in her camisole and panties. She wouldn’t be so bold as to walk into the man’s closet when he wasn’t there. Worse, his bedroom. She didn’t want to see if he was tidy or messy. She didn’t want to see his toothbrush and shaving creams. They’d already done too many personal, intimate things. Too many things she’d have to forget when they parted. She didn’t need more reminders of everything she was losing. She just wanted all of this to be over.

On the way to her bedroom, she kicked off her sandals. She yanked her sweater over her head and it fell from her tired fingers. She stopped long enough to slide her jeans to the floor and step out of them. Some little voice in the back of her head told her to pick up the jeans, pick up the trail of clothes she was leaving, but a heaviness consumed her. She barely got to the bed before she crumbled, luckily landing face-first on the mattress.

* * *

From the way his dad and Rose, and Ginny and Dom behaved, Alex would have thought they believed he and Eva were actually married. He knew part of this was for the benefit of the charade. But, really? Sometimes his dad and Rose just got carried away. They loved family.

Twenty minutes later, with Rose still regaling them with stories from her days as a public school teacher in Texas, Alex looked at his watch. He’d known Eva had needed some space. He didn’t blame her. Though they’d spent their days on the yacht resting, reading, watching glorious sunsets, it was wearing to pretend to be honeymooning when they would go back to their suite and sleep in separate rooms.

But this afternoon there’d been something a little different in her eyes. Something more than exhaustion. So he gave Rose’s hilarious stories another ten minutes, then excused himself and headed for his quarters.

He saw the trail of clothes to her room and burst out laughing.

“Very funny, Eva.”

He picked up the first shoe, then the second. Took a few steps and grabbed her sweater. Another few steps and he could scoop up her jeans. He turned to open the door of her bedroom but it was already open, and Eva lay, face-first, on the soft comforter of the queen-sized bed.

He laughed. “That’s a weird way to take a nap.” But as he walked into the room darkened by thick drapes, he realized she was in nothing but panties and a camisole. Silky white with a wide lace border.

He stopped. Cleared his throat. Obviously she was sleeping, so he’d just drop her jeans, sweater and shoes on a chair in the back. He walked past the bed, dumped the clothes, and turned to leave the room, but as he approached the bed, he noticed her breathing was labored, difficult.

He walked over. “Eva?”

She didn’t move.

He bent and nudged her shoulder. “Eva?”

She still didn’t move.

He grabbed the receiver from the palace phone by her bed. “This is Alex. Send a doctor to my quarters immediately.”

It seemed to take forever for the doctor to arrive with a nurse, but the second they rang the bell, he opened the door.

Alex had turned on the overhead light, pulled back the covers and shifted her on the bed so that she was lying on her back.

When he took the doctor to her room, it was easy to see the bright red splotches on her cheeks. Her head shifted on the pillow. She moaned as if in pain.

Dr. Martin looped his stethoscope around his neck. “I can see from here that she’s got a fever.” He walked over to the bed, took a look at her face and turned to Alex. “I’m going to have Sarah take her vitals.” He motioned Alex to the door and walked him out of the room and up the hall.

“After Sarah gets the vitals, I’ll have a look at her. We’ll also need to draw some blood for tests.”

Alex said, “Okay.”

“Do you want me to call Dom to come and sit with you?”

“No. I’m fine.”

The doctor smiled. “Okay. Great.” He headed down the hall, but faced Alex again. “You know I have to report this visit to your dad, right?”

Alex nodded. Didn’t every flipping thing they did have to be reported?

“Great. Blood tests will take a few hours. Are you sure you don’t want somebody called?”

He nodded, realizing that the person he’d want called to help him through an afternoon of waiting was Eva. But she was the one who was sick.

When Dr. Martin and Sarah came out of her room after the exam, he asked, “Can I go in and sit with her?”

Dr. Martin winced. “Actually, Alex, you risk catching the flu. I can’t be certain, but it looks like that’s what she picked up. Maybe from someone on the yacht.”

“Which means I’ve already been exposed.”

The doctor shrugged. “I’d prefer you stay away. If you want someone with her, I can send up nurses who will do twenty-four-hour shifts.”

A sudden memory of his mom being sick sprang into his head. He remembered his dad by her side twenty-four hours a day and suddenly understood why.

“I’ll take the risk.”

“I have to report this to your father.”

“So you said.”

The doctor sighed and left with Sarah the nurse and Alex walked back to her room.

She was under the covers, dressed in a pair of pajamas. Alex had no idea where they’d come from, but all Doc had to do was get on the phone and tell someone in housekeeping to send pajamas and they’d probably be delivered through the back door.

He walked to the bed, not liking Eva’s labored breathing, but knowing she was being cared for by one of the best. Crouching at the side of the bed, he pushed her hair off her forehead and wished that they’d met under different circumstances.

Because wishing accomplished nothing, he forced himself to his feet, but didn’t leave her room. He pulled a Queen Anne chair from a corner of the room to the side of the bed. When he fell asleep, it was only for a few minutes at a time. So he crawled onto her bed. He stretched out beside her and fell asleep for a few hours, but when he woke up she was thrashing. The second he touched her hand, she stopped. So he stayed, right where he was, not under the covers, on top. Sometimes he’d smooth her hair from her face. For the most part he just held her hand. Until she scooted closer and snuggled against him. He wrapped his arms around her and slept. Not for long stretches, but longer than he might have slept on that uncomfortable chair.

In the morning, the doctor ordered him to go to bed and he told the old grouch that he’d go as soon as the doctor’s visit was over.

But he didn’t leave. He stayed in the chair, watching her. Though the temptation was strong to lie on the bed with her, he resisted it. He watched nurses take her temperature, wake her up enough to give her meds and even cool her head with a wet cloth.

When the doctor returned that evening it was to announce that her fever had broken.

“Now, there’s no reason to sit by her bed. You can get some sleep.”

He walked the old man to the door, and hesitated at the place where he’d go left to his own room, or right to Eva’s.

But staying in her room was silly. She was over the worst of it now. And he needed some sleep.

He turned left, got a shower and shrugged into a T-shirt and a pair of pajama pants. But when he lifted the cover off his bed, he couldn’t slide inside.

For some reason or another, he simply could not leave her alone. He knew she only had the flu. He knew her fever had broken. But he just couldn’t leave her by herself in a room that was unfamiliar to her.

Still, he was tired. Exhausted. So he walked to the empty side of her bed, lifted the cover and slid inside. When she turned to him, he wrapped his arms around her. The second he closed his eyes, he fell asleep.

* * *

When Eva awakened she had no idea what time it was...or what day. Vague images passed through her brain but nothing stuck. She was also comfortably tucked against someone. Not the way a mother or father cradles a child, but closer.

Alex
.

Some of the images gelled in her mind. Him ordering around a man in a gray suit. Him giving uniformed nurses instructions.

She smiled.

“Go back to sleep. You might have slept away the past thirty-six hours. But I’ve slept in fits and starts.”

On this bed. With her. Flashes of him lying beside her, stroking her hair, flitted to her. That’s why his arms around her hadn’t awakened her. He’d done this before. Maybe even the entire night before.

She stilled her hands at her sides and felt silky material.

“The nurses did that. Changed your PJs twice. They also gave you two sponge baths. Though I volunteered, they shot me down.”

She laughed.

“There you go. Now I know you’re not just awake, you’re feeling better.”

“I am.”

“Well, go back to sleep. It’s still night. And I’m tired.”

He was staying? Was he going to hold her the entire time he slept?

Happiness overwhelmed her and suddenly she felt every inch of him that touched her. Not just his warmth, but the softness of a T-shirt and cotton sleep pants. His bicep was her pillow. Her cheek rested against his chest. It was the most intimate, most wonderful feeling.

“Don’t ever do that again.”

His voice filtered to her softly, filled with a casual intimacy that caused joy to radiate to every nook and cranny of her body.

“Do what?”

“Get so sick that half the palace worried you were going to die, or that we’d put so much stress on you we’d killed you.”

She carefully, slowly raised her hand until she could lay it against his chest. Not so much out of curiosity about what he felt like, but more out of a longing to know what it felt like to be allowed to touch him.

“All I remember is a headache.”

“You had a virus.”

Here they were, apparently in the middle of the night, having a conversation while wrapped in each other’s arms. She flattened her palm against his chest, reveled in the steady rhythm of his breathing, knew this was what being married felt like: a quiet, unspoken connection.

“A weak virus if I’ve only been sleeping thirty-six hours.”

“Strong enough that your mother almost sent for clergy.”

She laughed and snuggled against him. His arms tightened around her. “I seem to remember you bossing around the nurses.”

“I have a marriage license that says I can.”

She suppressed a smile. “So you’re one of those types who throw their weight around.”

“I haven’t spent six weeks protecting you only to have a virus kill you.”

He said it so easily, as if that was all it was, but his muscles tightened.

She suddenly wished she could see his face, see the naked emotion in his dark, dark eyes. But then she’d have to pull away. It wasn’t often he let her be so close, let her touch him, let himself touch her.

“You like me.”

He laughed. “Of course, I like you.”

“No. You
like
me.”

He stilled. The room got very quiet.

“Does it matter?”

It mattered to her. A great deal. If only because her heart needed to know. Needed to hear him say that something had blossomed between them, because she couldn’t take another day of being so close to him, yet being emotionally separated.

“It matters.”

“Then, yes. I have feelings for you that I shouldn’t have.”

“I have feelings for you too.” Such an inadequate description of the emotions that squeezed her heart and captured her soul. Made her hot and cold. Made her long to be with him as he distanced herself from her. Made her understand the bond between her parents that was strong enough that her dad could pretend to leave with a mistress and trust her mother would collapse into his arms when the truth was revealed. She almost couldn’t bear the strength of it... Yet it slipped out as one tiny sentence.