LITMIR.BIZ

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nocturnal wanderings took him—he’d remembered every intimate detail of the love they had made.

      He bit back a low growl of frustration at the turn of his thoughts. Yet when he saw that her hands were still trembling violently in the aftermath of her nightmare, he took two stalking strides toward her.

      “Sit,” he demanded and made himself grip her shoulders at arm’s length. In a no-nonsense motion, he guided her to a chair and sat her down. “How often does this happen?”

      She sat as still as a block of wood, her hands clutched tightly in her lap. “Just...not often.”

      Not often, my ass, he thought with a dark scowl. He’d bet his portfolio this was a nightly occurrence. Swearing as much at the clench of sympathy he felt in his chest as at his body’s reaction to the way her deep breath stretched the pale-blue silk tight over the softness of her breasts, he turned back to the counter and slammed around filling the teakettle.

      When he’d set it on to boil and settled himself, he turned back to her. Leaning his hips against the counter, he crossed his arms over his chest and tucked his hands under his armpits, where they wouldn’t lead him into trouble.

      “You don’t lie worth a damn, Your Highness.”

      Immediately regretting the angry edge he’d let creep into his voice, he worked at gentling his tone. “You want to talk about it?”

      Eyes downcast, she gave a small, tight shake of her head.

      Fighting a crushing awareness of her vulnerability, he stared at that tumble of blond hair a long time before he was able to speak again. “You’ve been through a lot, Anna. Maybe you ought to consider seeing someone...a doctor or someone to help you through this.”

      “I don’t need a doctor,” she bristled, lifting her chin and gracing him with a valiant, aristocratic smile. “Besides, how would it look? A von Oberland in therapy? It wouldn’t do. Appearances at all costs you know. Wouldn’t want the world to get wind that the royal blood was anything but true blue.”

      He narrowed his eyes, studied her long and hard. A little starch looked good on her. It was a sign she was still fighting. Suddenly he didn’t feel so bad about baiting her with the “Your Highness” crack, even though anger had provoked it. The fact was, like it or not, he had a lot of anger built up inside where Princess Anna was concerned. He’d held it in check for four years, but ever since he’d brought her here, he’d felt it escalating.

      It seemed like forever instead of mere months that he’d been fighting feelings he didn’t want to admit to and blaming her for being the cause. He’d done his duty. He’d gotten her out of Obersbourg, then watched from afar, made sure she was safe. Just like he’d made sure she was set up in this apartment in his own building, that she was absorbed into the small community of Royal as Annie Grace, a distant cousin of some city father too far removed for anyone to question in any depth. He’d seen her dressed in her hot-pink waitress uniform, with her hair pulled back into a nondescript pony tail, waiting tables at the local greasy spoon—a job he’d set up for her. A job he’d secretly hoped she would find appalling and so far beneath her she would have stomped her regal foot and thrown a royal tantrum.

      In retrospect, he wasn’t too proud of himself for stooping so low as to want to humiliate her. Not that his plan had worked, anyway. She hadn’t done one damn thing he’d expected.

      What she’d done was adjust. Without comment. Without complaint—and he’d been the one left feeling devalued.

      She’d taken to the waitress role as if she’d been born with an order pad in her hand instead of a gilded rattle. She’d waited tables, laughed with the locals and looked and acted like she’d enjoyed every minute of it.

      Act is the key word here, he told himself, working hard to reinforce his cynicism where she was concerned. He didn’t dare forget that she was a consummate actress—had played the role of her life when she’d made him fall in love with her.

      He rolled a shoulder, shook it off. That was then. This was now. And love—whatever the hell that was—didn’t have anything to do with what he was feeling for her now. What he was feeling for her now, he told himself, was a grudging tolerance that had gotten tangled up in a misplaced sense of responsibility. And a leftover sexual obsession that he had no intention of indulging.

      Stone-faced, he turned toward the whistle of the kettle, set it off the heat and snagged a pair of mugs from her cupboard. As he held the chunky stoneware in his hand, he worked hard to convince himself that the princess was no doubt missing the delicacy and the elegance of her seventeenth century fine bone china and the servants who all but drank her tea for her. Yet when he set the mug in front of her, she cupped it gratefully between her small hands, absorbed the welcome warmth, first through her fingertips then with her mouth, as she touched the mug to her lips.

      A knot of tension that was becoming all too familiar when he was around her coiled tight in his gut.

      “I’m fine now.” She made a forced attempt to sound more steady, more centered. “You don’t have to babysit me. People have bad dreams. It’s not a big deal.”

      A muscle in his jaw worked involuntarily and he stated the facts as he saw them. “And you don’t have to put on some brave front. This has been hard on you. There’s no shame in admitting it.”

      The stunned look in her eyes as she reacted to his unexpected empathy momentarily silenced them both.

      “Right,” she said finally. “No shame.”

      Her voice so full of the shame she was trying to deny, it made his chest hurt.

      She sat so still. Her slender fingers were wrapped around that mug like it was her only anchor. Her gaze was focused on something much further away than the clock on the far kitchen wall. And her voice, when she finally spoke, sounded as weary as time.

      “I wanted Ivan out of my life,” she all but whispered into a silence that had grown heavy and thick. “I’d prayed he would be made to pay for whatever part he played in Sara’s death, for holding Sara’s babies hostage.” She lifted eyes glittering with unshed tears, stared at a time and place far away from Royal, Texas. “God help me, I wanted him dead.”

      The guilt etched on her face clogged his throat with emotion. He swallowed it back. Waited.

      Haunted eyes flicked to his then quickly away. “I’m glad he’s dead. For everything he’d done, everything he tried to do. I’m glad he’s dead,” she repeated and once again, met his eyes. Once again, she looked away as if she was ashamed. “What does that make me? What kind of monster does that make me?”

      Everything she wouldn’t let him see in her eyes was manifested in those self-indicting words, in the thready hopelessness of her voice. He wanted to drag her into his arms and hold her so she wouldn’t splinter in a million pieces. Yet he sensed that if he touched her now, she would shatter. Like a beautiful spun glass swan. Like a priceless crystal vase.

      Since he didn’t think that both of them together could gather all the pieces if she fell apart, he made his voice as gentle as he knew how.

      “What it makes you is human, Anna. It makes you human—nothing more. Nothing less. The prince was an opportunist. He was a murderer. And he was a coward—he proved it when he jumped off the bridge south of town. You had no part in that. You had no part in anything he did.”

      Despite the sense of his argument, her silence told him she felt she had played a very huge part in it. The next words out of her mouth confirmed it.

      “If I had married him he’d be alive, though, wouldn’t he? Sara might even be alive—”

      It galled him to hell and back that she would take even an ounce of blame on her slim shoulders. He drew a deep breath, laid a hand on her arm. “Look—”

      She jumped as if she’d been burned. “It’s all right,” she insisted abruptly. So abruptly he could only stare as she shook off his touch and rose. “I’m sorry...I’m

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