‘It’s too large and too cold for me. I’d prefer to meet everyone in the dining room.’
‘The dining room?’ He looked thunderstruck.
She would have laughed if she weren’t so cold and tired.
‘Yes,’ she said, drawing in a calm response. She could keep calm and courteous, she was the Queen and she would not shout at any of her people. ‘The table is large for us to all fit around. Let’s meet in half an hour. We need to summon my assistant back from Severene.’ She frowned thoughtfully. ‘Actually, leave that to me. I’ll sort that when I speak to Juno.’
Minutes later in the privacy of her apartments, she pulled Juno’s phone from her pocket and finally turned it on. She’d avoided the task while she’d travelled home. Now she stared at the screen, but there was nothing. No ping, ping, ping of incoming messages. There wasn’t even one—let alone any from the one person she wanted to hear from most of all.
Drawing a breath, she touched the keypad and called her sister.
‘What’s this about you being back in Monrova?’ Juno asked instead of even saying hello.
‘You’ve heard already?’ Jade shook her head. Major Garland was very efficient. ‘News travels fast.’
‘Is everything okay?’ Juno asked.
‘More importantly, is everything okay with you?’ Jade questioned. ‘I heard...’
‘I did something stupid,’ Juno said quickly. ‘But I’m fine. In fact, I’m better than fine...’
Jade gripped the phone, listening closely to her sister’s effervescence as she confessed that she hadn’t just ‘jumped’ King Leonardo. She’d fallen in love with him and he had with her. The joy was something Jade hadn’t heard in her sister’s voice in so long and she loved it. They planned to marry as soon as possible, meaning Juno would become the queen that Jade had always known her sister was capable of being. It was perfect and everything that Jade needed right now.
‘You’re going to live near.’ Jade’s eyes filled with the sweetest relief. ‘You’re going to be my neighbour.’ It was a balm soothing her own devastation.
‘Jade?’ Juno suddenly paused. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘Better than okay.’ Jade made herself nod. ‘It was just time for me to come home. I’m ready, Juno, really ready to be here and do this the way I actually want to. I had a great time away. It was so good for me.’
None of that was a lie. She couldn’t regret a moment of it. But she heard Juno’s hesitation and her intake of breath and knew she was going to ask something difficult and unavoidable.
‘Now, when’s the wedding going to be?’ Jade spoke again quickly to head off Juno’s query.
She knew her sister could hear something in her voice. Even when they’d spent so many years apart, they could tell—there was no real ability to lie to each other. To conceal, yes, but not outright lie. So she had to distract. Fortunately, Juno fell for it, her happiness swamping her—making it impossible for her not to answer and share her joy.
Jade listened with pure delight and then they quickly made plans to front up to the press. The only way forward for them both was with honesty.
The irony that everything she’d done to save her sister’s job was now rendered utterly pointless wasn’t lost on Jade. She didn’t even need to tell Juno about anything that had happened in New York. Certainly nothing about Alvaro. She couldn’t anyway; she didn’t want to say anything that would cause Juno to worry about her. She would let nothing diminish her sister’s much-deserved happiness.
Juno and Leonardo the couple came as no real surprise. Jade had suspected there was something between them from the moment she’d seen those photos from the Monrova Winter Ball. And now, listening to Juno, she knew they brought the best out in each other. Some things were just meant to be.
She and Alvaro, however, were not.
He’d caught her eye from the first second—he was compelling and magnificent. But then, when he’d let her in? Let her really see him? Not just feel him, not just touch him, but be with him—his intelligent and laughing, protective and vulnerable, utterly passionate self?
But Alvaro hadn’t argued, hadn’t begged her to stay, hadn’t really said anything when she’d told him she loved him. And he certainly hadn’t wanted to hear what she’d finally been brave enough to say. And that hurt her deeply. She’d never said that to anyone before.
While on the one hand he’d given her so much—a joie de vivre and an inner confidence she’d been missing—he’d also devastated her. Because she wanted everything else from him too. She wanted him. And for the briefest of moments, she’d thought he wanted her too.
But he didn’t.
The afternoon she returned to Monrova—having liaised with Leonardo and Juno, and with her assistant back by her side to help—she read her prepared statement to the teleprompter. She’d watched King Leonardo make his statement and then take a couple of questions only moments before her live cross. Beside him, Juno had looked beautiful—she was literally glowing. It was the only thing that got Jade through the broadcast.
What got her through the next couple of days was pure grit. She called on Serena, her assistant to work through switching up her daily schedule and her long-term commitments, finally changing some of the routine that her father had imposed on her life for so long. Finally, she felt liberated and able to make her own calls. Hiring a new personal trainer was going to be one of them, she laughed at herself. Calm but nervous, questioning herself but with growing confidence in her own choices, she began. She was going to be okay—eventually. Because she’d found her own voice.
But at night her mind wandered and she remembered things that were so wonderful, but so bad for her. She’d asked for what she wanted from Alvaro. Repeatedly. And he’d given it to her. He’d listened. He’d not minimised her desires as the irascible wishes of a spoilt princess, but seen them for what they were—the real, secret desires of a lonely woman who’d wanted to feel something for once. Who’d yearned to be wanted in return.
She’d been such a fool about that bit. He’d just been giving her the fairy tale for a fortnight. Because, for just a fortnight, he could. He could deliver every desire, every dream...because it was finite and it was only physical. Because there was not and never would be a future in it. And that was safe for him, wasn’t it?
But the second she’d suggested that there might be a future?
That was when he’d pulled back. Because he hadn’t meant any of it. He had just been indulging her. Spoiling her. Like the poor little rich royal she was.
For the first time she understood why people did such stupid things for lust. It fogged the mind and got so far beneath your skin, it made you reckless. It felt so good, you didn’t care about possible dangers or consequences or repercussions. She imagined it was like a drug.