Second Chance With the Rebel: Her Royal Wedding Wish (23 page)

This was where it went, then. When a person exercised their power completely, it became a ballet, not a fight with the forces, but a beautiful, intricate dance with the elements. Ronan rode that wave with such certainty.

Shoshauna had walked all her life with men who called themselves princes, but this was the first time she had seen a man who truly owned the earth, who could be one with it, who was so comfortable with his own power and in his own skin.

There was another element to what he was doing, and she became aware of it as he outran the wave, dropped back to his stomach, moved out to catch another. He was not showing her up, not at all.

Showing off for her, showing her his agility and his strength and his grace in this complex dance with the sea.

He may have been mastering the sea, but he was giving in, surrendering, to the chemistry, the sizzle that had been between them from the very moment he had first touched her, dragged her to the ground out of harm’s way, a mere week ago, a lifetime ago.

Ronan was doing what men had been doing for woman since time began: he was preening for her, saying, without the complication of words: I am strong. I am fearless. I am skilled. I am the hunter, and I will hunt for you. I am the warrior, and I will protect you.

It was a mating ritual, and she could feel her heart rising to the song he was singing to her out there on the waves.

Finally he came in, tossed the board down, then threw himself down on his stomach and lay panting in the sand beside her.

She wanted to taste his lips again, but knew she was in the danger zone. He questioned her motives, he would never allow himself to be convinced that it was about them, not about her looking for convenient ways to escape her destiny.

To even try to convince him might be to jeopardize the small amount of time they had left.

Tomorrow, hours away from now, they would leave here.

As if thinking the same thought, he told her his plan for the day. They would take the boat back across the water, find where the motorcycle was stashed in the shrubbery. Did she know of a fish-and-chips-style pub close to the palace? She told him that almost certainly it was Gabby’s, the only British-style pub on the island that she was aware of.

“We’ll meet Colonel Peterson there at three,” he said.

“And then?”

“If it’s safe, you’ll go home. If it isn’t, you’ll most likely go into hiding for a little longer.”

“With you?”

“No, Shoshauna,” he said quietly. “Not with me.”

She would have tonight, then one more ride on that motorcycle, and then, whatever happened next, this would be over.

Sadness threatened to overwhelm her, and she realized she did not want to ruin one moment of this time she had left contemplating what was coming. She suspected there was going to be plenty of time for sadness.

Now was the time for joy. For connection. He knew they were saying goodbye, it had relaxed his guard.

Shoshauna looked at the broadness of Ronan’s shoulders as he lay in the sand beside her, how his back narrowed to the slenderness of his waist, she looked at how the wet shorts clung to the hard-muscled lines of his legs and his buttocks.

She became aware he was watching her watching him, out of the corner of his eye, letting it happen, maybe even enjoying it.

She reached out and rested her hand on the dip of his spine between his shoulders. For a minute his muscles stiffened under her touch, and she wondered if he would deprive her of this moment, get up, head to the cottage, put distance between them. She wondered if she had overplayed.

But then he relaxed, closed his eyes, let her touch him, and she thought, See? I knew I would be a good chess player. Still, she dared not do more than that, for fear he would move away, but she knew he was as aware as she was that their time together was very nearly over. That was the only reason he was allowing this. And so she tried to memorize the beauty of his salt- and sand-encrusted skin beneath her fingertips, the wondrous composition of his muscle and skin. She felt as if she could feel the life force flowing, vibrating, throbbing through him with its own energy, strong, pure, good.

Night began to fall, and with it the trade winds picked up and the wind chilled. She could feel the goose bumps rising on his flesh and on her own. The waves crashed on the shore, throwing fine spray droplets of water up toward them.

Still, neither of them made a move to leave this moment behind.

“Do you think we could have a bonfire tonight,” she asked, “right here on the beach?”

Silence. Struggle. It seemed as if he would never answer. She was aware she was holding her breath.

“Yeah,” he said, finally, gruffly. “I think we could.”

She breathed again.

* * *

Ronan slid a glance at Shoshauna. She had changed into a striped shirt and some crazy pair of canvas slacks she had found in the cottage, lace-up front with frayed bottoms that made her look like an adorable stowaway on a pirate’s ship.

Despite the outfit, she was changed since the surfing episode, carrying herself differently. A new confidence, a new certainty in herself. He was glad he’d let down his guard enough to be part of giving her that gift, the gift of realizing who she would be once she went back to her old world.

Surely, he thought looking at her, at the tilt of her chin, the strength in her eyes, the fluid way she moved, a woman certain of herself, she would carry that within her, she would never marry a man for convenience, or because it would please others. He remembered her hand resting on his back. Surely, in that small gesture, he had felt who she was, and who she would be.

Tonight, their last night together, he would keep his guard down, just a bit, just enough.

Enough to what? he asked himself.

To have parts of her to hold on to when he let her go, when he did not have her anymore, when he faced the fact he would probably never look at her face again.

Then he would have this night: the two of them, a bonfire, her laughter, the light flickering on her skin, the sparkle in her eyes putting the stars to shame.

In the gathering darkness they hauled firewood to the beach. As the stars came out, they roasted fish on sticks, remembered her antics in the water, laughed.

Tomorrow it would be over. For tonight he was not going to be a soldier. He was going to be a man.

And so they talked deep into the night. When it got colder, he went and got a blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders, and then when it got colder still and she held up a corner, he went and sat beneath the blanket with her, shoulder to shoulder, watching the stars, listening to the waves and her voice, stealing glimpses of her face, made even more gorgeous by the reflection of the flame that flickered across it.

At first the talk was light. He modified a few jokes and made her laugh. She told him about tormenting her nannies and schoolteachers.

But somehow as the night deepened, so did the talk. And he was hearing abut a childhood that had been privileged and pampered, but also very lonely.

She told him about the kitten she had found on a rare trip to the public market, and how she had stuck it under her dress and taken it home. She smiled as she told the story about a little kitten taking away the loneliness, how she had talked to it, slept with it, made it her best friend.

The cat had died.

“Silly, maybe to be so devastated over a cat,” she said sadly, “but I can’t tell you how I missed him, and how the rooms of my apartment seemed so empty once he was gone. I missed all his adorable poses, and his incredible self-centeredness.”

“What was his name?”

“Don’t laugh.”

“Okay.”

“It was Retnuh. In our language it means Beloved.”

He didn’t laugh. In fact, he didn’t find it funny at all. He found it sad and lonely and it confirmed things about her life that she had wanted to tell him all along but that he had already guessed anyway.

“Prince Mahail’s proposal came very shortly after my Beloved died. Ronan, it felt so much easier to get swept along in all the excitement than to feel what I was feeling. Bereft. Lonely. Pathetic. A woman whose deepest love had been for a cat.”

But he didn’t see it as pathetic. He saw it as something else: a woman with a fierce capacity to love, giving her whole heart when she decided to love, giving it her everything. Would the man who finally received that understand what a gift it was, what a treasure?

“Will you tell me something about you now?”

It was one of those trick questions women were so good at. She had shared something deep, meaningful. She wasn’t going to be satisfied if he talked about his favorite soccer team.

“I wouldn’t know where to begin,” he said, hedging.

“What kind of little boy were you?” she asked him.

Ah, a logical place to begin. “A very bad one,” he said.

“Bad or mischievous?”

“Bad. I was the kid putting the potatoes in the tailpipes of cars, breaking the neighbors’ windows, getting expelled from school for fighting.”

“But why?”

But why? The question no one had asked. “My Dad died when I was six. Not using that as an excuse, just some boys need a father’s hand in their lives. My mother seemed to know she was in way over her head with me. I think wanting to get me under control was probably motivation for most of her marriages.”

“Marriages? How many?” Shoshauna whispered, wide-eyed. This would be scandalous in her country where divorce was nearly unheard of. It had been scandalous enough in his own.

“Counting the one coming up? Seven?”

“You can’t be responsible for that one!”

Still, he always felt vaguely responsible, a futile sense of not being able to protect his mother. When he was younger it was a sense of not being enough.

“What was that like for you growing up? Were any of her husbands like a father to you?” Shoshauna asked.

And for some reason he told her what he had never told anyone. About the misery and the feelings of rejection and the rebellion against each new man. He told her about how that little tiny secret spark of hope that someday he would have a father again had been steadily eroded into cynicism.

He didn’t know why he told her, only that when he did, he didn’t feel weaker. He felt lighter.

And more content than he had felt in many years.

“What was your mother’s marriage to your father like?” she asked softly.

He was silent, remembering. Finally he sighed, and he could hear something that was wistful in him in that sigh. He had thought it was long dead, but now he found it was just sleeping.

“Like I said, I was only six when he died, so I don’t know if these memories are true, or if they are as I wish it had been.”

“Tell me what you think you remember.”

“Happiness.” He was surprised by how choked he sounded. “Laughter. I remember, one memory more vivid than any other, of my dad chasing my mom around the house, her running from him shrieking with laughter, her face alight with life and joy. And when he caught her, I remember him holding her, covering her with kisses, me trying to squeeze in between them, to be a part of it. And then he lifted me up, and they squeezed me between them so hard I almost couldn’t breathe for the joy of it.”

For a long time she was silent, and when she looked at him, he saw what the day had given her in her face: a new maturity, a new ability to be herself in the world.

And he heard it in her voice, in the wisdom of what she said.

She said, “Once your mother had that, what she had with your father, I would think she could not even imagine trying to live without it. By marrying all those men, she was only trying to be alive again. Probably for you, as much as for herself. It wasn’t that she wanted those men to give you something you didn’t have, it was that she wanted to give you what she had been before, she saw you grieving for her as much as for him.”

It was strange, but when he heard those words, he felt as if he had searched for them, been on a quest that led him exactly to this place.

A place where, finally, he could forgive his mother.

Ever since he’d left home, it was as if he had tried desperately to put a lid on the longing his earliest memories had created. He had tried to fill all the spaces within himself: with discipline, with relentless strength, with purpose, with the adrenaline rush of doing dangerous things.

But now he saw that, just like Shoshauna, he had been brought to this place to find what was really within himself.

He was a man who wanted to be loved.

And deserved to be loved.

A man who had come to know you could fill your whole world, but if it was missing the secret ingredient it was empty.

With the fire warm against their faces and the blanket wrapped around them, they slept under the winking stars and to the music of the crashing waves. He had not felt so peaceful, or so whole, for a long, long time.

But he awoke with a fighting man’s instinct just before dawn.

For a moment he was disoriented, her hair, soft as eiderdown, softer than he could have ever imagined it, tickling the bottom of his chin, her head resting on his chest, her breath blowing in warm puffs against his skin.

The feeling lasted less than half a second.

He could hear the steady, but still far off, wop-wop-wop of a helicopter engine, beneath that the steady but still-distant whine of powerboats.

He sat up, saw the boats coming, halfway between the island and the mainland, three of them forming a vee in the water, the helicopter zooming ahead of them to do reconnaissance.

The fire, he thought, amazed at his own stupidity. He’d been able to see the lights of the mainland from here, how could he have taken a chance by lighting that fire?

Because he’d been blinded, that’s how. He’d forgotten the number-one rule of protection, no not forgotten it, been lulled into believing, that just this once it would be okay to set it aside. But he’d been wrong. He’d broken the rule he knew to be sacred in his business, and now he was about to pay the price.

He knew that emotional involvement with the principal jeopardized their well-being, their safety. And he had done it anyway, putting his needs ahead of what he knew was right.