The Ultimate Seduction (18 page)

Ryzard lifted his brows in query when she turned from her goodbye.

“He grew up with Paulie and my brother. I’ve known him forever,” she defended. “We needed pilots so I called him.”

It was petty and ungrateful to think, we didn’t need them
that
badly, but he was still short on sleep and deeply deprived of her. His willingness to share her, especially when he was so uncertain how long he’d have her, was nil.

His own transport arrived. They fell asleep against each other in the back of the 4x4 for the jostling four-hour drive back to Gizela.

* * *

The palace looked better than ever, Tiffany noted when she woke in front of it. Its exterior was no longer pockmarked by bullet holes and the broken stones were gone, giving the grounds a sense of openness and welcome. Inside, she went straight up the stairs next to Ryzard, both anxious for a shower. They parted at the top and she went to her room, where, he had assured her, everything she’d left was still there.

She wasn’t sure what it meant. A dozen times she’d thought about asking for the items to be shipped, but she’d been afraid that contacting him would be the first step toward falling back down the rabbit hole into his world. Or it would have been final closure, something she hadn’t been ready for. Had he felt the same? Because he could have had the things shipped to her at any time.

The not knowing hung like a veil over the situation, making her wonder if she was being silly and desperate when she dressed for his flag salutation, or respectful and supportive. He wouldn’t have brought her here if he didn’t want her here, she told herself, but she faltered when they met at the top of the stairs.

He wore his white shirt, black suit and presidential sash. His jaw was freshly shaved and sharply defined by tension as he took in her houndstooth skirt and matching wool jacket. “You don’t have to,” he said for the second time.

She almost took him at his word, almost let herself believe that he only wanted her, didn’t need her, but his eyes gave him away. They weren’t flat green. They burned gold. As if he was taking in treasure. As if she said she wasn’t ready, he would wait until she was.

“I want to,” she assured him, wondering if she was being an imaginative fool. Why would she want to do this? Pride of place, she guessed. It made her feel good to be with him no matter what he was doing. She admired him as a man and took great joy in watching him rise to his position.

Outside, it was blustery and tasting of an early-fall storm with spits of rain in the gusting wind. Leaves chased across grass and their clothes rippled as they walked to the pole. The flag snapped its green and blue stripes as he made his pledge and saluted it.

A burst of applause made them both turn to the crowd gathered at the gate. It was a deeper gathering than Tiffany had seen any other time. Hundreds maybe. A fresh rush of pride welled in her.

“Your predecessor wouldn’t have cut up his hands freeing trapped miners,” she said, picking up his scabbed hand. It was so roughened and abused, she instinctively lifted it to her lips.

The cheering swelled, making her pull back from touching him. “Sorry. That was dumb.”

“No, they liked it. They’re here for you as much as me. They know what you did for us.” He faced the crowd and indicated her with a sweep of his hand and a bow of his head.

His people reacted with incendiary passion, waving flags and holding up children.

“They’re thanking you, Tiffany.” He lifted her hand to his own lips, and another roar went up.

They stood there a long time, hands linked, waving at the crowd. No one walked away. They waited for her and Ryzard to go in first.

“Are you crying?” he asked as they entered the big drawing room. It was such a stunning room with its gorgeous nineteenth-century furniture and view overlooking the sea, but she still wasn’t comfortable in it.

Averting her gaze from Luiza’s portrait, she swiped at her cheeks. “That was very moving. I didn’t expect it. I had the impression they thought of me as an interloper.” Now she couldn’t help straying a glance at Luiza, as if the woman might be eavesdropping.

For a long moment he didn’t say anything, only looked at the portrait with the same tortured expression she’d seen on him before, when his feelings for Luiza were too close to the surface.

She looked away, respecting his need for time to pull himself together, but taking a hit of despair over it, too.

“It’s my fault you felt that way,” he said in a low, grave voice. “But please try to understand what she meant to me. Luiza made me see that Bregnovia is my home. That if I fought for it and made it ours,
mine
—” he set his fist over the place where her name was inked forever “—I would always belong here. That was deeply meaningful after so many years of being rootless and displaced.”

She nodded, unable to speak because she did understand and felt for him.

“I needed her love after losing my parents. I would have shut down otherwise. Become an instrument of war.”

Instead of a leader who had retained his humanity. It was one of the qualities she admired most in him, so she could hardly begrudge the woman who’d kept his heart intact through the horrors of battle and loss.

“When I lost her, I couldn’t let myself become embittered and filled with hatred. It would have gone against everything she helped me become, but I couldn’t face another loss like it. The vulnerability of loving again, knowing the emotional pain of grief if something were to happen... It terrifies me, Tiffany.”

He said it so plainly, never faltering even when he was exposing his deepest fear.

She wanted to look to the ceiling to contain the tears gathering to sting her eyes. It killed her to hear that he couldn’t give up his heart, but she couldn’t look away from him.

“It’s okay. I admire her, too,” she managed. Her voice scraped her throat with emotion, but she was being sincere. “I wish I’d met her. She had amazing willpower. I wouldn’t have had the guts to do what she did.”

“Guts.”
The harsh sound he made was halfway between a laugh and a choke of deep anguish. “Luiza had ideals. Now she is our martyr and a symbol of our sacrifice and loss. I would do her a disservice to forget or dismiss that, but it doesn’t make you an interloper for living where she died, Tiffany. She had a vision. When I look at you, I see reality. Our reality. Scarred by tragedy, but so beautiful. So strong and determined to carry on.”

His tender look of regard had its usual effect of striking like an unexpected punch into her solar plexus, making her breath rush out. She had to cover her lips to still them from trembling.

“I don’t like comparing you. It’s disrespectful to both of you, but you’re right. You and Luiza are very different. You wouldn’t have killed yourself. Given the same situation, you would fight with everything in you to stay alive until I came for you, no matter what happened. That’s who you are. Your courage astounds me.”

He ran his hand down his face only to reveal an expression of profound regret.

“When I sent you away, all I could think was that I didn’t want to risk the pain of loss again. And did you crawl back in your cave even though I’d hurt you? No. You went on with your life without me, and I was so hurt and so proud at the same time.”

She lowered her head, touched beyond measure, and saw a teardrop land on the hardwood. She swiped at her numb cheek, finding it wet. “Thank you for the flowers.”

“The flowers were an apology. You made me feel like a coward, refusing to embrace love when it’s as precious as life. I wanted to come to you and to hell with your Customs and Immigration, but I had to finish my obligation to Luiza first. I’ve done that. Official announcements will be made later in the week. I have the votes I need.”

“Oh, Ryzard, that’s wonderful!” She was elated for him, but still reeling from his mention of embracing love. Did that mean...? She searched his inscrutable expression.

“After the last few days, this country needs good news.” He sighed and rocked back on his heels, regarding her. “It also means the worst is over for a time when it comes to state functions. I won’t run in the next election. Could you live with two more years of being in the public eye, knowing it would be temporary?”

“What?” Her nails cut into her palms as she tried to stay grounded, not leaping too high on what he was saying. Not reading too deep. Definitely not wanting to hold him back in any way. “Ryzard, you
are
Bregnovia. It’s barely on its feet. You can’t hand it over to someone else so soon. I couldn’t live with myself if all this stability you’ve fought for crumbled.”

“I don’t want to wait that long to marry you,
draga.
I ache every night and barely get through my days. I need you.”

“You do?” Her voice hitched and stayed awfully small, but the world around her seemed to expand in one pulse beat, stealing the oxygen and filling the air with sparks. “You really want to marry me?
Me?
”

“
You.
Not the daughter of the next American president, not Davis and Holbrook, not the woman who charms heads of state without even trying. You.”

“Because you love me?” she hazarded, curling her toes and pulling her elbows in, bracing for the worst.

“Because we love each other.”

His tender gaze held hers, gently demanding she give up her heart to him. She did, easily.

“If I hadn’t been trained from birth to pretend everything was fine no matter how miserable I was, I couldn’t have got through these last weeks. I love you so much, Ryzard, and I hated myself for not letting my love be enough to keep us together.”

“I shouldn’t have made you feel like it was all up to you,” he said, coming across to draw her into him. With his lips pressed to her forehead, he added, “I will never hold back from you again. I thought I was being noble, letting you find the man who would love you like no other could, but that man is me. I love you with every breath in me, Tiffany. A different man loved Luiza. This one is yours.”

She relaxed her forehead against his nuzzling lips, touched to her soul. Fulfilled. Hopeful.
Happy.

He traced a soft kiss along the raised line of her scar, following it down to the corner of her eye and across her cheek until he was almost at her mouth.

“We should take this upstairs,” she said against his lips. “I have a feeling it won’t stay PG rated for long.”

He quirked a rueful grin and led her upstairs. In his bedroom, he took a moment to lift the snapshot from his bedside table and walk it into his sitting room.

When he returned he found her seated on the bed, hands tucked in her lap.

“We have to talk about one more thing before we go any further,” she said.

“What’s that?” he queried.

“Children.”

“At least two. I want them to have each other if something happens to us,” he affirmed.

“I was going to say six, but okay. Coward.”

“Ambitious,” he remarked in a drawl. “I can keep up if you can.” His smile was a slow dawn of masculine heat that twitched with amusement. “I’ve missed you, Tiffany. You make me laugh.”

She threw herself into his arms.

EPILOGUE

T
HE
M
ILKY
W
AY
stretched from one edge of the horizon to the other, diffusing into more stars against Zanzibar’s indigo sky than Tiffany had ever seen in her life. If Ryzard hadn’t kept her pressed firmly against his side as he steered them down the jetty toward the island bar, she likely would have stumbled into the lagoon.

“What the hell are you up to?”

“I know, I’m sorry, but I’ve never seen anything like—wait, what?” She realized Ryzard had been talking to a man in a mask who’d just passed them on the jetty. She glanced back the way they’d come to see the member break off his lip-lock with a
petite q
and hurry her toward the interior of the club.

“Who was that?”

“A friend. One who knows better than to play with Zeus’s toys.” He dragged his puzzled gaze to her expectant one. With a low sigh, he bent to whisper, “His name is Nic.” Straightening, he added, “Don’t ask me to say more than that. Even though you’re my wife, I still have an obligation to respect other members’ privacy.”

She grinned, pleased more by her title of “wife” than anything else.

The DJ’s electronica pulsed louder as they finished their walk into the open-air bar.
Q Virtus
members and
petite q’s
danced and jumped to the beat, making the wooden floor bounce.

Tiffany refused a drink offered by a passing
petite q,
but Ryzard drew her to a side bar. “Iced coconut. Nonalcoholic,” he said.

Her condition wasn’t official, especially since they’d been married only a day, but they’d stopped using protection weeks ago. She was pretty sure, and they were both so quietly, ferociously happy it was criminal.

The server tilted his array of cones for her to peruse. They were stunning, not merely shaved and frozen coconut with a splash of color, but intricately decorated works of art in more shades, flavors and hues than the stars above them.

Tiffany almost picked the one that looked like a bouquet of sweet peas, but maybe the mandala was prettier. The paisley?

“It just hit me,” Ryzard said in a tone of discovery. “It was never about the taffy apple being better optics. You couldn’t decide what color candy floss you wanted.”

Grinning, she admitted, “You caught me.”

“I’m convinced it’s the other way around,
draga,
” he retorted.

She laughed in delight, but contradicted, “I distinctly remember a kidnapping on the high seas.”

“I remember fireworks,” he said with a smoky look from behind his mask. “Choose something or we’ll miss these ones.”

Face warm with pleasure behind her own mask, she took two cones and gave him one, leaning her weight into him as he hooked his arm across her shoulders and steered her toward the rail overlooking the Indian Ocean.

“I see them every night, you know. Fireworks. ’Cause I’m spoiled.”

“You are,” he agreed, leaning down to bite at her cone before he offered his. “So am I.”

“Mmm. We’re in the right place for the privileged, aren’t we?” she mused, licking clove-and-orange-flavored coconut from her lips.

He stopped and turned her so they held each other in a way that felt perfect and familiar and right. “As long as I’m with you, I’m exactly where I belong.”

* * * * *

If you enjoyed this book, look out for the next instalment of
THE 21st CENTURY GENTLEMAN’S CLUB:
THE ULTIMATE REVENGE by Victoria Parker
Coming next month!
Keep reading for an excerpt from BILLIONAIRE’S SECRET by Chantelle Shaw.