Page 56 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

‘But you can’t leave.’ She dashed around the desk to grasp his arm. ‘I need you here.’

The chasm expanded when he glanced down at his arm, where her fingers gripped the cool fabric of his suit jacket.

She wished she could grab the words back when his gaze met hers. And what she saw there threw her back to her childhood, when she had begged her father to stay, to care for her, and he had looked at her the same way—with pity and impatience—as if she were an inconvenience to be managed, a burden to be handled.

‘Aren’t you forgetting something, Belle?’ he murmured. ‘This isn’t a real marriage.’

She released her grip on his arm, even as the yearning in her heart sank into the chasm too. Along with the last of her strength and resilience.

As he walked away, without a backward glance, fear and sadness shattered her heart and made her feel like that broken child all over again. Wanting—and hoping for—something she could never have.

‘Take me to the airport in Androlov,’ Travis demanded, slinging his bag into the back of the cab.

‘Your Highness?’ The driver seemed stunned as he climbed in.

‘The name’s Travis Lord,’ he snarled. It had taken over two hours to get packed and arrange a flight out of Androvia—because his company jet had returned to the States—and he needed to leave now, before he lost any more of his cool. ‘There’s a hundred-buck tip in it if you can get me there in under an hour.’

He’d lost his temper with Belle, something he’d promised himself he wouldn’t do. Ever since she’d turned to him in Colorado and told him—in that carefully polite tone—that she really didn’t think they should share a bed any longer. And made him feel like nothing.

He got that he’d overreacted. Theirs could never be more than a sexual relationship—they’d agreed to that, hadn’t they? But he’d thought they’d eventually become friends during their time together in Colorado. Every time she’d turned to him with need in her eyes, every time she’d trusted him to hold her safely while he’d taught her some moves on the snowboard, every time he’d watched her go over and he’d held her afterwards... It had started to feel like—more.

He still wanted her, sure, but he could get over that. What he couldn’t handle though was the feeling of being used.

So, when she’d told him he didn’t respect her, he’d let her have it. With both barrels. But he refused to feel guilty about it.

The cab pulled through the gates of the palace, but had to stop on the verge to let through a couple of trucks with a US news channel’s logo on.

He glanced over his shoulder as the cab headed out of the royal compound. Then leaned forward to tap on the glass.

The driver slid open the divider. ‘Yes, Your... Mr Lord,’ the man said, correcting himself.

‘What’s with the news trucks?’

‘They have been arriving for the last hour. Her Majesty is giving a press conference in ten minutes,’ the man replied, sending Travis a puzzled look. Probably because he was supposed to know what was going on in his wife’s life. That would be the wife he’d just walked out on in a storm of hurt feelings.

‘I need you here.’

The plea echoed in his skull—as it had been doing for the past couple hours while he’d been slinging stuff into his bag and rearranging his schedule commitments to make his getaway to Colorado—but this time he couldn’t seem to convince himself she’d been playing him.

He’d seen the panic in her eyes, felt the tremble of her fingers holding onto his suit—and he’d decided it was all an act. Just like all the other moments when he’d sensed the volatile emotion under the polite indifference.

He couldn’t pose as her loving husband any longer. Not until he could stop wanting her, all the damn time. Not until he could get over his obsession with her—which had grown to impossible proportions since their marriage. Not just the constant need to touch her, and caress her, and make love to her... But worse than that, the desire to listen to her voice—so precise, so determined, so honest and forthright—talking about everything from palace business to the crummy way her old man had treated her as a kid—and see the emotions swirling in her eyes. The emotions he had kidded himself she had hidden from everyone but him.

But uncertainty rolled around in his chest, along with the great big boulder that had been lodged there ever since their heart-to-heart on Christmas Day.

He glanced at his watch. Then grabbed his phone out of his pocket, to switch on the local news app. Within seconds, the newsfeed was interrupted for a ‘special report’ from the White Palace.

The conference had been set up in one of the palace’s many staterooms, the same room he had walked through close to three months ago now.

Isabelle appeared in front of the desk, and the camera flashes went off instantly.

He enlarged the picture, to gauge her expression. She looked demure, controlled, reserved as always. But behind the façade of composure, he could see the cracks. The smudges under her eyes, which he had spotted during their argument but chosen to ignore. The slight tremble in her fingers as she read from a prepared statement.

The words didn’t really compute. Something about the disappearance of her assistant, Mel, and the Playboy Prince—the police’s concern that not a trace of them had been found.

Guilt made his throat ache, her distress clear to him now. Why the hell had he let his temper stop him from seeing what was so damn obvious?

Maybe because he hadn’t had the guts to confront his own feelings, about her.

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