Billionaires: The Royal: The Queen's New Year Secret / Awakened by Her Desert Captor / Twin Heirs to His Throne

“Did you like it there?”

She laughed. “Do I still live there, Kairos?”

“No. But one cannot be the queen of Iowa. So I suppose in your case, you did not have to dislike it to leave.”

“The queen of Iowa does have a nice ring to it, though.”

“Perhaps not as elegant as the queen of Petras.”

“Perhaps not.”

He leaned closer to her, taking her hand in his, pausing for a moment when she went stiff beside him. “Tell me more.”

“My mother was single until I was eight. Then she married my stepfather. You know how that ended. It was... It was not all bad. She wasn’t. He wasn’t. He was...the only father figure I ever had. He was kind to me.” She closed her eyes. “I remember once he bought me a present for...no reason. My mother never did things like that.” Her eyes fluttered open again. “But they were very wrapped up in each other, and I was an only child. Mostly, it was lonely.”

“What about friends? Didn’t you have friends?”

“Some. People studying advanced subjects in school. Other students who actually enjoyed getting good grades.” She paused, a fine line creasing her brow. “Someone came to speak at the school when I was young. A doctor. She had grown up in the area, with no money, nothing. It was a very poor town, and seeing someone come out of it and do what she did was inspiring. She told us that if we worked hard enough we can all achieve it. She talked to us about scholarships. About the kinds of things we could hope to find if we needed to succeed on merit rather than on status or money. I felt like she was speaking to me. I was smart, but we had nothing. My resources were all inside of me. And I was determined to use them. It was all I was given on this earth. I didn’t want to waste them.”

“From where I’m standing, I would say you didn’t.” How had he ever seen this woman as soft? She was pure steel. Brave as hell. She was braver than he was, truth be told. All he’d done was fall into line with what was expected of him. She had defied expectation at every turn. Had been brought into this world with no opportunity and from it had fashioned herself into royalty. He imagined there were very few people who could say the same.

“But you don’t get into good universities without hard work,” she said.

“I would imagine not. I got in with a pedigree.”

“People do, but I got in by being exceptional. I had to be. There’s so much competition for scholarships. Especially the type I needed. Full rides. Living expenses paid. I needed every bit of help I could scrounge up for myself. My mother went to prison for killing my stepfather during my last year of school. But I just...kept working. I was so close to being eighteen, social services sort of let me be. And I...stayed in the house by myself.”

“Tabitha...” His heart ached for her. For this woman who had been so lonely for so long.

“It was all right. I mean, it wasn’t in some ways, but in others... I could study in peace. I just kept going to school. And when I got to university, keeping what I had was dependent on maintaining a near-perfect grade point average. I could never afford to have boyfriends. Couldn’t waste any time or energy on parties. I had to be single-minded. And I was.”

“And a year into school you decided to move to Petras to take a job as my assistant,” he said. “Why exactly?”

“As I said, I wasn’t after a university experience. I wasn’t about making friends. I wanted to secure my future. The internship allowed me to complete my classes, and to gain the kind of work experience that most people would give a body part away to acquire. To work for the royal family? For someone with my background that’s more valuable than money. That’s a connection. The kind of connection someone like me can’t typically hope to ever obtain.”

“And then you married me instead.”

“You made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

His heart expanded, a sense of fullness pervading his chest. He could hardly breathe. “You’re very brave, Tabitha. I never fully appreciated that.”

She looked down, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “I don’t know if I’m especially brave. I was just more afraid of repeating the same life I’d already had as a child than I was of striking out on my own and failing.”

“I’ve heard it said that courage isn’t the absence of fear.”

“No. Without fear we would not move very fast.”

“Is that why you were running from me?”

She frowned, turning away from him and continuing on down the beach. For some reason that action pushed a long-ignored memory to the front of his mind.

* * *

“Don’t go.” He was twelve years old. He might as well be a man. He never cried. And yet, he could feel emotion closing down hard on his throat, strange prickling feeling pushing at the backs of his eyes.

The hall was empty except for him and his mother. He knew that she wasn’t simply going out for a walk. She didn’t have anything in her hand beyond her purse. But still, he knew. As certain as if she had announced it, he knew that this was the last time he would ever see her.

“Stay here, Kairos,” she said, her voice steady. If there was any regret inside of her, she certainly wasn’t showing it.

“You can’t go,” he said, calling on his most commanding tone. Of course, his voice chose that exact moment to crack in two, as it had been doing with increasing frequency lately. “I am the prince,” he continued, drawing strength from deep within him. “I forbid you.”

She paused, turning to face him, the expression in her eyes unfathomably sad. “It will end eventually, whether I leave now or not. Do you think I have anything your father wanted? No. But he wanted you. He wanted Andres. In that way, I didn’t fail. Remind him of that when he’s raging about this tomorrow.”

She turned away from him again, continuing down the long hallway. And he forgot to be brave. Forgot that he was supposed to be a man.

A cry escaped his lips and he ran after her, wrapping his arms around her, pressing his head against her back and inhaling the familiar scent of her. Honey and tuberose, mixed with the powder she applied to her face.

His cheeks were wet, tears falling easily now. “Don’t go. I won’t give you orders again. I’m begging you, please don’t leave. Mom, please.”

She rested her hands against his forearms, then curled her fingers around his wrist. She pushed down hard, extricating herself from his hold. “I have to.”

And then she walked away from him. At the palace door.

And he never saw her again.

* * *

He was breathing hard, his chest burning, his brain swimming with memories he usually kept locked down deep.

And then he looked at Tabitha.

He was treading on dangerous ground with her. He wasn’t neutral. And this wasn’t strictly sexual. It never had been.

Dammit. He had to get it together. He needed this time to convince her to stay with him. But he would never, ever be...that again. Never again would he allow himself to feel so much for someone that the loss of them would break him.

Never again would he be reduced to shameful begging in his own home to keep a woman with him.

He was different now. Harder. He was the man his father had commanded him to be. Not the boy who’d clung to a woman who felt nothing for him and wept as though his heart were breaking.

“I didn’t work years to improve my position in life only to settle for an existence that makes me unhappy.”

“What does happiness have to do with anything?” Kairos asked. “Happiness is just a socially acceptable word for selfishness. We all talk about how we need to be happy. About how our happiness must come first. In which case, leaving her husband and children isn’t abominable. It’s brave. Because you were only preserving your own happiness, am I right?”

“That isn’t true.”

Anger fired through his blood, the memory of his mother walking away still at the forefront of his mind, superimposing itself over this moment. Over this woman. “Of course it is. You can wander off into the far reaches of the world and eat, pray, love to your heart’s content regardless of who you leave behind because you’re on a journey to your essential truth and damn anyone else’s.”

“That isn’t what I’m doing. We were both drowning in that marriage, don’t pretend we weren’t.”