The Royal Collection. Rebecca WintersЧитать онлайн книгу.
was silent. She was the same person. But now she had a better idea of who that was, now, he hoped she would not be afraid to let it show, to let it shine.
He was aware of Gray’s sudden scrutiny, a low whistle. “Anything happen that I should know about?”
So, the changes were in him, too, in his face.
“No, sir.” Nothing anybody should know about. He would have to live with the fact his mistakes could have cost her her life. Because they hadn’t, no one else had to know. Ronan watched the other two boats unload. Military men, palace officials, bodyguards.
“Where’s Prince Mahail?’ he asked grimly.
“Why would he be here?”
“If I was going to marry her and she’d disappeared, I’d sure as hell be here.” But only her grandfather had come. Not her mother. Not her father. Not her fiancé. And suddenly he understood exactly why she had loved a cat so much, the loneliness, the emptiness that had driven her to say yes instead no.
But she knew herself better now. She knew what she was capable of. As far as gifts went, he thought it was a pretty good one to give her.
Gray was looking at him strangely now, then he shook it off, saying officiously, “Look, I’ve got to get you out of here. Your commanding officer is breathing down my neck. Your Excalibur team is on standby waiting to be deployed. I’ve been told, in no uncertain terms, you’d better be back when they pull the plug. I’m going to signal the helicopter to drop their ladder.”
Ronan was a soldier; he trained for the unexpected; he expected the unexpected. But somehow it caught him completely off guard that he was not going to be able to say goodbye.
The helicopter was coming in low now in response to Gray’s hand signals, sand rising around it. The ladder dropped.
Don’t think, Ronan told himself and grabbed the swaying rope ladder, caught it hard, pulled himself up to the first rung.
With each step up the ladder, he was aware of moving back toward his own life, away from what had happened here.
Moments later, hands were reaching out to haul him on board.
He made the mistake of looking down. Shoshauna was running with desperate speed. She looked as if she was going to attempt to grab that ladder, too, as if she was going to come with him if she could.
But the ladder was being hauled in, out of the way of her reaching hands. Had he really been holding his breath, hoping she would make it, hoping by some miracle she could come into his world. Was he really not ready to let go? But this was reality now, the chasms between them uncrossable, forces beyond either of their control pulling them apart.
She went very still, a small person on a beach, becoming smaller by the second. And then, standing in the center of a cyclone of dust and sand, she put her hand to her lips and sent a kiss after him. He heard the man who had hauled him in take in a swift, startled gasp at the princess’s obvious and totally inappropriate show of affection for a common man, a soldier no different from him.
But he barely registered that gasp or the startled eyes of the crew turning to him.
Jake Ronan, the most pragmatic of men, thought he felt her kiss fly across the growing chasm between him and touch his cheek, a whisper of an angel’s wings across the coarseness of his whiskers, as soft as a promise.
SHOSHAUNA looked around her bedroom. It was a beautiful room: decorated in turquoises and greens and shades of cream and ivory. Like all the rooms in her palatial home, her quarters contained the finest silks, the deepest rugs, the most valuable art. But with no cat providing lively warmth, her space seemed empty and unappealing, a showroom with no soul.
She was surrounded by toys and conveniences: a wonderful sound system; a huge TV that slid behind a screen at the push of a button; a state-of-the-art laptop with Internet access; a bathroom with spa features. But today, despite all that luxury, all those things she could occupy herself with, her room felt like a prison.
She longed for the simplicity of the island, and she felt as if she had been robbed of her last few hours with Ronan. She had thought they would at least have one more motorcycle ride together. No, she had even been robbed of her chance to say goodbye, and to ask the question that burned in her like fire.
What next?
The answer to that question lay somewhere in the six days of freedom she had experienced. She could not go back to the way her life had been before, to the way she had been before.
Where was Ronan? She still felt shocked at the abruptness of his departure. After that final night they had shared, she had wanted to say goodbye. No, needed to say goodbye.
Goodbye? That isn’t what she wanted to say! Hello. I can’t wait to know you better. I love the way I feel when I’m with you. You show me all that is best about myself.
There was a knock on her door, and she leaped off her bed and answered it, but it was one of the maids and a hairdresser.
“We’ve come to fix your hair,” the maid said cheerfully, “before you meet with Prince Mahail. I understand he’s coming this afternoon.”
Shoshauna did not stand back from the door to invite them in. She said quietly but firmly, “I happen to like my hair the way it is, and if Prince Mahail would like to see me he will have to make an appointment to see if it’s convenient for me.”
And then she shut the door, her maid’s mouth working soundlessly, a fish gasping out of water. For the first time since she had come back to this room, Shoshauna felt free, and she understood the truth: you could live in a castle and be a prisoner, you could live in a prison and be free. It was all what was inside of you.
A half hour later there was another knock on her door, the same maid, accompanied by a small boy, a street ragamuffin.
“He said,” the maid reported snippily, “he has something that he is only allowed to give to you. Colonel Peterson said it would be all right.”
The boy shyly held out the basket he was carrying and a book.
Shoshauna took the book and smiled at him. She glanced at the book. Chess Made Simple. Her heart hammering, she took the basket, heard the muted little whimper even before she rolled back the square of cloth that covered it.
An orange kitten stared at her with round green eyes.
She felt tears film her eyes, knew Ronan was gone, but that he had sent her a message.
Did he know what it said to her? Not “Learn to play chess,” not “Here’s a kitten to take the edge off loneliness.”
To her his message said he had seen the infinite potential within her.
To her his message said, “Beloved.” It said that he had heard her and seen her as no one else in her life ever had.
But then she realized this gift was his farewell gift to her. It said he would not be delivering any messages himself. Had he let his guard down so completely on that final day together because he thought he would never see her again?
Never see him again? The thought was a worse prison than this room—a life sentence.
She wanted to just slam her bedroom door and cry, but that was not the legacy of her week with Ronan. She had learned to be strong. She certainly had no intention of being a victim of her own life! No, she planned from this day forward to be the master of her destiny! To take charge, to go after what she wanted.
And to refuse what she didn’t want.
“Tell Prince Mahail I will see him this afternoon after all,” she said thoughtfully.
She realized she had to put closure on one part of her life before she