My hips slow and my pelvis rests against Olivia’s, where I’m buried, touching the deepest part of her.
I feel her hand on my jaw and open my eyes. She’s still wearing the necklace—it shines in the moonlight, but not as brightly as her eyes.
“Ask me again, Nicholas.”
Hope whispers. Blessed, beautiful, thrilling hope.
“Stay.”
Her soft lips smile. “For how long?”
My voice is hushed and rough with pleading.
“For always.”
Olivia looks deep into my eyes and her smile grows, her head bobbing in the tiniest of nods.
“Yes.”
NICHOLAS IS PRACTICALLY GIDDY the next morning. We both are. Kissing and laughing—we can’t keep our hands off each other. Because it’s a new day. I never really understood that expression before. I mean, isn’t every day a “new day”? But now I get it. Because our future—whatever that future may hold—starts today.
And Nicholas and I are walking into it together.
We have breakfast in his room. We take a long shower together—hot in more ways than one. We finally put our clothes on and venture out late in the afternoon. Nicholas wants to take me biking again. But when we make it downstairs, Winston—the “Head Dark Suit,” as Nicholas calls him—is waiting for us.
“There’s a matter we must speak of, Your Grace,” he tells Nicholas, not looking at me at all.
Nicholas’s thumb slowly caresses the back of my hand. “We’re just on our way out, Winston. Can it wait?”
“I’m afraid not. It’s rather urgent.”
Nicholas sighs.
And I try to be helpful. “I’ll hang out in the library until you’re done.”
He nods. “All right.” He kisses my lips, softly, quickly, and then goes to do what he needs to do.
About forty-five minutes later, I’m still in the majestic palace library—it’s two stories, with gleaming wood that smells like lemon polish, the shelves packed with one ancient-looking, leather-bound title after another. I flip through a copy of Sense and Sensibility, not really reading the words.
“We’re ready for you now, Miss Hammond.”
My head snaps up to find Winston looking down at me, his hands clasped behind his back.
“What do you mean, ‘Ready for me’?”
This guy’s poker face is epic. And more than a little freaky. His mouth is relaxed, his eyes impassive—it’s the face of a mannequin. Or a very good, very cold, hit man.
“This way, please.”
Olivia steps into the room, looking curious and so very tiny next to Winston’s girth. Her eyes drift over Henry in the leather chair by the fireplace, then she smiles when she sees me across the room.
“What’s going on?”
I search her face and my own memory—looking for some sign I missed. Something that would’ve made me suspect…but there’s nothing.
Olivia worries her lip, staring at my blank expression.
Winston swivels the computer screen on the desk toward her. “These are the headlines that will run in the Daily Star. It’s a tabloid.”
HIS ROYAL HOTNESS’S UNWANTED SECRET HEIR
ROYAL TEEN PREGNANCY ENDS IN
MISCARRIAGE—ALL THE DETAILS
Her face pinches in horror. “Oh no! How…how did they find out?”
“We were hoping you could explain that to us, Miss Hammond,” Winston says. “Since you are the one who told them.”
I hate that I agreed to this—agreed to let Winston take the lead, do the questioning.
“What are you talking about?” Olivia turns my way again. “Nicholas?”
Winston slides a sheet of paper in front of her. She stares at it hard, brow wrinkling with concentration. “What is this?”
It’s a mortgage statement for Amelia’s—for the building of the coffee shop and Olivia’s apartment in New York—that was in foreclosure five months ago.
It was paid off in full last week.
Winston tells Olivia as much.
“I don’t understand. I just spoke to Ellie yesterday—she didn’t say anything.” She takes a step closer to me. “Nicholas, you can’t really believe I would do this.”
My gut rebels at the idea—but the black-and-white evidence taunts me. “I’m not accusing you.”
“Yeah, but you’re not exactly defending me, either.”
I take the paper off the table. “Explain this to me. Make it make sense.” Even to my own ears, it sounds like begging. “Make me understand what happened.”
She shakes her head. “I can’t.”
It’s like a thousand weights are sitting on my shoulders, bending my spine, trying to snap me in half. “I would forgive you for anything, Olivia. Did you know that? Anything. But…I won’t be lied to.”
“I’m not lying.”
“Maybe you told someone, accidentally. Maybe you mentioned it to your sister or Marty or your father?”
She takes a step backward. “So, I’m not a scumbag but my family is?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“That’s exactly what you said.”
I throw the bank statement on the table. “For ten years there hasn’t been a whisper of this in the press. Then weeks after I tell you, it’s splashed across the papers and it just so happens your family’s mortgage is paid off at the same time? What am I supposed to think?”
Olivia flinches, running her hand over her forehead.
“I don’t know what to say.”