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She pulled herself up and stood to face him as he rose from the table. The top of her head only reached the shoulder of his suit jacket. “I’m just tired. Days are pretty long around here. I should go to bed now.”
“Tell me what has happened,” he said, emphasizing each word.
She looked up at him, a spark of proud fire momentarily brightening her sad eyes. “Please go.”
“You are not leaving this room, and I’m not leaving this house until you tell me what’s going on.”
“Why does it matter?” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “It’s the possibility of scandal, isn’t it? If the press hears the king of Elbia’s sister-in-law is bereft of a husband and can’t pay her electric bill, they’ll have a field day. Won’t they?”
Thomas’s heart stopped. So that was it. “Gary’s…left you and the children?” he asked hesitantly.
“Gone…flown the coop…absconded with a floozy from the office…good riddance.” She fluttered a hand carelessly in the air, but the gesture didn’t fool him a bit.
“Dear girl, I’m so sorry,” he muttered, trying to recover from his shock and think of something…anything appropriate to say.
“Well, I’m not,” Diane said in a quiet voice just short of cracking. “It’s been a long time coming. I should have insisted years ago…didn’t…couldn’t find a way to—”
The last ounce of strength drained from her. She turned with a choking sob and rushed toward the doorway into the living room.
Thomas cut her off with one enormous stride. She ran smack into his chest with her bowed head. His big arms immediately wrapped around her, pinning her there. She struggled for exactly half of one second, then went limp in his bear hug of an embrace.
Neither of them said a thing. But now that Thomas had her in his arms, her trembling body flush against his, he wasn’t sure what to do with her.
She didn’t push or squirm or indicate she needed space, oxygen or even words of solace from him. She seemed content just to remain where she was.
It was at that moment he became aware of an embarrassing development. Down below his belt. He felt himself move, extend, become…firm.
Thomas squeezed his eyes shut and willed himself to remember he was duty bound to Jacob to protect, defend and honor the members of his family. Desire wasn’t supposed to enter the equation. That meant not responding to Diane as if she were a beautiful, soft, desperately overworked woman who might welcome a man. That meant switching off his hormones for one bloody hour, finding out what he needed to know, mending whatever was broken the best he could…and getting the hell out.
If he played his cards right and there were no technical delays at the airport, he could be on the royal jet and headed back toward Europe in a matter of hours.
But at the moment a woman was weeping on his chest. Probably ruining his new suit jacket, he thought regretfully. He had paid an exclusive tailor in Florence to make it for him, at the cost of more lire than his recent week on the Riviera with a sultry French actress. In retrospect, the suit had seemed the better deal.
Diane made no sound, moved not a muscle. Nevertheless he knew she was crying by the bucketful.
“Mrs. Fields,” he said, “I’m good at fixing things. Let me help.” Although he’d meant to be gentle, even paternal, his words came out clipped, tense, businesslike.
If she hadn’t been moving before, now she was suddenly as still as granite, hardly breathing, taut from her tiny bare feet to the top of her shampoo-fresh head. “Help?” she whispered hoarsely. She looked up at him with incredible sadness. “You silly man, this isn’t a matter of diplomacy or rescuing Jacob from a mob of overenthusiastic paparazzi.”
“I realize that,” he began, employing his best diplomatic tone nevertheless. “But perhaps there is a way to work things out between you and your husband.”
“No, there isn’t.” She ducked out of his arms and began pacing the vinyl flooring. “I know it was the right thing to do, signing those papers, but I can’t bear to think how my kids are going to suffer.”
Thomas frowned, feeling something like panic tug at his gut. “What papers?” Did she mean separation papers? Or was she already divorced? He couldn’t walk out without something more exact to report to Jacob. But he also wanted to know, for himself.
“Mr. Fields is where now?” The words came out casually enough, but the muscles in his shoulders and arms bunched, as if prepped for battle with the man who had broken the heart of this amazing woman.
“I don’t know and I can’t say that I really care.” She smiled grimly at him.
Thomas stared at Diane, hesitant to push further. Seeing her in such anguish was devastating to him, although he didn’t understand why. Over the years he had hardened himself to the pain of others. He held little sympathy for anyone who wasn’t part of the royal family or the inner circle of the court. The von Austerands had, in every sense but one—blood—become his family.
After all his own parents had deserted him—each in their own way. He had been barely five years old when his mother had left his father, the Earl of Sussex, his two brothers and him. At six he’d been shipped off to a boarding school by his aristocratic father. Who had bloody well cared about him then?
The troubles of strangers were of no consequence to him. And Diane, though related by marriage to Jacob, was in all other ways a stranger. Yet, watching her suffer the rejection of the father of her children, he felt truly and deeply moved.
“I’m sorry,” Thomas began slowly. “He’s a fool to have left you.”
She gave him a tiny, appreciative shake of her head.
“If it’s money you’re worried about, there are ways to track down a deadbeat father and force him to do his share. It’s the law in this country.”
“I know. I’d just rather do this on my own. They’re my kids. He wouldn’t have left if he’d loved them.”
Thomas winced. Had his mother not loved him and his brothers?
Diane pulled the chenille belt tighter around her waist to close an enticing gap over her chest that Thomas was having difficulty pretending wasn’t there.
“I suppose not,” he said, mourning the view now blocked by fuzzy tufts of fabric.
Diane cast him an irritated glance. “You’re not going to leave, are you.” It was a statement.
“Not until I have something more to tell Jacob.”
She whirled toward the living room and disappeared around the corner. He found her digging through a stack of mail scattered across the coffee table among crayons, dried-up bits of modeling clay and miniature dinosaurs in molded multicolored plastic.
She came up with a long white envelope and thrust it at him. “Here. This tells all. Read and relay as much as you like to my concerned family.”
Her robe slipped open again.
He ached to kiss her. There. Right there between her beautiful breasts.
But she was holding the envelope out to him. Waiting.
Reminding himself of his duty for the hundredth time, Thomas took it from her, extracted its contents and unfolded a five-page document. “It’s a divorce settlement—legally signed, dated, notarized.” He looked up at her, but whatever emotions he expected to see in her eyes were absent. She’d pulled herself together in the time it had taken him to scan the agreement.
“You’ve accepted sole custody of the children and released your husband of all financial responsibilities?” He didn’t understand. “Why, Diane? Did he coerce you into signing this?”
“No,” she said. “I’m the one who filed for divorce and had the papers drawn up.”
“And your lawyer…he didn’t—”
“He advised me against releasing Gary from his obligations to the children. He said I had grounds to demand support plus a large settlement for emotional injury due to his desertion.”
“But you ignored his advice.”
She looked him squarely in the eyes. “I don’t want anything to do with Gary Fields. The children and I are better off without him.”
“No doubt,” Thomas agreed. “But still—”
“Don’t say another word,” she warned, shaking a finger at him as if he were one of her brood. “It’s done. Now all I have to do is figure out how to survive on pride…because there sure isn’t a lot of money coming into this household.”
She started pacing again, this time crisscrossing the oval, braided rug that nearly covered the living room floor. “Listen, Thomas, I wasn’t trying to hide anything from Ally and Jacob…or from my parents. Or embarrass anyone. I just didn’t want them to worry, you know? I had decided to wait until I was sure of the end result. I didn’t know until yesterday’s mail that Gary had signed the divorce papers.”
“But he did.”
“In a heartbeat.” She laughed dryly, shaking her head. “He never loved me, not really. I don’t think even I know what love is. I was a good wife to him, but now it’s finished. And I’m glad, I really am. Neither of us was happy.”
“I understand.” What still didn’t make sense to him was why she hadn’t fought for what was rightfully hers. She couldn’t possibly support three children on the money she made from her in-home day care business.
She looked up at him from beneath thick, dark lashes. “Sorry, you don’t deserve to get dumped on like this. You’re just the messenger, right?”
Her fingertips were lightly smoothing the vee of skin between her throat and breasts, unconsciously opening the robe again. He followed their teasing pattern, wishing she’d stop doing that. He was having enough trouble giving a damn about wayward husbands and legal documents. He imagined how her long, delicate fingers would feel sliding down his bare chest, across his belly, descending to—
“We hadn’t been intimate for a long time,” she continued, more to herself than to him. “Sex just didn’t seem very important to Gary.”
Personally, he couldn’t imagine any man not wanting to be intimate with Diane. “Most married men are interested in sex, no matter what else they may say. They just search for a suitable outlet…which may or may not be their wife.”
“Outlet. How harmless sounding,” she murmured, nibbling thoughtfully at her bottom lip. “Is that all we women are to men?”
He put a hand out to touch her shoulder consolingly but thought better of it and drew his curled fingers away. “Of course not, not where a real man is concerned.” But he had a flash of guilt for the women he’d used in the past. Did it matter that they’d used him, as well? For his money, for the gifts, for an entry into glamorous royal functions and a leg up in society? Maybe he wasn’t totally innocent, either. “I just meant,” he added slowly, “that Gary’s character isn’t of a caliber to match yours. He didn’t deserve you.”
She looked at him strangely, as if trying to decide how seriously she should take his compliment. She had stopped keeping track of her robe’s antics: one creamy shoulder was bare.
Thomas turned away and stared out the front window at the Benz, parked in a shadowy patch between two streetlights. He drew a deep breath, recentered himself, told himself sternly that his reason for being here was Jacob…not his lovely, tempting sister-in-law.
“May I tell your sister and the king what I’ve learned tonight?” he asked, his voice restored to its formal, controlled chest rumble.
She didn’t answer right away. “Of course. But before you return to Elbia I will have called Allison and spoken with her. I realize they will need to know. I’ll also call my parents.”
“The children—” he began, but she cut him off.
“Gary never spent much time with them. They obviously miss him, but his absence isn’t a big change for them. The money will be tight for a while, but I’ll figure out what to do.” She sounded confident.
“You’re sure?”
She gave him a sunbeam of a smile. “Of course. I’m a survivor, Thomas. If you knew me better, you’d understand that.”
He nodded but decided to try one last time. “I have the authority to give you a blank check—”
“Somehow I guessed you would have. Tell Jacob for me, No, but thank you. We’ll manage.”
There was nothing more he could do. Right? He’d learned the truth and offered assistance, which had been politely refused. If he telephoned the pilot at JFK, he might still make it back to Elbia by midday tomorrow.
“If you’re sure,” he said, taking her hand in a gesture calculated to be gentle, friendly, consoling.
“I’m sure,” Diane whispered.
Then she ruined everything.
She stepped up to him, rose onto her toes and kissed him lightly on the ridge of his jaw. A feather of a kiss from a woman who had the charity to respond with graciousness toward others despite her own immeasurable grief and disappointment.
“Thank you for coming, Thomas,” she whispered. She undoubtedly didn’t intend for her breast to brush against his arm as she withdrew. But it did.
He marched to the car, cursing his body for betraying him. One little kiss, one accidental touch, one bare shoulder…and his hormones were bouncing around inside of him like blasted Ping-Pong balls. Now there was no way he could leave for home tonight.
Two
Diane shooed her three darlings outside. Tommy, named after her dad, a retired Amtrak conductor, was leader of the pack. As the oldest child on the street, he was undisputed monarch of the neighborhood. Occasionally his sister, Annie, tricked him into doing what she wanted. But most of the time he saw right through her ploys.
Gary, Jr., known only as Gare from the time he was born, was the baby of her adored litter. He would begin kindergarten in the fall but didn’t look old enough. He idolized his big brother, collected dinosaurs and favored chocolate syrup poured over everything. Including mashed potatoes, if she’d let him have his way.
Altogether, they got along well and Diane would have cheerfully welcomed three more of the same. She loved children, so much so that she’d begun a day-care service in her home to enable her to stay home with her own while bringing some money into the house to help with expenses.
She let a nearly forgotten wish pass through her mind. If she could…if she ever had the money, she’d take her children with her on marvelous trips to far corners of the world. They would hike through exotic countries…share delicious foods of other cultures…listen to the music and language and laughter of other lands…and learn about people others called foreigners but she thought of as neighbors.
Dreams. Beautiful girlhood dreams that had been nourished by three years of studying international relations and sociology in college. They would never come true.
Diane put out a hand to touch the door frame and let her eyes close for a moment. The darkness behind her eyelids brought a temporary sense of separation from reality. It was so tempting to stay like this—shut off from overdue bills, from the loneliness, from the knowledge that traveling the world would never come to be.
As fond as she was of Thomas, she’d lied to him the night before. How she was going to make ends meet, she didn’t have a clue. Not yet. She had to come up with a plan.
When she opened her eyes, Tommy was helping little Gare onto the swing. Annie was swooping down the slide in their securely fenced yard. The June sun was warm. Unless someone took a spill, they’d be content for at least an hour on their own. And it was Saturday—no day-care kids. Now was as good a time as any to consider her options.
Forty-five minutes later, her checkbook lay open in front of her on the kitchen table. Checks to cover the most urgent bills had been written, bringing her balance down to almost nothing. In two weeks she’d be paid again, but without Gary’s earnings she’d be hard put to continue making ends meet.
Thomas had been right. She’d been too proud to ask Gary for help. But she wouldn’t go begging to her ex now. Alternatives. That’s what she needed. What were hers?
She could ask her parents for a loan. Or she could reconsider Jacob’s blank check. But either one would be a temporary fix at best and leave her feeling indebted to her family. She stood up, stretched and walked across the kitchen to work the stiffness out of her bones. It took making a cup of tea and circling the kitchen table for another ten minutes to come up with the obvious answer: get a better paying job.
That would mean working outside of her home, leaving her children in someone else’s care when they weren’t in school. Other mothers did it; she could, too. But she felt as if she was breaking a silent promise she’d made to her babies when they were born. She sat down again at the table, convinced she couldn’t feel any worse.
A moment later a series of fist-on-wood thuds rattled the glass pane in her kitchen door. She twisted around in her chair with a startled jerk just as Thomas Smythe opened her door without invitation and stepped inside. She was immediately reminded of the deliciously illicit feelings he’d awakened in her the first day they’d met…and every time since.
“I thought you’d have left for Elbia by now,” she said, pushing back from the table to stand up.
He shrugged, his shoulders threatening to break out walls. “I had a few more matters to look into before I left,” he said, placing a white paper sack on her table that looked as if it had come from the local bakery. He had only a slight English accent, which she attributed to the amount of time he’d spent in the United States and other countries on behalf of Jacob.
“What kind of matters?” She dug into the bag and brought out an enormous raisin scone. As anxious as he’d seemed to get out of her house the night before, she figured they must have been terribly important to keep him in Connecticut.
“Just details. Like making sure you have enough cash on hand to survive the next few months.”
The big guy doesn’t give up easy, does he? she thought, amused by his insistence on doing his job, but also a little annoyed at Jacob’s interference. “Well, there’s nothing you can do if I don’t want help, is there?” She took a bite of the scone, then waved it in challenge at him. “Short of dumping truckfuls of cash into my accounts, but you don’t have the name of my bank or the account numbers, so…” She nearly choked on a mouthful of crumbs at the mischievous twinkle in Thomas’s dark eyes. “You wouldn’t. You didn’t!”
He just looked at her. He wasn’t quite smiling, but she was sure the effort to keep a straight face was costing him.
“Damn you, Thomas. And Jacob, too. It’s no doubt his name that loosened tongues.” She tossed his raisined peace offering on the table. Men! What right did they have to take over her life? She was perfectly capable of working things out for herself. Surviving the next few months might not be fun, but she’d find a way.
“It’s for your own good. In the children’s best interest,” Thomas explained solemnly.
