HOW TO MARRY A PRINCESS Page 13

  Jessica sighed. “Leave it to Noah to bring home royalty.” She delicately plucked the cherry from her Manhattan by the stem and popped it into her mouth. Her red lips tipped upward in a smile that managed to be both lazy and aggressive at the same time.

  Alice resisted the urge to explain that her family was not strictly considered royal. Montedoro was a principality, not a monarchy. Her mother held a throne, but she didn’t wear a crown. It was a distinction most people didn’t get, anyway. Plus, in recent generations, with all the media hype, just about anyone with a title could end up mistakenly being called a “royal.” So never mind. Let Jessica call her a royal if she wanted to. “Noah didn’t ‘bring’ me here,” she said. “I arranged my own transportation, thank you—and the Santa Barbara area is so beautiful. We rode down to the ocean today. It was fabulous.”

  Jessica was not interested in discussing the scenery. “Slightly, er, tarnished royalty, however. We’ve all read so much about you....”

  Alice kept on smiling. “Tarnished? I’m guessing you must have grown up years and years ago, back when women weren’t allowed to be as interesting as men.”

  Jessica took a large sip from her drink. “Humph. Being royalty, I’m guessing you know about Henry VIII.”

  “Well, I did see The Other Boleyn Girl. I kind of have a thing for Eric Bana, if you must know.”

  “I only mean, if you think about it, Noah is a little like Henry VIII, isn’t he?”

  Alice wished she had a drink in her hand. She could toss it into Jessica’s handsome, smug face. “Excuse me?”

  “Not that he’s ever cut off anyone’s head. It’s only that he becomes bored with his conquests so easily, wouldn’t you say?”

  Alice gave up trying to play nice. “I’m sorry, Jessica. Could you try being just a little more direct? Are you telling me that you are one of Noah’s ‘conquests,’ and that he dumped you and now you’re bitter and out for revenge because he broke your heart?”

  Jessica almost choked on her Manhattan. “No, of course not. It’s just what I’ve heard and what I’ve observed. I’m a friend, a neighbor. I have the next estate over to the north.”

  “You don’t behave like a friend.”

  “I’m only telling you what I’ve heard.”

  “Only spreading ugly rumors, you mean—and trying to cause tension between Noah and me.”

  Jessica huffed. “As I said, Your Highness, it was just an observation. There’s no need to get hostile.”

  “Oh, I’m not hostile. I’m merely disgusted. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I see no benefit to either of us in continuing this conversation.” Alice started walking. She didn’t stop until she reached her room. When she glanced back, Jessica was gone and Altus was right where he’d been a moment before, patiently waiting, ever watchful. She gave him a nod and shut the door.

  Once alone, she fell back across the bed and stared at the ceiling and slowly smiled. Her mother would have been proud of her. She’d put Jessica Saunders in her place and then some. And she’d done it without causing her usual scene, without so much as raising her voice.

  * * *

  Later, when all the guests had gone home, Noah did what he’d been waiting all day and evening to do. He took off Alice’s black dress and her red-soled shoes and made slow love to her. It was even better than the night before.

  She cuddled up close to him afterward, and he stroked her silky, fragrant hair and thought that even if she hadn’t agreed to marry him yet, things were going pretty well between them.

  Scratch that. Things were going great.

  Then she said, “Tell me about Jessica Saunders.” Her tone was a little too careful, too neutral.

  He wrapped a thick bronze curl around his finger, rubbed it with his thumb and then let it go. “There’s nothing to tell. She’s always seemed friendly enough. She’s a neighbor, a booster of the new Carpinteria hospital—to which I have written more than one large check. She does like her Manhattans, or so I’ve been told. And she’s divorced. I heard she took her ex-husband to the cleaners. He left her for a twenty-year-old dental assistant from Azusa.”

  “Ouch. I guess that explains the bitterness. At least to a degree. And she was drinking a Manhattan. Maybe she’d had one too many.”

  “What bitterness?” He took her chin and tipped it up so he could see her eyes. “What happened?”

  She wrinkled up her pretty nose as though she smelled something bad. “Jessica caught me on the stairs and told me that you’re like Henry VIII. You quickly get bored with your girlfriends and dump them.”

  “What a bitch. I never realized.” He kept his hand under her chin so he could see her eyes as he told her gruffly, “Not bored. Never dumping you—but didn’t I tell you that weeks ago, on my last night in Montedoro?”

  “You did. And your dumping me or not isn’t really what I’m worried about right now.”

  “Good.” He waited. He wasn’t sure where this was going, but he already had a feeling it was in the wrong direction.

  She asked, “Are you really friends with any of the people who came to the party tonight?”

  “Not really, no. But I have a good time with several of them. I enjoy their company. Isn’t that enough? Do they need to be people I’d take a bullet for?”

  She stacked her hands on his chest and braced her chin on them—and didn’t answer his question. “It’s beautiful here. I love it.”

  “So, then, why do you sound like you’re leading me someplace I’m not going to like?”

  She lifted up enough to plant a hard, quick kiss on the edge of his jaw. “I want to know more about you. I want to know everything about you.”

  He scowled up at her. “Why?”

  “Noah, come on. You’ve asked me to marry you.”

  “Yeah, I have. And in case you’ve forgotten, you failed to say yes.”

  “It’s not something a person should enter into lightly. We’re talking about a lifetime together. And about having children.”

  “Exactly. So when are you going to say yes?”

  She puffed out her cheeks with a hard breath. “A woman with any sense at all needs to know everything she can about a man before she says yes.”

  “You already know me better than anyone else but Lucy—and maybe Hannah.”

  “I believe that. And still, I don’t know you nearly well enough.”

  He did love her mouth. He loved it even when she was saying things he didn’t want to hear. Idly, he rubbed his thumb across those lush, sweetly shaped lips of hers. “Believe me. You know me well enough.”

  His assurances failed to shut her up. “No, I don’t. And what I’m trying to tell you is that I need to know more. I want you to take me to Los Angeles. I want to see the street you grew up on, the house you used to live in. I want to meet your childhood friends.”

  That was not going to happen. “Where did you get this idea?”

  She bent her head and pressed the sweetest, softest kiss to the center of his chest. “I was talking to Lucy yesterday. She told me a little about how it was for you before your mom died.”

  He should have known. “Did she tell you that all I did was fight and drink?”

  “More or less, yes. But she also said you had a sweeter side then and that you were more open-minded.”

  He grunted. Of course Lucy would say that he used to be sweeter. And maybe it was even true. Being sweet and open-minded had not gotten him what he wanted and needed in life. “I don’t have any childhood friends, so there’s no one there for you to meet.”

  “That’s all right.” She laid her head down, her ear against his breastbone. “I still want to see where you grew up.”

  He eased his fingers under the warm weight of her hair and settled his hand around the back of her neck. He didn’t think he could ever get tired
of putting his hands on her. It was another of the many things that made her perfect for him. “It’s a neighborhood of small older houses, California bungalows and little stucco Spanish-style homes. Nothing special. You’d get nothing out of seeing it.”

  “Let me be the judge of that.” With her index finger, she traced a squiggly pattern along the outside of his arm. It tickled in a very good way. “You can take me to all the places you used to hang out.” She sighed, a tender little sound, and snuggled in even closer. “My sister Rhia met her husband in Los Angeles. Rhia was in college at UCLA and Marcus was on some special military fellowship there. They had a favorite hamburger stand.” She chuckled to herself. “I want to go to your favorite hamburger stand.”

  He traced a slow path down the bumps of her spine—all the way to those two perfect dimples on either side of her round little bottom. “No, Alice. I’m not taking you there.”

  She pushed herself up over him and then brought her face down to his, nose to nose. He could smell lilies. Also, sex. Her nipples were like little pink pebbles against his chest. He started getting hard again. She knew it, too. She smiled in that way she had, all woman and all-powerful. “I wasn’t asking your permission.”

  “Listen to me.” He cradled the side of her face and gave her his most uncompromising stare. “No.”

  “You don’t intimidate me, Noah. And you don’t get to be the only one in control. If you don’t go with me, I’ll only go without you.”

  “What in hell did you and Lucy talk about?” he growled against those fine soft lips of hers.

  “I’ll never tell.” She licked him, just stuck out that clever tongue of hers and ran it in a circle around his lips. He got even harder. And then he opened his mouth and sucked her tongue inside.

  The kiss was long and wet and wonderful. Before it was over, he’d flipped her onto her back. And once he had her there, well, he had to kiss her everywhere.

  She didn’t object. She threaded her fingers into his hair and whimpered encouragements, holding him in place against the wet, slick heart of her sex. He kissed her there until she rolled her head on the pillows and whispered his name, the waves of her climax pulsing against his tongue.

  He was sure by then that they were done with the subject of the old neighborhood and he was feeling pleased with himself to have so effectively distracted her.

  She smiled at him in a dazed and dreamy way and held down her hand. He took the condom from her and smoothly rolled it on. Then he rose up over her. She didn’t even try to gain the top position that time. She simply opened to him, soft and giving and welcoming, more woman than any other he’d ever known.

  He lost himself in her. It was perfect. Paradise.

  And then, sometime later as they drifted toward sleep, with her arms tight around him, her fingers stroking his hair, she whispered, “Tomorrow, then. We can go to East Los Angeles and after that maybe visit Bel Air and see Jonas and Emma and the children.”

  * * *

  In the morning, he told her again that they weren’t going to East L.A.

  She said, “It’s all right, Noah. I’ll give you a few days to get used to the idea. And eventually, if you keep refusing to go with me, I’ll go by myself.”

  He decided to leave it at that for now. She’d said she would give him a few days. He was hoping that when those days were up, she’d either have seen the light and realized it was a pointless exercise to try to travel backward into his past—or he would have come up with another, better argument to convince her of why there was no need to go.

  He left her for his rooms, where he showered and dressed.

  When he got downstairs, she was sitting with Lucy out in the loggia. Their heads were together and they were whispering intently.

  Then they spotted him.

  They straightened away from each other and smiled at him—both of them, Lucy, too.

  His sister hadn’t granted him a smile in more than three weeks. He knew her so well, knew what that smile meant. She was mounting a new offensive in her campaign to get him to give her the money to go to New York.

  Fine. At least she wasn’t acting like he didn’t exist. Maybe they could work this out. Maybe this time he would be able to get through to her, get her to see that he only wanted what was best for her.

  “Noah,” Alice said, too sweetly. “Come join us. Hannah is making French toast with raspberries.”

  He went and sat down and put his napkin in his lap.

  Lucy poured him coffee—buttering him up. Definitely.

  Hannah came out with the plates full of food.

  Lucy waited until he’d had a couple of fortifying bites of his breakfast before she said, “Noah, I want to try one more time to work this out with you, about New York.”

  He ate another bite of the French toast. Excellent, as always. And then he took a sip of coffee. “Yeah. I think we do need to settle this.” He set down his cup and told her sincerely, “You know I want you to be happy.” He slid Alice a quick glance. She was concentrating on her breakfast, staying out of it, which he appreciated. He saw the little twitch of a smile at the corner of her mouth, though, the flash of a dimple. She assumed from what he’d just said that he was rethinking his refusal to send Lucy three thousand miles away.

  Lucy had known him a lot longer. She regarded him warily. “If you want to settle it, let me have access to my trust fund so I can get an apartment and get ready for the spring semester.”

  He set down his fork and said gently, “When you’re twenty-five, if you’re strong enough.”

  Alice’s faint smile had disappeared. She set down her fork, too, and took a slow, thoughtful sip of her coffee.

  Lucy said, “I’m strong enough now.” She spoke levelly. He could hear the angry undertone in her voice, but she was controlling it.

  So far, anyway.

  He said, “Listen. Why don’t we compromise?”

  Lucy cut a bite of French toast and then didn’t eat it. “I want to be flexible, Noah. But with you the word compromise only means that we’ll be doing it your way.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  He’d been thinking it over. And he was willing to compromise, willing to let her try more than just the online classes he’d been suggesting. He made his new case firmly. “How about this? One year here. At UC Santa Barbara. The School of Art, the College of Creative Studies. Come on. It’s UC. It will be challenging and exciting. You’ll learn a lot and enjoy yourself. And you can live at home. We’ll see how it goes. Then, after two semesters, we can reevaluate, see how you’re feeling, see if you’re ready to try New York.”

  From the corner of his eye, he could see the look on Alice’s face. It wasn’t a happy one. She just didn’t understand. Someone had to make sure that his sister was safe. Lucy wouldn’t be realistic, so he had to do it for her.

  Lucy came right back at him. “I know UCSB is a great school. But it’s not FIT New York. I’ll only be treading water there, and I have tread water all of my life, Noah. I’ve always, forever, been waiting—to get better, to be well, to be like everyone else.” Tears filmed her big eyes that were just like their mom’s.

  If only she would face the truth about herself. “But, Lucy, come on. You’re not like everyone else. You have to be careful, you have to—”

  “No!” Her fisted hand struck the table. Her plate bounced and flatware clattered. “How many times do we have to go over this?”

  Damn it, why couldn’t she see? He didn’t want this fight any more than she did. “Lucy, I—”

  “No. Wait. For once, Noah, won’t you please just listen to what I keep telling you? Last year I wanted to try UC. You said to wait one more year just to be sure I was strong enough. Well, I have waited. I have waited and waited. My doctors have given me their blessing to live a
normal life. I keep up with my blood work and exams and stress tests and everything is stable. When I go, it’s not like I’m heading off to the ends of the earth. It’s New York. Some of the best cardiac doctors in the world are there. I’ll get referrals, you know that, the best of the best. I’ll keep up with my checkups. I will be fine.”

  “Lucy. Come on. No.”

  Her cheeks flushed hot pink. “Just like that, huh? As always. Just no.”

  He felt like some monster. But he knew he was right and he couldn’t back down. “If you would only—”

  “Stop. Just stop.” Tears pooled in her eyes. Furious, she dashed them away. “I’m a healthy, normal woman now, Noah. Why can’t you see that? Okay, Mom died. And Dad. But that doesn’t mean something awful will happen to me, too. Why are you so afraid I’m going to keel over dead if I dare to get out on my own?”

  Mom and Dad. Why did she always have to bring up Mom and Dad? And Alice was just sitting there, taking it all in. He should have insisted that he and Lucy do this in private.

  He said with slow care, “This has nothing to do with Mom and Dad and you know it.”

  “Oh, please. Get real. You are lying to yourself and I have no idea how to get you to stop. You have to let me go, Noah. I’m all grown up, I’m in good health, and you haven’t been my guardian since I turned eighteen. I’m getting the money somehow. One way or another, I’m moving to New York before the start of the spring semester.” Lucy shoved back her chair and threw her napkin on the table. “You just watch me and see if I don’t.” She whirled and took off like a shot.

  “Lucy, get back here!”

  She didn’t glance back, didn’t even break stride. She stormed through the open doors to the family room and vanished from sight.

  Once she was gone, he picked up his fork again. He ate a couple of bites of his fast-cooling breakfast, chewing slowly and carefully, keeping it calm.

  Eventually, he sent a sideways glance at Alice. She caught him at it. Because she was just sitting there watching him. She had her hands in her lap.