The Prince's Wedding
Auteur
Justine Davis
Lezers
17,0K
Hoofdstukken
20
Chapter 1
At least it didn’t show.
If nothing else, Lucas Sebastiani was certain of that. All those years of training, virtually from the cradle, on how to put on a public face were paying off now in a way he’d never expected. No one would be able to guess at his agitated state of mind.
But never before had it been such an effort to maintain that practiced facade—a fact he was very aware of and not particularly happy about.
“We’ll be landing in Colorado in approximately one hour, Your Highness.”
Lucas nodded without looking at the attendant in the Montebellan uniform. Not because he was fascinated by the view out the small jet’s window, but because he didn’t want to see the speculation he was sure would be in the woman’s eyes. She would never say anything—anyone who worked for the Sebastianis was too well-trained for that—but Lucas suspected they were all wondering how he was feeling as they headed toward the scene of his own personal disaster, the place where his last flight had ended so abruptly and painfully.
How did they think he felt? That crash had done more than rattle his brain, temporarily wiping out his memory. It had changed his life—and he himself—forever.
“May I get you anything, Your Highness?”
“No, thank you, Mareta. Why don’t you relax for the rest of the flight.”
The woman nodded, then turned and walked toward the front of the plane. Restlessly, Lucas stood up. Normally when he felt like this he would head for the cockpit and take over the controls for a while. Flying his beloved new Redstone Hawk V was usually just the thing to settle his nerves. Something about flying the responsive craft made all his problems fade in significance, although it set Roark, the Sebastianis’ chief pilot, on edge not to be at the controls himself.
If he’d been flying the Hawk that night, Lucas knew he likely would have beaten that storm. He even had the passing thought that flying it here and now, nearing the place where he’d come to grief all those months ago, would be a good thing, sort of like getting back on a horse after you’d been thrown.
But instead of heading for the cockpit, he found himself moving the other way, toward the stateroom at the back of the plane’s cabin. Once he’d been pleased with the richly appointed fixtures and lush furnishings of the powerful little jet. Now he barely noticed any of the many amenities. The sleek plane was merely the quickest and easiest way to carry out this all-important mission.
Once, he thought wryly, you were the walking personification of a stereotype, the guy the term “playboy prince” was coined for. And now?
He wasn’t sure who he was now.
He stepped through the door of the stateroom, and immediately some of his tension eased. That carefree, sometimes heedless man had died in that plane crash in the mountains ahead of them. The man who stood here now had been reborn, given a fresh start, and he was determined to make the most of it.
The reason for his determination lay sleeping peacefully in a small portable crib. As Lucas approached, the older woman who sat vigilantly beside his baby son’s bed rose to her feet and inclined her head respectfully.
“Your Highness.”
“How is he?”
“He is sleeping quietly, Your Highness.”
“Thank you, Eliya. I’ll watch him for a while.”
The nurse nodded, reached into the small crib to adjust the blanket, gave the baby a last gentle pat, then gathered up the length of silk she’d been embroidering and quietly exited the stateroom.
Lucas sat in the chair she’d vacated and stared down at the tiny being, this miracle who was part of him, and part of history. The next prince of the kingdom of Montebello, heir to the more-than-a-century-old island throne that had been held by his family since its inception in 1880.
Luke Marcus Augustus Sebastiani. Such a big name for such a little boy.
Of course, when he’d come to them he’d been only Luke. But once his identity had been confirmed beyond doubt, he’d been renamed after his father, grandfather and illustrious ancestor in an official royal ceremony designating him as Lucas’s—and Montebello’s—heir.
Now, at three months old, he was blissfully ignorant of the fact that he was aboard a royal Montebellan jet, winging his way toward a reunion with the mother he’d never known. The mother he’d been stolen away from on the very day he’d come into the world.
Lucas shrugged his shoulders rather fiercely, as if the sudden action could somehow shed the memories of the confused emotions he’d felt when he’d first gotten word of Jessica’s death. And his state of confusion had only gotten worse when he’d pressed for details and his cousin Drew had reluctantly told him that she’d died giving birth to a stillborn child. It was only later that he’d learned she’d been kidnapped by Gerald Hanson, who posed as the caretaker of the ranch, and who’d been in league with Jessie’s sister in the plot to murder her and steal the baby.
The thought that Jessie had been pregnant when he’d left her had been a hammer blow. First had come wonder, that they had created new life out of their love. Then had come more confusion—why hadn’t she told him? Judging by the timing, she had to have known.
Of course, he had to admit with much reluctance, he hadn’t exactly stayed around long enough to give her time to work up to it.
When his memory had suddenly returned, he’d left her for her own good, he’d thought, knowing what chaos would descend on her beloved ranch if he stayed and was discovered there. He’d spent many a long night since torturing himself with guilt, especially after the report of her death—if he’d stayed, would she still be alive?
And the knowledge that his child, a baby whose existence he hadn’t even been aware of, had also died had made the hollow ache inside him almost unbearable. He’d told himself he couldn’t possibly feel so bad over a baby he hadn’t even known about, who hadn’t even lived to draw a breath.
But he had. And there it was.
He’d thrown himself into a passion of work, until even his father had suggested he slow down. He’d ridden on his favorite horse over the island of Montebello from one end to the other, until rumors about the mental state of their returned prince began to circulate among the people.
And then the miracle had happened. Out of the morass of evil hatched by Jessica’s sister had come a tiny, precious bit of goodness. Gerald had lied, and his son was alive.
There had been the formality of paternity testing, but Lucas hadn’t needed any DNA report to prove what he’d known the moment he’d looked at the child. His mother had gasped aloud when she’d first seen the boy, and then tears had come to her lovely blue eyes as she’d looked upon the very image of her own firstborn child.
Lucas stared at his sleeping son. He saw a chin and cheekbones familiar from photographs of his own babyhood, the dark hair, knew that when the baby’s eyes were open they were the same dark blue as his own. But the beautiful, trusting smile that made Lucas’s chest tighten painfully, was a gift from his mother.
From Jessica.
Jessie.
A shiver rippled through him. She’d been his touchstone, his center in a world spun out of control, the only anchor in the storm that had swamped his life. She’d quite literally saved his life and his sanity. She’d given him peace, a reason to go on, and hot, sweet love in the darkness.
And he’d walked out on her, in the middle of a Colorado winter night.
“I didn’t know about you,” he whispered to his sleeping son. “I didn’t know.”
And what would you have done if you had?
He didn’t answer the self-directed question. He didn’t have an answer. Because the man who had walked out that night was not the man who sat here with this child now. Just as the man who had fallen in love with Jessie wasn’t that man. The man who had fallen in love had been Joe, a simple ranch hand who led a simple life, knowing nothing of his own past yet finding beauty and a sort of peace in the present, in the arms of the loving woman who had captivated him with her courage, her strength, her gentle caring, her beauty.
The woman he’d been mourning since word had come that she’d been murdered in the plot to cash in on the existence of the child sleeping here so peacefully. The woman who had haunted his days and filled his nights.
The woman he’d thought dead and buried until just a few days ago.
His pilot’s instincts told him when the plane’s slow descent began. In his mind he could picture the rough terrain at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, that backbone of America. They must have passed over Denver while he’d been lost in thought. With the big city behind them, he could picture the little town of Shady Rock, nestled in the shadow of the towering peaks.
And somewhere, tucked away in a beautiful but isolated corner, was Jessie’s ranch, those beloved acres of land she ran herself ragged to maintain. The ranch he’d come to love himself, along with the quiet, peaceful life he’d found there. Even when he’d been haunted by what he couldn’t remember, he’d loved it.
It was nice, he thought vaguely, not to have to worry about the details. The limo was waiting for them, with a driver who knew exactly where they were going. The aide, Lloyd Gallini—who was also the bodyguard his father refused to let him travel without—was busy scanning the area, although there was no one in sight who seemed at all interested in them.
He couldn’t blame his father, not after what had happened to him. Being captured, even intentionally, by terrorists hadn’t been much fun. That his efforts had been instrumental in the FBI’s bringing down the Brothers of Darkness cell in the U.S., a danger not only to America but to the safety of his family and perhaps even his entire country, was the only thing good to come out of it.
But he still felt cramped. He’d had security around him all his life—it was the price of being the crown prince of Montebello—but it was somehow worse here, in this place. This was America, where such things as royal titles meant little to everyday people, and here he’d always been able to move more freely.
“We will be at the hotel within fifteen minutes, Your Highness.”
Lucas suddenly tuned in to the aide’s words, realizing he should have been paying more attention.
“Your suite is prepared, and—”
“No.”
Gallini blinked. “Your Highness?”
“We’ll go to the hospital first.”
“But the security hasn’t been finalized—”
Lucas shook his head. “The hospital. This has waited too long already.”
It was odd, he thought as Gallini passed along the new instructions to the driver, that back here in the still-wild country of the Rockies the quiet obsequiousness of the people who served him seemed out of place. As if the land itself had created the mind-set of its people, that everyone was equal, and should be treated so.
I’m thinking like Joe, he realized.
Joe had been just another guy, an average citizen, his only uniqueness being his condition, that wall he’d come up against every time he tried to remember anything beyond the time when he’d awakened in the wreckage of the small rented plane, after losing the battle with a Colorado blizzard. It had been a wall so blank he’d only known he’d been the pilot because there was no sign anyone else had been aboard.
Joe had been able to go anywhere, do anything, talk to anyone, without worrying about protocol, image or threats to his life. Joe had been able to work happily until he was exhausted without being cautioned about overdoing it. Joe had been able to rant against fate without fear of his complaint being overheard and hitting the tabloids within twelve hours.
Joe had been able to fall in love simply because the right woman was there, not because his parents had arranged a suitable and advantageous match.
An image of Jessie as he’d last seen her, asleep in her huge old brass bed, coalesced with all-too-perfect clarity in his mind. A shaft of winter moonlight turning her long, blond hair to silver as it lay, still tousled from his eager fingers, across both her pillow and his. Her soft lips, slightly parted, curved into a slight smile even in sleep, and if the sheet had slipped one more inch down the soft swell of her breast, one of the lovely pink nipples he’d caressed and sucked and rubbed until she cried out in pleasure would have drawn him irresistibly back to her.
She’d had the look of a woman who’d been well loved, and leaving her had been the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life. Only the fact that he’d known it was the best thing he could do for her had gotten him through it.
Now he was about to see her again, for the first time since that night. And he didn’t know what to expect from her.
Or from himself.
Lucas was aware of the charged atmosphere the moment they went through the hospital doors. He’d once accepted it as a matter of course, the odd reaction people had to royalty. As Joe, ordinary ranch hand, he’d lost the knack, and now that he was Prince Lucas again—or trying to be—he wasn’t sure he’d ever get it back. The nanny lagged slightly behind on the order of the bodyguard, whom Lucas had instructed to protect his son at all costs.
Clearly they’d known he was coming. The usual phalanx of security and staff clustered around him before he got halfway through the lobby. He supposed the hospital had planned it out in the hours since they’d entered American air space. He wanted more than anything to tell them all to shut up and simply take him to Jessie, but he no longer had that option. Joe Benson could say anything he wanted to anyone, if he was willing to take the consequences. Lucas Peterson Sebastiani had had the consequences of incautious speech drilled into him since he’d been old enough to talk.
Joe, he thought wearily as he smiled and nodded endlessly, had had it easy.
It seemed forever, although he knew it was only a few minutes, before someone finally gestured him down a hallway to a large, private hospital room.
“Everything is as you wished,” a woman with rather false-looking black hair gushed. He thought she had identified herself as some sort of public relations person for the hospital, which was typical. He would much rather deal with the frontline people, but knew this was simply another cost of being who he was.
Joe had definitely had it easy, he thought, realizing even as he thought it the irony of thinking a man who’d lost his entire past had had it easy.
“Thank you,” he said as they paused outside the door to the room. He looked at Gallini. “Now, if you will give me a moment, please?”
His father’s man was nothing if not well-trained, and he immediately ushered the entourage away. Lucas hesitated, bracing himself, then reached for the door handle. He inched the door open and stepped inside.
She was asleep.
Jessie had always had a fragile look, a look belied by an incredible inner strength. She had constantly amazed him—or rather, Joe—by the amount of work she did on the ranch, the things she was capable of that he never would have believed. If her physical strength wasn’t enough, she put that clever mind to work and found another way.
But now she didn’t just look fragile. She looked nothing short of frail, and it frightened him. He’d wondered if he would see her differently, now that she was the mother of his son, but all he could see right now was that frailness. The knowledge of how close he’d come to losing her hit with gut-sinking power, that the report of her death had very nearly been true. The dark circles under her eyes and the paleness of her skin as well as the bruises that marked her slender body told him this was a woman who had been through hell. A woman who still had a fight ahead of her to fully recover, physically and emotionally.
He could only hope he’d brought the right medicine.
Jessie woke up slowly. The now-familiar sounds registered first, voices in the hallway, the distant bell of an alarm as some other patient rang for assistance. She held off opening her eyes—as long as she kept them closed she could pretend it wasn’t real. She’d never been one to avoid reality, but lately she’d found herself doing it more and more often.
Why not, she muttered inwardly, closing her eyes more tightly, when my reality is just plain rotten? My baby is gone before I even had the chance to hold him, my own sister betrayed me in the worst possible way, I was held captive in a cellar by a mentally ill man for months….
She smothered a sigh, knowing she was feeling sorry for herself. And even telling herself she had reason didn’t make her feel any less guilty about it.
“Jessie?”
For a moment she thought she had gone back to sleep and was once more hearing Joe’s low, husky voice whispering her name. God, she’d been such a fool. Falling in love with an itinerant ranch hand was bad enough, but falling in love with a prince? That was idiotic.
“I know you’re awake.”
It was Joe’s voice.
Her body became rigid as knowledge came back to her in a rush. She’d known he was coming, she’d heard the hospital staff buzzing about the impending visit of Montebellan royalty. There was protocol to learn and follow, security arrangements to be made, she’d heard it all. Including the whispers about the tabloid stories of an amnesiac prince who had dallied with a rustic American woman, only to regain his memory and realize she was utterly unsuitable. She’d tried to dismiss it as tabloid sensationalism, but the common-sense logic of it had dug deep into her heart.
The nurses had even come to her for help, full of their excited questions, and she’d laughed so hard even she couldn’t miss the hysterical edge that had tinged the sound. And she couldn’t explain the absurdity of them asking her how to address a crown prince when she’d known the man only as Joe Benson, a good man with a horse, but one without a past.
And a good man in bed. Oh, yes, she knew that, too.
Great. What a thing to think of just before you have to open your eyes and face him.
With an effort that taxed her minimal stamina just now, she forced the vivid, erotic memories out of her mind. And opened her eyes.
She had thought she was prepared. She’d spent every hour since the call from the Montebellan royal family’s advance man getting ready for this moment, telling herself what to expect. But now that she was face-to-face with it—with him—it did no good at all, and her heart broke all over again.
This man standing beside the bed was a stranger. Oh, he had Joe’s face, his dark hair, his lean, rangy body, his beautiful deep blue eyes, so much darker than her own. But he was a stranger. Joe had been haunted by what he couldn’t remember, but this man’s eyes were even more grim, as if the memories he’d regained haunted him even more. This man stood just as straight, yet seemed weighed down, as if with an even greater burden. This man had an air about him that Joe had never had, something she couldn’t quite put a name to. And it wasn’t just the fact that he was dressed in an elegant, obviously expensive suit and tie, clothing she could never have pictured her ranch lover wearing.
She opened her mouth to say his name. She shut it again when she realized the name she’d been about to say was Joe. She remembered the discussion she’d heard between a couple of the nurses, about what you called a crown prince. Certainly not Joe….
“I suppose I should say ‘Hello, Your Highness,”’ she finally said.
He winced visibly. “Jessie, don’t.”
“I’m sorry. Was that not the proper form of address? Or should I simply be flattered that the ‘playboy prince’ has come to visit?”
She thought he winced again, but he controlled it so quickly she couldn’t be sure. She knew she sounded bitchy but she couldn’t seem to help it. She was tired, aching in more ways than one, and emotionally spent. She had to gather what defenses she had, and right now they were rather meager.
“I’m still the same man I was on the ranch,” he said. “It’s just that my name is Lucas, not Joe.”
“Are you the same man?” she asked. “Are you really?”
She saw the brief flicker in his expression, and knew she’d struck a nerve.
“Inside I am. Somewhere.”
His voice was tinged with such pain that she dropped the sarcasm in her own. And bit back, as she had been doing since the moment he’d walked in, the urgent questions about her baby. If crazy, twisted Gerald had lied, if the Sebastianis had kept the truth from her and her baby wasn’t alive and well, she didn’t want to know. Not yet.
“Will you answer a question?” she asked him instead.
“Of course.”
“When did you know? When exactly did you remember who you were?”
“That’s two questions.”
She let out a compressed breath as he dodged answering directly.
“I mean, each has a different answer,” he said quickly, as if he sensed her reaction.
“Oh?”
“I knew who I had to be when I saw my photograph on the news. But I still didn’t remember anything more than what I’d told you.”
She frowned. Then why had he left her like that, skulking out in the middle of the night, leaving nothing but a note? She understood now what he’d written, about not being the man she thought he was, but why had he run, if he still had no memories of his past?
She reached for the small control panel on the hospital bed and pushed the button to raise her head. She was quickly reminded of her every bruise and aching muscle, but she hated lying there helpless, looking up at him.
He leaned over, as if alarmed, and she supposed she must have winced at the various pains. She eyed him warily, not wanting him any closer, not now, not while she was battling to sort out her confused emotions. Again as if he’d read her reaction, he backed off.
Joe had been like that, she thought. He’d been seemingly able to read her every mood. So maybe there was some of Joe left in Prince Lucas Sebastiani.
She tried to hide the shiver that went through her as she thought the name, a name she had heard long before the battered, lost man called Joe had come into her life. The name she’d connected with the other glitterati of the world, kings, queens, princes and princesses.
The name she still found so difficult to connect to the man she’d known and fallen in love with during those glorious months on the ranch that was her life.
She’d allowed herself the fantasy, allowed herself to picture herself and Joe making their life on the land her family had lived on for generations, to picture a happy life with another generation of Chambers’s to work this ranch she so loved.
But her Joe was the man often called the most eligible royal bachelor in the world. She had known when she first realized who he was that there was no future for them. Prince Lucas Sebastiani was far out of the league of a modest Colorado rancher who loved her quiet, peaceful life. She understood that. But her heart broke a little more on the knowledge that Joe, just plain Joe, had loved that life, too.
When she’d discovered she was pregnant with his child, she’d been both thrilled and terrified.
Terrified, she thought now as she stared up at this stranger with Joe’s face, had been the more appropriate reaction of the two.
“Why?” she asked. “Even if you did realize you were…who you are, why did you go like that?”
He lowered his gaze. “The more I saw of the news story, all the media fuss, the more I realized that if I was found at the ranch it would destroy your life there. I can’t explain it, but in my gut I knew it would be chaos.” He grimaced. “It was like some part of me still remembered what it was like to be constantly hounded by the media, even if I couldn’t remember anything else yet.”
“But later…you did remember?”
“Jessie,” he said quietly, and there was an undertone in his voice that made her hold her breath. “I’ll tell you everything, answer every question you have, I promise. But….”
She held her breath once more, waiting in tense silence as he walked back to the door of her hospital room. He opened it partially, and she heard him speak quietly to someone outside, although she couldn’t make out the words.
When he turned around, he held a small bundle in his arms. Jessie smothered a gasp. She hadn’t thought he would…she just hadn’t dared to think about it at all.
She sat up quickly, despite the protest of various body parts. Her heart raced. She forgot to breathe at all. And every last ache and pain was forgotten as Joe—Lucas—laid that bundle gently in her arms.
And at long last, after countless weeks of agony and heartache, she did what she had feared she would never do again.
She looked down into the eyes of her son.
