Page 81 of Modern Romance Collection May 2024 Books 1-4

Something flickered inside him, a flame of recognition. Distant, but there.

“Julius,” he repeated.

“Yes.” She breathed in deeply. “Crown Prince Julius Adamos Carvalho.”

Silence stretched between them once more. Laughter died in his throat when she didn’t smile, didn’t chuckle, simply watched him with that clinical gaze.

“Prince,” he echoed.

“Yes. Heir to the throne of the island nation of Rodina.”

CHAPTER FOUR

JULIUSHADN’TMOVEDfrom the chair in over thirty minutes. For the first minute after her pronouncement, he’d simply sat, as if absorbing the enormity of what she’d shared. Then he’d asked questions, collecting information about his life as if he were preparing to study for an exam. Every now and then he would pause, breathe in deeply, then continue. It was the only sign that the conversation was taxing him.

The more he’d talked, the more she’d recognized that this wasn’t a ruse. A realization that had opened the door to fear that curled around her heart and crawled up her throat. Fear at whatever horrid thing had happened to him in London and caused this.

He’d resisted contacting the palace, saying he needed time to process what she’d shared. It had taken nearly ten minutes to convince him to let her call her friend Burak, a fellow guard who had been promoted to the head of Julius’s detail after she’d left, and see if she could ferret out any information. Burak had grudgingly admitted that Julius had taken a sabbatical.

“Only a select few know his exact location. He made the private security I hired at the airport and threatened to fire me if I didn’t pull them.”

“So you’re just letting the heir to the throne wander around the world?” Esme asked incredulously.

“He checks in every forty-eight hours by cell.”

The edge in Burak’s voice had made her change topics. She liked Burak, counted him as one of a tiny group of friends. Even if she strongly disagreed with how Julius had been allowed to roam free, she knew firsthand how the man operated. If he had decided on something, the only person he would ever bow to would be his father. And even then, if he believed in it strongly enough, he would put up one hell of a fight. It had been one of the qualities that had made her admire him even as she wanted to wring his neck.

Just like now. From here she could see the bruise just below his hairline, red turning to a mottled purple. The ugly scarlet of the cut on his face. What had he gotten into that he would have sustained such injuries?

She turned away from the window, not wanting him to suddenly turn and see her watching him like a mother hen. She put the used coffee mugs in the sink, rinsed them out, focused on the cold splash of water on her fingers, the smoothness of the porcelain in her hands, the slight clunking in the pipes.

Focus on the tangible.

Julius’s voice echoed in her head. He’d come into her hospital room shortly after the accident. She’d been rising up from the depths of a nightmare, one filled with the screams of people and a frightened horse as searing pain burned through her skin. He’d taken her hand, his fingers rubbing soothing circles on her skin, as he’d told her to focus on the things she saw in her room, the things she heard. A simple exercise, but one that had grounded her and given her time to collect herself.

Perhaps that had been the moment she’d started to slip from respect into love.

She placed the mugs in the drying rack. Her hands rested on the edge of the countertop, then curled around the edge, a death grip as she bowed her head and blew out a harsh breath.

Deus me ajude.

She still loved him. After everything that had happened, love still beat inside her for a man who had used and betrayed her.

This can’t be love.

Infatuation? A fantasy? The longings of a woman who had been rejected her whole life?

She grabbed onto that last thought. Of course it was hard to let go. She and Julius had grown close over the past year. He’d been there for her during her recovery, the grueling hours of physical therapy. He’d also been the first man she’d gone to bed with in over two years. It was only natural that she would still have lingering emotions, that she would feel upset that someone she had respected and come to care about had been hurt to the point of forgetting his entire life.

Upset and torn. Should she tell him about what they’d shared in Paris? Reliving the humiliation of those last few moments in his office before she’d walked out, convinced she’d never see him again?

Except what would that accomplish, other than further complicating their current situation? It wasn’t as if they’d dated or had anything beyond that one night.

Get it together, Esmerelda.

The heir to the throne was sitting on her porch with no memory of who he was or what had happened to him. Now was not the time to struggle with unrequited emotions. No, she needed to get him back home to Rodina and into the care of a qualified physician since the foolish man had taken the address from that London jeweler and used almost all his cash to pay for a seat on a cargo plane that hadn’t bothered to ask for a passport. When he’d told her that lovely tidbit, she’d had a vivid and painful image of him strapped into the back of a hold crowded with boxes of contraband as a rickety plane spiraled into the ocean.

If she suppressed that horrifying vision and instead focused on the reality that the so-called “Ice Prince” of Rodina had flown on a cargo plane with a bag of cash with a million-euro ring secreted in the bottom, it was almost amusing.

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