The Prince's Cinderella Bride. Amalie Berlin

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      He opened the door and it slammed directly into something, halting his forward march.

      She stumbled out from behind the door, looking disoriented, but her stagger gave him room to enter and he took advantage of it, shutting the door directly behind him.

      “Why were you standing there?”

      “I was thinking about locking the door,” she said without preamble. Then, redirecting his question, “Why were you standing outside the door?”

      “Anais, I’ve had a hell of a day. I paused because I wanted to make sure I had control of myself and didn’t come right in here and shake you hard enough to knock the brown off of you. What the hell are you playing at with this drab makeover and the name-change? Are you in the country illegally?”

      She flinched, then shrugged back from him across the distance of her tiny office. He’d struck another nerve. That shouldn’t please him, but the pink that flashed in her artificially tanned cheeks and the way she smoothed her hair down felt almost like satisfaction. He had seven years of jabs in reserve and, by the look of things, it wasn’t going to get boring anytime soon.

      “Of course I’m not here illegally. I had my name changed. Legally. Then I changed my appearance. My mother is getting older—she’s got diabetes and had a heart scare last summer, not that I should have to explain myself. This is my country too, and I shouldn’t have to lose it forever because I married poorly when I was young and naïve.”

      A tic in his right eyelid flickered at her return volley.

      Definitely different from the Anais he’d known.

      “How...?”

      “Your brother changed my name for me quietly.” She rubbed her cheek and he knew where the door had clocked her, but she stayed standing there, close enough—only because of the wall behind her—that he could reach out and touch her if he wanted to.

      He did want to, so he shoved his hands into the well-worn fatigues he preferred these days, comfortable clothing he’d soon lose as he picked up a new mantle of duty.

      “I went with Anna because it’s close enough to Anais for me to still save myself if I start to say my old name. Kincaid is my grandmother’s maiden name, so I have some attachment to it. Doctor, however, is legitimately mine.”

      Softness had always abounded in Anais. Tender heart. Soft, free-flowing wavy strawberry-blonde hair. Curves that bewitched him. Gentle aqua eyes. Youthfully plump cheeks and lips... Soft.

      A red mark darkened that formerly plump cheek, outside the blush that had already faded. She’d had her ear to the door listening when he’d slammed it open. Not locking it. Or maybe not locking it yet, whatever she’d claimed.

      She made herself sound even harder than she appeared. That physical angularity was by far the biggest change, and the one that had momentarily thrown him when she’d come into Ben’s quarters. Not her hair color, her eye color, the glasses, or that suspicious tan... It was how square her jaw seemed now, the gauntness of her cheeks, and the now slender but apparently strong body supporting it all. Anna Kincaid was hard.

      He didn’t know what else to say.

      For seven years, he’d had a million questions for her—mostly in the first couple of years when everything was hardest. But now, standing here, he didn’t want to ask her why she’d gone. Those old wounds could pop back open with the slightest prod. His chest already ached just looking at this shadow of his brightly colored Anais.

      “Are you living back in Easton?”

      “No. Are you still at the penthouse?”

      “Yes,” he answered. Why it had been so important to him to come find her after speaking with Ben? “Is there something you want to say to me?”

      Like I’m sorry?

      She shook her head, then seemed to change her mind as the shaking turned into a nod, her voice going quieter. “How do you know Lieutenant Nettle?”

      “Served together. First tour,” Quinn answered again. Did she feel anything for him anymore? Besides anger? Somehow, he’d earned her anger? Her anger, and the fact that she wanted him gone was all he could make out. Her eyes used to sparkle when she saw him, even the last time she’d seen him—which she’d no doubt known would be the last time—they’d still sparkled. But with them hidden under those unremarkable brown contacts, he couldn’t see it. Or it wasn’t there. A wife who had feelings for her husband...her ex-husband even...wouldn’t look so hard when he’d never wronged her. Never done anything wrong but love her. Even a friend would look kindly upon a soldier returning home after seven years in a war zone, but she just wanted him gone.

      Over the course of his tours, he’d learned to fight his way out of dodgy situations. Fight and survive first, complete the mission second. He couldn’t fight his way out of this. He didn’t even know where to start.

      He could make her feel anger, maybe some polite curiosity, but nothing else. Touching her would just hurt him; there was no Braille hidden on her flesh that would tell him the truth, or what he wanted to hear: that she regretted leaving, that she’d suffered because of it, that she was sorry.

      He forced his arms to relax, then thought better of it and wrenched his mangled left hand from his pocket to present to her.

      “Ben was there to help when my fingers were shot off.” Seeing her blanch only emboldened him. With as much detail as he could summon from that day, he described the way the wedding band he’d still worn had become platinum shrapnel Ben had to pull from the remains of his palm. The way Ben had to cut away his dangling finger. “And that still hurt less than you.”

      Her eyes went round, with his hand held up for her inspection, and her breathing increased in speed and force; soon the heated air fanned his hand across the distance. The two fingers, thumb, and partial palm felt the flutter like the barest breeze.

      “Get used to seeing me around here. I’ll try to keep the cameras away, for Ben’s sake.”

      Her open-mouthed breathing turned to choking, and he realized she was going to be sick a half-second before she turned and flung herself over her office trash bin and retched. Her whole body convulsed with the force of each spasm.

      His stomach lurched too.

      Damn.

      They’d both changed. The last vestiges of the man who’d married her, who’d loved her, felt sick too, wanted to look away.

      But the realist he’d had to become couldn’t feel too badly. What had even made her sick? Hearing how he’d lost his fingers, or the idea the cameras that invariably ended up following him might catch sight of her?

      As if it mattered. He should leave her there, let her get on with it, savor the little thrill of revenge that had run through him at her visceral reaction.

      He wouldn’t pull her hair aside and soothe her back. He wouldn’t apologize for not softening the brutality of that situation for her, the way he’d softened it for his family.

      She wasn’t his family anymore. She’d been the one to leave. And he’d never gotten to say anything to her about it, since his family had shipped him off to boot camp directly afterward.

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