The Wedding Party And Holiday Escapes Ultimate Collection. Кейт Хьюит

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СКАЧАТЬ nodded, even as he felt that tension and awful uncertainty ratchet up inside him. And it had been Leo’s job, for fifteen years. A hell of a long time. ‘You did it well.’

      ‘Thank you,’ Leo answered, and Sandro heard the repressive note in his brother’s voice, felt a pang of sorrow. Once, they’d been close, two small boys banding together. Now he felt a distance yawn between them and he had no idea how to close it.

      He stared down at the papers again, wished he knew the words to say, and had the courage to say.

      ‘Sandro?’ Leo asked for a moment. ‘Is everything all right...between you and Liana?’

      ‘Between me and Liana?’ Sandro’s voice came out sharp. ‘Why do you ask?’

      Leo shrugged. ‘Because I know you married for convenience, and yet I’ve seen the way you look at each other. Something’s going on.’

      ‘We’re married, Leo. Of course something is going on.’

      ‘Do you love her?’

      Sandro felt his throat go tight. ‘That’s between Liana and me, isn’t it?’

      ‘Sorry. I don’t mean to be nosy.’ Leo sighed. ‘I just want you to be happy.’

      ‘And since you’ve just fallen in love you want everyone else to as well.’

      ‘Something like that, I suppose.’

      ‘Don’t worry about Liana and me, Leo. We’re fine.’ Sandro spoke with a firmness he didn’t really feel, because they weren’t fine. Not exactly. Ever since returning to Maldinia, he’d felt the emotional distance yawn between them. Physically things were amazing, exciting. But emotionally? He might have been honest and vulnerable and all that in California, but here? Where the memories mocked him? When the fear that he didn’t deserve any of this, couldn’t live up to it, suffocated him?

      No, not so emotionally available now. Here. Even if, in a moment of weakness, he’d told her he loved her.

      ‘Okay,’ Leo said after a moment. ‘Well. Goodnight.’

      ‘Goodnight.’

      It was early evening and a purple twilight was settling over the palace and its gardens as Sandro left his study a few minutes after Leo. He and Liana had a dinner engagement that evening, something official and most likely boring at the Italian embassy.

      But before he got ready for it, he wanted to see Liana. Talk to her...although he had no idea what he was going to say.

      He found her in the pretty, feminine little room she used as her own study, going over her schedule with her private secretary. Sandro watched them for a moment, two heads bent together, smiling and chatting as they reviewed certain points.

      Liana was in her element, and that was brought home to him no more so than when she looked up and smiled her welcome.

      ‘I’ve just been going over my schedule—it looks like a very busy week!’

      ‘Does it?’ The secretary, Christina, excused herself, and Sandro closed the door, leaning against it. ‘So what are you doing?’

      ‘Well...’ Liana glanced down at the typewritten sheet. ‘On Monday I’m visiting the paediatric ward of the hospital here in Averne. Tuesday is a lunch for primary caregivers of disabled and elderly. Wednesday I’m meeting with a primary school, and Thursday I’m officially opening a new playground in the city’s public gardens.’ She looked up, eyes sparkling. ‘I know I’m not inventing a cure for cancer or anything, but I like feeling so useful.’

      ‘Surely you felt useful before, when you worked for Hands To Help.’

      ‘Yes, I did,’ Liana answered after a moment. ‘Of course I did. But sometimes...’ She trailed off, and, intrigued, Sandro stepped closer.

      ‘Sometimes?’

      Liana gave a little shrug. ‘Sometimes it hurt, working there. It reminded me of—of my sister.’

      ‘Do you miss her?’ he asked quietly and she blinked rapidly, needlessly straightening the papers in front of her.

      ‘Every day.’

      ‘It must be hard. I didn’t think many people actually died from epilepsy.’

      ‘They don’t.’

      ‘So Chiara was just one of the unlucky ones?’

      And for some reason this remark made her stiffen as if she’d suddenly turned to wood. ‘Yes,’ she said, and her voice was toneless. ‘She was unlucky.’

      Sandro stared at her, saw how the happiness and excitement had drained from her, and felt guilt needle him. Damn it, he’d done that. He shouldn’t have asked those questions, and yet he’d just been trying to get to know her all over again. Get closer.

      Yet you keep your secrets to yourself.

      ‘I’m sorry I’ve been a bit—distant lately,’ he said abruptly, and Liana looked up, startled.

      ‘At least you noticed.’

      ‘And you have too, I assume?’

      ‘Yes.’ Her voice was soft, sad. ‘I know we’ve been— Well, the nights have been—’ She laughed a little, shook her head. ‘You know what I mean.’

      ‘I certainly do.’

      ‘But we haven’t talked, really. Not since California.’

      Not since they’d sat across from each other on his bed, naked not just with their bodies but with their souls. He sighed. ‘Returning to this palace always brings back some bad memories for me. It’s hard to combat them.’

      ‘What memories, Sandro?’

      He dragged his hand across his eyes as words burned in his chest, caught in his throat. How much to admit? To confess? ‘A lot of memories.’ She just waited, and he dropped his hand. ‘Memories of my father always telling me how he was counting on me,’ he said, his voice expressionless now. ‘Counting on me to be a good king. Just like him.’

      ‘Just like him?’ Liana repeated softly, a slight frown curving her mouth downwards. She knew, just as the whole world did, that his father hadn’t been a good king at all. He’d been dissolute, uninterested in his people, a spendthrift, a scoundrel, an arrogant and adulterous ass.

      And Sandro had idolised him.

      ‘He was my hero, growing up,’ he said, and then laughed. ‘Which sounds ridiculous, because you know as well as I do there was nothing heroic about him.’

      ‘But you were a child.’

      ‘I believed that until I was eighteen.’ He winced just saying it aloud. ‘I insisted on believing it, even when boys at boarding school taunted me with the truth, even when I saw the newspaper headlines blaring about his affairs, his reckless spending.’ He shook his head. ‘I convinced myself they were jealous СКАЧАТЬ