Chapter Fifteen

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

L YON HAD A staff member tell his mother there'd be no lunch. Then he had meetings to attend. He brooded, the whole afternoon, trying to determine what the hell to do with all this.

And he approved all the last-minute changes and hiccups on the parliamentary dinner. He dealt with problems, questions. He was distracted, yes , but he was not incapable of doing what needed to be done because of it.

Because, it turned out, the women who'd raised him were wrong. He could do both. Love and grieve and hurt and make good choices for his country. It turned out , that when he gave himself a chance to do everything without the fear of taking a wrong step, he did what he'd always done.

The right damn thing. Soft spots or no.

Perhaps a time would come when that would not be the case, but even if he held himself to some impossible standard of isolation—upsets would still come along. Natural disasters or worldly problems challenging all Divio was. Loss or illness or who knew what else when it came to his family, to himself.

He could do the right thing—avoid scandal, meet his responsibilities—but he could not control the world around him by doing such things.

It was a strange, out-of-body moment, all in all. To be both distracted and capable of dealing with—or delegating—everything that needed to be done. To watch as nothing crumbled around him simply because his role wasn't the only thing he took into account.

To consider that maybe, just maybe, there could be a life where he balanced both. Not the expectations his grandmother had set for him, but meeting the needs of his citizens. While at the same time meeting the needs of his family, without letting selfish desires ruin everything. Without worrying that...every private decision would ruin his public persona.

Beau was his family. His wife. He hated the idea that she suffered so. It tore him up inside and made him want to go talk to her and beg forgiveness. He would protect her and defend her from anyone who dared say a negative word about her.

But she had lied . She had kept this from him from the very beginning. She had been in the wrong as well. Whether it was his fault or not that she hadn't trusted him with this, had hidden it from him, she had not given him the opportunity to be right or wrong.

They both needed to find a way to do that. Give each other chances, instead of being too afraid and making everything worse. Making everything get to the point of falling apart.

Maybe balance wasn't so much about everyone being one hundred percent happy or everything getting his full attention. No, it was finding what needed him the most in the moment and responding to it.

Because his grandmother's will to one-up her brother had no bearing anymore. Both were dead and gone. He was here. Beau was here.

Right now, everything was set for the dinner tomorrow, he'd responded to every pressing item on his agenda. So what needed him was Beau, and working through what had happened today.

If he owed her an apology, which he did, he should offer it. And if she did not offer one of her own, then he would deal with that in the moment. They would talk through it. Have those conversations that had been sorely missing in her book until the very end.

But when those conversations had come—the couple in the book had worked things out. So that is what he would do. Make it all work out.

He left his office and went in search of her. It was late, but she wasn't in their suite of rooms or in bed, so he went to the library next. And when she wasn't there, he began to...worry. He searched everywhere he could think of, and then finally he had to page her assistant.

The woman was wide-eyed and nervy when she came into his office. She had clearly been asleep. Her curtsey was awkward at best. "I'm sorry, Your Highness, it seems no one has seen her since this morning."

"This morning ." Lyon's body felt as though it emptied fully out, then inch by inch filled back with rage.

All the ways she'd pushed him. All the ways she'd claimed to want him. All the ways she had understood him, and she hadn't given him the damn opportunity to understand her .

She had run away.

Where—but Lyon immediately knew where she would have gone. The only place she would run away to. She talked to her sister almost every day. The only thing she ever spoke of with any positivity was Zia and her babies.

"Find out the residence of Zia Rendall...or whatever her name is now. And ready a plane. Once you have the address, I will leave at once."

"I... I don't know..."

He growled, couldn't help himself. Luckily Mr. Filini entered, unfortunately his mother did as well. Someone must have woken her up and told her Beau was missing. Oh, well. It didn't matter. All that mattered was getting to Beau.

"Mr. Filini—"

"I heard, Your Highness. We'll be on it at once." He gestured to Beau's assistant and they both left.

Lyon thought briefly of packing, but what did he need? Nothing. He would bring her back here and they would have their reckoning. She did not get to just run away and have that be that.

"Lyon, you can't miss the dinner," Mother said.

He looked at his mother. For a moment there was a pang. She was right. He should stay. Focus on responsibilities first and then deal with Beau. He couldn't possibly risk the potential he might not get back in time. What would people say?

It was knee-jerk. Everything he'd been taught. What would people say? They would compare him to all the negative that had come before.

But if he gave it space. If he let himself consider it for what it was, not the debt he had to pay, it became ridiculous.

Responsibility to host some frivolous, meaningless dinner? That had nothing to do with the actual rules of law or running of the kingdom. That wasn't in service to the citizens but was simply meant to feed a bunch of pompous members of parliament, so they decided to like him? And maybe, just maybe , not compare him to the reckless men who'd preceded him?

To hell with that.

"If I am not back in time, I trust you can handle it."

She sputtered, but he didn't bother to listen to any responses she managed.

He was going to find his wife.

Cristhian had indeed found her. That was what he did, after all. And in no time at all Beau had been on a plane, flying back to his estate with him. He didn't offer her any words, didn't try to get her to talk. He simply ushered her where she needed to go. He was a good man. Worthy of Zia and their beautiful twins.

Who Beau would finally get to hold.

When she arrived at Cristhian and Zia's that afternoon, she was greeted by her sister, who had one baby in the crook of her arm, and the other arm open and ready for Beau.

Beau was not much of a crier. She had always chalked it up to crying so much when she had panic attacks. It took away any need to release her emotions that way when she wasn't panicking.

But when she stepped into Zia's outstretched arm, and Zia hugged her close, the tears filled her eyes. She blinked them away before she pulled back and looked at the tiny bundle in Zia's arms.

"This is Harrison," Zia said, her voice rough. A mewling cry, followed by a much angrier one, sounded from deeper in the house. "And there is your namesake announcing her displeasure, as she is quite adept at doing. Come." Zia led her into the house and a cozy little living room with all sorts of baby paraphernalia strewn about, including two little bassinets in the corner.

Beau followed Zia to one and looked down at an angry little bundle. Her face was red and scrunched up.

"And this is Begonia. Our little Bee," Zia said, the love and joy in every word even as the girl screamed in a tiny but loud cry. "Go on," Zia said, nudging Beau with her hip. "Pick her up."

But Beau felt completely ill-equipped to deal with any of this. Or any of her life right now. It was all too big and unwieldy. She swallowed the emotion clogging her throat, or tried. "I don't know how."

"Allow me." Cristhian scooped the baby up, and the girl immediately began to quiet.

Something about a very large man holding a very small bundle made Beau want to weep. But she held it together and Zia moved her over to the couch, and then Cristhian sat next to Beau. Beau tried to hold her arms like Zia was and Cristhian transferred baby Bee into Beau's arms. Zia sat next to her, cradling Harrison.

It was just so amazing and beautiful. That her sister had brought these two precious lives into the world. Beau gazed down at the little girl in her lap. "Aren't they the most perfect things in the entire universe?"

"Mostly. I don't quite have those feelings when they're screaming their heads off at two in the morning, but ninety-nine percent of the time they are the most perfect things in the entire universe." Zia stroked her son's cheek.

After a few minutes of silence, Zia sighed. "What's happened, Beau?"

Beau couldn't tear her gaze away from Bee. She couldn't really find the words either. "I don't know. It was so good at first, and then..."

"Good?" Zia pressed. "You...got along with Lyon?"

Beau nodded. "I wasn't lying to you during all those calls. I..." Love him . "He was very kind. He has the most beautiful library, and he likes to read. He even read a book I liked to get to know me. It was actually... I was very happy for a bit. Maybe if I'd been pregnant, it would have gone differently."

Which was not a productive thought. She'd just be sitting in his castle being miserable. Not allowed to go to things like parliamentary dinners. Even though she'd proven she could handle it. A baby wouldn't have changed anything, except she would have had someone to hold in her isolation.

"So you two... You..." Zia cleared her throat. "There was...a chance you were...pregnant?"

Beau looked up at her sister, then realized Zia had clearly not considered that just because the marriage had been arranged to save Zia, that there might not be the making of heirs involved.

"We had sex, Zia. We are married."

Cristhian made a dismayed sort of noise and stood. "Perhaps I will go...do anything else."

Zia rolled her eyes and waved him off. "We can handle the babies. Go do something manly."

He smiled at Zia, the kind of smile that spoke of many things. Affection, amusement, intimacy. Zia watched her husband leave, the love so evident in her eyes that Beau had to look away. But she could only look at the child in her lap and feel a terrible, terrible yearning.

"I wanted to be pregnant," she heard herself say, without really meaning to.

"Oh, Beau." Zia's free arm came around Beau's shoulders.

She shook her head. It was the wrong thing to say. She blinked back the tears. "Best this way."

"Tell me what happened. All of it. Beginning to end, and then we will figure out what to do."

Beau didn't really want to rehash it yet, but she might as well. She didn't know where to start, really. At the wedding? The chalet? Even though she spoke to Zia almost every day, she had mostly kept her sister in the dark about the Lyon Beau had come to know. She hadn't known how to talk about falling in love with the man she'd married to save Zia. She hadn't known how to talk about sex, because it hadn't felt right to talk about Lyon's reaction to things. And maybe she didn't want Zia flying into protective mode when Zia had been carrying so much on her plate. So Beau had been vague about everything.

Now? She told her sister everything. From Lyon's "steps" to the chalet to the horrible fight with the countess. To Lyon discovering her. In the midst of a panic attack.

"This dinner has been everyone's focus for weeks," Beau said. She'd managed to hold back tears, but it was getting harder. "Talked about how important it is for the guests to see a united monarchy. To be fed and wooed and complimented as if that will wash away the poor deeds of the past princes. And maybe it would. Men in power are so very simple. But the moment Lyon saw me... The moment he realized what was happening... He saw what's wrong with me and then because of that he said I didn't have to go."

"He sounds like Father," Zia said with disgust.

Beau so wished she could agree. "But he's not. Not in the least." Maybe that's why she felt bruised straight through. Maybe that's why running away didn't feel right or righteous, just depressing.

She didn't want to punish Lyon, didn't want to hurt him. Which added to the depression. "If anything, I've fallen into being our mother."

"Impossible," Zia said, but it was knee-jerk, she didn't know .

"I pretzeled myself to make him happy. I... I made myself miserable to make him happy."

"That's not quite the same as Mother, Beau," Zia said gently.

Beau stared at Zia in utter shock. "How can you even try to claim that?"

"Mother...isn't miserable. I'm not saying she's happy, but she's not...trying to make Father happy ."

"She certainly wasn't attempting to make us or herself happy."

"No. I think she's afraid of Father. Of what he'll do. How he'll react. She never stood up for us, not because she loved him more than us—though I admittedly thought that for a time. But... I'm in love now. Both with my husband, and I have these children whom I love. Mother is all...fear. All that talk of bending and not breaking. She just wants things to be easy and smooth. Love is neither of those things. For good or for ill. It takes...work, compromise. It means losing pieces of your heart to be out of your own control. It's why it was so easy for her to just...let us be married and then wash her hands of us. It's easier that way, than to maintain a relationship."

Beau frowned a little at that. She hadn't expected love to be easy. No book had ever claimed it would be such. So maybe it's why it never occurred to her that her mother's motivation was the path of least resistance, not some passionate love that only extended to her husband and not her children.

"There is a certain give-and-take to love." Zia looked at her children. "Perhaps it helps that I had them, growing inside of me, long before I considered love . If I'd only felt my love for Cristhian, perhaps it would have terrified me to turn into Mother too. But them? Oh, Beau. I'd give them anything. I'd give up anything to make them safe and healthy and happy. And that extends to my husband. So, I can't believe it's...wrong to want to make someone happy. There's something right about that. Something loving about that."

"So you think I should go back and be miserable and hide away and—"

Zia put her free hand on Beau's shoulder. "Not at all. I said give and take. Not you giving and him taking. If he thinks because of one little panic attack you're somehow not worthy of going to dinner, he can sod off forever. That's on him . Not you. And it's nothing at all to do with love."

Beau didn't understand why that didn't make her feel any better, but she pushed it all aside and focused on her sister. Her niece and nephew. On simple, easy love.

But was it simple when she'd sacrificed herself for Zia? When Zia had sacrificed herself for Beau for years? Or was that give? And take. Hard decisions to make someone else happy. A willingness to survive the miserable, if someone else could be okay.

But Beau didn't want her life to be what it had always been, so how could she go back to Lyon? Since there was no easy answer to that, she ignored it. She had a nice afternoon with her sister. A reaffirming evening watching Cristhian and Zia act as a team. The love they shared with each other and their children was clear.

Beau couldn't go back to a life that didn't look like that, so she'd done the right thing.

Of course, she didn't know what to do about the future. Lyon would hardly grant a divorce. But, she couldn't go back. Maybe it was her turn to disappear. Zia had gone to a little polar island for a while when she'd first discovered her pregnancy, maybe Beau could follow suit.

She would be alone, but wasn't that better than hiding half of herself to please someone? Or being hidden away in a castle that wasn't hers? Better to isolate herself than be isolated by others. She had always thought so, and she tended to be right.

Late into the evening, really early morning at this point, she helped Zia with the twins' middle-of-the-night feeding. They sat together on the couch under a very dim light, Beau feeding Harrison with a bottle while Zia held Bee to her. Even in her fog of misery, this felt so nice. To be an adult with her sister. To sit here in a life that did not involve their parents or threats or kingdoms . Just late nights and quiet rooms and sweet babies.

Cristhian came in. He was dressed in dark sweats and a T-shirt, his hair sleep-rumpled.

Zia looked up at him with some surprise. "Beau helped me. You should have kept sleeping."

But Cristhian was giving Beau an odd look, before he turned to his wife. "Zia? Can I talk to you for a second?" He nodded toward the hallway.

A secret. Beau frowned. Zia raised an eyebrow.

"I'm in the middle of something, darling," she replied dryly, pointing to the child latched to her.

"Yes. I know. It's only..."

Beau shared a look with Zia, because never any time had she ever seen Cristhian seem even remotely uncertain as he did now.

And then she heard a shout from somewhere deeper in the house. Both Beau and Zia straightened with alarm.

"Is something wrong?" Zia asked.

Cristhian cleared his throat. "Well. It seems the prince has arrived."

"Who's the prince...?" Beau began to ask, but then it dawned on her. She recognized that shout, though she had never heard Lyon shout in such a way. Her eyes widened. What was he doing here? "Oh."

Oh.

Zia reached over, clutched her arm. "You don't have to see him if you don't want to. Cristhian will send him away."

"We have tried." Cristhian cleared his throat. "He is quite...insistent."

"So insist him right back," Zia said fiercely, as she transferred Bee to her shoulder and rubbed the baby's back until a small burp sounded. "With your fist," she added darkly, a very strange tableau.

But not as strange as Lyon being here. Here.

"I'm trying to avoid an international incident," Cristhian replied, his voice equally as dry as Zia's had been earlier.

"Well, I'm not." Zia got to her feet as if she was about to go instigate such incident. But before anyone could do anything, Lyon stormed right into the room.

His hair was wild, his tie loose and one of the top buttons of his shirt unbuttoned.

For ticking moments, Beau could only stare at him. He was as unkempt as she'd ever seen him. He was angry, certainly, and in front of people. And still her heart leapt.

What an idiot she was. What a stupid thing love was. She clutched Harrison close and steeled herself for whatever he was going to say.

Because she wouldn't go back and shrink herself. No matter what she'd done, no matter what she'd promised. She would be free.

And he could go to hell.