The Prince's Cinderella Bride by Amalie Berlin

Author:Amalie Berlin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin Medical Romances
Published: 2017-11-23T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

WAIT STAFF CIRCLED the table, placing dessert plates before each guest—something fruity in red, white and blue. Quinn couldn’t focus on it. If he could harness the current coming through Anais’s hand now gripping his, he could power the capital.

He turned more to face her, pretending it was to share a dessert with her when really every ounce of his willpower was engaged in fighting his instinct to spirit her away. Just to hold her. Just to put his arms around her and rock through the pain he still felt vibrating through her.

He felt the weight of everyone’s gaze now—everyone but her—but he couldn’t blame them. Or her. But he needed to look at her as desperately as her grip said she needed to keep hold of him.

Mechanically, she went about a few bites of the berry concoction. She ate, but didn’t taste it; her half-bowed head and blank eyes made it clear.

Before they’d made a dent in the dessert the fireworks display was announced, and guests departed the table for the veranda to the rear gardens. She started too, but Quinn tugged her close enough to wrap an arm around her waist and steer her to the dance floor instead. His obligation to remain through the fireworks display was the only thing keeping him from taking her away with him.

The lights in the great room fell, to minimize the distraction through the wide veranda windows separating them from the guests outside watching the sky, but the dark also made it feel secluded, almost private.

“We’re not going out?” she whispered, but turned into his arms as he steered her around the floor.

“I can see from here,” he said, not wanting to break the spell between them and what it told him.

She loved him. She’d never stopped loving him. But it felt as if a stiff breeze could blow her away, so he folded her into his arms and rested his cheek against her temple.

Tilting her head, she whispered by his ear, “Are you okay?”

Worried about him. More proof.

“A little overwhelmed,” he admitted, unable to summon a better answer, unable to make a clever or cajoling response, the words aching in his chest. “I didn’t know that about your specialty. I’d wondered, but I should’ve asked. I should’ve sat down with you and just talked, not about all this...just to know. What I missed. We should’ve found time to sit down.”

He felt her nodding, felt her pull him a little tighter, even felt the regret rolling off her.

“We’ve never really done much of that. Only when we were dating.”

The softly spoken words burned. He tried to think about times after they’d eloped when they’d just sat and talked about anything for longer than a few minutes, but he couldn’t. In that moment, swallowing past the lump in his throat, he was glad for the dark, even glad for the way his lungs refused to draw a complete breath—it drove home the part he’d played in the downfall of their marriage—she hadn’t ducked out of conversations he’d started, not once.

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