Page 29 of Twins For His Majesty (Royally Tempted #1)

T HE HELICOPTER LIFTED and the palace began to look small.

Tiny, really. A place that held so many memories for Octavio, so many memories of his life.

His time with his parents and Rodrigo, times of happiness and care, of love and warmth.

Times that he hated to think back to, despite their warmth, because of how badly they contrasted with what came next.

The loss, the grief, the despair. The feeling of being completely uprooted from everything and everyone he’d ever known.

The conclusion he’d reached at that point, that there were no guarantees in life.

That the only thing he would ever be able to control was himself, his interactions with people and who he let near him.

And so he’d been careful.

He’d been careful in terms of who he surrounded himself with, he was careful with his time, attention, focus, relationships.

His boundaries and rules. He was careful all the time.

And it was exhausting. But what was exhaustion when the alternative was allowing someone else to hold the controls to your life and happiness?

So he was still careful, even with Phoebe, which was precisely how he knew he didn’t love her.

He didn’t need her. He’d be fine without her.

The whole idea of her loving him was a construct, some kind of romantic notion dreamed up because of the pregnancy.

Just like he’d said to her. She was hormonal. Fanciful. Just plain wrong.

He dropped his head forward as the air whooshed out of his lungs.

Had he actually said that to her?

The morning’s conversation came rushing back to him, the conversation he’d been avoiding remembering all day.

He could see now how hurtful he’d been. He’d chosen words almost as if deliberately aiming to wound her, to insult her intelligence and—what had she called it?

—gaslight her. He’d been so afraid of what she was saying, of the picture she was painting, of even the merest possibility that he might not have been able to maintain the control he fought so hard for, that he’d responded to her brave confession by shutting it down in the most direct way possible. Because he hadn’t wanted to hear it.

He’d panicked.

The city was now a blanket of lights, and yet he could still pick out the landmarks, the layout, the streets and parks he knew so well and was now in command of.

He loved this place. He loved his people. He loved the honour that had been bestowed upon him, to be King of this ancient Mediterranean country. There he was able to love without restraint, because countries could not hurt people. Countries could not wound.

Was he so afraid of Phoebe hurting him?

No.

It wasn’t that. It was a deeper fear: that he might lose her. That he might lose not just her, but one day, her love. That she might turn away from him? That he didn’t deserve her. Just as all those nannies and his uncle Mauricio had made him feel, all his life.

He was afraid. Terrified.

And hadn’t he known that all along? From his first meeting with Phoebe, hadn’t he sensed something within her that was different and unusual, something that threatened not just his equilibrium but the very safe, very ordered lines he lived within?

The intensity of his need for her—not just physically, he conceded now, but in every way—had overtaken his senses from that first meeting.

When he hadn’t been with her, he’d craved her.

He had fought that, tooth and nail, pretending that he was only proposing because of her pregnancy, pretending that their marriage was the last thing he personally wanted, when wasn’t the opposite true?

He’d wanted Phoebe. Not as the mother to his heirs, but for herself. Her wonderful, beautiful self.

But he’d run from that. He’d been running from it for as long as he’d known her, fighting himself and what she was coming to mean to him, because of the survival skills he’d developed to cope with the emotional abuse he’d endured every day since his parents’ death, until finally, as an adult, he could liberate himself from that oppression.

He sat up a little straighter, a strange heady rush of adrenaline pumping through him.

He knew his upbringing had been wrong and cruel. He knew that he’d been deliberately worn down, and he thought that had made him strong. Despite their attempts, he’d grown up and shown them all: no one could break him.

No one could hurt him.

But what if they were hurting him still?

What if their efforts to whittle away his joy had long, snaking tendrils, creeping into his life still, stopping him from seeing what was right in front of him?

What could be in front of him for all time, if he played his cards right and was very, very lucky?

It was a risk—but wasn’t everything? Wasn’t getting in this helicopter a risk? A plane?

He was almost breathless when he reached for his headset and slipped it in place, allowing him to communicate directly with the pilot. ‘Take us back to the palace. Immediately.’

Phoebe had stayed in the corridor until the sound of the rotor blades had disappeared and then she’d begun to walk away. Slowly. Each step felt like she was wading through mud, and that had nothing to do with her growing stomach.

It hurt.

Everything hurt.

The last thing she’d called after him was that she was willing to wait for him to wake up and realise how he felt about her. But was she really? Could she do that? Could she live this life, by his side, raising his babies, knowing he might never love her back?

Or worse—that he might love her but have no idea how to admit it?

She groaned, pressing her fingers to her forehead.

She was lost, wandering aimlessly through the palace, staring at ancient art, flowers, guards’ faces, seeing nothing, because her whole heart and mind were taken up thinking about Octavio and how much she wanted him to see what they were.

She wanted him to trust this, but he wouldn’t.

She knew how stubbornly he wanted to hold to his habits of not letting anyone in, and she could understand why.

Hearing about the way he’d been treated after his parents’ death only hardened her resolve to be brave: to admit she loved him and put herself on the line again. Just like with Christopher.

But nothing like it, at the same time.

She had never loved Christopher. She could see that now.

She’d needed him in the sense of the time they’d met—even years after her mother’s death she had still been floundering and miserable.

He’d filled a void for her and distracted her from the worst of her grief.

She’d become used to him and had liked spending time with him.

Theirs had been a relationship of natural progression, at least for Phoebe.

She’d liked him, therefore she’d thought it logical that after a certain amount of time she might love him.

And a little time after that, she’d realised that the sensible thing to do was to get married and start a family.

It had all been a series of steps, a path she’d started on and just kept following because… why not?

It wasn’t like that with Octavio.

She needed him because of who he was. She hadn’t been able to get him out of her head from the very beginning because he’d started to exist in her blood.

Meeting him had been the striking of a match and the next minute, she’d been in the middle of a full-blown wildfire.

The heat was scorching, her love for him would not end.

She stopped walking and closed her eyes.

When she opened them, she glanced around, a little lost. Where was she? This part of the palace was no longer familiar. She pushed through a door, nodding once at the guard outside, finding herself in a room that was very old, very formal and very beautiful. If somewhat intimidating.

She took a seat by the unlit fireplace and stared at it, wondering when the aching in her heart would stop.

He had no idea why she’d ended up in the cigar room, of all places, but according to his guards, that’s where his wife had gone after he’d left.

His wife. The words took on a whole new significance now.

Octavio jogged through the corridors, thinking with a small smile of what his mother would have said.

She had scolded him when he’d run like this as a child, delighting in the never-ending expanses of corridors, perfect to treat like a sports stadium when he was bored.

She’d scolded him but always with a slight smile in place, as though she understood that a fire was in his soul, and this was the only way to put it out.

He ran faster, until his lungs hurt, and as he rounded the corner of the corridor that housed the cigar room, a guard, who had perhaps been feeling the effects of a long day at his post and was almost asleep on his feet, reacted with a look of shock to see the King come sprinting past him.

‘Your Majesty,’ the guard said in surprise.

Octavio didn’t stop.

Only when he approached the door he wanted did he slow down to allow air to fill his lungs so that he would be capable of speech. The guard at the door gave him a quizzical look and then nodded once.

‘Her Majesty has not left.’

‘Excellent. See that we are not disturbed.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Octavio hesitated at the door a moment, but he’d come this far and wasn’t going to let a little something like last-minute nerves get in the way.

He knocked on the door perfunctorily and then pushed it open, his gut twisting at the sight of Phoebe.

His wife. His pregnant wife. His beautiful, kind, selfless, pregnant wife, who had also suffered so much in her life and deserved better than to ever feel like this.

For the woman in the chair across the room was a study in grief and despair, and he had done that to her.

He closed the door and crossed the room, startling her out of her reverie just as he had the guard.