yet. It’s easy for you to put all the responsibility for this relationship on my shoulders. Because then you don’t need to think about Sophia or Annabelle at all.’
The tears wouldn’t stop. Her heart was breaking.
Alex’s face had crumpled. She didn’t have a single doubt that she loved this man sitting across from her. This proud, passionate, potential king.
It would be so easy to get swept along with the wonder of the pink palace, Euronia, and a prince who’d come looking for her after ten years.
She wanted him for herself. She really did.
She almost wished she could take back everything she’d just said and walk through that door again and wrap her arms around his neck and kiss him.
But this would always have been there.
This would eventually have festered between them.
She wanted to be free to love Alex. And she wanted him to be free to love her. Things just didn’t feel like that right now.
‘This is killing me, Alex,’ she whispered.
He stood up sharply, his chair screeching along the floor. He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I need to think. I need to think about all this.’
His eyes were vacant. As if he couldn’t look at her, couldn’t focus.
The tables had turned completely.
He’d been telling her to take her time.
But the reality was after ten years it was Alex who needed to take his time.
She stood up and walked back towards the glass doors.
This time it was her turn to say the words. ‘Take all the time you need.’
FOR TWO DAYS he avoided Ruby.
There was too much to think about—too much to absorb.
Any time he was around Ruby he was drawn to her and wanted to touch her.
But horrible little parts of what she’d said were keeping him awake at night.
The photograph part was easy. He knew exactly which picture to frame for Annabelle. It was embarrassing to think he hadn’t even considered it before.
He—and the advisors around him—had just assumed that Annabelle wouldn’t remember anything about her mother.
He hadn’t deliberately kept her pictures away from Annabelle—he just hadn’t thought to talk to Annabelle about her mother.
She was playing in her room now. One blonde doll seemed to be driving a racing car around the furniture and over most of the other toys. She was making noises again—a brrrrmm for the racing car and a gasp as the doll plummeted over the bedcovers.
His heart twisted in his chest. If Sophia had lived would their little girl have been like this? It was a horrible thing to consider. It meant facing up to facts—facing up to a responsibility that he’d thought he had fulfilled.
Ruby thought differently.
He couldn’t hesitate any longer. He walked into the room, keeping his voice bright. ‘Hi, Annabelle. I’ve brought a picture for you.’
He put the silver frame on Annabelle’s bedside table.
There was an audible gasp. It almost ripped him in two.
The picture was almost exactly at Annabelle’s head height. She tilted her head to one side, her eyes wide.
He could have picked from a million pictures of Sophia. Once Annabelle was old enough to use the internet she would find another million pictures of her mother online.
But this was his favourite. This had always been his favourite. It was the picture he still had of Sophia in his mind—not the frail, emaciated pale woman she’d become.
This picture had Sophia on a swing, her blonde hair streaming behind her, her face wide with laughter and her pink dress billowing around her. She was around eighteen in this picture and it captured her perfectly. It captured the fun-loving human being she’d been before illness had struck her down.
He had other pictures. Pictures of her holding Annabelle not long after the birth and in the following months. There were lots of those.
But all of those pictures were touched with inherent sadness. The inevitability of a life lost. He’d put some into a little album for Annabelle. Those were for another day.
She reached out and touched the photo, obviously captivated by the joy in the picture. That was the word it conjured in his brain. Joy.
He knelt beside her. ‘That’s your mama, Annabelle. She was a very beautiful woman and you look just like her. I thought it was time for you to have a photograph of your own.’
Her little brow furrowed for a moment. He could almost see her brain trying to assimilate the information. Her lips moved, making the M movement—but no sound came out.
He rested her hand at her back. ‘Look—your dress is the same colour as hers.’
He could see the recognition on his little girl’s face. His whole body ached. Why hadn’t he done this sooner?
A wave of shame washed over him. He should have known to do this. He should have known that his daughter needed this. But Alex had no experience around children. He had no relatives with youngsters, and as an only child he didn’t have much experience to draw on.
He’d had friends—peers—during his life. Sophia had been among them, as had his schoolmates and university friends. But he hadn’t been exposed to a life of looking after other people’s children.
His sole experience of children before the birth of Annabelle had been on royal tours, where he was expected to talk to kids and hold babies. That was all fine, but it only lasted minutes. It didn’t give him a taste of real life.
He looked down at the little girl in front of him. She’d gone back to her dolls and was racing them around the room again. Just like any three-year-old should.
His eyes glanced between his daughter and the photo. The wave of grief was overwhelming. Ruby was right. Sophia hadn’t just been his friend.
Would he have married her if she hadn’t been sick? Probably not. Their relationship hadn’t been destined to go that way. Sophia had had wanderlust. She would likely have travelled and married someone from a distant country.
But the genetics of life had changed all that.
He took a deep breath. He hadn’t felt the surge of emotion around Sophia that he felt around Ruby. There hadn’t been that instant connection. More like a slow-growing respect. But other than Ruby she was the only woman on this planet he’d actually felt anything for.
In his head
