“Oh, my,” she let out, unintentionally.
He stopped behind her. “She’s something, isn’t she?”
Allison nodded. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything that big in Nanticoke Cove.”
“She’s called the Queen Elise. She can cross the Atlantic a whole day faster than the QE2.”
Allison let her glance drift downward from the immense yacht to stare at the wavelets rippling closest to her feet. “You’re full of it, Jay.”
He laughed out loud this time. “What?”
“You heard me. You have no idea what the name of that ship is. You’re just experimenting with another pickup line.”
“I’m not, Alli. Honest.”
“Baloney!” She couldn’t help sounding spiteful now, couldn’t pretend to be callous and modern about relationships. “Two years ago, you told me you were a graduate student on summer break. You claimed you were studying for your master’s degree in political science at Yale.” New Haven was less than an hour’s drive to the east, along the coast of Connecticut, so his story had seemed reasonable to her.
“I was.”
“Don’t lie, Jay!” she shouted, spinning around to face him. Her rage nearly made it impossible for her to form words. “You never were a student at Yale,” she choked out. “I know because I checked.”
He stared mutely at her.
She was close to tears now, as she remembered how desperate she had been to contact him. Even if he hadn’t wanted to come back to her, she’d wanted to tell him about the baby. She’d been so confused, so frightened and alone. But he hadn’t been there for her. In the end, all she’d wanted was to let him hear her decision—that she intended to keep their child. Maybe he had somehow guessed he’d impregnated her, and that was why he’d left. But on the more likely chance that he hadn’t known, her strong sense of fairness demanded she tell him that he was going to be a father. Then he could make his own decision about taking on the responsibility or not.
“Shut up!” Allison said when he started to open his mouth. “I’ll save you the trouble of asking. I called the college registrar’s office and argued with three different clerks, insisting there must be a Jay Thomas in the student body. But they said no one under that name was registered.”
He looked more amazed than angry. “You did that? You actually tried to track me down?”
She glared at him.
“Ouch,” he said, and looked out at the water.
“You deceived me, Jay. You used me. All you wanted was a summer fling. And I was too naive to guess that what we were doing could be that ordinary and simple.”
“I’m sorry,” he said tightly. “That’s one reason I came back...to apologize for the way I treated you. I want to make it up to you. Come out with me for dinner.”
She threw up her hands, veered away from him, and started marching down the beach. She was so angry she could have strangled him. Or better yet, put a blunt instrument to good use.
“Incredible,” she muttered to herself. The man steals your heart, relieves you of your virginity, and ditches you after getting you pregnant...then he wants to buy you a meal and make nice. She knew she couldn’t have said another word to him, she was so furious. The words would have vaporized like steam from her lips.
“Alli!” he shouted after her. “Listen to me!”
She ignored him, kept on walking, the sand sifting into her shoes, between her toes, making each step feel gritty and slow-motion awkward.
A hand roughly gripped her arm, taking her by surprise. She hadn’t heard him chasing her. She recovered and faced him, her shoulders ratcheted back, her eyes brittle with emotion, seething with hatred. But her chin trembled, giving her away. She blinked back hot tears.
“Listen...” he hissed at her, and started to say something more. But he changed his mind and quickly bent down to press his lips over hers.
The heat and intensity of his kiss shocked her. It was the last thing she’d expected from a runaway boyfriend who’d lied his way into her heart, then disappeared without a trace. Why was he doing this to her?
Allison was trembling from head to foot when his lips finally brushed away from hers. His grip on her wrist loosened, but he closed his muscular arms around her in a warm embrace. She thought for a brief moment how strange his body felt, wrapped around hers, as if he was holding himself up as much as he was restraining her from running away again.
He kept her there, pinned tightly against his chest, as he began talking in his perfect English with the almost indistinguishable hint of an accent that had intrigued her from their first meeting. “Please just let me explain and try to do this right, for a change.” He didn’t wait for her response. “Yes, I lied. But not about being a grad student at Yale. I was enrolled there...under a different name.”
“Your name isn’t Jay?”
“My American friends sometimes called me that. Occasionally, it suited other situations. My name’s Jacob.”
“Jacob,” she repeated, feeling the need to test out the sounds. The name suited him, although why, she couldn’t have said. “Jacob Thomas?”
“No.” He hesitated, and she sensed a growing tension in his neck and arms, as if he was having second thoughts about continuing. “Do you read the gossip columns in grocery store tabloids?” he asked.
She blinked up at him, wondering what one thing had to do with the other. “No, why do you—”
“What about newspapers?”
“The front page and local news, occasionally. I don’t have a lot of reading time with—” She stopped herself from adding, with a full-time job and an infant to raise.
He sighed and adjusted his hold on her, and she began to wonder if he actually feared she’d take a swing at him if he released her. “Promise you’ll let me finish.”
She felt like screaming. “Just say what’s on your mind, Jacob, or whoever the hell you are, and let me get on with my life!”
He took a deep breath that she could feel through her ribs, pressed against his.
“My real name, my entire legal name as it appears on my birth certificate is—His Royal Highness, Jacob Phillipe Mark von Austerand, Crown Prince of Elbia. That yacht out there is mine, and I want you to have dinner with me on it, tonight.”
Allison closed her eyes, feeling numb from head to toe. She said nothing, didn’t move an inch. After a minute Jacob dropped his arms and stepped back to observe her expression. She focused on the strong angles of his face, which seemed perfectly composed and serious. Pursing her lips, she folded her arms over her chest and smiled sweetly up at him.
He tentatively lifted one corner of his lips in response.
“And I am Queen Elizabeth,” she stated calmly. “Get
