for not handling the situation more tactfully.
“Now, Diane—”
“You’ve come to spy on me,” she accused with a touch of dry humor.
“I’m sorry if I’m intruding,” Thomas whispered gruffly. “Jacob and Allison are worried about you and the children. They’ve received phone calls from Florida. Your parents believe you’re having problems of some sort but won’t tell them what it’s all about.”
The touch of anger in Diane’s eyes softened. She set her mug down a little too hard, and coffee sloshed over the lip onto the tabletop. “It’s nothing they can do anything about. I didn’t want to burden anyone unnecessarily.”
“I see.”
She gave him a look that could only have come from deep sorrow. Whatever had happened must have been pretty awful.
He set down his own mug firmly, hiked himself up even straighter in his chair and spread his huge hands over hers on the table in front of him. “If it’s that serious, Mrs. Fields, your family should be told.”
“It’s nothing that I can’t— It’s just that—” Something seemed to catch in her throat. A watery glaze covered her eyes, and she looked away from him.
Was she going to cry? He would never have thought it possible. Diane the fighter. Diane the veritable tigress when it came to chasing off the press in the days just after her sister’s marriage to Jacob, when no one in either family could go anywhere without a trail of reporters yapping like hyenas at their heels. He’d seen her run off a journalist and his photographer with a broom when the pair had tried to corner her children with questions in their own backyard.
And here she was, an emotional disaster, on the verge—unless he was mistaken—of breaking down entirely. He didn’t have a clue what to do.
“Diane, let them help.”
She pulled herself up and stood to face him as he rose from the table. The top of her head only reached the shoulder of his suit jacket. “I’m just tired. Days are pretty long around here. I should go to bed now.”
“Tell me what has happened,” he said, emphasizing each word.
She looked up at him, a spark of proud fire momentarily brightening her sad eyes. “Please go.”
“You are not leaving this room, and I’m not leaving this house until you tell me what’s going on.”
“Why does it matter?” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “It’s the possibility of scandal, isn’t it? If the press hears the king of Elbia’s sister-in-law is bereft of a husband and can’t pay her electric bill, they’ll have a field day. Won’t they?”
Thomas’s heart stopped. So that was it. “Gary’s…left you and the children?” he asked hesitantly.
“Gone…flown the coop…absconded with a floozy from the office…good riddance.” She fluttered a hand carelessly in the air, but the gesture didn’t fool him a bit.
“Dear girl, I’m so sorry,” he muttered, trying to recover from his shock and think of something…anything appropriate to say.
“Well, I’m not,” Diane said in a quiet voice just short of cracking. “It’s been a long time coming. I should have insisted years ago…didn’t…couldn’t find a way to—”
The last ounce of strength drained from her. She turned with a choking sob and rushed toward the doorway into the living room.
Thomas cut her off with one enormous stride. She ran smack into his chest with her bowed head. His big arms immediately wrapped around her, pinning her there. She struggled for exactly half of one second, then went limp in his bear hug of an embrace.
Neither of them said a thing. But now that Thomas had her in his arms, her trembling body flush against his, he wasn’t sure what to do with her.
She didn’t push or squirm or indicate she needed space, oxygen or even words of solace from him. She seemed content just to remain where she was.
It was at that moment he became aware of an embarrassing development. Down below his belt. He felt himself move, extend, become…firm.
Thomas squeezed his eyes shut and willed himself to remember he was duty bound to Jacob to protect, defend and honor the members of his family. Desire wasn’t supposed to enter the equation. That meant not responding to Diane as if she were a beautiful, soft, desperately overworked woman who might welcome a man. That meant switching off his hormones for one bloody hour, finding out what he needed to know, mending whatever was broken the best he could…and getting the hell out.
If he played his cards right and there were no technical delays at the airport, he could be on the royal jet and headed back toward Europe in a matter of hours.
But at the moment a woman was weeping on his chest. Probably ruining his new suit jacket, he thought regretfully. He had paid an exclusive tailor in Florence to make it for him, at the cost of more lire than his recent week on the Riviera with a sultry French actress. In retrospect, the suit had seemed the better deal.
Diane made no sound, moved not a muscle. Nevertheless he knew she was crying by the bucketful.
“Mrs. Fields,” he said, “I’m good at fixing things. Let me help.” Although he’d meant to be gentle, even paternal, his words came out clipped, tense, businesslike.
If she hadn’t been moving before, now she was suddenly as still as granite, hardly breathing, taut from her tiny bare feet to the top of her shampoo-fresh head. “Help?” she whispered hoarsely. She looked up at him with incredible sadness. “You silly man, this isn’t a matter of diplomacy or rescuing Jacob from a mob of overenthusiastic paparazzi.”
“I realize that,” he began, employing his best diplomatic tone nevertheless. “But perhaps there is a way to work things out between you and your husband.”
“No, there isn’t.” She ducked out of his arms and began pacing the vinyl flooring. “I know it was the right thing to do, signing those papers, but I can’t bear to think how my kids are going to suffer.”
Thomas frowned, feeling something like panic tug at his gut. “What papers?” Did she mean separation papers? Or was she already divorced? He couldn’t walk out without something more exact to report to Jacob. But he also wanted to know, for himself.
“Mr. Fields is where now?” The words came out casually enough, but the muscles in his shoulders and arms bunched, as if prepped for battle with the man who had broken the heart of this amazing woman.
“I don’t know and I can’t say that I really care.” She smiled grimly at him.
Thomas stared at Diane, hesitant to push further. Seeing her in such anguish was devastating to him, although he didn’t understand why. Over the years he had hardened himself to the pain of others. He held little sympathy for anyone who wasn’t part of the royal family or the inner circle of the court. The von Austerands had, in every sense but one—blood—become his family.
After all his own parents had deserted him—each in their own way. He had been barely five years old when his mother had left his father, the Earl of Sussex,
