narrowed her eyes at that, straining to catch his meaning. “Afraid of what?”
Alek swept a trembling hand through his damp hair, not looking at her at first. And when he did, his eyes begged forgiveness.
“I want to meet my son.”
And Luanne marveled, in a stuttering, not-quite-focused kind of way, that there had been enough of her heart left intact to now be crumbling into a million pieces.
Even as short as she was, there was no avoiding the bitter, brittle heat of those impossibly blue eyes as Luanne backed away, her arms laced over her unborn child. The pup circled her feet, worried.
“Jeff swore to me he wouldn’t tell you.”
Alek swallowed down the acrid taste of guilt, hating this moment more than he’d ever hated anything in his life. “I haven’t known for long.”
He watched as her eyes squeezed shut, as she drew in a shuddering breath, opened them again. Resolve now flickered in their bright-blue depths, if not ameliorating the panic of moments before, at least fortifying it. “And I don’t suppose you’d consider pretending you’d never found out, would you?”
It was as close to begging as he imagined she’d ever come, and it nearly broke his heart. He dragged an arm across his wet face, then shook his head. “I think it’s time we all stopped pretending, don’t you?”
The prick to his conscience came hard and fast. How ironic to reach a point in his life where integrity should suddenly become all-important, only to have circumstances laugh in his face. But, in those cases where kindness and honesty seem to be mutually exclusive, which one was the more noble choice?
However, as he watched the clearly distraught woman in front of him, his ambivalence vanished. As did, apparently, some of her reticence. Her emotions as transparent as he remembered, Luanne stared at him for several seconds, then banged back the screen door. “Inside,” she said softly.
Alek and the pup both obeyed.
Once in the house, she headed down the short hallway toward the back, leaving a trail of damp footprints on the bare floor. She flapped her hand toward a sparsely furnished living room off to the left. “You may as well take a load off while I go to the little girl’s room.” The words were almost flippant, the tightness with which they were spoken, anything but.
“Luanne.”
She turned, her gaze wary.
“I’m not here to take Chase away from you.”
Purple smudges lurked underneath eyes now gone expressionless. “And I reckon I have your word on that?”
“Yes.”
He hadn’t expected her to laugh, although the sound was as dry and dusty as the air outside. “And just what’ve you ever done that would give me any reason to trust you, Your Highness?” she said, then disappeared down the hall.
Point to her.
Every muscle in his neck strung tight, Alek wandered into the bare-floored living room, the pup clicking at his heels. A quick swipe at his backside determined that he was dry enough to sit stiffly on the edge of a cushioned wicker chair; the pup wriggled over to him, flopping onto his back to get his stomach scratched. Alek complied, distractedly, glancing around the white-walled room, glaringly bright from the sunlight streaming in through the pair of curtainless windows. A large ceiling fan droned lazily overhead, barely stirring the thick, stifling air; dozens of boxes, like an oversize children’s block set, were towered throughout the room. Even from here he could see the labels: Books— History or Books—Bio or Books—Novels A-D. He wondered, vaguely, why she’d moved back from Dallas.
Back to where their child had been conceived, eleven years ago.
Alek leaned back on his elbows in the bleachers, oblivious to the sun biting through his cotton shirt and jeans, oblivious to everything save the sassy little Chevy Corsica spitting dirt from its wheels as it sped around the makeshift track. He’d come to Sandy Springs as he had to a dozen other small American towns—for the racing. Not the major venues, but the dusty little amateur tracks where tomorrow’s stars were earning their stripes, where dreams burned through a young man’s—or, less frequently, a woman’s—veins as hot and fierce as the souped-up stockcars burned rubber. He’d heard about the track from someone in another town, fifty miles to the east. And about twenty-two-year-old Jeff Henderson, who was gonna win one of the big ones one of these days, you just wait and see.
Prince Aleksander was hardly the first royal to be bitten by the racing bug. In fact, he could name at least a dozen blue-bloods who either drove or sponsored various teams, traveling from track to track to satisfy their lust. In Alek’s case, however, it wasn’t the thrill that had lured him into the sport as much as his discovery that racing was a terrific common denominator. Socioeconomic barriers simply vanished, leaving nothing except shared euphoria—or profound disappointment—in their place. And that camaraderie had gone a long way, in the past nine years since his parents’ deaths, to stanch a despair so chronic, he barely felt the ache anymore.
Still, it lurked inside him, just waiting for an unguarded moment to assault him afresh. So he kept on the move, racing pretty little cars and dallying with equally pretty women who understood not to expect emotional commitment. Not now, certainly. Perhaps not ever.
His grandmother, Princess Ivana, didn’t understand. And he knew she worried. Which worried him, in turn. To an extent. But not enough to date anyone for more than a few months. Or stay in Carpathia for more than a few days at a time.
Alek had been gone nearly six months this go-round, didn’t plan on returning for several more, at least. For some time he’d had the odd thought about putting together his own racing team. He had both money and connections; he could certainly get the cars. Now all he needed were drivers.
New drivers. Hungry drivers. Drivers who handled a car as sweetly as the cocky, loose-limbed kid he’d been honored to watch tear up a track this afternoon.
Not that he was anywhere near ready to make an offer, or even to reveal his true identity. In fact, he was using his father’s name—Hastings—rather than Vlastos, the royal name handed down through his grandmother and mother, masquerading as just another bored, wealthy European bumming around the States. Watching, taking mental notes, planning—those were sufficient for the moment. Alek took risks, yes, but he wasn’t impetuous. Or incautious. Still, a frisson of exquisite, almost sexual pleasure had hummed through his veins at the way Jeff Henderson seemed to effortlessly balance passion with precision. Like Alek, Jeff clearly only took chances he knew he could pull off.
The young man said as much, when Alek approached him after the practice session to compliment him on his style. Determination glittering in his golden-brown eyes, the freckled, mustached redhead with the ready smile soaked up the compliment, then went on to say that he intended to drive professionally one day. Just as soon as he found a sponsor.
Alek just smiled, then took Jeff up on his invitation to join him later on for a beer and a bite to eat at the local watering hole, if he had a mind.
The night had already cooled considerably when Alek pulled his rented Porsche convertible alongside a monster SUV in front of the post-and-rail fence edging someone’s pasture. A light breeze stirring his shoulder-length hair, he sat and stared for several moments at the neon-drenched adobe box from which blasted the sounds of a live country-western combo, complete with female
