Royal Bachelor (11 page)

Alice straightened and turned around to face him with an incredulous look. “He’s ill? And you’re here?”

“Don’t look at me like that, please. He’s not on his death bed. I left so that my family could focus on my father. I don’t think he wants me around anyway.”

Her face softened and she gave him an apologetic smile, though she still looked flabbergasted. Of course, with her wonderful father, she wouldn’t be able to imagine leaving him if he was ill. “Death bed or not, I think he
would
want you there.”

“Trust me, he’s not and he wouldn’t. My mother wouldn’t have let me leave, would she? All the same, it was—” He looked down and played with her hair. When he looked up, Alice was waiting. So he continued. “Do you remember what I said about the crypt and how it ruined all underground places for me? That happened because I felt pressure even back then. And for a five-year-old, that’s tough, isn’t it? Even now, I can’t take it.”

“There’s pressure because you’ll be taking the reins next, after your father?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sure you’ve been groomed for the position and you’ll be good at it.”

Luke shook his head. “He’s young. He’s not even sixty.”

Alice smiled and took his hand. “And
you’re
young.”

“Well, yes. I can’t take over for him yet.”

“How old are you?”she asked. It was strange being so close, feeling so intimate, and then realizing they still knew so little about each other.

“Twenty-six.”

“Oh dear, I’m robbing the cradle.”

Luke laughed. “What?”

“I’m much too old for you. I’m thirty-nine! That is, I’ve celebrated the eighth anniversary of my thirty-ninth birthday this year. Don’t I look it?” She tossed her hair dramatically. Luke laughed. She was crazy. She was twenty-five. In the living room over the mantel was a heart-tugging portrait of Angela smiling down on a newborn Alice in her arms. The date and Alice’s full name was inscribed in gold in the bottom beneath a stencil of flared angel wings.

Angela looked so blissful in that portrait. And no wonder. Her Alice was just so precious. “No, you don’t.” He kissed her.

Her mother’s relatives were scattered here and in Europe, and when Angela’s only brother on American soil died it had become very quiet in the island house, with only Rebecca to add to their number. Alice’s grandfather didn’t like leaving his vineyard in the summer when the sprouts and vines had to be looked after most and couldn’t imagine bearing the harrowing New England winter. Theirs had always been a tiny, tiny family. It didn’t help that Alice was content with Rebecca being her only friend. The neighbors in Brooklyn and her parents’ colleagues and friends had their own places to go to.

But now, for the first time in years, they felt like party makers themselves instead of spectators. They were seven! What a huge number. Angela was delighted. Alice worried that her mother might barricade the house and prevent anyone from ever leaving again.

“Luke, we’ve been so busy eating. I should have asked you earlier. But what do you do?” Antonio asked. “My Alice has two degrees you know. Earned literature and fine arts at the same time.”

“I didn’t know that,” Luke said. “We haven’t exchanged degrees. Why didn’t you ask me Alice?”

“Because it’s trivial,” said Alice, scolding her father with a look. “You could have a doctorate in Jane Austen and I’d still hate you if you were a horrible person.”

“Where can I get a doctorate in Jane Austen?” Luke chuckled. “I have a degree in political science and art history.”

“Do we have to talk about academia over the roast?” asked Angela. “Oh, not that I think your degrees are boring, Luke, just—”

“You wound me deeply, ma’am.”

The table laughed.

“I work with money,” Luke continued. “I sit on two committees for foundations. Three if you count the one for horses.”

Antonio nodded. “Lots of foundations in Elmera. What’s these two you sit in, aside from the one for horses?”

“Elmera’s Children’s Fund. It’s a local offshoot of the UNFPA. Concerned with children, mothers, orphans and especially young women susceptible to early pregnancy. That’s the other foundation, mostly. More centered on teenagers and keeping them off drugs and away from unwanted pregnancy.”

“That’s quite something,” Angela said.

“Yes.” Luke left it at that.

Alice gave her father a look for initializing an inquisition. Antonio was testing Luke, already calculating whether this was a good match for his daughter. Part of Alice was counting on her father’s disapproval, hoping someone besides her would realize how imprudent this match was.

Under the table, Luke took her hand and squeezed. “I’m relieved he finally asked me something like that,” he whispered. “He wouldn’t be a normal father if he didn’t. I—” He hesitated.

“What is it?” she whispered back.

“It came to me just now. I wish I worked more for my jobs. Your mother’s right, they
are
something. Forgive me at how superior and horrible this would sound, but I’d thought them dull.”

Alice smiled. “Well, what do they make you do, exactly? Sign papers? I’d find that dull myself.”

He looked at her then with something close to adoration in his eyes. And right in front of her parents, he kissed her on the forehead. “Yeah, yeah, I mostly sign papers.”

*

The family had gone on another winter weather walk, leaving Luke and Alice alone on a blanket by the comfort of the fire again.

“Why are you an only child?” Luke asked out of the blue. He was lying with his arms under his head, gaze directed straight up at the wood beam ceiling, leaving Alice free to look her fill of his profile.

“Are you?” she returned. She was only guessing since he hadn’t really mentioned brothers or sisters. Besides, it was a sad subject for her.

“I was a difficult birth. My mother had a miscarriage before me and two after. And then they stopped trying because my father was afraid he was slowly killing my mother.”

“And you said you didn’t know your father,” she murmured, trying to imagine little Luke watching his baby siblings grow and fade. The same little Luke who realized death and responsibility all at once within a deep Elmeran crypt.

Luke shook his head. “I really don’t. What I told you was common knowledge, I think I first read it in an official press release.”

Alice grimaced. Despite its beaches and weather, Elmera was sounding less and less welcome for Luke. A seedling of hope sprung in her heart: perhaps he could stay here. Her sympathy for the young Luke and her tenderness toward this man opened her up.

“I had a little brother for a while. I remember him. He had my mom’s red hair. I was four when he died and I remember peering into his crib and wondering why he wasn’t there. He just... disappeared. One day he was my little brother sticking his arms through the crib to reach for me and learning to crawl around on the carpet, the next day, my parents said he was gone. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, as if a four-year-old could grasp that. I was seven before I realized he wasn’t coming back.”

“That’s terrible.”

“And I guess my parents were too heartbroken to try again. Though I don’t really know if they did and it would be too cruel to ask. Instead they just helmeted and padded me the rest of my life.” When he looked at her disbelievingly, it was her turn to chuckle. “Oh, college really shook them up. Rebecca and I both moved away and they got better because I threatened I’d do drugs if they didn’t loosen up.”

“You are evil incarnated.”

Alice belatedly noticed that they were both lying on their sides now, her with her arm tucked under her head, and Luke with his head propped by his arm, looking down at her.

It was suddenly very warm.

“I really want to kiss you right now,” he said, matter of fact.

“Then why are you talking? Ew. I can’t believe I said that.”

He chuckled and then lowered his head to hers, slowly, taking his time. When the touch finally came, Alice made a noise at the back of her throat. In relief, in triumph. She was a quick study and soon she matched his kiss, suckle for suckle, lick for lick, stab for stab. They did a gentle battle with their tongues. All her bones turned to water, her blood became liquid fire.

His hand moved to her hair, stroking her scalp, and then her neck and shoulders then down to her waist. Alice laced her body around Luke’s, weaving her legs between his and conforming to the shape of him. She brought his hand to her breast, the touch muffled by sweaters and underwear, but she sighed nevertheless. The heat of his touch made her squirm at how disconcertingly right the sensation was.

He transferred his hand under her sweater to her stomach and covered her skin, gently massaging before leaving to stroke her waist and back, and then returning to stroke and tease her breast again over her bra. She was drunk and so alive at the same time. She wrapped her arms around him and buried her fingers in his hair.

Alice broke free of the kiss to gasp, pressing her neck to his mouth and digging her fingernails into the skin of his back.

She wanted him, and she was suddenly bewildered and foggy on why she was refusing herself when he wanted her, too. She felt desperate and they were now grinding against each other, kissing, touching.

They were on a rug, on the floor, in her parents’ house, with nothing between them but this raging fire that demanded to be fed and consume them—And Alice suddenly didn’t care. So what if she’d decided to take things slow? So what if all this practically screamed inevitable heartbreak? Any hesitation she might still have had was brushed aside by Luke taking a deep breath and propping himself on his arms away from her. He stared down at her. She melted at the desire in his eyes. Everything else melted away.

Why not, why not, why not?
It rang in her ears as loudly as the blood heated up by their touch and kisses. A sensible part of her answered the question, but the desire drowned it out.

She pulled Luke close before he could move away.

They went back to New York. Luke stood in the cold wind, letting his skin turn bright red. Luke looked out over the frigid ocean and thought of Alice, sweet Alice. Even now, a day later, it set his teeth on edge with desire, just remembering their mind-numbingly sweet coupling. He couldn’t call it sex in his mind, not even when it had felt like one because of their frantic fumbling and wordless, almost impersonal joining. It hadn’t surprised him because she’d set him on fire from the first. Sinking into her had turned him a little feral—but she was Alice. She had something special that kept him tethered to humanity, his strokes had begun gently but she wouldn’t have that. Surprising and delighting him, she set a brutal pace. She was a goddess.

Normally, Luke should have forgotten her by now, or the desire should have mellowed, but no. Luke was even more tightly-wound now than when he didn’t know yet how it felt to be deep inside her.

It didn’t help that Alice seemed to be reacting the way Luke usually did. Alice had grown a little cool, a little detached, and it terrified Luke how much this terrified him. After gasping into each other’s ears as they came, Alice had seemed stricken and had gently pushed him away, squirmed back into the leggings they’d both pushed to her ankles, and gone to her room without a look back.

She hadn’t been the same since. Or rather, she hadn’t become what Luke had expected her to become—closer to him, not distant.

“My lord,” Jules said, appearing at Luke’s side. “Miss Martelli’s feet are probably getting cold.”

“My own feet are freezing,” Luke replied dazedly.

“No.” Jules sighed. He hated idiomatic expressions in English. For the ease of conversation he lapsed into Elmerean. “Not everyone would jump at being your girlfriend, my lord. Especially not when they think they’re at risk rather than at gain.”

“At risk?”

Jules raised an eyebrow. “Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately, my lord?”

“Of course he looks at himself in the mirror daily, you old fart,” said Alfred, arriving on the scene and grimacing at the cold. “Out with it.”

“And you’re supposedly so worldly-wise, Alfred,” said Jules, enjoying the attention. “My lord, you are a handsome man. Even without your position in the equation, women are naturally wary of handsome men because handsome men find it too easy to replace their women.”

“Trust me, I’m not about to replace Alice.”

The vehemence and certainty in Luke’s words startled all three of them. Jules looked pleased. “I suggest you let her know then. Show her by being honest with her.”

“Jules, I
am
going to tell her. And yes, I will get to it. So you can stop looking at me like I stole your SpongeBob boxers.”

“My what, my lord?”

Alfred left as suddenly as he came. Luke didn’t answer Jules. He was thinking and trying to master himself. Jules was right. Luke had to open himself to Alice in the same way she already had for him. He had seen her hesitation before she’d flicked it away in favor of giving them both what they’d wanted from the beginning. He had an idea of what Alice with her principles and rules must be battling just now and it made him feel worse for his deception.