I can’t stay.
Those were the words Mackenzie wanted to say to her father when she phoned him an hour after her confrontation with Devereaux and Lois. Instead she found herself saying, ‘It’s going well, Dad. King Gabriel’s pleased with the plans.’
‘Not just King Gabriel!’ her father told her. ‘I had an email from Prince Khalid as well telling me he was most impressed with the way you were handling publicity.’
The praise didn’t do anything to lift her spirits.
‘Our Eliza told your mother and me how she came up with the idea of the prince rescuing her,’ her father continued. ‘No question she’s going to be on the company payroll when she’s old enough. She’s a natural.’
Mac flopped back onto the pile of pillows on her bed and hoped her father hadn’t commended Eliza for her actions. ‘Dad, she could’ve drowned!’
‘Rubbish! She’s an excellent swimmer.’
‘I don’t want you encouraging her.’ Grandfatherly praise was the last thing Eliza needed when Mac and Dev had both told her it’d been the wrong thing to do. ‘How’s Carmen? Is there any sign of the baby yet?’
‘Um. About that …’
Mac stilled. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘Yes, everything’s fine with Carmen, and the pregnancy is going well.’ He hesitated. ‘You won’t be pleased, but I have to confess that I might have overplayed the urgency of the situation a little.’
He didn’t need to go on. With those words of admission, Mac knew she’d been played. ‘Did you lie to me, Dad, to get me here on this assignment?’
‘I didn’t lie. Jed needed to be here to support Carmen. You know she pushes herself too hard and with that there’s an increase in premature labour. She did need to go to hospital … although that was just for a few tests.’
A number of very choice curses ran through Mac’s mind and her grip tightened around her mobile phone. ‘King Gabriel expected me all along, didn’t he?’ she demanded.
‘It was you he wanted. You were the one recommended by Prince Khalid, not your brother. I had no choice.’
She got up from the bed, so uptight she needed to pace back and forth between the bed and the doorway just to try to work off some angry energy. ‘You sent me even knowing I didn’t want this assignment?’
‘It’s worked out, hasn’t it?’
‘You know I always said I wouldn’t help any playboy fix his reputation—especially this one who doesn’t even want to change!’
‘It’s time you got over your experience with Grayson, Mac. He’s been dead for over a decade and you’re not a teenager anymore! When are you going to let it go and start living life to the full?’
Without any warning, a sob emerged from her chest. She mightn’t be a teenager but she was still making the same mistakes. It was incredible how all the armour she’d built up around herself had come apart the first time it’d been seriously tested.
‘What’s going on, Mac?’ Her father’s voice was suddenly full of concern and she wished she was in the same room so she could deliver a good, hard thump. If he’d listened to her in the first place she wouldn’t even be in Santaliana. ‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’
Biting back a curse, she stopped pacing and dropped on to the end of the bed. Where did she start? More to the point, what was the point of even trying to explain the emotional mess she’d got herself into?
‘Mac?’
Her father loved her. He might be an overbearing tyrant sometimes, manipulating his kids into doing what he wanted them to do, but at the end of the day, he and her mum loved her and they were always there when she needed them. They’d stood by her when she was pregnant, and helped her raise Eliza when she’d gone back to university to get her degree.
‘Are you still there?’
‘Yes.’ She stared at the intricate floral pattern on the carpet.
‘Are you alright?’
‘No.’ The floral pattern blurred. Hot droplets of her heartbreak streamed down her cheeks.
‘Tell me. What’s wrong?’
‘I’ve …’ Oh God, how did she make her confession to her father? ‘I’ve fallen for Prince Devereaux.’
There was silence from the other end of the phone.
‘Dad. I want to come home.’ Knowing she was being a coward, but too miserable to care, she needed to be as far away as possible from Devereaux. She’d warned him about Lois, yet he’d rushed to defend her—a woman he’d just met. A woman he’d picked up at a nightclub. All she could do now was go to King Gabriel before she left and tell him what she knew about Lois. Hopefully, he’d have the woman investigated and Devereaux would be protected.
‘I can’t keep working with him. I’m sor-sorry,’ she said with another small sob. She’d told Devereaux she cared about him and he’d made it obvious he didn’t want her. How could she maintain a professional distance now when she couldn’t even pretend not to be emotionally involved with him?
She could just about see her father slapping the palm of his hand against his forehead. It was the gesture he always resorted to when things weren’t going his way.
Whack!
Oh, yes. There it was. The sound she’d expected.
‘Everything’s in place for the television documentary and the race series, right?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’ Pain squeezed like clamps tightening at her temples. ‘There’s still work to do, but I’ve kept all the notes backed up on disk as usual, and someone else can walk in and take over straight away.’ She was always thorough—always well prepared in case something happened at home and she needed to drop any assignment she was working on to be at Eliza’s side.
‘You’ve never been a quitter, Mac. Are you sure you can’t hang in there a little longer and see this through?’
‘I want to come home.’
Her father let out a long sigh at her adamant tone. ‘Okay. I’ll make arrangements this end and phone King Gabriel when everything is set. We can always say Eliza needs you. I just don’t know who I’m going to send. Jed really should stay with Carmen.’
‘Send Matilda,’ Mac suggested without hesitation. ‘She’s more than capable, Dad.’ Her PA was a bit zany and alternate. It was the reason her father, a staunch traditionalist, had never given Matilda the opportunity to step out on her own.
‘She’s a loose cannon!’
‘You’re wrong about her. She might see the world a little differently, but she’s very creative and she’s a hard worker. She’ll be able to follow all my notes easily, and she can always phone me to discuss anything she needs to clarify.’
Her father muttered a curse. ‘I can’t see I have any other choice. I’m heading for South America next week, damn it, or I’d take over myself!’
Ha! Somehow she didn’t think her father’s bull-in-a-China shop approach would work with Devereaux. ‘Matilda will be fine. I guarantee it.’
‘Stay and hand over to her.’
Mac took a deep breath. ‘If you can get her here tomorrow morning, I’ll meet with her and do the handover, but I don’t want to stay any longer.’ And I’ll hide in my room until I leave.
Coward!
No. I’m not a coward. I’m a realist. I have to leave now, before my feelings for Devereaux tear me to shreds.
There was a knock on the main door to her suite of rooms. ‘I have to answer the door, Dad. Give Eliza a hug from me and tell her I’ll talk to her again tonight. I’ll phone you to make sure Matilda’s okay with this handover.’ Matilda would be fine. She’d jump at the opportunity.
‘Talk to you then,’ Bill Roberts confirmed. She was about to end the call when he added, ‘Mac?’
‘Yeah, Dad?’
‘I love you. You know that, don’t you?’
She managed to choke back a huge sob of emotion, but couldn’t staunch the flow of tears from her eyes or stop the wobble of her lower lip as her father’s sincerity reached her from across the miles. ‘I know, Dad. I love you and Mum too.’
‘You’ll bounce back, kiddo!’ he said.
Somehow she would. ‘Bye.’
Relief that she was going to be away from an untenable situation warred with grief that things with Devereaux simply weren’t going to work out the way she would’ve liked. All she could do was remember that she’d given her heart to a man she’d loved and believed in before. That heart had been broken, yet ten years and one adorable child later, Mackenzie was still standing.
This time, she hadn’t fallen in love with Devereaux. Not really. She’d fallen for the man she thought he could be. No point in hankering after an illusion. She’d go on standing when she left Santaliana, and somehow her heart would mend. Strange to think that even though this time around she wasn’t contemplating a future as a single mother, and having to cancel a wedding, the breakup of her affair with Devereaux before it had even turned into a relationship, was every bit as hard to come to terms with.
There was another knock at the outer door just as she reached for the handle.
‘You!’ she exclaimed as she opened it.