‘How can you doubt it?’
Her head was spinning. She didn’t have an answer right away. There was so much to take in that her heart felt as if it was in a vice. She’d barely recovered from the shock of Dom’s attack, and then there had been the shame of seeing yet another newspaper article written in her name. Now she was faced with Cesar’s bombshell proposal of marriage. ‘I’ve said it before. I’m just not princess material, let alone queen.’
‘Which is precisely why I think you’ll be the most marvellous addition to the royal family,’ Cesar insisted. ‘You’re what my people deserve—someone who will genuinely care for them and who’s prepared to get their hands dirty. Not forgetting you’ll have to put up with me.’
She searched Cesar’s eyes for some hint of humour and found none. The past half an hour had brought about great change. Cesar had found her, saved her, and they’d confirmed the treachery of his aide. What was she waiting for? For the doubt demons to leave? Life was full of uncertainty. How you dealt with it was what mattered. The one thing you could not, must not do was to turn your back and walk away from the chance of happiness. ‘Is this a serious proposal of marriage?’
‘I would never joke about something so important,’ Cesar promised with a steady look.
‘But there’s been no lead up, no hint of what you were thinking, no preparation—’
‘For life?’ he asked gently. ‘How much preparation do you need? Seems to me you’ve been doing pretty well up to this point, and I believe this is the perfect solution to silence the critics following any fallout from the article. The Playboy Prince is ready to settle down—’
Just when she was ready to believe he could change and grow in the emotional sense, he slashed her belief into tiny pieces.’
‘There’s no point in dragging things out,’ he said.
Life drained out of her but she was a fighter, which meant refusing to give up, especially when that meant giving up the man she loved. She wasn’t going to let him go without a fight. ‘What about tracing a possible path for our future first?’ she asked crisply. ‘What about describing your vision of the path we’ll be walking down together. Or is this marriage just another business deal for you? Maybe it’s a way for you to get your people onside. After all, everyone loves a royal wedding.’
Cesar looked shocked.
Grief, hurt and shame collided inside her. Receiving the proposal she’d dreamed of all her life in what amounted to bullet points was unbearable. She didn’t need to be told that she wasn’t a likely choice of bride for Prince Cesar of Ardente Sestieri, but to be made to feel that she was nothing more than a convenient solution for Cesar hurt like hell.
And then he made it worse.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘I AM A brutally honest man,’ Cesar conceded with a grudging grin, ‘but I’ll admit that what I’m thinking doesn’t come out the way I intend.’
‘I get that, but it’s what you’re feeling too that needs expressing,’ Sofia observed, ‘and not just clinical thoughts when it comes to something as precious as marriage. What I don’t want is for you to say something you don’t mean.’
‘But I do mean it,’ he insisted with a hard stare. ‘Every word.’
‘With eyes as hard as flint?’ she said, breaking up inside. ‘Please, don’t lie to me, Cesar. I don’t understand how you can love me so much that you want to spend the rest of your life with me when I’ll never be princess material.’
‘That’s the very reason I want to marry you. Haven’t I told you that before?’
‘Why can’t you stop pretending that the marriage you propose is anything more than a convenient solution?’
‘What do you want me to say, Sofia? I thought this was what you wanted.’
Tears sprang to her eyes. ‘A marriage proposal that sounds more like a business deal?’ she asked incredulously.
‘Don’t do this to me.’ Cesar pulled back when she longed for him to move forward. ‘I’m trying to be fair,’ he insisted.
‘So your future plans include a quirky horse-riding artist, said to have written defamatory articles about you? No smoke without fire,’ she reminded him grimly. ‘Does that sound like the perfect royal match to you? Will your countrymen go for it? Will the Queen stand and cheer when you tell Her Majesty our news?’
‘Please, be calm,’ Cesar insisted in a way that made her madder still. ‘I’ve told you about my past so you know I’m not obvious prince material. Yet, here I am, not so very different from you. I wouldn’t be asking you such a vital question if I thought you were a typical princess, spoiled, indulged, entitled, but none of those words describe you, Sofia.’
‘No. I’m just the mug who fell in love with you,’ she admitted, when she could finally draw an easy breath.
‘You love me?’
‘Of course I do!’ she exclaimed heatedly.
‘A fact that makes our marriage even more likely to succeed,’ Cesar declared, without returning the compliment. ‘So now we’ve got that sorted out, I’ll give you a list of things to do in the lead up to our wedding.’
‘No clipboard?’ she asked heatedly. ‘Don’t tell me you forgot to bring it with you?’
