The Tycoon Takes a Wife / His Royal Prize: The Tycoon Takes a Wife / His Royal Prize

Six

Eloisa perched on the second-to-top step of the rolling ladder, replacing two copies of The Scarlet Letter. They’d been returned by a couple of high schoolers who’d lost their classroom edition and had to check it out from the library in a panic before the test. And while work usually calmed her, channeling peace through the quiet and rows of books … Today the familiar environment fell short of its normally calming effect.

She placed the blame squarely on her husband. Having Jonah show up in her life again so unexpectedly was unsettling on too many levels. No wonder she was having trouble finding her footing. She’d contacted her attorney and it appeared Jonah’s claim was correct. The divorce hadn’t gone through after all. Her lawyer had received the paperwork just this morning, although he vowed he had no idea how Jonah had learned of her Medina roots.

The lawyer had gone on to reassure her he would look into it further. In fact, he planned to go straight to the source and speak with her father and brothers directly. If they didn’t have the information, they would need to be warned, as well.

She aligned the books and started back down the ladder. A hand clamped her calf. Gasping, she grabbed the railings to keep from pitching over backward. She looked down fast—

“Jonah,” she whispered, her world righting and narrowing to just him,”you scared the hell out of me.”

“Sorry about that. Wouldn’t want you to fall.” He kept his hand on her leg.

Eloisa continued down, his hand naturally sliding up for an inch, and another. Her heart triple-timed as she wondered how long he would keep up this game.

She descended another step.

His hand fell away. The heat of his palm remained.

Soft chitchat sounded from a couple of rows over, the air conditioner nearly as loud as the conversation. Otherwise, this section of the library was pretty much deserted this morning.

Eloisa gripped a shelf since the floor felt a little wobbly.”What are you doing here?”

“I came to take you out. Unless you have to do something with your sister’s wedding plans, in which case, I’m here to supply lunch.” He gripped the shelf just beside her, his body blocking the rest of the row from sight and creating a quiet—intimate—haven.

A lunch date? God, that sounded fun and wonderful and more than a little impulsively romantic. So unwise if she wanted to keep her balance while finding out what made Jonah Landis tick.”I already bought a sandwich on my way in.”

“Okay, then. Another time.” He looked past her, then over his shoulder, a broad shoulder mouthwateringly encased in his black polo shirt.”Mind if I have a tour of the place before I leave?”

Her mouth went dry at the thought of more time with him. She eyed the water fountain.”It’s a public library. As in open. To the public. Like you.”

He traced down the binding of a misplaced Dickens book.”I was hoping for my own personal tour guide. I’m partial to sexy brunette librarians who wear their long hair slicked back in a ponytail. And if she had exotic brown eyes with—”

“I get the picture, you flirt.” She held up her hand and stifled a laugh.”You want a tour?” She pulled A Tale of Two Cities from the shelf and tucked it under her arm.”Of a library?”

“I want a tour of your library. You saw my workplace in Spain.” He propped a foot on the bottom step of the ladder.”Now I want to see yours.”

Could he really be serious here? Could he perhaps, like her, need some additional insights in order to put the past behind him? The whole flirtation could just be his cover for a deeper confusion like she felt.

And she was probably overanalyzing. Didn’t men say things were a lot simpler for them?

Regardless, what harm could there be in showing him around the library? She couldn’t think of anywhere safer than here. Now where to start?

If she took him downstairs to the reception area, she would face questions later from the rest of the staff. Better to go farther into the stacks.

She mentally clicked through other areas to avoid. A book-group discussion. A local artist in residence hanging her work. Eloisa discussed the facility’s features by rote.

Jonah reached ahead to push open a doorway leading into a research area.”What made you decide on this career field?”

She looked around. Definitely secluded. She could talk without worrying about being overheard, but also she wouldn’t have the same temptations of being alone in her town house with Jonah.”My mother spent a lot of time staying under the radar. I learned low-key at an early age. Novels were my …”

“Escape?” He gestured around the high-ceilinged space that smelled of books and air freshener.

“Entertainment.” She shoved a chair under the computer desk.”Now they’re my livelihood.”

“What about after your mother married what’s-his-name?” Jonah followed, palming her back as she rounded a corner.

“My mother still liked to keep things uncomplicated.” How in the world had her mother ever fallen for a king? And a deposed king at that, with all sorts of drama surrounding his life? Enrique Medina seemed the antithesis of her stepfather, a man who might not be perfect, but at least had been a presence in her life. Loyalty spurred her to say,”His name is Harry Taylor.”

“Yeah, what’s-his-name.”

Eloisa couldn’t help grinning. Her stepfather wasn’t a bad guy, if a bit pretentious and pompous…. And she knew in her heart he loved his biological daughter more than he loved her. It hurt a little to think about that, but not anywhere near as much as it used to.”While I appreciate your championing my cause, I truly can stand up for myself.”

“Never doubted that for a second,” Jonah answered without hesitation.”What’s wrong with other folks—like me—throwing our weight in along with you?”

She simply shook her head.”I thought you wanted a tour.”

“We can tour and talk.”

Sometimes she wasn’t sure if she could walk and chew bubblegum around this man. She plastered on a smile.”Sure we can. And here’s my office.”

Eloisa swept the door open wide and gestured for him to follow her into the tiny space packed full of novels, papers and framed posters from literature festivals around the world. She placed the Dickens classic on a rolling cart to be shelved later.

The door clicked as it closed. She turned to find the space suddenly seeming way smaller with Jonah taking up his fair share of the room that wasn’t already occupied by her gunmetal-gray desk, shelves and an extra plastic chair for a guest.

Maybe her office just felt claustrophobic because there weren’t windows or even a peephole in the door. Not because they were alone.

Totally alone.

He hadn’t planned on getting her alone in the library.

Yet here they were. Just the two of them. In her tiny, isolated office.

Jonah pivoted away to find some distraction, something to talk about, and came nose to nose with a shelf of books. Art books and history books, all about Spain and Portugal. She wasn’t as detached from her roots as she tried to make out.

Jonah thumbed the gold lettering along the spine of a collection of Spanish poetry. He recalled she spoke the language fluently.”Have you ever met your biological father in person?”

“Once.” Her voice drifted over his shoulder, soft and a little husky.”I was about seven at the time.”

“That’s years after the last-known sighting of him.” Jonah kept his back to her for the moment. Perhaps that would make it easier for her to share. So he continued to inventory her books.

“I don’t know where we went. It felt like we took a long time, but all travel seems to take forever at that age.”

He recalled well the family trips with his three brothers and his parents, everything from Disney to an Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb. Their vacations would have been so different from that mother-daughter trip to see a man who barely acknowledged her existence. Sympathy kicked him in his gut.”Do you remember the mode of transportation?”

“Of course.”

“Not that you’re telling.” He couldn’t stop the grin at her spunk.

“I may not have a relationship with my father—” sounds rustled behind him, like the determined restoring of order as she moved things around on her desk”—but that doesn’t mean I’m any less concerned about his safety, or the safety of my brothers.”

”That’s right. Medina has three sons.” He clicked through what he knew about Medina from the research he’d been able to accomplish on his own—when he should have been working. But damn it all, this was important.”Did you meet them as well?”

“Two of them.”

“That must have seemed strange to say the least.”

“I have a half sister, remember? It’s not like I don’t understand being a part of a family unit.” Her voice rose with every word, more than a little hurt leaking through.”I’m not some kind of freak.”

He turned to face her again. Her desk was so damn neat and clean a surgeon could have performed an open-heart procedure right there. Germs wouldn’t dare approach.

Jonah, however, had never been one to back down from a dare.”Your mother would have already been remarried by the time you were seven.”

“And Audrey was a toddler.” She clasped her hands in front of her defensively.

Her words sunk in and … holy hell.”Your mom went to see her old lover after she was married to another guy? Your stepfather must have been pissed.”

“He never knew about the trip or any of the Medinas.” She stood straight and tall, every bit of her royal heritage out there for him to see. She ruled. It didn’t matter if she was sitting in a palace or standing in a dark, cramped, little office. She mesmerized him.

And she called to his every protective instinct at the same time. What kind of life must she have led to build defenses this thick?

“Your stepfather didn’t know about any of it?” Jonah approached her carefully, wary of spooking her when she was finally opening up, but unable to stay away from her when he sensed that she could have used someone to confide in all these years.”How did she explain about your father?”

She shrugged one shoulder.”She told him the same thing she told everyone else. That my father was a fellow student, with no family, and he died in a car accident before I was born. It’s not like Harry talked about my dad to anyone else. The subject just never came up for us.”

Jonah skimmed his fingers over the furrows along her forehead.”Let’s not discuss your stepfather. Tell me about that visit when you were seven.”

Her forehead smoothed and her face relaxed into a brief flicker of a smile.”It was amazing, or rather it seemed that way to me through my childish, idealistic eyes. We all walked along the beach and collected shells. He—” she paused, clearing her throat”—uhm, my father, told me this story about a little squirrel that could travel wherever she wanted by scampering along the telephone lines. He even carried me on his shoulders when my legs got tired from walking and sang songs in Spanish.”

“Those are good memories.”

She deserved to have had many more of them, but he kept that opinion to himself. Better to wait and just let her talk, rather than risk her clamming up out of defensiveness.

“I know it’s silly, but I still have one of the shells.” She nudged a stack of already perfectly straight note slips.”I used to listen to it and imagine I could hear his voice mixed in with the sound of the ocean.”

“Where is the shell now?”

”I, uh, tucked it away in one of my bookcases at home.”

A home she’d decorated completely in a seashore theme. It couldn’t be coincidence. He gripped her shoulders lightly.”Why don’t you go see him again? You have the right to do so.”

“I don’t know where he is.”

“But surely you have a way to get in touch with him.” The soft give of her arms under his hands enticed him to pull her closer. He should take his hands off her, but he didn’t. Still he wouldn’t back off from delving deeper into this issue.”What about the lawyer?”

She avoided his eyes.”Let’s discuss something else.”

“So the lawyer is your point of contact even if the old guy never bothers to get in touch with you.”

“Stop it, okay?”

She looked back at him again hard and fast. Her eyes were dark and defensive and held so much hurt he realized he would do anything, anything to make that pain go away.”Eloisa—”

“My biological father has asked to see me.” She talked right over him, protesting a bit too emphatically.”More than once. I’m the one who stays away. It’s just too complicated. He wrecked my mother’s life and broke her heart.” Her hands slid up to grip his shirt.”That’s not something I can just forget about long enough to sit down for some fancy dinner with him once every five years when his conscience kicks in.”

He churned over her words, searching for what she meant underneath it all.”I miss my father.”

His dad had died in a car wreck when Jonah was only entering his teenage years.

”I told you I don’t want to see him.”

Jonah cupped her face, his thumb stroking along her aristocratic cheekbone.”I’m talking about how you miss your mother. It’s tough losing a parent no matter how old you are.”

Empathy softened her eyes for the first time since they’d stepped into her office.”When did your father pass away?”

“When I was in my early teens. A car crash. I used to be so jealous of my brothers because they had more time with him. Talk about ridiculous sibling rivalry.” He’d always been different from them, more of a rebel. Little did they know how much it hurt when people said he would have been more focused if only his father had lived. But he refused to let what others said come between him and his family.

Family was everything.

“We almost lost our mother a few years ago when she was on a goodwill tour across Europe.” The near miss had scared the hell out of him. After that, he’d knuckled down and gotten his life in order. His skin went cold from just thinking of what had almost happened to his mother.”An assassin tried to make a statement by shooting up one of her events.”

“Ohmigod, I remember that.” Her fists unfurled in his shirt and her hands smoothed out the wrinkles in soothing circles.”It must have been horrible for you. I seem to recall that some of her family was there…. You saw it all happen?”

“I’m not asking for sympathy.” He clasped her wrists and stilled her hands. She might mean her touch to be comforting, but it was rapidly becoming a serious turn-on.”I’m only trying to say I understand how you feel. But, Eloisa, once you’re in the spotlight, there’s no way to step back out.”

“I completely get your point,” she said emphatically.”That’s why I’ve kept a low profile.”

He brought her hands together, their hands clasped as he tried to make her understand.”You were born into this. There’s no low profile. Only delaying the inevitable. Better to embrace it on your own terms.”

“That’s not your call to make,” she snapped, pulling her hands away.

God, it was like banging his head against bricks getting this stubborn woman to consider anything other than a paradigm constructed a helluva long time ago.”Are you so sure about your father’s reasons for choosing to close himself away?”

Her spine starched straight again, ire sparking flecks of black in her eyes.”What are you hoping to accomplish here?”

He’d been hoping to learn more about her in an effort to seduce her and had ended up pissing her off. But he couldn’t back down.”You don’t have to play this their way anymore, Eloisa. Decide what you want rather than letting them haul you along.”

Her hands fisted.”Why does this need to get so complicated, and what the hell does it have to do with you?”

Anger stirred in his gut.”I’m the guy who’s still married to you because it’s so complicated. Damn it, Eloisa, Can you understand my need to do something, fix this somehow?”

“Maybe there’s nothing to fix. And even if there is, do you know what I really want?”

”Okay. Mea culpa.” He thumped his chest.”You’ve got me there. I haven’t got a clue what you want from me.”

“Well, prepare to find out.” She clasped his face in her hands, only giving him a second’s warning.

Eloisa planted her mouth on his.

He blinked in shock—for all of three seconds before he hauled her against him and kissed her right back.

As her arms slid around his neck, he decided the time had come to take this as far as she would go.

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