A Love that Endures 3 Read online

Oliver gave her a disbelieving look. “You’re barely eating at all anymore. Katerina, look, if this is about . . .”

  “Please. You asked me to wait to discuss this till after the party. And I’m doing my best to uphold that agreement. So don’t worry about me, okay?”

  Oliver forced a smile and placed a hand on Katy’s thigh under the table. It wasn’t a seductive maneuver, nor a controlling one; if anything, Oliver was just trying to be comforting. But her utter distaste for the sensation only reinforced her feelings about the wedding.

  Even if this marriage was what Oliver wanted. And his parents. And Katy’s parents. And Cassie. Pretty much all of the people Katy had and loved and respected. All those expectations and hopes, dashed . . . Katy swallowed, her mouth feeling dry.

  Well, no one ever said that this breakup was going to be easy.

  Down the table a few seats, the king and queen of Lorria were speaking animatedly to an American tycoon. Even farther down, Cassie was enjoying a third or fourth drink while her fiancé scrolled through his phone. Katy was feeling mightily alone, even though this party was being thrown in large part for her.

  She was also feeling quite claustrophobic at the moment, and the dissonance of the two feelings was jarring, only adding to the confusion of her mind.

  “I’m going to mingle a bit,” she told Oliver, trying on a gentle smile. “Personally greet some of the guests who came all this way for us.” She removed her cloth napkin from her lap and placed it on the table between a lovely floral centerpiece and her untouched plate.

  “That’s a good idea. I’ll come with you,” Oliver replied. He made to stand, but Katy quickly spoke again.

  “Actually, if it’s all right with you, I’d like to have a little time to myself. We can make the rounds together afterward, though, if you’d like.”

  She didn’t want to be rude, but she desperately needed a break from the façade. Even if just to stretch her legs and say hi to a few acquaintances.

  Oliver looked down briefly before answering. “Okay, love. We’ll do it together later.”

  He grabbed her hand before she could walk away, delivering a small but pointed squeeze. Katy turned back to look at him for just a moment; his green eyes were almost pleading. But she had nothing to say. He released her, and she went on her way.

  The sweeping ballroom was full of many of the world’s richest and most powerful people. Katy wasn’t intimidated. She’d been raised around this level of prosperity and influence all her life. But, as she walked among all the glittering dresses and high-end suits, nodding genteelly to people, she was reflective.

  How many of those people were truly happy? How many had been forced to choose their country or their family or their political careers over their own happiness? How many were stuck in loveless marriages or hopeless situations, all in an effort to save face?

  “Congratulations, Princess!” a duchess called out to her as she passed. Katy waved smilingly but kept walking. Soon, she would be forced to fake her way through the happy congratulations and well-wishes. But for now, she just wanted to be alone.

  She walked to the side of the ballroom and passed a long white table of small bites. Katy picked up a chocolate-covered strawberry and continued on her jaunt—a small pleasure on a difficult day.

  Now that dinner was almost over, there were lines at a few small bars around the room. Katy noticed one in the far corner of the room and considered heading over to help calm her nerves. But before she could escape to the back, she was set upon by a familiar face.

  “Lovely party, Princess,” the Spanish woman said in a low voice.

  Katy smiled genuinely. “Mia. It’s so good to see you. It’s been too long.”

  Katy hadn’t seen Mia in years, not since the terrible scandal had interrupted the work the Spanish private eye had been doing for her. In the immediate aftermath of the drug charges, with David’s paternal family being linked to the Brazilian drug trade, Cassie had grumbled about whether or not Mia and David had been in on the whole thing together, but Katy had never believed it. Mia had been working for Katy as they tried to reunite David and his family with his missing mother, Jeanine. If anything improper had happened with David’s private information, Katy knew it wasn’t Mia’s fault.

  She had tried so hard not to think about whose fault it really had been. Had that been a mistake?

  “It has been too long,” Mia replied. She was wearing a sparkling black gown that trailed behind her on the ground, a dangerously high slit up its side exposing one of her shapely legs and a stiletto heel.

  “How is business?” Katy asked.

  Mia shrugged. “It has been a bit slow.” For a brief moment she looked contemplative, almost sad, as though weighed down by many concerns, but then a glimmer of hope entered her eyes. “Actually, I was hoping I could have your help on a case I’m currently working on.”

  Katy’s eyebrows raised in surprise. Of course she’d be willing to help a friend in any way she could, but how? “Sure, Mia. Anything. What do you need from me?”

  Mia looked to both sides and then leaned in toward Katy. “Perhaps we could discuss in private, Princess. In order to maintain confidentiality.”

  “Um, okay,” Katy replied, with just a touch of hesitance. She had never been put in such a strange situation before, but she knew Mia well and respected her. Obviously if they needed to be alone to speak then there was a reason for that. And hadn’t she just been looking for a way to excuse herself from the party?

  Mia turned to indicate behind her with a soft jerk of her chin. “Out in the hallway outside of the ballroom, there is a long corridor near the east wing of the palace, leading to the servants’ quarters. It will be empty right now. Could you meet me there?”

  “Now?”

  “That would be lovely,” Mia replied. “It won’t take long. Just let me head in that direction first. Follow me after a minute or so.” Then, without waiting for another response, she turned in her dark gown and briskly walked away and out of the ballroom, somehow managing to look completely casual yet entirely poised.

  Katy was still not quite sure what to think. It was a weird situation, certainly. But it was nice to feel useful—and this would be a great excuse to get her mind off of the party that was being thrown for her and Oliver. So, after dutifully counting to sixty in her head, she looked around to make sure no one was paying her too much mind and then followed Mia out of the party.

  She cast a final glance back before exiting the ballroom. Oliver was speaking to his parents. The king and queen were occupied with each other. And Boris and Cassie were now both on their phones. So no one would even notice she was gone.

  At least for a few minutes.

  The elegantly decorated hallway outside was mostly empty and mercifully free of the buzz of conversation. A young duke was chatting with a pretty young catering assistant, his back turned to Katy, and a few palace employees were cleaning up the now-defunct happy-hour tables. But other than that, the hallway was empty. Katy turned and headed toward the east wing. No one would question her.

  Soon enough, she spotted the corridor and turned into it. It was deeper into the palace, less showy, and more dimly lit than the main hallway, since it had no windows. And it actually was empty. No Mia, no servants, no one. Katy took a few uncertain steps down the corridor before stopping. Perhaps she’d misheard Mia? Her heartrate was already far too high for the situation.

  “Katy?”

  Katy’s blood turned to ice in her veins. Not because she was frightened to be interrupted in the dark corridor, away from her family and friends. Not because she didn’t know anyone, besides Cassie, who would call her “Katy.” Not because she was feeling alone and confused.

  No, it was because she recognized that low, gentle male voice. A voice she had never expected to hear again. A voice that sent a shock like lightning through her entire system.

  She turned around to see a tall, tanned man standing near the end of the corridor. He wore the distinct w
hite tux of the caterers, snugly fitted over a broad chest; his short dark hair was styled into a fashionably subtle undercut, and his face was slightly obscured by a close-cut beard and thick eyeglasses. Katy peered in the dim light, her heart leaping in her chest.

  She could’ve sworn she’d recognized that voice. But the man standing before her seemed a warped reflection of a long-ago familiar face. Could he truly be the same person? Perhaps her obsession over the past few days had begun to affect her mind.

  From his place down the hall, the man took a step toward Katy. She felt her pulse quicken. She wasn’t far away from the other partygoers, or palace staff. But at this moment, she felt alone in the palace, in the room, and her heartrate accelerated with the first tingles of nerves.

  The man took another step, entering a pool of yellow light from one of the corridor’s mounted lanterns. Katy gasped.

  She knew the shape of those eyes, even if the irises were oddly brown instead of blue—and contacts could account for that. She knew that aristocratic nose, the strong jaw, the wave of dark, Semitic curls that sat on this man’s head. She knew his build and his full, soft lips.

  “Katy,” he said again. And Katy knew that it was him.

  “David,” she breathed out. Her heart was probably beating wildly, but the moment that she said that word, it felt like it stopped. It felt like everything had stopped. Time, sensation, reason . . . all Katy could feel was mute shock.

  “Katy,” David started again, and even in her shock, she could sense that he was struggling with words as well. “I hope I didn’t frighten you. I know the timing is . . . bad. But I need to talk to you. Desperately.”

  As time slowly began to move again, Katy began to feel a tinge of worry. If this was truly her David, the David of her past—then what if he was also the dangerous, conniving cheater that her family, the tabloids, the whole world said he was? Would he lie again? Would he manipulate her?

  “What are you talking about?” Katy mustered. She’d had to dig deep to find the courage to say it. Everything was strange and surreal at the moment. And she was having a hard time thinking of any words at all.

  “Katy, I don’t have much time, so this is probably going to sound like a lot . . .” He made to run his hand through his hair, an achingly familiar gesture, then seemed to think better of it and put his hands at his sides, looking her in the eyes. “You’ve been lied to. Mia and I have both been caught in the path of destruction of those lies. And I know you have no reason to believe me, but I need you to know the truth. I need you to know that I’m innocent.”

  Katy’s heart wrenched in her chest. She had been afraid, so afraid that he’d say those words. She’d almost expected them. Because while she desperately wanted to believe, she also knew that he could be lying.

  And how could she know the truth, when all she had was her heart to guide her—and it had gone so wrong before?

  “How?” she retorted, feeling a small indignation rising at the painful memories of what she had endured as the waves of scandal around David broke, catching her up in the crossfire. “The drugs, David. The trial. Your ex!”

  Could it really all be false?

  “You know who I am, Katy. I’m not a liar. I’m not a cheater. I’m not a criminal. You have to know that.”

  David took another step forward, and Katy fought the urge to step backward away from him. Her mind was a tangled frenzy. She wanted to run from him; she wanted to rush forward and embrace him. She’d never felt so conflicted in her life.

  David took another step. They were only a foot or so away from each other now. Katy looked up at his handsome face, his pained eyes. Something long dormant deep inside of her began to stir.

  How do you know he’s not lying? That you’re not setting yourself up for more pain, betrayal, and scandal?

  “David,” she started in a faraway-sounding voice. “You have to tell me more than that. You have to give me your proof. Tell me what actually happened.”

  David nodded, but his nod was twitchy. “Believe me, I want to. It’s just a lot, and I hate to do this to you here, of all places. And of all times . . .” He trailed off, the pain around his eyes sharpening, and raised his hands as though to take her shoulder, then thought better of it. “Can you meet with me after the party is over? I’m at the Wych Elm. Room 402.”

  “Come to your . . . room?” Katy swallowed hard. She wasn’t sure how to respond to any of this. She had a feeling that she was supposed to be afraid of David, but—as she looked at him, stumbling over his words, his hands once again at his sides as though afraid to reach out or startle her—she realized that she wasn’t. There was a whole host of things she was afraid of, all swarming for attention, but the thought that the man standing before her might do her violence was unthinkable.

  David seemed to be stumbling over what she’d just said as well. “Er, I didn’t quite mean . . .”

  She found her own voice again as he trailed off, and it came out stronger this time. “David, just say what you need to say here. Please.”

  David’s forehead creased with worry. “Okay, Katy. Just please hear me out. Your parents . . .”

  “Katy?”

  David stopped short as a woman’s voice filled the corridor behind him. Katy looked past him, wide-eyed, to see Cassie standing there.

  Katy watched as her cousin’s eyes jumped from Katy to the stranger and then grew wide in fear and surprise. Cassie’s mouth opened, the cascade of emotions jumping across her face boiled up to the point of spilling over, and Katy knew in a horrible jolt exactly what was about to happen.

  “SECURITY!”

  21

  David

  “That’s David Rosen!”

  The sound of his own name had never shocked David so much.

  But as the brawny man who shouted it raced toward him from an adjoining hallway, with four more men his size following close behind, David knew that what the shout really represented was the crashing sound of his master plan falling apart around him, just when he had been painfully close to—well, to having any effect at all. The once-quiet corridor filled with a cacophony of voices, security guard grunts, Cassie shouting orders, and Katy—was she protesting?

  But David didn’t have time to focus on her voice because he was tackled to the ground. It hit him so fast that he barely felt the rocking force that knocked him off his feet. And, for the briefest of moments that he was in the air, all he could do was stare at Katy, searching for emotion in those wide gray eyes, hoping that somehow what he’d managed to say had been enough to at least make her doubt the false narrative she’d been told.

  But when David hit the ground with the security guard on top of him, his brain went dark. His lungs struggled to take in a full breath. There was an unbearable weight on his chest, and hands were simultaneously pushing him down and trying to drag him up and to his feet.

  “No! Be careful! Please! Get off of him!” Katy’s voice cried out from somewhere, and amongst all the confusion, a tiny piece of him was warmed. Just hearing those words was almost enough to relieve him of the sensation that everything was going out of control. Almost.

  “Please! I’m ordering you—” Katy called out again. But then her voice was drowned out by a gaggle of other voices. David was dragged upward; he struggled to pull away, but there were now five or six men surrounding him, grabbing and pushing. He could barely breathe, much less fight. But as he opened one bruised eye from where he’d hit the floor and looked through the cracked glass of clear spectacles—thank goodness they weren’t actually prescription—he could see that the noise wasn’t just coming from them.

  With his blurry, streaming vision, he caught flashes of fancy hairdos, trailing dresses, and sharply cut jackets, a gathering crowd looking out at the scene. There must have been dozens of people in the hallway now, all staring in abject horror at the scene unfolding in front of them.

  And he already knew what they were thinking. David Rosen, the cheating, lying bastard who had broken the pri
ncess’s heart, was back.

  “Call the police!” Cassie shouted.

  “Cassie, no!” Katy’s voice was firm, but the rabble of voices and her cousin’s continued shrieks nearly drowned her out. “Wait! Don’t take him anywhere! I ordered you to wait!”

  David could barely hear her over the commotion and the wild mess of sensations throbbing through his body at once. It sounded like the security guards didn’t hear her at all—or perhaps they, too, were under Cassie’s influence.

  “Get him out of here!” a new voice bellowed. David recognized it immediately. The king of Lorria had arrived. “Get that scum out of this palace!”

  “Papa, no!” David thought he heard Katy shout. But then the noise was too overwhelming to make out any individual voices at all anymore.

  He couldn’t see well. He could barely think. His chest and his head ached sharply, and his teeth felt like they had been jolted in his mouth. He wanted to call out to Katy, to tell her that the very people she was speaking to now were the people who had deceived her, but his head was too foggy from hitting the ground hard. There was an uncomfortable metallic taste in his mouth.

  “Katy,” he managed to croak, in a voice barely above a whisper. But he doubted she’d heard it. He was being dragged through the crowd now, quickly and angrily, and he knew exactly where he was headed.

  Surrounded by guards, David burst through the main entrance of the palace and found himself being rushed along in the cool nighttime air outside. They made it to the palace’s front gate quickly. And then, with a sudden rush, David was thrust forward and out into the street. Once again, he hit the ground hard. Angry voices shouted after him.

  “Stay out!”

  “Don’t come back!”

  “Show your face again and we’ll send you back out in an ambulance!”

  David rolled over to his side on the street and coughed. He hadn’t ever been manhandled like this—even in prison, he’d managed to avoid anything more than minor harassment. As the feeling came back into his face and extremities, he began to assess the damage. A busted lip. Broken glasses. Possibly a twisted ankle. Bruised ribs, for sure. His expensive catering tux was filthy. And his eye was already painfully swollen from the force of hitting the ground.