She lowered her head, touched beyond measure, and saw a teardrop land on the hardwood. She swiped at her numb cheek, finding it wet. “Thank you for the flowers.”
“The flowers were an apology. You made me feel like a coward, refusing to embrace love when it’s as precious as life. I wanted to come to you and to hell with your Customs and Immigration, but I had to finish my obligation to Luiza first. I’ve done that. Official announcements will be made later in the week. I have the votes I need.”
“Oh, Ryzard, that’s wonderful!” She was elated for him, but still reeling from his mention of embracing love. Did that mean...? She searched his inscrutable expression.
“After the last few days, this country needs good news.” He sighed and rocked back on his heels, regarding her. “It also means the worst is over for a time when it comes to state functions. I won’t run in the next election. Could you live with two more years of being in the public eye, knowing it would be temporary?”
“What?” Her nails cut into her palms as she tried to stay grounded, not leaping too high on what he was saying. Not reading too deep. Definitely not wanting to hold him back in any way. “Ryzard, you are Bregnovia. It’s barely on its feet. You can’t hand it over to someone else so soon. I couldn’t live with myself if all this stability you’ve fought for crumbled.”
“I don’t want to wait that long to marry you, draga. I ache every night and barely get through my days. I need you.”
“You do?” Her voice hitched and stayed awfully small, but the world around her seemed to expand in one pulse beat, stealing the oxygen and filling the air with sparks. “You really want to marry me? Me?”
“You. Not the daughter of the next American president, not Davis and Holbrook, not the woman who charms heads of state without even trying. You.”
“Because you love me?” she hazarded, curling her toes and pulling her elbows in, bracing for the worst.
“Because we love each other.”
His tender gaze held hers, gently demanding she give up her heart to him. She did, easily.
“If I hadn’t been trained from birth to pretend everything was fine no matter how miserable I was, I couldn’t have got through these last weeks. I love you so much, Ryzard, and I hated myself for not letting my love be enough to keep us together.”
“I shouldn’t have made you feel like it was all up to you,” he said, coming across to draw her into him. With his lips pressed to her forehead, he added, “I will never hold back from you again. I thought I was being noble, letting you find the man who would love you like no other could, but that man is me. I love you with every breath in me, Tiffany. A different man loved Luiza. This one is yours.”
She relaxed her forehead against his nuzzling lips, touched to her soul. Fulfilled. Hopeful. Happy.
He traced a soft kiss along the raised line of her scar, following it down to the corner of her eye and across her cheek until he was almost at her mouth.
“We should take this upstairs,” she said against his lips. “I have a feeling it won’t stay PG rated for long.”
He quirked a rueful grin and led her upstairs. In his bedroom, he took a moment to lift the snapshot from his bedside table and walk it into his sitting room.
When he returned he found her seated on the bed, hands tucked in her lap.
“We have to talk about one more thing before we go any further,” she said.
“What’s that?” he queried.
“Children.”
“At least two. I want them to have each other if something happens to us,” he affirmed.
“I was going to say six, but okay. Coward.”
“Ambitious,” he remarked in a drawl. “I can keep up if you can.” His smile was a slow dawn of masculine heat that twitched with amusement. “I’ve missed you, Tiffany. You make me laugh.”
She threw herself into his arms.
EPILOGUE
THE MILKY WAY stretched from one edge of the horizon to the other, diffusing into more stars against Zanzibar’s indigo sky than Tiffany had ever seen in her life. If Ryzard hadn’t kept her pressed firmly against his side as he steered them down the jetty toward the island bar, she likely would have stumbled into the lagoon.
“What the hell are you up to?”
“I know, I’m sorry, but I’ve never seen anything like—wait, what?” She realized Ryzard had been talking to a man in a mask who’d just passed them on the jetty. She glanced back the way they’d come to see the member break off his lip-lock with a petite q and hurry her toward the interior of the club.
“Who was that?”
“A friend. One who knows better than to play with Zeus’s toys.” He dragged his puzzled gaze to her expectant one. With a low sigh, he bent to whisper, “His name is Nic.” Straightening, he added, “Don’t ask me to say more than that. Even though you’re my wife, I still have an obligation to respect other members’ privacy.”
She grinned, pleased more by her title of “wife” than anything else.
The DJ’s electronica pulsed louder as they finished their walk into the open-air bar. Q Virtus members and petite q’s danced and jumped to the beat, making the wooden floor bounce.
Tiffany refused a drink offered by a passing petite q, but Ryzard drew her to a side bar. “Iced coconut. Nonalcoholic,” he said.
Her condition wasn’t official, especially since they’d been married only a day, but they’d stopped using protection weeks ago. She was pretty sure, and they were both so quietly, ferociously happy it was criminal.
The server tilted his array of cones for her to peruse. They were stunning, not merely shaved and frozen coconut with a splash of color, but intricately decorated works of art in more shades, flavors and hues than the stars above them.
Tiffany almost picked the one that looked like a bouquet of sweet peas, but maybe the mandala was prettier. The paisley?
“It just hit me,” Ryzard said in a tone of discovery. “It was never about the taffy apple being better optics. You couldn’t decide what color candy floss you wanted.”
Grinning, she admitted, “You caught me.”
“I’m convinced it’s the other way around, draga,” he retorted.
She laughed in delight, but contradicted, “I distinctly remember a kidnapping on the high seas.”
“I remember fireworks,” he said with a smoky look from behind his mask. “Choose something or we’ll miss these ones.”
Face warm with pleasure behind her own mask, she took two cones and gave him one, leaning her weight into him as he hooked his arm across her shoulders and steered her toward the rail overlooking the Indian Ocean.
“I see them every night, you know. Fireworks. ’Cause I’m spoiled.”
“You are,” he agreed, leaning down to bite at her cone before he offered his. “So am I.”
“Mmm. We’re in the right place for the privileged, aren’t we?” she mused, licking clove-and-orange-flavored coconut from her lips.
He stopped and turned her so they held each other in a way that felt perfect and familiar and right. “As long as I’m with you, I’m exactly where I belong.”