“Yes. Before, when we were living together.”
“Before he dumped you,” Nataliya said from near Emma’s shoulder. “To marry me.” The Princess of Mirrus rolled her eyes. “Like that was ever going to work.”
A laugh was startled out of Emma. “Some people obviously thought it would.”
“Some people were wrong.” Nataliya didn’t sound the least apologetic about making that pronouncement. “I owe Konstantin an apology though.”
“Why?” Emma and the King asked at the same time.
Nataliya looked up at her husband, the love she held for him so clear to see and that it was reciprocated could not be doubted. The King looked besotted. “I judged your brother as a playboy when all the time he was nursing a broken heart from giving up his One True Thing.”
“I’m not that,” Emma denied immediately. “Kon doesn’t love me.”
“If you say so.” But Nataliya sounded like she did not agree.
“He told me so.” But did it matter?
That was the question Emma really had to answer. Did it matter if Kon loved her, or if he did love her, if he was ever able to recognize that?
She loved him. She always had. Always would. And that was why she had not dated. It had not just been fear of rejection. Or being too busy raising and providing for their son.
But because Emma had found her One True Thing and had always known that anything less in a relationship would not be enough.
“Nik told me that he didn’t love me either. Before we married.” Nataliya gave the King a look of indulgence that made him grimace.
“You, of course, were fully aware of your own feelings.”
Color washed into Nataliya’s cheeks. “That is not the point.”
Emma smiled at the royal couple, so much less intimidated than she’d expected to be by them. “No, the point is that when you love someone, you take risks with your heart even when you’re scared.”
Nataliya’s eyes widened. “Um, yes? Sure, that was the point I was trying to make.”
Emma smiled at the other woman, suddenly sure that she and this person who had always stood in her own mind between Emma and her happiness would be a great friend.
“If it helps you at all, I am certain my brother will never let you down again,” Nikolai said, like a sibling who cared and with just a smidgen of the arrogance of a king.
Emma nodded. “You know? I think you may be right.”
That night Emma and Kon tucked Mickey into bed together as they’d done every night since that fateful morning in the bank.
“You’re staying on the couch, right, Mom?” Mickey asked drowsily.
“I’m staying here, in the apartment with you and your dad. We’ll all have breakfast together when you wake up.”
“Mmm, ’kay...” Mickey snuggled down into his blankets and fell asleep just like that.
“He is exhausted.”
“It was an eventful and emotional-filled day. He got an adoring grandfather, surrogate grandmother, two uncles and an aunt all in one fell swoop.” Emma turned off the bedside lamp, noting that Kon had already turned on Mickey’s night-light.
They stood at the same time and headed out of the dim room.
“My father is like a child himself in his excitement over getting to know Mikhail.” Kon sounded both pleased by that and indulgent toward his father.
“He calls him Mishka too.” They all did.
Kon made an mmm sound. “It is a sign of affection to use the diminutive.”