Marcus stared into Kyra’s warm eyes, listening with his whole heart. He sympathized with Kyra but also felt a little sorry for Maggie. She seemed to be the ne’er-do-well of the family, and he knew what it was like to be saddled with that label. He placed a hand over Kyra’s and squeezed, and Kyra looked up at him, her gaze serious.
“I’ve worked really hard at advancing my career, Marcus,” Kyra said. “I never made time for a social life or relationships. Having kids of my own wasn’t in my plans at all, and I don’t know how a baby will factor into my life at this point.”
“I’d like to be there to figure it out with you,” he told her honestly.
She smiled but didn’t respond. He could tell she was unsure about letting herself rely on anyone, and, after hearing her story, he couldn’t blame her. This woman had the weight of her family on her shoulders. She was the sole caretaker. Marcus wanted her to know that he understood.
“Family is hard to navigate,” he said, echoing her sentiments and adding his own. “I didn’t grow up with financial struggles, but life wasn’t always “palace perfect” in our family either.”
Warmth flooded him when Kyra managed a smile at his silly pun.
“So what kind of struggles did you have then?”
Marcus hesitated. He knew that opening up to Kyra would bring them closer, but still it wasn’t something he loved to talk about.
“I was always sort of the black sheep in my family, I guess,” he admitted. “I was a troublemaker as a young boy. Not fights—nothing violent—but I guess you could say I was the class clown, more interested in acting out and making people laugh than in focusing on classes. No one took me seriously anyway, and I kind of ran with it.” He shrugged. “The reputation followed me and stuck.”
Kyra looked perplexed. “But you were a little boy,” she said, defending him.
“A mischief-making little boy,” Marcus said, half-joking to hide the hurt he felt over the whole thing. “A problem child. And that’s the way everyone has had me pegged since I was ten years old.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
Marcus tried to act like it didn’t bother him but found himself recalling a time from his childhood when he realized how problematic his reputation really was. He was ten and had a crush on the daughter of a prestigious family who was staying at the castle. He’d made friends with the young girl, Lena, taking her for walks on the castle grounds and later playing an innocent game of truth or dare. On the third afternoon of their stay, her parents came to fetch her from the game room where they were listening to music together. Lena had protested, saying she wanted to stay for a little while longer, but her mother whisked her away. Marcus had surreptitiously followed them down a corridor on their way out, if just to be near Lena for another few minutes. He would never forget the words he heard her mother say to her.
“If you’re going to be paired with one of the Ashton clan, it most certainly won’t be that one. That boy may be rich, but he’ll never be respected.” The mother paused to tuck a stray hair behind Lena’s ear, and Marcus hid inside a shadow, hoping she wouldn’t see him standing there in his shame. “He’ll be nothing but a playboy, you mark my words.”
The incident was still painful to think about and even more painful to recount now to Kyra. She put her hand over his and peered sympathetically in his eyes.
“Marcus, I’m so sorry that happened to you. It must have hurt very much when you were so young,” she said. “But look at you now. That snobby old woman was way off.”
Marcus snorted. “Kyra, I am a playboy. That’s how everyone sees me, including my family. My oldest brother, Edward, has always been the heir, my middle brother, Alton, was the spare, and I’m the one nobody expected to ever settle down. Nobody’s first choice, always the consolation prize. No one ever wanted to get serious with someone like me, so I used my already sordid reputation as an excuse to stroke my ego with lots of playing the field. Different girl every night—that was me.”
Kyra’s eyebrows rose, and Marcus was quick to reassure her, “I’ve always wanted it, and truthfully, I don’t regret how things worked out, because it all led me to you.”
“How?”
He decided to get totally honest with Kyra. “You don’t know this, but my father placed me on the advisory board for the crisis center as a punishment for “bad behavior.” He placed air quotes around the word for effect. “Some tabloid reporter caught wind of a relationship I was in and smeared me,” he said and rolled his eyes. He finished off his cider and placed the glass on the table with a clink. “Turns out the girl was already engaged to be married—to another prince, no less—even though she never bothered to tell me.”
“Yikes.”
“I hadn’t realized she was betraying anyone, but I’d known all along that she was just using me. It didn’t occur to me to mind.” He moved his eyes from the dark forest in the distance to look straight into Kyra’s. “Now I know what it feels like to really care about someone.”
Kyra smiled, and he thought he noticed the faintest flush creep onto her cheeks in the moonlight.
“When people expect nothing of you, why bother trying? That’s what I thought before,” he said. “But since I met you, Kyra, I have a damn good reason to try.”
Suddenly a zig zag spear of lightning lit up the sky. Marcus grinned, imagining it was Mother Nature’s way of emphasizing his admission of his feelings, but when he looked back at Kyra, her face had paled, and she was obviously on edge.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m okay,” she said, but he could hear the tremble in her voice. “I don’t like storms is all.”
“Well, this one’s still pretty far off,” he said. “Nothing much to worry about yet.”
Kyra nodded and swallowed. He could tell she was still nervous. “When I was young, my family narrowly survived a tornado. We were visiting my granny on her farm, and we had to hustle into her storm cellar.”
Marcus noted that Kyra’s eyes hadn’t left that sky. Thunder clapped, and she jumped.
“Granny’s house was destroyed,” Kyra said. “We would have been killed had we not made it to the cellar in time. Ever since that day, I’ve been terrified of storms.”
“Well, I can tell you that in my twenty-six years in Sovalon, we’ve never had a tornado, so you don’t have anything to worry about.” Marcus felt the urge to comfort her. “Here, come sit next to me, and we can watch the lightning together.”
Kyra stood from her chair across from Marcus and started toward the one beside him. Before she could sit down, he reached out and pulled her onto his lap. He wrapped his arms round her and felt her relax into his body.
“Better?” he asked.
“Mmm hmm.”
Marcus relished Kyra’s nearness as she leaned back into him, closing the gaps between their bodies. He tucked his face into her hair and inhaled the sweet jasmine scent of her. How was it possible that a woman could smell this good? Feel this good? But the truth was that being with Kyra felt more than just good. It felt right.
As the wind picked up and began to whip around them, Marcus felt Kyra’s shoulders tense.