Amelia Fortune Chesterfield was to marry James Banning in the most popular royal romance since the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Lord James Banning. A viscount, whatever the hell that was. A man who was her equal in wealth and family connections. A man who was slated for an even higher title, evidently, once Amelia was his wife. Earl something of something or other.
His sister had talked about it so many times, the facts ought to be tattooed on his brain.
His fingers strangled the steering wheel. “Wedding plans becoming so taxing that you had to run away from them?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.” He turned through the overhead arch bearing the iron Rocking-U sign and pressed harder on the gas. The highway was still a fair piece away, but once he hit that, it’d be smooth sailing. He’d leave her in capable medical hands and wash his hands of her, once and for all.
Somewhere inside his head, laughter mocked the notion. He’d been doing that so-called washing for the past two months and hadn’t gotten anywhere. There had to be something wrong with him that he couldn’t just file her away as a one-night stand where she belonged and be done with it.
“Please don’t take me to Lubbock,” she said huskily. “I don’t need a doctor. I just need some sleep. And some food.” She reached across as if she were going to touch his arm again, but curled her fingers into a fist instead, resting it on the console between their seats. “Drop me on the side of the road if you must. I’m begging you. Please, Quinn.”
He ground his molars together. Would he have had more resistance if she hadn’t said his name? “I’m not gonna drop you on the side of the damn road.”
He should take her to Jeanne’s. Recently discovered family or not, the woman was Amelia’s aunt. Jeanne would take her in. Even if it was the middle of the night.
He muttered an oath and pulled a U-turn there on the empty highway.
Maybe Amelia wouldn’t mind Jeanne’s questions, asked or unasked, but Quinn would. Particularly when he had unanswered questions of his own.
He didn’t look at her. “I’ll take you back to the Rocking-U. And then you can start talking.”
* * *
His voice was so hard.
His face so expressionless.
Amelia wrapped her arms around herself and tried to quell her trembling. She was so, so tired.
She’d foolishly thought that once she got back to Horseback Hollow, once she saw Quinn in person, everything would be all right.
She could explain. And he would understand.
He would take her in his arms, and everything would be perfect and as wonderful as it had been the night of her cousin Toby’s wedding. Quinn would know that there was only him. That there had only ever been him.
It had been the single thing keeping her going throughout the dreadful ordeal of getting to Horseback Hollow.
“You can start—” Quinn’s deep voice cut through her “—with explaining why you came to the Rocking-U at all.”
“I wanted to talk,” she whispered.
He gave her a long look. Animosity rolled off him in waves, a stark contrast to the tender warmth he’d shown her just six weeks earlier. “Yet so far you haven’t said anything new.”
She wanted to wring her hands. Such a silly, naive girl to think that her presence would be enough to make up for everything she hadn’t said that she should have. For everything she hadn’t done that she should have.
“What did Banning do? Disagree over china patterns? So you run away again to the States to bring him to heel? Your last trip here was pretty effective. Ended up with a royal engagement the second you got back home. Or maybe you’re just in the mood for one more final fling before the ‘I do’s’ get said.”
“I told you weeks ago that there’s no engagement,” she reminded carefully. After a week of the frantic telephone messages she’d left for him once she’d arrived in London, he’d finally returned her call. She’d tried to explain to him then about the media frenzy that had greeted her at the airport when she’d returned from Toby’s wedding.
Reporters shouting their congratulations on her engagement to James. Cameras flashing in her eyes. She’d been blindsided by the unwanted attention as much as she’d been blindsided by news of an engagement she and James had discussed, but had never agreed to.
He grunted derisively. “And I don’t believe you any more now than I did when you said it the first time. You came to Horseback Hollow two months ago and you had sex with the poor dumb cowboy who didn’t know enough to recognize things for what they were. Your little walk on the wild side, I guess, before settling down all nice and proper with the English earl.”
“James isn’t an earl yet.” Which was the furthest thing from what she wanted to say.
“I don’t give a damn what he is or isn’t.” He slowed to make the turn through the iron archway, but the tires still kicked out an angry, arching spit of gravel. “He’s your fiancé. That’s the only thing I have to know. And as good as you were in the sack, princess, I’m not interested in a repeat performance.”
She bit down on her tongue to keep from gasping and stared hard out the side window until the tears pushing behind her eyes subsided. They hadn’t ever made it to a “sack,” as he so crudely put it. They’d made love under the moonlight in a field of green, surrounded by trees, singing crickets and croaking frogs. She’d slept in his arms under the stars and wakened at dawn to chirping birds and his kisses.
It had been magical.
“It was six weeks ago,” she whispered.
He still managed to hear. “Six. Eight. Whatever it was, it no longer matters to me. You want to screw around with a cowboy, do it on someone else’s ranch.”
She snapped her head around, looking at him. Even though it was dark as pitch, and the only light came from the glow of his pickup truck’s instrument panel, she still knew every inch of his face. Every detail. From the dark brown hair springing thickly back from his sun-bronzed forehead to the spiky lashes surrounding his hazel eyes to his angular jaw. She knew his quiet smile. The easy way he held his tall, muscular body.
“Don’t do that,” she said sharply. “Don’t cheapen what we had.”
“What we had, princess—” he drew out the word in a mocking British accent “—was a one-night stand. And the next day, you returned to the loving arms of your intended. Poor bastard. Does he know what he’s getting?” He pulled to a stop in front of a modestly sized two-storied house and turned off the engine. “Or maybe he doesn’t care. Maybe he’s just happy to merge one highfalutin’ family with another and fidelity doesn’t matter one little bit.”
“He’s not my fiancé!”
“And that’s what you came all the way here to talk about,” he said skeptically. “To claim that he’s not your fiancé? While every newspaper and trashy tabloid in print, every gossipy website that exists, is dissecting the great ‘Jamelia’ romance. If he’s not your fiancé, why the hell aren’t there any quotes from you saying that? Everything else about the two of you has been chronicled across the world. Seems to me there have been plenty of opportunities for you to state otherwise.” He stared into her face for a long moment, then shook his head and shoved open his truck door. “We had this same conversation two months ago on the phone.” His voice was flat. “Should have saved yourself a ten-hour flight in coach.” He slammed the door shut and started walking toward the house.
“Six weeks ago,” she whispered again
But of course