Roarke's Kingdom

Dear God, she thought, help me.

What a fool she’d been to accept Roarke’s offer.

Why hadn’t she considered what life would be like if she did?

Slowly, she made her way to her bedroom and shut the door after her.

She’d spent, what, two minutes imagining how difficult things would be—and then she’d looked at Roarke and said “yes.”

Roarke wanted her to stay. She had wanted to stay.

So she’d stayed.

Now, she was dancing on the edge of disaster.

She spent her days with a little girl she’d come to love as deeply as if she were her own, her evenings and weekends with a man she’d come to—to like too much…

Hell.

She loved him.

She adored him.

“And you knew it when you agreed to stay,” she whispered. “You knew it!”

Jennifer walked to the French doors and opened them to the warm evening breeze.

What on earth had she been thinking? Life wasn’t a story out of Susanna’s book of fairy tales. If it were, Roarke would have asked her to stay because he’d fallen in love with her and she would be the good, honest woman he thought she was.

But this wasn’t a fairy tale.

Roarke was attracted to her. She knew that. But he was still in love with his ex. There was no room in his heart for another woman. As for Susanna—she belonged to her father. And to her mother, even if that mother didn’t want her.

Jennifer groaned as she sank down in a chair.

It couldn’t go on like this.

You couldn’t love a man you couldn’t ever have, love a child who was another woman’s without paying a price, and heartache was the terrible price you’d pay.

The realization had been building inside her for days. She’d kept ignoring it like someone who thought you could confront a demon by pretending it wasn’t really there.

A sob rose in her throat and she sprang to her feet.

She was so stupid.

“So, so stupid,” she whispered.

But then, she’d been stupid before. It was what had started this mess in the first place.

Jennifer ran her hands through her hair. It needed cutting. It was thick and there were times it seemed to have a mind of its own.

Her hands stilled.

That was the first thing Craig had ever said to her.

“Those pretty curls look as if they have a mind of their own,” he’d said over the Route 66 Roadside Café breakfast menu as she stood waiting to take his order one rainy morning. “I’ll bet you didn’t get them from a beauty parlor.”

As pickup lines went it had been a little better than the ones she usually heard so she’d smiled politely and said no, she hadn’t, and would he like toast or muffins with his eggs?