The Prince's Devious Proposal - Holly Rayner Page 0,47

said. “That’s what you were really doing, right? When you told me you were in Sovra? The ‘royal emergency’ was your family’s debt. And you hadn’t been called back to Sovra to deal with it at all. You were trying to get your hands on my money. Now you’re here because you weren’t able to do it, and you need to manipulate me into giving it to you.”

She was sure she was right, and she didn’t know how she felt about it. On one hand, that would mean she still had some power, that the ball was still in her court. She would be able to say no to whatever Petr was about to ask her to do.

On the other hand, though, Petr was a smart man. She didn’t like to admit it, but it was true. What if he had some kind of leverage to use against her?

But Petr shook his head. “I haven’t been trying to get my hands on the money,” he said. “Naomi, this was a plan years in the making. If I had wanted to get that money, I could have gotten it. I knew what I needed to do. There’s a reason I didn’t.”

“What reason?” she asked.

“You,” he said simply, looking directly into her eyes.

“I don’t know what that means.”

“All the time we spent together,” he said. “Everything that happened between us—I didn’t expect it, Naomi. I didn’t expect to feel the way I did about you. I didn’t expect that I would fall in love.”

Naomi felt sick. “Stop,” she begged. “No more lies.”

“I’m not lying,” he said. “My feelings for you were real. I tried to deny them. The plan was always for me to distance myself from you after we were married, to take half of your money and disappear. As we got to know one another in Europe, I began to realize how difficult that was going to be. How painful. I wasn’t lying when I told you that I tried to talk myself out of proposing to you, but I was lying about my reason. I knew that it would be better for you if we didn’t get married. I almost had myself convinced to call the whole thing off that night.”

“But you went ahead with it,” she said.

“I did,” he said. “I felt awful. But I told myself that you and I would find a way to make it work. I told myself that maybe when I came clean about my family, you would want to help. That you wouldn’t hate me for putting you in that position.”

She didn’t know what to believe. Was this possible? Could it be that he really had loved her?

It doesn’t matter.

“The messed-up thing is that I might have been willing to help you,” she said. “But you lied to me. If you’d told me the truth from the beginning, things might have been different.”

“That’s why I came here tonight,” Petr said. “I had to come clean. I had to let you know that my intentions might have been wrong at the start, but that my love for you was real.”

“But you didn’t tell me the truth after we were married,” she said. “You say that you thought we’d find a way to make it work, that maybe I’d choose to help you. But you went ahead with the original plan. Instead of confessing what you’d done, you distanced yourself from me so that you would be in a position to take my money.”

“That’s not why I distanced myself,” Petr said. “I know it might be difficult to believe, because that was the original plan. But when the time came, I stayed away from you for a different reason.”

“What reason?” Naomi asked.

“I had to let my family know that I wasn’t going to go through with the plan,” Petr said. “I had to come clean with them and tell them that I’d fallen in love. They still have financial problems, and those problems are still going to have to be solved.” He sighed. “And they’re all very angry with me, of course, because they thought I was going to be the solution.”

“You mean, they thought I was going to be the solution,” Naomi corrected him.

“Yes,” Petr admitted. “I suppose they did.”

“So that’s what you’ve been doing all this time?” Naomi asked. “Telling your family that you’re not planning to con me out of my inheritance anymore?”

“That’s right.” He reached out his hand for hers.

Naomi didn’t take it. She didn’t know what to think of