Cindy Gerard: Lone Star Prince

This Sunday, however, she played their game to the letter. She watched the happy celebration unfold before her in the grand salon of the Texas Cattleman’s Club with a plastic smile in place when the reality was that her heart was breaking. She murmured the appropriate words when her only triumph was in the knowledge that no one knew how much her actions had cost her.

As promised, Miranda and Edward, her sister’s twin babies, had been rescued by Gregory’s brother Blake. They were safe—thank God they were safe here in Texas—but as of today, they were no longer hers to protect. As of today, they were no longer hers at all.

In one of the hardest decisions of her life, she had given them up. She had given them over to the loving arms of Blake and his new bride, Josie.

It was the right thing to do, she told herself, just as she had told herself repeatedly since Blake had brought the babies to Texas. Blake and Josie loved them. They would ensure that Anna’s promise to Sara would be fulfilled.

“Promise me, Anna. Promise me,” Sara had pleaded shortly after the twins were born. “If anything happens to me...promise me you won’t let mother and father raise them. Promise me you’ll get them out of Obersbourg and find someone who will love and nurture there.”

Anna had smiled back then at her little sister’s dramatic plea. Sara had always been the actress of the two of them. The rebel. The wild little princess who thumbed her nose in the face of tradition, laughed at the rigors of royal protocol.

Bracing against a fresh wave of pain, Anna drew herself erect. It was because of Ivan Striksky that Sara would never laugh again. The final proof had arrived yesterday. Gregory had sent the damning evidence over to the diner via messenger.

She was still trying to come to grips with the words in the fax sent by the attorney who had handled the estate of Marcus Dumond, Ivan’s horse trainer. Marcus had been much more than a horse trainer, as it turned out. Anna had known he had once been Sara’s lover. She hadn’t known that Marcus was the father of the twins. And now, because Gregory had ferreted out the truth, she had proof that the car crash that had killed both Sara and Marcus had been arranged by Ivan.

The rumble of deep, masculine laughter dragged her away from her thoughts of that devastating news and back to the reason for today’s celebration. Today was the day she had agreed to officially release the twins for adoption. Today was the day she severed her last tie to Sara.

She made herself shut out the ugly string of events that had brought her here and focused on the happiness around her. Blake was a good man. Josie a good woman. Both were all smiles as they stood side by side, each of them cradling one of the babies in their arms. And while she had agonized about her decision, in the end she knew she’d had no choice. It had been Sara’s wish.

Just like she’d had no choice but to attend today’s celebration. Thank God for Harriet, she thought, as she so often had in the past months. Sensing intuitively that Anna would need to draw on all her resources to keep herself together, she had volunteered to take William to a movie today.

“Anna?”

She blinked, automatically set a smile in place even before she realized it was Josie who had walked up beside her and lightly touched her arm.

“Are you all right?”

“Fine. I’m fine.” She broadened her smile, and even though her heart was breaking, opened her arms to little Miranda when Josie held her out to her. Tears filled her eyes as Miranda reached up and tangled her little fingers in Anna’s hair.

Life was so strange, she thought, smiling down at the happily gurgling baby. When Blake had finally managed to smuggle the babies out of Europe and into Texas, he’d run into the storm of the century while driving across the state with them. Josie had spotted his car in a washed-out ravine. Blake had been unconscious, the babies crying and hungry. Josie had managed to get them all home to her farmhouse, and during Blake’s recovery, while he’d struggled to regain his memory that had been temporarily lost in the crash, they’d fallen deeply in love—with each other and with the twins.

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Josie murmured, breaking into Anna’s thoughts.

“Yes,” Anna agreed softly. Relishing the warmth and the sweet scent of the baby in her arms, she held her closer. “She’s very beautiful.”

The silence that followed rang hollow with the unspoken pain of her loss.

“You will always be her aunt, Anna.” Sensitive to Anna’s regrets, Josie’s eyes, when Anna met them, were kind and reassuring. “You will always be Edward’s aunt. They’re your family. Please, don’t doubt that. We won’t ever take that away from you.”

Anna blinked hard, gave Josie a genuine smile as Blake, with Edward sleeping soundly in his arms, joined them.

“I know,” she said. “Just like I know they’ll have a far better home and life with you than if I were to take them back to Obersbourg.”

She didn’t doubt that for one moment. Even as William’s mother, she had difficulty exercising authority over how he was raised. As the twins’ aunt, her influence would be even more limited. She couldn’t bear to have happen to them what happened to Sara. She couldn’t let two sweet, precious lives be ruled by the iron fist of her father and the apathetic blind eye of her mother. If subjected to her parents’ strict code of discipline, like Sara, they might eventually rebel. Like Sara, they might turn to a wild and destructive lifestyle—like the one that had played a part in ending her life.

Her next words were spoken as much to herself as to Blake and Josie. “They have a chance for a normal life now. I have to believe that.” She stopped, braced and deliberately met Josie’s concerned gaze, then Blake’s. “I do believe that. Just like I believe Sara would have approved. You’re very special. Both of you.”

Blake’s warm brown eyes, so different from his brother Gregory’s distant blue, probed hers. “No regrets.”

She kissed Miranda lightly on the cheek and handed her back to Josie before answering with conviction. “I have many regrets in all of this—the decision to give up the twins to you is not one of them.”

Josie embraced her then, her own eyes brimming with tears.

“Oh, no.” Anna managed a shaky laugh. “Don’t you dare start. I’m lost if you cry—and this is a party, remember? Go. Go party.”

“You’re okay then?” Blake touched a hand to her arm.

“I told you. I’m fine. Now go. I saw your father looking for you.”

As she watched them walk away, a bittersweet ache in her chest, someone accidentally bumped into her, then apologized profusely. For the first time today, her smile was spontaneous. Since Gregory had brought her here to Royal, she had grown to appreciate the Texas style of gallantry, the open friendliness of its people.

She made herself focus on the gathering, recognized many of the faces, faces’ of people who knew her as Annie Grace, just a waitress at the diner. Aside from Blake and Josie, only Gregory and Harriet and the three men who had assisted him on the Alpha mission to rescue her last September—Hank Langley, Sterling Churchill, Forrest Cunningham—knew her true identity. They too, had joined the celebration. So had their wives, Callie, Susan, and Becky.

She had taken special notice of Gregory and Blake’s parents, Janine and Carson Hunt. She wasn’t certain how much Gregory’s parents knew about the twins’ situation—or about hers. She only knew that they looked at her through kind eyes that made her yearn for something she’d never received from her own parents. Carson was a robust bear of a man with crinkled brown eyes and a thick head of silver hair. Janine was lovely. Diminutive in stature, yet obviously her own woman, her blue eyes, so like Gregory’s, were warm, bold and full of life as she welcomed Edward and Miranda to the family with loving arms.