Marrying Her Royal Enemy Read Free Page B

was to hear you out. Suddenly, I find myself without an appetite.”
    He stood, then reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet and extracted a card from the marina where he was staying. She flinched as he tucked it into the front pocket of her jeans. “Don’t make this decision because you hate me, Stella. Make it for what you believe in. Make it for Akathinia. If the military isn’t handcuffed, they will seek to finish the job they started when they took that Akathinian ship last year. Lives will be lost.”
    Her chin dropped, her lithe body tense, caught in the middle of a storm. “I know you,” he murmured. “You’ll do the right thing.”
    “No, you don’t.” She shook her head slowly, a wealth of emotion throbbing in those blue eyes. “You don’t know anything about me.”

CHAPTER TWO
    K OSTAS COULDN ’ T KNOW her because she clearly didn’t know herself at this moment in time. The fact that she was even entertaining his proposition was ludicrous.
    Stella paced the terrace of Jessie’s oceanfront villa, smoke coming out of her ears. How dare he come here? How dare he throw that guilt trip at her? She had come to Barbados to get her head together, to figure out what she wanted to be. Instead, he had dumped the weight of two countries on her shoulders; issued that parting salvo that had her head spinning...
    If the military isn’t handcuffed, they will seek to finish the job they started when they took that Akathinian ship last year.
    Her stomach plummeted, icy tendrils of fear clutching her insides. Five crew members had died when a renegade Carnelian commander had taken an Akathinian ship during routine military exercises in the waters between Akathinia and Carnelia last year. If Kostas lost control of Carnelia and the military seized power, Akathinia was in danger.
    But to marry him to protect her country? Commit herself to a union of duty, something she’d vowed never to do?
    She halted her incessant pacing. Leaned her forearms on the railing of the terrace and looked out at the dark mass of the sea, a painful knot forming in the pit of her stomach. At least she knew the truth about Athamos now. It didn’t explain why Cassandra Liatos had been so special that he’d engaged in a death race with Kostas over her—why he’d been so foolish as to throw his life away over someone who didn’t know her own mind.
    Unless he’d loved her...
    Frustration curled her fingers tight. Had he? Was that the answer to the mystery that plagued her? She wanted to pound her fists against the big barrel of her brother’s chest and demand an answer, but Athamos wasn’t here. Wouldn’t ever be here again.
    Bitter regret swept through her, hot tears burning her eyes, threatening to spill over into the sorrow she’d refused to allow herself to feel lest it disintegrate what was left of her. Somehow she had to let him go. She just didn’t know how.
    She was pacing the deck again when Jessie came home, high heels clicking on the wood, a bottle of wine and two glasses in her hands.
    “What is Kostas doing here? He nearly blew your cover. I had to convince a regular you were a friend from church.”
    She could use a little higher guidance right about now. “He wants me to marry him.”
    Jessie’s eyes bulged out of her head. “Marry him?”
    “Open the wine.”
    Her friend uncorked the bottle, poured two glasses and handed her one.
    She took a sip. Rested her glass on the railing. “It would be a political match.”
    “Why?”
    “I am the symbolic key to peace and democracy in the Ionian Sea. A way for Akathinia and Carnelia to heal. A vision of the way forward.”
    “Are you expected to walk on water, too?”
    A smile curved her lips. “It would be a powerful statement if Kostas and I were to marry.”
    Jessie fixed her with an incredulous look. “You can’t commit yourself to a marriage of duty. Look what it did to your mother. It almost destroyed her.”
    All of them. Her parents’ marriage may have