The Royals Collection. Rebecca Winters

not why I’m here.”

      “He has corporate connections Perry and Andrew might find useful, too. I suppose that might carry even more weight with you.” After all, scientists could be rich, but Beatrice had never made any bones about not wanting another one in the family.

      Her mom sighed. “I am not here on behalf of your brother or my husband, either.”

      “You’re here for my sake,” Chanel supplied with full-on sarcasm.

      But her mother nodded, her expression oddly vulnerable and sincere. “Yes, I am. The way you two are together. It’s special, Chanel, and I don’t want you to miss that.”

      “We’ve only been dating a month,” Chanel said, shocking herself and voicing her biggest concern.

      Beatrice nodded, as if she understood completely. “That’s the way it was for me and your dad. We knew the first time we met that we would be together for the rest of our lives.”

      “You stopped loving him.” What would Chanel do if Demyan stopped wanting her?

      Her mother’s eyes blazed with more emotion than Chanel could ever remember seeing in them. “I never did.”

      “But you said...” Pain lanced through Chanel as her voice trailed off.

      There were too many examples to pick only one.

      “He was it for me.”

      “You married Perry.”

      “I needed someone after Jacob died.”

      “You had me. You promised we would always be a team.” That broken promise had hurt worst of all.

      “It was too hard. You were too much like him. I tried to make you different, but you refused to change.” Her mother sighed, looking almost defeated. “You are so stubborn. Just like him.”

      For the first time, Chanel heard the pain in those words her mother had never expressed.

      Some truths were just as hurtful to her. “Perry hates me.”

      “He’s a very jealous man.”

      “He wasn’t jealous of me. You weren’t affectionate enough to me to make him jealous.”

      Sadness filled Beatrice’s eyes. “No, I haven’t been. He was jealous of Jacob.”

      “Because you never stopped loving him.” Despite all evidence to the contrary.

      “How do you stop loving the other half of your soul?”

      Finally Chanel understood a part of her childhood she’d always been mystified by. She’d tried with Perry at first. Really tried. “Perry blamed me. He took his jealousy out on me.”

      “Your father wasn’t around to punish.”

      “You let him.”

      Beatrice looked away and shrugged. As if it didn’t matter. As if all that pain was okay to visit on a child.

      “You let him,” Chanel said again. “You knew and you let him hate me in effigy of my father.”

      Her mom’s head snapped back around, her expression dismissive. “He doesn’t hate you. He wanted you to be the best and all you wanted was your books and science.”

      “It’s what I love. Didn’t that ever matter to you?”

      “Of course it mattered!” Beatrice jumped up, showing an unfamiliar agitation. “Science stole your father from me. Do you for one second believe I wanted it to take you, too?”

      “So, you pushed me away instead.”

      “That wasn’t my intention.”

      “I don’t fit with the Saltzmans.”

      Beatrice didn’t deny it, but she didn’t agree either. Should Chanel be thankful for small mercies?

      “I did fit with the Tanners.”

      “Too well, but they’re all gone, Chanel. Can’t you see that?”

      “And you think I’ll die young like Dad did because of my love for science?”

      “You’re too much a Tanner. You take risks.”

      “I don’t!” She’d been impacted by the way her father and grandfather had died, too. “I’m very careful.”

      “If you are, then I’ve succeeded a little, anyway.”

      “You succeeded, all right. You succeeded in picking away at our relationship until there wasn’t one anymore.” Chanel nearly choked on the words, but she wouldn’t hold them back anymore. “You couldn’t handle how much having me around reminded you of Dad, so you pushed me away with both hands.”

      “And now you can barely bring yourself to see me even once a month.”

      “Visits with you are too demoralizing.”

      “Your sister and brother see you more often.”

      Even Andrew. He was away at university, but Chanel went to visit her brother at least once a term. She always made sure she got time with him when he was home. While she’d done her best to nurture her relationships with her siblings, Chanel had avoided her mother with the skill of a trained stunt driver.

      “You have your sister date with Laura every week, but somehow you manage to avoid seeing me or Perry.”

      “Can you blame me?” Chanel demanded and then shook her head. “It doesn’t matter if you do, or don’t. I know whose fault it is we don’t have a relationship and it’s not mine.”

      Finally, she truly understood that. It wasn’t that Chanel wasn’t lovable. Unless she’d been willing to become a completely different person, with none of her father’s passions, mannerisms or even affections, Chanel had been destined to be the brunt of both her mother’s grief and Perry’s jealousy.

      There was no way she could be smart enough, well behaved enough or even pretty enough to earn their approval.

      Not with hair the same color as her dad’s and eyes so like his, too. Not with a jaw every Tanner seemed to be born with and her bone-deep desire to grow up and be a scientist.

      Beatrice’s eyes filled with grief that slowly morphed into resolution. “No, it’s not. You deserved better than either Perry or I have given you. You deserve to be loved for yourself and by someone who isn’t wishing every minute in your company you would move just a little differently, speak with less scientific jargon...”

      “Just be someone other than who I am.”

      “Yes. You deserve that.” Her mom’s voice rang with a loving sincerity Chanel hadn’t heard in it since she was eight years old and a broken vulnerability she never had. “That’s why I’m urging you with everything in me not to push Demyan away because how you feel about him scares you. I wouldn’t trade the years I had with your father for anything in the world, not even a life without the constant pain of grief that never leaves.”

      “You think Demyan loves me like Dad loved you?”

      “He must.” In a completely uncharacteristic gesture, Beatrice reached out and took both Chanel’s hands in her own. “Sweetheart, a man like that, he doesn’t offer you marriage when he could have you in his bed without it, not unless he wants all of you, but especially the life you can have together.”

      Her mother hadn’t called her sweetheart in so long that Chanel had to take a couple of deep breaths to push back the emotion the endearment caused. “He’s really possessive.”

      And bossy in bed, but she wasn’t going to share that tidbit with her mom.

      “He needs you. For a man to need that deeply, it’s frightening for him. It makes him hold on tighter.”

      “Did