Behind the Palace Walls Read Online Free PDF Page B

bright future.
    She had done that for Emma, and she’d been happy to do so.
    But why did Emma have to get everything?
    On the heels of jealousy, guilt rode hard. Who was Paige to deny her sister anything? Paige had been practically an adult when their mother died. Emma was the one who’d grown up without a loving mother. Paige had done everything for her, but a sister wasn’t the same as a mother, no matter how hard she tried.
    A tear spilled free, and then another, until finally Paige was curling her hands into Alexei’s shirt as the first heartbroken sob escaped her. After that, it was easy to cry. She’d held the tears in for so long. She hadn’t cried since her mother’s funeral, had believed that tears made her weak.
    Now, it felt good to let it all out. Cleansing. The man holding her never stopped rubbing her back, never made a move to pull away and leave her alone. Selfishly she clung to him and cried for all the years she’d lost.
    While she cried herself out, she made a decision. From now on, Paige would no longer neglect her own happiness for that of others. When she wanted something, she would not deny herself. She was through denying herself.
    It was a new day for Paige Barnes. And she knew just how to prove it.

     
    CHAPTER THREE

    ALEXEI SENSED THE change in her before she acted. One minute she was sobbing her heart out, the next she was standing on tiptoe and pulling him down for another kiss.
    He was tempted. More than tempted. Alexei let her kiss him, fighting his reaction as her lips moved tentatively over his. She tasted like salt and sadness, and he wanted nothing more than to take that sadness away. It was his fatal flaw, this desire to protect and comfort those in need. He’d spent years fighting for his family, years that had taken their toll.
    But there was nothing he could do for this woman. Though it would be so easy to take what she offered, so easy to sweep her into his arms and carry her to his room, he wasn’t going to do it.
    She wasn’t kissing him because she wanted him. She was doing this to prove something to herself. And he didn’t feel like being the conduit through which she tried to vanquish her anger and disappointment.
    Her reaction to his news about her sister and Russell had not been what he’d expected. He’d set her up in his mind as a cold, calculating woman on a mission for her lover. He’d not stopped to think that maybe she really had been worried, or that she didn’t know her sister wasn’t missing but was instead sneaking off to Chad Russell’s room.
    Alexei didn’t like the way her tears had made him feel, the way her sweet vulnerability just now—the tentative kiss, the hint of desperation—struck a nerve inside him.
    She brought memories crashing into his head that he tried to shove away. Memories of a pale, sad woman lying in a hospital bed, her lips cracked and dry, a lone tear sliding down her cheek as she whispered that she loved him.
    The last person on this earth who loved him had died because he wasn’t able to save her, because even though he was a prince, he’d been poor and broken and couldn’t afford to buy the best leukemia treatments money could buy. After Katerina’s death, he’d vowed on her memory that he would not be poor for the rest of his life. And he would strike back at the cold-blooded man who’d stripped them of everything before he’d returned to America with the rights to the land their mother had sold, and the rich oil and gas deposits beneath.
    Tim Russell had left them with nothing, and though it would have taken only a fraction of the wealth he’d amassed from their land to help Katerina, he’d refused. Alexei had scraped together the money to fly to Dallas and beg for his sister’s life, but he’d been met with cold disdain. He still remembered standing in Russell’s office, high over the Dallas skyline, and being both awed and sickened by the wealth on display. He’d wanted that life for his family, and it