His Princess in the Making

Ten years of dreaming Lia’s dreams for her, making her every wish come true, and seeing how she’d grown and changed. She’d become a woman before Toby’s blinkered eyes. And now she’d gone so far ahead of him he couldn’t see her.

The title and tiara were the least of his problems. She loved him, wanted him—but she didn’t love him, didn’t want him. After half a lifetime of him being everything to her, she trusted him with the truth only now—when she believed it was too late.

But if Lia wanted a man to show her just how much he wanted her, she was about to get it.

Melissa James is a mother of three, living in a beach suburb in New South Wales, Australia. A former nurse, waitress, shop assistant, perfume and chocolate demonstrator—among other things—she believes in taking on new jobs for the fun experience. She’ll try anything at least once, to see what it feels like—a fact that scares her family on regular occasions. She fell into writing by accident, when her husband brought home an article stating how much a famous romance author earned, and she thought, I can do that! She can be found most mornings walking and swimming at her local beach with her husband, or every afternoon running around to her kids’ sporting hobbies, while dreaming of flying, scuba diving, belaying down a cave or over a cliff—anywhere her characters are at the time!

BY

MELISSA JAMES

MILLS & BOON

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To an old friend who waited long years

for his damaged love to come to him.

I know the reward was worth the wait.

Thanks to Rachel, Robyn Grady

and Barbara Jeffcott-Geris for helping shape this book,

and special thanks to Barbara Daille-White

for an outsider’s perspective.

PROLOGUE

Sydney clinic for eating disorders, ten years ago

“How is she today?”

The middle-aged specialist smiled up at the brown-skinned young giant hovering over him, with intense blue eyes filled with anxiety and stress. “I’d say you’d know the answer better than I do, Toby, since you stayed overnight and have spoken to her twice already today.”

One side of the boy’s mouth curved up in acknowledgement of the comment, but he said, “I meant to ask how her counselling session went.”

The doctor reached up to lay a hand on the other’s shoulder—a massive, muscled shoulder, evidence of his active profession. “Lia says what we want to hear, so we’ll send her home. You know she only talks to you.”

The doctor spoke without anger or frustration. Indeed, he’d never known a boy like this one. Not brother, not lover, but the most devoted friend any girl in this clinic had ever had. Here day and night for the girl he called “his best friend’s sister,” there were undercurrents that made everyone on staff smile.

But they never laughed. Not when the boy always knew what the near-silent girl wasn’t saying, what she’d eat and when she’d eat—and when she needed a few hours in the outside world, going on a bushwalk or sitting on the beach.

Toby Winder was the most unorthodox support person everyone at the clinic had ever known. He’d read every book written on anorexia nervosa, and yet tossed out the rule books half the time, using his knowledge of Lia instead—and somehow his unique method of treatment worked. Lia was not only putting on weight, she was happy. She ate when he didn’t coax her, but made her smile and laugh and feel cherished. He seemed to heal young Lia Costa just by being there, by knowing her as few family members or friends knew anyone with this secretive, killing disease.

Lia had lost so much in a year. First, her parents had died in a car crash. Within five months of their deaths she’d been rejected by the Australian Ballet because of her height. Now her grandmother had been diagnosed with breast cancer. It was enough to drive a girl as intense as Lia, with so little self-esteem, into starving herself.

Toby Winder was the single miracle keeping her alive. The biggest threat to recovery was feeling alone, ugly or unloved. He made her feel safe and beautiful and loved, made her feel special by calling her by her real name, Giulia, when everyone else called her Lia.

A first-year fireman, he’d managed to arrange his schedule to be the opposite to Lia’s brother Charlie, a fellow fireman, so that if one of them couldn’t be there the other could, or so her grandfather could visit Lia around his wife’s visiting hours. Toby had asked them both to hide their anxiety, which only put an added burden on Lia. He’d shown them the parts of the garden she liked at the clinic, and the games she enjoyed playing, eating when she was so absorbed in the fun she barely noticed.

When he’d discovered that Lia exercised all night if left alone, still trying to lose the last vestiges of the slender yet curvaceous figure that she believed had kept her from the ballet, Toby had cajoled the staff into putting a camp-bed beside her at night. How he slept with his six-foot-five frame on that squeaky old bed, the staff never could work out. He simply said that if she was sleeping he could sleep.

And, when she needed to visit her ill grandmother, Toby took her—and by some miracle Lia never starved herself afterwards to deal with the stress, because Toby was there beside her.

Nobody on the staff had ever seen a case like this. They’d never seen an anorexic girl’s face light up the way Lia’s did when she saw Toby come through the gates, or when she heard his voice. Anorexic girls rarely welcomed touch the way she did with Toby. And nobody had seen a nineteen-year-old boy put aside his entire life to help someone who wasn’t even his girlfriend to recover from this unrecoverable disease, giving and giving without a hope of reward apart from her return to health.

All of which made the doctor’s task so much harder now.

“You’ve been incredibly devoted to her recovery,” the doctor began gently. “We’ve all been amazed by the way she responds to you.”

Toby reddened and shrugged a shoulder. “She’s my friend.”

“I think she’s a little more than that to you…or a lot. Isn’t she?” he pressed.

The boy turned towards the window. “I think I’ll go find her.”

“This is for her sake, Toby. I need to know.”

Toby didn’t turn back, but the way he rubbed his neck told the doctor he’d rather have him stick pins in him than answer these questions. “We’ve been friends for five years, since Charlie took me home to meet the family. She was only eleven. She was like one of my little sisters to me. I moved in with the family a year later.” He didn’t elaborate why, and Dr Evans realised Toby was as secretive as Lia.

“When did it change for you?” the doctor asked, gentle but remorseless.

A long silence followed. Then, slowly, he said, “When she came here. When she collapsed. I knew then.”

“Knew?”

He frowned fiercely out of the window, as if something there offended him. “I’m going to marry her.”

Five blunt words, but from the mouth of this boy, so young and yet so old beyond his years, they didn’t seem romantic, melodramatic or ridiculous. It was a vow made all the stronger for the unemotional way he’d said it.

And that only made the doctor’s task harder now. “You can’t tell her.”

Toby wheeled round. The doctor shrank from the unaccustomed ferocity in the boy’s face. “Why not?”

And the doctor knew he’d chosen the right time. Toby had been about to show Lia the feelings he’d been bottling up for months during her recovery.

“Because you’re her ‘it’ person. She needs your friendship to live.”

“She’ll always have it.”

The doctor refused to step back this time, even when he saw Toby’s massive fists clench—even as he imagined the rookie fireman breaking down burning walls and doors with a single punch. “Will she?”

“Yes.” No protests, no outburst of teenage anger or indignation, and again his simplicity made him all the more believable.

“She can’t be expected to make a decision of this calibre now, Toby. She’s lost so much this year. That she’s recovered to this point is a miracle in itself, and a testament to her inner strength and your devotion.” Aching with pity, he forced himself to go on. “For the sake of her future health, you must take your cues from her. If she ever tells you she wants more than friendship, I’ll be happy for you both.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

The rough pain in Toby’s voice made the doctor’s ache even stronger. “Then you can’t, either.” He sighed, turning away; it hurt to look at him. “She needs you in a way I’ve never seen an anorexic patient need a single person before. Though everyone loves her, and she gives to everyone, you’re the only one who knows her heart and soul. She trusts you to be there. If you ever withdrew the friendship, or broke her trust—”

“It won’t happen.”

“What if she doesn’t feel the same way?” he asked quietly. “Will she still have your unswerving devotion when she brings home a boyfriend, a lover? Will you still give her everything she needs when she’s sleeping with another man?”

For as long as he lived, Dr Evans would never forget the look on Toby Winder’s face at that moment. Just the thought of Lia with another man turned this bronzed young giant pale and shaking, his eyes blank with devastation.

“She’ll still have it,” was all he said.

Many times in the past five months, the doctor had wished he’d known love the way this boy did. Now he was glad his heart was a little shallower.

“She’s almost better now, but former anorexics need their trusted support systems through the greatest stresses in life—moving, death, weddings. Childbirth,” he pressed. “If she married another man, but still needed your friendship, can you say with absolute certainty that you could devote yourself to her? Losing your friendship could send her back into anorexic behaviour patterns. The danger will always be there. Like alcoholics, they never completely recover. It’s a stress release she’ll always be tempted to return to. Intense stress, fear, loss or shock will lead to vomiting—and she’ll remember the comfort of losing weight. It’s a sense of control for her when the world spins out of control.”

“I know all that,” Toby said, his voice tight.

Hating this, Dr Evans added the final words to convince him. “Even thinking she could lose your friendship might send her back here. Next time, it could kill her.”

Toby’s face whitened even more and his eyes darkened, but he didn’t speak, didn’t move. After a long wait, a single nod was all he gave in answer— but every line of the boy’s body, the perspiration on his neck and forehead, told the doctor how very close to the edge he was.

Moved with pity, he reached out to touch his shoulder again, but Toby moved to the door. “She’s coming.”

He was out before the doctor could say another word.

The doctor moved to the window where Toby had been standing, and opened it.

The tall, slender girl, almost recovered now, was dressed in the anorexic ‘uniform’ of concealing trousers and a windcheater. She wandered the flowered paths, head down, with the listless, puppet-like attitude she always displayed until…

Toby walked towards Lia across the sunlit grass in the pretty, hilly gardens of the centre. When he came close, he spoke her name.

She looked up; her eyes lit. A smile was born, and filled her face until she was radiant. Her tumbled dark curls glistened in the sunlight. All the ethereal beauty lost inside her withdrawn nature when he wasn’t near her came to life. She came to life.

The doctor shook his head in wonder. He wasn’t an emotional man, but whenever he saw these two he thought of Juliet with Romeo, Isolde with Tristan.

Toby opened his arms and Lia ran into them.

A lump filled Dr Evans’ throat. The joy on the boy’s face as he held her, the serenity and completion on hers, almost convinced him he was doing the wrong thing. Could he throw out the rule book on love the way Toby had with healing her? Could he let them just be? Because the incandescence of this boy and girl when they were together was something he’d never seen before, and probably never would again.

But what if he was right? What if?

Despite her secretive nature, Lia had given some sweet memory, some piece of tender wisdom, to every person at the centre, staff or patient. She was one of those people everyone loved. From the first day Dr Evans had met Lia, every instinct had screamed at him that this girl had to live…and Toby Winder had made her want to live. He had to be there to catch her when she fell.

No, he couldn’t risk Lia’s life because a boy was in love now.

Yes, he’d done the right thing. But the doctor knew that he’d continue to question the wisdom of his decision until the day he died.

CHAPTER ONE

The present day

Australia’s Newest Royals! Charlie and Lia Costa, the Boy and Girl from Ryde, Ready for Right Royal Marriages

The Swan Lake Princess: From Giselle to Real-life Cinderella. Aussie Ballet Teacher Lia Costa Will Marry the Grand Duke of Falcandis! Date is Set…

They’re So In Love: Lia and Max Fall at First Sight. Will There Be A Double Wedding With Charlie and Jazmine?

AS TOBY tried to report for work at the fire station, he was crowded by a hundred eager faces and bodies pushing at him. The usual swarm of microphones was shoved in his face.

“Toby, how do you feel about your friends becoming royalty? Your mother told us that you feel left out.”

“Will Charlie marry Princess Jazmine?”

“Is Lia in love with the Grand Duke?”

That’s what I want to know. Toby couldn’t answer the questions tossed at him, since neither Charlie nor Giulia had called him once, nor even written a note, since they’d disappeared a month ago. He hated that—though he was family, he wasn’t family enough.

He cut the excited questions short with the weary, timeless, “No comment.” He pushed past the milling crowd of reporters into the fire station with the grim determination of a man used to the press.

He ought to be by now. Last year, he and Charlie had received more than enough of the star treatment after they’d saved some kids from a burning, collapsing house. But the past few days of intrusions, constant doorbell-ringing and phone calls at all hours had given him a gutful.

Since the story hit had world news four days ago, Toby had found he couldn’t even attend a fire without being crowded and asked for his opinion on questions he couldn’t answer. How the hell did stars handle this on a daily basis?

How had Charlie managed not to punch someone without his restraining influence? How was Giulia coping with the pressure? Was she eating? And, God help him, did she like that handsome Grand Duke? Had she fallen in love at a glance?

A disembodied voice filled the room via the loudspeaker. “Grizz, report to Leopard’s office, stat.”

Toby sighed and dropped down from the chin-up bar. Though they used the irreverent nicknames for each other—Toby’s being “Grizzly Bear” because of his height and build—when you were called to the captain’s office you didn’t prevaricate.

He took the back stairs three at a time, hoping to God Leopard didn’t have more questions about Charlie and Giulia, and ridiculous assertions that a fireman and a ballet teacher could be the lost heirs to a kingdom he’d only heard about on quiz shows. When he reached the office, two black-suited, unsmiling men turned to him, and he knew he was about to get answers at last. One said, “We need you to come with us now, sir, no questions asked.”

It wasn’t a request.

An hour later he landed in Canberra, at a quiet airfield reserved for VIPs.

For the next three hours he endured intense questioning, and instructions on what complete discretion really meant. Then, only then, was he introduced to Lady Eleni, a pretty, dark-haired woman who was personal assistant to Princess Jazmine—Charlie’s fiancée. Then he was taken to a dressing room at the Hellenican Consulate in Canberra, where he changed from gym clothes to jeans and shirt from the suitcase packed for him by the Australian Security Intelligence Office. They’d thought of everything.

Including Lia’s puppy, the excitable, scruffy Puck, who barked a series of excited yaps as they boarded the Hellenican royal jet.

She was shaking.

Standing in bright, late-summer sunshine outside the Summer Palace, wearing designer jeans and a lemon linen-shift and shoes that would have cost the same as her ballet school, Lia Costa waited for Toby to arrive.

But I’m not Lia Costa. I’m Giulia Maria Helena Marandis, Princess Royal-to-be, she reminded herself yet again, after a month of living in the Summer Palace in the small Mediterranean nation of Hellenia.

She reminded herself of it every day, almost every hour—and still she kept expecting the alarm to go off and to wake up back in her bedroom in Ryde…

Despite the day’s warmth, her hands and feet were cold. She chewed on her lip as the black Rolls turned smoothly and came through the gates. She winced as the press took hundreds of shots of the car’s occupants.

He was here. Toby was here.

The butterflies in her stomach turned to woodpeckers.

“It’ll be fine, Lia, you’ll see,” Charlie muttered as he waited beside her. “Don’t worry so much.”

She smiled and pressed her brother’s hand, knowing Charlie didn’t believe it any more than she did. Though he’d insisted on the King bringing Toby here, to talk everything out with their best friend, there was nothing anyone could say or do to fix the crisis she and Charlie found themselves in, unless they could find a way to turn back time. Charlie would be the next king of Hellenia, and Lia would be Princess Royal, with all its luxury—and its duty. Including creating much-needed royal heirs.

Charlie might be between a rock and a hard place, but at least he and Jazmine were deeply attracted. They had a chance at happiness.

She, Lia, had the choice of the devil and the stormy, blue sea.

The Rolls pulled up in front of them. The chauffeur opened the door for him and Toby, big, strong and dependable, emerged from the car. Joy surged through her at the sight of him.

Then she saw his face, let go of Charlie’s hand and gasped. Something awful ran through her body, like she’d stuck her finger in an electrical socket.

Toby was her gentle giant, her quiet tower of strength, who knew and loved her just as she was despite her inadequacies. For more than a decade she’d counted on seeing the tenderness in his summer-sky eyes, the sweet curve of his slow, sunlit smile, and the flash of his deep-grooved dimples when he looked at her.

Now, as he took in the changes to her hair, the obvious designer touches to her clothes, the look on his face—cold and unemotional—hurt her. It had been so stupid to indulge in the small, pitiful hope that in these clothes, with her hair cut and some subtle make-up applied, he’d find her pretty at last…

Until this moment she’d never seen the blackness Charlie claimed was inside him. She had only one single memory where Toby had looked at her without a smile—the day she’d discovered his family was exploding, and she’d brought him home to live with the family. Even when she’d woken up in the clinic after her collapse four years later, he’d smiled, held her tight and thanked God she was still with him.

But today there was no smile. She saw his soul from the mirror of his eyes, turning the bright summer day to night. Until now she hadn’t thought of his reaction to crossing the world for her, losing career, home and freedom of choice.

Lia fiddled with her hands. Her toes did the squirmy thing she hated. “T-Toby?”

His eyes met hers, in a searching that felt like a winter’s night…and then, like a miracle unfolding before her, they softened and lightened.

“Toby,” she whispered, and took a hesitant step. Her arms, of their own accord, reached for him. When his opened in return, and he smiled that slow, sunlit smile so uniquely his, she couldn’t hold in the sob of relief.

“Toby, oh, Toby, I’ve missed you!” she choked, and ran slam into his arms.

“Giulia, beloved,” he murmured into her hair as he held on fast.

And after a month of weathering storms of right royal proportions, the world felt right at last. Toby was here, her one-of-a-kind, wonderful friend who knew her, good and bad, weak or strong—and just loved her. She loved the endearments he used for her alone. Most women loved the way he spoke—or maybe they just loved his striking looks. But he’d never called the girls he’d dated “beloved,” only her. She loved it—so different from “babe” or “doll” or “sweetheart”, or the other normal nicknames guys called their women.

But she wasn’t his woman—she never had been—and that made the difference. Friendly love took away demands, emotional confrontations and expectation.

She ought to know. After enduring the world’s most stupid crush on her best friend all through her teen years, she’d finally given up hoping he’d look her way. Only then had the world shifted onto its right axis, and the best-friend love they were always meant to share had been theirs. They could hold each other without any silliness.

Only, the funny thing now was… Was he—aroused? No, that was ridiculous; he’d never wanted her that way. She tried to dismiss it from her mind as a guy thing, an involuntary reaction of some kind, and held tight to him anyway—best friends could do that. She whispered, “Toby, Toby,” as if he was a phantom that might disappear at any moment.

He smiled down at her, tender and loving. “Miss me, beautiful girl?”

“Like half of me was gone,” she choked. Like the sunshine had disappeared.

“So I gather I need not bow and say Your Highness, as instructed?”

The tone of his deep, rumbling voice, rich with teasing, made her gasp with relief. “You do and I’ll hit you.”

As he chuckled and caressed her hair, she kissed his cheek—and felt the old urge to taste his skin with her tongue.

Okay, so she’d never quite conquered this—this idiotic feeling of being turned on by her best friend. She’d accepted it couldn’t happen. It was just a physical thing—probably because she’d never met another man who made her feel dainty, feminine and aroused with a touch. But she’d sworn long ago she’d never embarrass him, or herself, by burdening him with her desires again. She’d done that eleven years ago, at that wretched New Year’s party, and had almost destroyed their friendship.

She’d never risk losing him again.

He’d given her so much during the past ten years. He’d just proved his devotion by crossing the world for her. Why ruin something so perfect and wonderful for something only one of them had ever wanted?