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‘Greedy,’ Alex said and chuckled, and Lily felt her insides do that somersaulting thing again and thought she really had to get a grip.
Her towel slipped a bit and she got a grip. Fast.
‘I’ll get dressed,’ she said and grabbed a bunch of clothes and headed for the bathroom.
But she kept the door open. Just a little. There was so much she wanted to know. And it might buy her time. Maybe it could even deflect questions from the scar.
Asking questions could be seen as a pre-emptive strike. Yeah, right, as if that would succeed. But there was little else she could think of to do.
‘How long have you had this place?’ she called.
‘My father had it built when he married my mother.’
‘He planted the garden?’
‘He and my mother did the basics. My father died when I was five and my mother was forced to leave. My mother and I rebuilt the garden when she came back.’ His voice softened. ‘She was passionate about gardening. Like you are about boats.’
She’d been steering the conversation to him. There was no way she’d let him deflect the conversation straight back.
‘Your mother died when you were… seventeen?’
‘Almost seventeen. She was sick for a long time before that.’
‘You told me you were raised in the royal nursery.’
‘I was,’ he said, latent anger suddenly in his voice. ‘My uncle hated my father and when I was born that hatred turned… vindictive. Giorgos holds… held… the titles to the entire island. When my father died he banished my mother from the island. Because I was heir to the throne, he demanded I stay.’
‘He loved you?’
‘He hated me. But if I was to be his heir, he’d control me.’
‘Oh, Alex.’
‘Yeah, it was tough,’ he said. ‘The law supported him, and my mother’s pleas were ignored. My pleas were ignored.’
‘But… you got her back?’
‘I did,’ he said and she heard a note of grim satisfaction enter his voice. ‘Finally. By the time I was fifteen… well, even by fifteen I’d learned things Giorgos didn’t want me to know. I was making his life uncomfortable, and he no longer wanted me at the castle. So finally my mother was allowed to return and he allocated an allowance for us to live on. We came back here to live, for all the time she had left.’
There was an untold story here, she knew. A fifteen-year-old standing up to a King. But instinctively she knew he wouldn’t tell her more.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.
‘There’s no need.’
She was still in the bathroom. She had her clothes on now. Jeans, T-shirt.
There was no reason for standing in the bathroom any longer.
She walked out, cautious. Michales had finished his bottle. Her son was looking up at Alex, sleepy but expectant. Alex was looking at Lily, expectant.
The resemblance was unnerving. She was unnerved.
She smiled. It was impossible not to smile at these two.
Her men.
The thought was weird.
‘Tell me about your illness,’ Alex said softly and her smile died, just like that.
‘You don’t need to know.’
‘I do.’ His gaze met hers. Calm. Firm. Unyielding.
The time for dissembling was past.
Okay, then. There was, indeed, no practical reason for her to dissemble—apart from increasing her vulnerability—and she felt so vulnerable anyway she might as well toss in a bit more to the mix.
‘I had a brain tumour,’ she said, so quickly, so softly that she wasn’t sure he’d hear. But the flash of horror in his eyes told her he had.
‘A brain tumour… ’
‘Benign.’ The last thing she wanted from this man was sympathy, but sympathy was in his eyes, right from the start, wanted or not. There was also horror.
When the doctors had told her the diagnosis she’d gone to the Diamond Isles to talk to Mia. She’d been hoping for something. Support? Love? Even kindness would have done. But of course Mia had been caught up in her own world. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she’d said when Lily had tried to tell her. ‘You’ve always had your stupid headaches. I won’t even begin to think you’re right.’
She’d been bereft, lost, foundering. Calls to her mother had gone unanswered. She’d never felt so alone in her life.
Then came the night of the ball. She might as well attend, she’d thought, rather than sit in her bedroom and think about a future that terrified her.
And so she’d met Alex. When Alex had smiled at her, when he’d asked her to dance, she’d found herself falling into his arms. Doing a Mia for once. Living for the moment.
And for two glorious days he’d made her forget reality. He’d smiled at her and she’d let herself believe that all could be right in her world. She’d blocked out the terror. She’d lost herself in his smile, in his laughter, in his loving…
And in his body.
And now here he was, looking at her as if he really cared, and she was lost all over again.
She couldn’t be lost. Not when her world was so close to being whole again.
‘I always had it,’ she said, still too fast, searching for the quickest way to tell him what he had to know. ‘Okay, potted history. You probably know my father was a Scottish baronet, a childless widower. My mother was a distant relation of the Greek royal family, fearsomely ambitious. She set her cap at my father’s money and title, even though he was forty years her senior. Mia and I were born, two years apart.’
‘I know this. The country’s been told this.’
‘Yes, but as Mia’s story. This is mine.’
‘Okay,’ he said, cradling the almost sleeping Michales. His eyes never left her face. ‘You want to sit down and tell me the rest?’
She cast him a scared look. Scared and resentful. Sure she wouldn’t be believed.
‘No one’s pushing you into a chair,’ he said gently. ‘There’s no naked bulb swinging eerily above your head as you spill state secrets. Just tell me.’
She nodded. She closed her eyes. She opened them again and somehow found the strength to say what needed to be said. ‘When I was six I started getting headaches,’ she told him. ‘I was diagnosed with a tumour, benign but inoperable.’ She shrugged. ‘I guess that was the end of my parents’ marriage. My mother loathed that I was sickly. It was almost an insult—that any daughter of hers could be less than perfect. And then Dad’s money ran out.’
She paused. This was too much information. Dumb.
She didn’t want this man’s sympathy.
Alex’s silence scared her, but she had to go on.
‘So my mother left, taking Mia with her. Dad and I muddled through as best we could. When Dad died my mother’s uncle, a man as different from my mother as it was possible to be—took me in. He was a boat-builder in Whitby in the north of England, and I learned my passion for boats from him. When he died, Spiros, my uncle’s friend, persuaded me to go to the States and work for him. So that’s what I did. My headaches were a nuisance I’d learned to live with. I made great boats. I was… content.’
‘You didn’t come to Mia’s wedding.’
‘I wasn’t invited. We’d hardly seen each other since our parents separated and, believe me, I wasn’t fussed. Would you have liked to be Mia’s bridesmaid?’
She tried a smile then, but she didn’t get one in return. His gaze made her feel he was trying to see straight through her. It left her feeling so exposed she was terrified.
Get on, she told herself. Just say it.
‘Then the headaches got worse,’ she said, trying to get to the point where Alex could stop looking… like he scared her. ‘I was getting increasingly dizzy. Increasingly sick. Finally I had tests. The doctors told me the tumour had grown. They thought… unless there was a miracle I had less than a year to live.’
His eyes widened in shock. ‘Lily!’ His hand reached out towards her but she shook her head. She stepped even further back.
No contact. Not now.
‘So I was in a mess,’ she said, trying to sound brisk and clinical and knowing by the look on his face she was failing. ‘My mother didn’t want to know about me. I didn’t want to burden Spiros. You’ve already figured his boatshed looks prosperous but it’s struggling. But I had to talk to someone. So, stupidly, I came to the palace to try to talk to Mia. I arrived just in time for the King’s celebrations to mark forty years on the throne. That’s when I met you.’
Her words had the power to change his world. That was how he felt. As if his world had shifted.
The first time they’d met they’d been surrounded by glittering royalty, the royal ball in full swing. Giorgos had been flaunting his young glamorous wife, taunting him. Telling him there was no way he’d inherit the throne.
But as his uncle had walked past Lily the King’s corset had creaked. Lily’s lips had twitched. They had, it seemed, a shared sense of the ridiculous.
Intrigued, he’d asked her to dance.
She’d laughed about the chandeliers. She’d gently mocked his tuxedo.
She’d felt like a breath of wind against his heart.
That was the start. They’d laughed and talked for two days. They’d become as close as two people could get.
That she’d had this threat hanging over her…
‘So… ’ He was struggling to find his voice.
‘So I slept with you.’ Her chin tilted upward in that wonderful, defiant way he was learning to know. ‘It was crazy, but crazy was how I felt that night. Crazy wonderful. Yes, we took precautions but maybe I wasn’t as careful as I should have been. It was like nothing was real.’
She smiled then, a real smile, with real humour. Making him remember why he’d wanted her. Making him remember why he’d thought she was different. ‘It’s okay,’ she said softly. ‘It was great that night. It was fantastic.’
He didn’t feel like smiling. ‘I wasn’t as careful as I should have been,’ she’d said. How careful had he been?
Not careful enough.
‘I got you pregnant.’
She nodded. ‘You can’t imagine how I felt when I found out. I couldn’t work. I had no money. I was having a baby and the headaches were getting more and more frequent. Nevertheless, even after I phoned you… I couldn’t consider abortion. I had tests and it was a little boy and he was so real. I wanted… I so wanted… ’
She shook her head, seemingly shaking away a memory that held nothing but despair. Moving on. ‘Well, finally I contacted Mia again,’ she whispered. ‘She gave me the same dumb line. It was my business. Not hers. But then she phoned back. Excited. It seemed Giorgos was infertile. They’d been quietly trying to arrange an adoption, but they’d so much rather it was my baby. I know her reasons now—Giorgos’s reasons. But by then I was so sick I couldn’t enquire and even if I’d known maybe I wouldn’t have cared. All I could think was that Mia would give my baby a chance of life.’
He didn’t respond. The audacity of the scheme still left him dumbfounded. Mia and Giorgos using Lily’s desperation for their own ends… How could Lily have guessed their intention?
And of course Lily had accepted their offer. It was the child’s best chance. In a royal household, she knew the baby would at least be well taken care of. Like Lily, the alternatives seemed unbearable.
He looked down at the almost sleeping Michales. His son. To not bring this little boy into the world… The child of two mature parents, conceived in what could almost be taken as love…
He thought again of the call she’d made to him in early pregnancy, and of his response, and he felt sick.
There was a drawn-out silence. Silence and silence and more silence.
She hated it. He could see it. She hated anyone knowing, but to tell him… It was making her feel exposed and frightened and very, very small.
‘But you survived?’ he said softly, finally, into the stillness.
‘So I did,’ she said humourlessly. ‘You think I’m lying?’
‘I didn’t say that.’ He shook his head. Definite. ‘My God, Lily… ’ Once again he put a hand out towards her but she backed even further. Standing against the French windows as if preparing to flee.
‘Let me finish.’ She hesitated, then forced herself to go on. ‘Part of this I’ve only heard from others,’ she said. ‘But I need to tell you. Mia and Giorgos paid for me to be admitted to a private hospital in France, a place known for its discretion. Mia arrived as I was getting really ill. I know now that her plan was to tell the people back on the Diamond Isles that she was pregnant and suffering complications. If my baby survived to term she’d take him as hers. Giorgos would bribe anyone who needed to be bribed.’
‘But how did she… ?’
‘I can’t tell you what I don’t know,’ she said bluntly. ‘I gather I ended up in a coma. I gather Michales was born. I also gather one of the nurses in the hospital became really troubled that I was lying untreated. Apparently, until Michales was born, Mia acted concerned, but after she took him I was left alone.’ She took a deep breath. ‘The nurse saved my life. She risked her job and contacted a doctor she knew who was doing groundbreaking surgery. He checked me out and figured he had nothing to lose if he tried operating. Mia had left my mother’s contact details for when I died. The surgeon contacted her for permission to operate—offering to do it for free.’ She managed a smile again. ‘Even my mother couldn’t knock that back. So finally I woke. The tumour was gone. Unbelievably gone. I had my life.’
He didn’t know what to say. He just gazed at her in awe.
‘Unreal, isn’t it?’ she said, half mocking. ‘Unbelievable. Parts of it I didn’t figure out myself until I arrived here at your coronation, and even now I’m having trouble coming to terms with it. But it’s okay. I’m not asking for belief. I’m not asking for anything. I just want to build boats and care for my son. I want to live.’
Her chin tilted forward again, pugnacious, defensive.
How could he believe such a story?
But then he thought of Mia. He’d been present at the wedding, and he remembered Mia’s mother as well. They were two of a kind. Grasping, greedy, social climbers. Flaunting their connection to the Greek royal family and to English aristocracy.
They were about as different from this woman as it was possible to be.
‘I won’t impinge on your freedom,’ he said softly and she nodded.
‘Good, then.’
‘But… no one came near you?’
‘Spiros and Eleni would have if I’d told them. I didn’t tell them.’
‘I would have if you’d let me.’
‘Would you?’
‘You can believe it. It’s true. Hell, Lily, you could have died.’
‘That’s what I expected,’ she said. ‘I guess nothing will ever be so bad again. Drifting into unconsciousness, knowing there was no return ticket. Knowing I had to leave my baby in Mia’s care.’
‘If I could get my hands on her… ’
‘There’s no joy down that road,’ she said simply. ‘Being angry just makes everything worse. Anyway… ’ she shrugged ‘… now you know. We can get on with it.’
‘With what?’
‘With our sham marriage. With doing what we have to do before I can go home.’
‘Where’s home?’
‘Where Michales is,’ she said simply. ‘I don’t care about places. I care about my baby. That’s all.’
CHAPTER TEN
SHE’D lied.
I care about my baby. That’s all. She’d known it was a lie before she’d uttered it but she wasn’t about to add her other… care.
Alex.
He looked appalled. It helped, she decided, that he looked appalled at what she’d gone through. When she let herself think about it, she was pretty appalled herself.
That he was horrified on her behalf… It did something to her insides. There was a warmth forming inside her—a glow that was starting to build.
She looked down at the bed, where he still sat holding Michales on his knee.
Her men.
Her family.
She’d never had family. Her mother had been entirely uninterested in her sickly daughter. Her father had been elderly when she was born and their relationship had been built on Lily’s role as carer. Mia simply didn’t want to be a part of her life.
But here… this man didn’t want her to care for him, she thought.
This man cared.
Um… no. He’d been horrified at an appalling story. Nothing more.
So don’t get your hopes up, she told herself severely.
Michales was starting to grizzle. After his swim and shower and feed he should be drifting into sleep.
So be a mother, she reminded herself sharply.
She lifted Michales from Alex’s arms, held him to her shoulder and rubbed his back.
He emitted one very satisfactory belch.
Alex’s brows hiked in amazement. ‘Is he supposed to do that?’
As an ice breaker it was great. The tension inside the room fizzled and died, and she found she could smile, too.
‘Better out than in, wouldn’t you say?’ She was laying Michales into his cot. He’d had a very busy day for a baby. A wedding, a reception, a first ever swim… He snuggled down, his eyes closing almost before he was tucked in.
She stood gazing down at him. When she looked up, Alex was standing beside her.
The tension zoomed in again.
‘What?’ she said, suddenly breathless.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he said on a note of discovery.
‘Yeah, dressed to kill.’ Jeans and T-shirt. Her standard uniform for life. She’d left the scarf off. Why bother?
‘Lily… ’
‘Let’s not,’ she managed.
‘Not what?’
‘Whatever you’re about to say. Like paying compliments. I don’t like it.’
‘You don’t like compliments?’
‘Mia gets the compliments. You want Mia? You need to line up behind a guy called Ben.’
‘You’re nothing like Mia.’
‘Well, there’s the truth. Can you excuse me? I need to unpack.’ She made to go past him but his hands caught her shoulders and held.
‘Lily, can we start again?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Wind the clock back,’ he said softly. ‘So we don’t have baggage between us.’
‘By baggage I guess you mean Michales.’
‘He’s very noisy baggage,’ he said and smiled as he glanced into the cot. ‘I doubt he fits the description. But in a way… he complicates things. Your illness complicates things. All sorts of things complicate… things.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Between you and me.’
‘There’s nothing… ’
‘You see, that’s where we differ.’ He moved so he had a hand on each arm. His hands were on her bare skin. They felt big and warm and sure. In his hold she suddenly felt… safe.
‘Alex, don’t,’ she murmured but still he held her, his eyes asking questions.
‘Don’t what?’
‘H-hold me.’
‘You don’t want to be held?’
‘I’m scared.’ It wasn’t true, but it was what she ought to feel. She should be running a mile. But she could give herself to him.
The idea was suddenly there, and it was so overwhelming that scared was the right description. To give herself to this man…
She’d married him, she thought, frantically trying to get her hormones under control. But to fall in love with him… To give her heart…
She already had.
Sensations were sweeping in from all sides.
And suddenly she was remembering how she’d felt during those last appalling months, as the tumour in her head had threatened to overwhelm her. She’d had times when she was dazed, confused, disoriented. The sensation of being out of control was terrifying.
Gazing at Alex now, that was how she felt. As if her body wasn’t her own. As if her head wasn’t her own.
‘Lily, what is it?’ He was gazing at her in concern. Something of what she was feeling must have shown in her face, for the grip of his hands changed. It was a subtle shift. Not a withdrawal exactly but… From the beginnings of passion, it had changed to a hold of comfort. ‘Lily, I won’t hurt you.’
‘I know you won’t.’ But here was a shift again. She didn’t want him to look like that. She didn’t want this man’s sympathy.
The night Michales had been conceived had been a night out of frame. She’d emerged from plain, frightened Lily to being someone else. She’d been seductive, wild and free.
It had been imaginary.
It had been fun.
The memory of that fun was with her now, like an itch building within. Goading her. Go on, Lily. You know you can be like that again. If you dare…
‘Alex, are you suggesting… that you want this marriage for real?’ she whispered.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I know it’s not love at first sight or anything like that,’ she said hurriedly. ‘But we’ve… we’ve got this attraction thing going.’
‘We do.’ He sounded puzzled, but laughter was replacing sympathy. Which was what she wanted—wasn’t it?
No. She wanted a serious discussion.
‘I’d prefer it if you didn’t laugh,’ she told him, and he schooled his expression to gravity.
‘Of course. I’m not laughing. So you’re saying we might be attracted to one another. I agree. So where might that be taking us?’
‘See, here’s the thing,’ she said, fighting for courage. But suddenly she was sure she was right. Mia wasn’t the only one who could fight for what she wanted, she thought. All her life she’d let events shape her course. Now… she had her life back. She had a beautiful baby, and before her was the most gorgeous prince in the known universe and he was her husband. Whatever the reason for the marriage, marriage it clearly was.
So here was the idea. What was the harm in asking for more?
‘When we made our wedding vows, did you mean any of them?’ she asked quickly, before any more qualms raised their heads.
‘You mean keeping me only unto you for as long as we both shall live?’ he asked, and the laughter in his eyes had suddenly gone. ‘Lily… ’
She hadn’t meant to get this serious; it was scary. ‘I didn’t mean that,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I wouldn’t ask that. For as long as we both shall live… This is only for a year. And you’ve known me for what—two minutes?’
‘I’ve known you for over a year.’
‘But in real time. Two days and a couple of meetings in between. Not enough to base a whole life on. But what I’m asking… ’ She faltered, fought to find the right words and then forced herself to say them. ‘It’s just the first bit. It’s the keeping yourself only unto me.’
‘Keeping myself faithful to you, do you mean?’
He had it. She nodded, relieved it was in the open. ‘That’s the one.’
‘Are you suggesting you might want to keep a couple of gigolos on the side while we’re married?’ It was said lightly but his gaze said this wasn’t a light question. His gaze was locked onto hers, as if he were trying to see inside her.
‘Of course I don’t,’ she said. Unconsciously her chin tilted again, assertive. Or trying to be assertive. Inside, she was jelly. ‘Alex, I’m willing to swear that for the whole time I’m married to you I will be faithful.’ Deep breath. Just ask, she told herself. Do it. And she did. ‘Will you do the same for me?’
And there was no hesitation at all. ‘I will,’ he said, and he might as well have said I do, there was such gravitas.
Her eyes widened. Just like that, she had his promise.
She didn’t know where to take it from here.
He was watching her, concerned now by her silence. ‘You don’t believe me?’
‘It’s just… you’re a royal prince, you could have anyone. I didn’t think you’d want to be… ’
‘Monogamous?’
‘That’s the one.’ She was practically stuttering. She felt as if she was tying herself in knots. ‘What makes you different?’
‘I wouldn’t mind seeing if it works,’ he said, so softly she thought at first she’d got it wrong. But the way he was looking at her said she had it exactly right.
I wouldn’t mind seeing if it works… That was an implication that he wanted something more than a marriage of convenience.
Don’t go there, she thought. She wasn’t ready. She wanted her freedom. Or she thought she did. Alex was… fabulous. But to be sucked into the royal goldfish bowl for ever…
Think about that later, she told herself. Later was truly scary. Think about here. Think about now.