THE
Royal HOUSE OF NIROLI

Scandalous Seductions

PENNY JORDAN

MELANIE MILBURNE

www.millsandboon.co.uk

THE
ROYAL
HOUSE OF NIROLI

SEMPRE APPASSIONATO, SEMPRE FIERO

Always passionate, always proud

The richest royal family in the world—united by blood and passion, torn apart by deceit and desire

Complete your collection with all four books!

The Royal House of Niroli: Scandalous Seductions

The Royal House of Niroli: Billion Dollar Bargains

The Royal House of Niroli: Innocent Mistresses

The Royal House of Niroli: Secret Heirs

WELCOME TO NIROLI!

Nestled in the azure blue of the Mediterranean, the majestic island of Niroli has prospered for centuries. The Fierezza men have worn the crown with passion and pride since the Middle Ages. But now, as the King’s health declines, and his two sons have been tragically killed, the crown is in jeopardy.

The clock is ticking—a new heir must be found before the King is forced to abdicate. By royal decree the internationally scattered members of the Fierezza family are summoned to claim their destiny. But any person who takes the throne must do so according to ‘The Rules of the Royal House of Niroli’. Soon secrets and rivalries emerge as the descendants of this ancient royal line vie for position and power. Only a true Fierezza can become ruler—a person dedicated to their country, their people…and their eternal love!

The Future King’s Pregnant Mistress PENNY JORDAN

CHAPTER ONE

MARCO opened his eyes, and looked at the bedside clock: three o’clock in the morning. He’d been dreaming about Niroli—and his grandfather, the king. His heart was still drumming insistently inside his chest, its beat driven by the adrenalin surges of challenge and excitement that reliving one of his past youthful arguments with his grandfather had brought him.

It had been in the aftermath of one of those arguments that Marco had made his decision to prove to himself, and to his grandfather, that he was capable of achieving success somewhere other than Niroli and without his grandfather’s influence and patronage. He had been twenty-two then. Now he was thirty-six, and he and his grandfather had long since made a peace—of a sort—even if the older man had never really understood his grandson’s refusal to change his mind about his vow to make his own way in the world. Marco had been determined that his success would come not as the grandson of the King of Niroli but via his own hard work. As simple Marco Fierezza, a young European entrepreneur, he had used his shrewd grasp of finance to become one of the City of London’s most lauded financiers and a billionaire.

In the last few years it had caused Marco a certain amount of wry amusement to note how his grandfather had turned to him for financial advice with regard to his own private wealth, whilst claiming that their blood tie absolved him of paying for Marco’s services! The truth was, his grandfather was a wily old fox who wasn’t above using whatever means he could to coerce others into doing what he wanted, often claiming that what he did was done for the good of Niroli, rather than himself.

Niroli!

Outside, the icy cold rain of London rattled against the windows of his Eaton Square apartment, and Marco felt a sudden sharp pang of longing for the beautiful Mediterranean island his family had ruled for so many generations: a sun-drenched jewel of green and gold in an aquamarine sea, from where dark volcanic mountains rose up wreathed in silvery clouds.

The same sea that had claimed the lives of his parents, he reminded himself sombrely, and which had not just robbed him of them, but also made him heir to the throne.

He had always known that ultimately he would become Niroli’s king, but he had also believed that this event lay many years away in the future, something he could safely ignore in favour of enjoying his self-created, self-ruled present. However, the reality was that what he had thought of as his distant duty was now about to become his life.

Was that knowledge the reason for the dream he’d had? After all, when it came to the relationship he would have with his grandfather if he agreed to do as King Giorgio had requested and return to Niroli to become its ruler, wasn’t there going to be an element of the prodigal male lion at the height of his powers returning to spar with the ageing pack leader? Marco knew and understood the older man very well. His grandfather might claim that he was ready to hand over the royal reins, but Marco suspected that Giorgio would still want to control whoever was holding them as much as he could. And yet, despite his awareness of this, Marco knew that the challenge of ruling Niroli and making it the country he wanted to see it become—by sweeping away the outdated and over-authoritarian structures his grandfather had put in place during his long reign—was one that excited him.

There had never been any doubt in Marco’s mind that when ultimately he came to the throne he would make changes to the government of the island that would bring it into the twenty-first century. But then he had also envisaged succeeding his gentle, mild-mannered father, rather than having his tyrannical grandfather standing at his shoulder.

Marco gave a small dismissive shrug. Unlike his late father, a scholarly, quiet man who, Marco had recognised early in his life, had been bullied unmercifully and held in contempt by the King, Marco had never allowed himself to be overwhelmed by his grandfather, even as a child. They shared a common streak of almost brutally arrogant self-belief, and it had been this that had led to the conflict between them. Now, as a mature and powerful man, there was no way Marco intended to allow anyone to question his right to do things his own way. That said, he knew that taking the throne would necessitate certain changes in his own lifestyle; there were certain royal rules he would have to obey, if only to pay lip-service to them.

One of those rules forbade the King of Niroli to marry a divorcée. Marco was in no hurry to wed, but when he did he knew he would be expected to make a suitable dynastic union with some pre-approved royal princess of unimpeachable virtue. Somehow he didn’t think that it would go down well with his subjects, or the paparazzi, if he were to be seen openly enjoying the company of a mistress, instead of dutifully finding himself a suitable consort.

He looked towards the bed where Emily lay sleeping, oblivious to what lay ahead and the fast-approaching end of their relationship. Her long blonde hair—naturally blonde, as he had good reason to know—was spread against the pillow. To Marco’s surprise, he was suddenly tempted to reach out and twine his fingers through its silken strands, knowing that his touch would wake her, and knowing too that his body was hardening with his immediate need for the intimacy of her body. That he should still desire her so fiercely and so constantly after the length of time they had been together—so very much longer than he’d spent with any woman before—astonished him. But the needs and sexual desires of Marco Fierezza could not be compared with the challenge of becoming the King of Niroli, he acknowledged with his customary arrogance.

King of Niroli.

Emily knew nothing about his connection with Niroli, or his past, and consequently she knew nothing either about his future. Why should she? What reason would there have been for him to tell her, when he had deliberately chosen to live anonymously? He had left Niroli swearing to prove to his grandfather that he could stand on his own feet and make a success of his life without using his royal position, and had quickly discovered that his new anonymity had certain personal advantages; as second in line to Niroli’s throne he had grown used to a certain type of predatory woman trying to lure him. His grandfather had warned him when he had been a teenager that he would have to be on his guard, and that he must accept he would never know whether the women who strived to share his bed wanted him for himself, or for who he was. Living in London as Marco Fierezza, rather than Prince Marco of Niroli though he was cynically aware that his combination of wealth and good looks drew the opposite sex to him, he did not attract the kind of feeding frenzy he would have done if he’d been using his royal title. Marco had no objection to rewarding his chosen lovers generously with expensive gifts and a luxurious lifestyle whilst he and they were together. He started to frown. It still irked him that Emily had always so steadfastly—and in his opinion foolishly—refused to accept the presents of jewellery he’d regularly tried to give her.

He’d told her dismissively to think of it as a bonus when she had demanded blankly, ‘What’s this for?’ after he had given her a diamond bracelet to celebrate their first month together.

Her face had gone pale and she’d looked down at the leather box containing the bracelet—a unique piece he’d bought from one of the royal jewellers—her voice as stiff as her body. ‘You don’t need to bribe me, Marco. I’m with you because I want you, not because I want what you can buy me.’

Now Marco’s frown deepened, his reaction to the memory of those words exactly as it had been when Emily had first uttered them. He could feel the same fierce, angry clenching of his muscles and surge of astounded disbelief that the woman who was enjoying the pleasure of his lovemaking and his wealth could dare to suggest that he might need to bribe her to share his bed!

He had soon put Emily in her place though, he reminded himself; his response to her had been a men-acingly silky soft, ‘No, you’ve misunderstood. After all, I already know exactly why you are in my bed and just how much you want me. The bribe, if you wish to think of it as that, is not to keep you there, but to ensure that you leave my bed speedily and silently when I’ve had enough of having you there.’

She hadn’t said anything in reply, but he had seen in her expression what she was feeling. Although he’d never been able to get her to admit to it, he was reasonably sure that her subsequent very convenient business trip, which had taken her away from him for the best part of a week, had been something she had conjured up in an attempt to get back at him. And to make him hungry for her? No woman had the power to make herself so important to him that being with her mattered more than his own iron-clad determination never to allow his emotions to control him and so weaken him. He had grown up seeing how easily his strong-willed grandfather had used his own son’s deep love for all those who were close to him to coerce, manipulate and, more often than not in Marco’s eyes, humiliate him into doing what King Giorgio wanted. Marco had seen too much to have any illusions about the value of male pride, or the strength of will over gentleness and a desire to please others. Not that Marco hadn’t loved his father; he had, so much so that as a young boy he had often furiously resented and verbally attacked his grandfather for the way the older man had treated his immediate heir.

That would never happen to him, Marco had decided then. He would allow no one, not even Niroli’s king, to dictate to him.

Marco was well aware that, despite the fact that he had often angered his grandfather with his rebellious ways, the older man held a grudging respect for him. Their pride and their tenacity were attributes they had in common, and in many ways they were alike, although Marco knew that once he was Niroli’s king there were many changes he would make in order to modernise the kingdom. Marco considered that the way his grandfather ruled Niroli was almost feudal; he’d shared his father’s belief that it was essential to give people the opportunity to run their own lives, instead of treating them as his grandfather did, like very young, unschooled children who couldn’t be trusted to make their own decisions. He had so many plans for Niroli: it was no wonder he was eager to step out of the role he had created for himself here in London to take on the mantle his birth had fated him to wear! The potential sexual frustration of being without a mistress bothered him a little but, after all, he was a mature man whose ambitions went a lot further than having a willing bed-mate with whom he would never risk making an emotional or legal commitment.

No, he wouldn’t let himself miss Emily, he assured himself. The only reason he was giving valuable mental time to thinking about the issue was his concern that she might not accept his announcement that their affair was over as calmly as he wished. He had no desire to hurt her—far from it.

He still hadn’t decided just how much he needed to tell her. He would be leaving London, of course, but he suspected that the paparazzi were bound to get wind of what was happening on Niroli, since it was ruled by the wealthiest royal family in the world.

For her own sake, Emily needed to have it made clear to her that nothing they had shared could impinge on his future as Niroli’s king. He had never really understood her steadfast refusal to accept his expensive gifts, or to allow him to help her either financially or in any other way with her small interior design business. Because he couldn’t understand it, despite the fact that they had been lovers for almost three years, Marco, being the man he was, had inwardly wondered what she might be hoping to gain from him that was worth more to her than his money. It was second nature to him not to trust anyone. Plus, he had learned from observing his grandfather and members of his court what happened to those whose natures allowed others to take advantage of them, as his own father had done.

Marco tensed, automatically shying away from the unwanted pain that thinking about his parents and their deaths could still cause him. He didn’t want to acknowledge that pain, and he certainly didn’t want to acknowledge the confused feelings he had buried so deeply: pain on his father’s behalf, guilt because he could see what his grandfather had been doing to his father and yet he hadn’t been able to prevent it, anger with his father for having been so weak, anger with his grandfather for having taken advantage of that weakness, and himself for having seen what he hadn’t wanted to see.

He and his grandfather had made their peace, his father was gone, he himself was a man and not a boy any more. It was only in his dreams now that he sometimes revisited the pain of his past. When he did, that pain could be quickly extinguished in the raw passion of satisfying his physical desire for Emily.

But what about the time when Emily would no longer be there? Why was he wasting his time asking himself such foolish questions? Ultimately he would find himself another mistress, no doubt via a discreet liaison with the right kind of woman, perhaps a young wife married to an older husband, though not so young that she didn’t understand the rules, of course. He might even, if Emily had been sensible enough, have thought about providing her with the respectability of marriage to some willing courtier in order that they carry on their affair, once he became King of Niroli. But, Marco acknowledged, the very passion that made her such a responsive lover also meant she was not the type who would adapt to the traditional role of royal mistress.

Emily would love Niroli, an island so beautiful and fruitful that ancient lore had said Prometheus himself caused it to rise up from the sea bed so that he could bestow it on mankind.

When Marco thought of the place of his birth, his mental image was one of an island bathed in sunlight, an island so richly gifted by the gods that it was little wonder some legends had referred to it as an earthly paradise.

But where there was great beauty there was also terrible cruelty, as was true of so many legends. The gods had often exacted a terrible price from Niroli for their gifts.

He pushed back the duvet, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to sleep now. His body was lean and powerful, magnificently drawn, as though etched by one of the great masters, in the charcoal shadows of the moonlight as he left the bed and padded silently toward the window.

The wind had picked up and was lashing rain against the windows, bending the bare branches of the trees on the street outside. Marco was again transported back to Niroli, where violent storms often swept over the island, whipping up its surrounding seas. The people of Niroli knew not to venture out during the high tides that battered the volcanic rock cliffs of a mountain range so high and so inaccessible in parts that even today it still protected and concealed the bandit descendants of Barbary pirates who long ago had invaded the island. In fact, the fierce seas sucking deep beneath the cliffs had honeycombed them into underwater caves and weakened the rock so that whole sections of it had fallen away. The gales that stirred the seas also tore and ripped at the ancient olive trees and the grapevines on the island, as though to punish them because their harvest had already been plucked to safety.

As a boy Marco had loved to watch the wind savage the land far below the high turrets of the royal castle. He would kneel on the soft padded seating beneath an ancient stone window embrasure, excited by the danger of the storm, wanting to go out and accept the challenge it threw at him. But he had never been allowed to go outside and play as other children did. Instead, at his grandfather’s insistence, he’d had to remain within the castle walls, learning about his family’s past and his own future role as the island’s ultimate ruler.

Inside Marco’s head, images he couldn’t control were starting to form, curling wraithlike from his childhood memories. It had always been his grandfather and not his parents who had dictated the rules of his childhood, and who’d seen that they were imposed on him…

‘Marco, come back to bed. It’s cold without you.’ Emily’s voice was soft and slow, warm, full and sweet with promise, like the fruit of Niroli’s vines at the time of harvest, when the grapes lay heavily beneath the sun swollen with ripe readiness and with implicit invitation.

He turned round. He had woken her after all. Emily ran her small interior design business from a small shop-cum-office just off London’s Sloane Street. Marco had known from the moment he first saw her at a PR cocktail party that he’d wanted her, and that he’d intended to have her. And he’d made sure that she’d known it too. Marco was used to getting his own way, to claiming his right to direct the course of his own life, even if that meant imposing his will on those who would oppose him. This was an imperative for him, one he refused to be swayed from. He had quickly elucidated that Emily was a divorced woman with no children, and that had made her pattern-card perfect for the role of his mistress. If he had known then her real emotional and sexual history, he knew that he would not have pursued her. But, by the time he had discovered the truth, his physical desire for her had been such that it had been impossible for him to reject her.

He looked towards her now, feeling that desire gripping him again and fighting against it as he had fought all his life against anything or anyone who threatened to control him.

‘Marco, something’s wrong. What is it?’

Where had it come from, this unwanted ability she seemed to possess of sensing what she could not possibly be able to know? The year his parents died, the storms had come early to Niroli. Marco could remember how when he had first received the news, even before he had said anything, she had somehow guessed that something was wrong. However,whilst she might be intuitive where his feelings were concerned, Emily hadn’t yet been shrewd or suspicious enough to make the connection between the announcement of his parents’ deaths and the news in the media about the demise of the next in line to the Niroli throne. He remembered how hurt she had looked when he’d informed her that he would be attending his mother and father’s funeral without her, but she hadn’t said a word. Maybe because she hadn’t wanted to provoke a row that might have led to him ending their affair, the reason she didn’t want it to end being that, for all her apparent lack of interest in his money, she had to be well aware of what she would lose financially if their relationship came to a close. It was, in Marco’s opinion, impossible for any woman to be as unconcerned about the financial benefits of being his mistress as Emily affected to be. It was as his grandfather had warned him: the women who thronged around him expected to be lavishly rewarded with expensive gifts and had no compunction about making that plain.

Under cover of the room’s darkness, Emily grimaced to hear the note of pleading in her own voice. Why, when she despised herself so much for what she was becoming, couldn’t she stop herself? Was she destined always to have relationships that resulted in her feeling insecure?

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ Marco told her. There was a note in his voice that made her body tense and her emotions flinch despite everything she was trying to do not to let that happen. The trouble was that once you started lying to yourself on an almost hourly, never mind daily, basis about the reality of your relationship, once you started pretending not to notice or care about being the ‘lesser’ partner, about not being valued or respected enough, you entered a place where the strongest incentive was not to seek out the truth but rather to hide from it. But she had no one but herself to blame for her current situation, she reminded herself.

She had known right from the start what kind of man Marco was, and the type of relationship he wanted with her. The problem was that she had obviously known Marco’s agenda rather better than she had understood her own. Although she tried not to do so, sometimes when she was feeling at her lowest—times like now—she couldn’t stop herself from giving in to the temptation of fantasising about how Marco could be different: he would not be so fabulously wealthy or arrogantly sexy that he could have any woman he wanted, but instead he’d be just an ordinary man with ordinary goals—a happy marriage, a wife… Her heart kicked heavily, turning over in a slow grind of pain. She thought of children—theirs—and it turned over again, the pain growing more intense.

Why, why, why had she been such a fool and fallen in love with Marco? He had made it plain from the start what he wanted from her and what he would give her back in return, and love had never been part of the deal. But then, way back when, she had never imagined that she would fall for him. At the beginning, she had wanted Marco so much, she had been happy to go along with a purely sexual relationship, for as long as he wanted her.

No, she had no one but herself to blame for the constant pain she was now having to endure, the deceit she was having to practise and the fear that haunted her: one day soon Marco would sense that deceit and leave her. She loathed herself so much for her own weakness and for not having the guts to acknowledge her love or take the consequences of walking away from him, through the inevitable fiery consuming pain. But, who knew? Maybe walking away from Marco would have a phoenix-like effect on her and allow her to find freedom as a new person. She was such a coward, though, that she couldn’t take that step. Hadn’t someone once said that a brave man died only once but a coward died a thousand times? So it was for her. She knew that she ought to leave and deal with her feelings, but instead she stayed and suffered a thousand hurtful recognitions every day of Marco’s lack of love for her.

But he desired her, and she couldn’t bring herself to give up the fragile hope that maybe, just maybe, things would change, and one day he would look at her and know that he loved her, that one day he would allow her to access that part of himself he guarded with such ferocity and tell her that he wanted them to be together for ever.

CHAPTER TWO

THAT was Emily’s dream. But the reality was, recently, she’d felt as if they were growing further apart rather than closer. She’d told herself yesterday morning she would face her fear. She took a deep breath.

‘Marco, I’ve always been open and…and honest with you.’ It was no good, she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t make herself ask him that all-important question: ‘Do you want to end our relationship?’ And, besides, she hadn’t always been honest with him, had she? She hadn’t told him, for instance, that she had fallen in love with him. Her heart gave another painful lurch.

Marco was watching her, his head inclined towards her. He wore his thick dark hair cut short, but not so short that she couldn’t run her fingers through it, shaping the hard bone beneath it as she held him to her when they made love. There was just enough light for her to see the gleam in his eyes, as though he’d guessed the direction her thoughts had taken and knew how much she wanted him. Marco had the most piercingly direct look she’d ever known. He’d focused it on her the night they’d met, when she had tried to cling to reason and rationality, instead of letting herself be blatantly seduced by a pair of tawny-brown predator’s eyes…

Emily knew she should make her stand now and demand an explanation for the change she could sense in Marco, but her childhood made it difficult for her to talk openly about her emotions. Instead she hid them away behind locked doors of calm control and self-possession. Was it because she was afraid of what might happen if she allowed her real feelings to get out of control? Because she was afraid of bringing the truth out into the open? Something was wrong. Marco had changed: he had become withdrawn and preoccupied. There was no way she could pretend otherwise. Had he grown tired of her? Did he want to end their relationship? Wouldn’t it be better, wiser, more self-respecting, if she challenged him to tell her the truth? Did she really think that if she ignored her fears they would simply disappear?

‘You say that you’ve always been open and honest with me, Emily, but that isn’t the truth, is it?’

Emily’s heart somersaulted with slow, sickening despair. He knew? Somehow he had guessed what she was thinking and—almost as bad—she could see he was spoiling for an argument… because that would give him an excuse to end things.

‘Remember the night I took you to dinner and you told me about your marriage? Remember how “open” you were with me then—and what you didn’t tell me?’ Marco recalled sarcastically.

Emily couldn’t speak. A mixture of relief and anguish filled her. Her marriage! All this time she had thought—believed—that Marco had understood the scars her past had inflicted on her, but now she realised that she had been wrong. ‘It wasn’t deliberate, you know that,’ she told him, fighting not to let her voice tremble. ‘I didn’t deliberately hold back anything.’ Why was he bringing that up now? she wondered. Surely he wasn’t planning to use it as an excuse to get rid of her? He wasn’t the kind of man who needed an excuse to do anything, she told herself. He was too arrogant to feel he needed to soften any blows he had to deliver.

Marco looked away from Emily, irritated with himself for saying what he had. Why had he brought up her marriage now, when the last thing he wanted was the danger involved in the sentimentality of looking back to the beginning of their relationship? But it was too late, he was already remembering…

He had taken Emily to dinner, setting the scene for how he had hoped the evening would end by telling her coolly how much he wanted to make love to her and how pleased he was that she was a woman of the world, with a marriage behind her and no children to worry about.

‘Just out of interest,’ he’d quizzed her, ‘what was the reason for your divorce?’ If there was anything in her past, he wanted to know about it before things went any further.

For a moment he thought that she was going to refuse to answer him. But then her eyes widened slightly and he knew that she had correctly interpreted his question, without him having to spell it out to her. She clearly knew that if she did refuse, their relationship would be over before it had properly begun.

When she finally began to speak, she surprised him with the halting, almost stammering way in which she hesitated and then fiddled nervously with her cutlery, suddenly looking far less calm and in control than he had previously seen her. Her face was shadowed with anxiety and he assumed that the cause of the breakdown in her marriage must have been related to something she had done—such as being unfaithful to her husband. The last thing he expected to hear was what she actually told him. So much so, in fact, that he was tempted to accuse her of lying, but something he saw in her eyes stopped him.

Now Marco shifted his weight from one foot to the other, remembering how shocked he’d been by the unexpected and unwilling compassion he had felt for her as she’d struggled to overcome her reluctance to talk about what was obviously a painful subject…

‘I lost my parents in a car accident when I was seven and I was brought up by my widowed paternal grandfather,’ she told him.

‘He wasn’t unkind to me, but he wasn’t a man who was comfortable around young children, especially not emotional young girls. He was a retired Cambridge University academic, very gentle and very unworldly. He read the classics to me as bedtime stories. He knew so much about literature but, although I didn’t realise it at the time, very little about life. My upbringing with him was very sheltered and protected, very restricted in some ways, especially when I reached my early teens and his health started to deteriorate.

‘Gramps’ circle of friends was very small, a handful of elderly fellow academics, and…and Victor.’

‘Victor?’ Marco probed, hearing the hesitation in her voice.

‘Yes. Victor Lewisham, my ex-husband. He had been one of Gramps’ students, before becoming a university lecturer himself.’

‘He must have been considerably older than you?’ Marco guessed.

‘Twenty years older,’ Emily agreed, nodding her head. ‘When it became obvious that my grandfather’s health was deteriorating, he told me that Victor had agreed to look after me after…in his place. Gramps died a few weeks after that. I was in my first year at university then, and, even though I’d known how frail he was, somehow I hadn’t…I wasn’t prepared. Losing him was such a shock. He was all I had, you see, and so when Victor proposed to me and told me that it was what Gramps would have wanted, I…’ She ducked her head and looked away from Marco and then said in a low voice, ‘I should have refused, but somehow I just couldn’t imagine how I would manage on my own. I was so afraid…such a coward.’

‘So it was a marriage of necessity?’ Marco shrugged dismissively. ‘Was he good in bed?’

It continued to irk Marco to have to admit that his direct and unsubtle challenge to Emily had sprung from a sudden surge of physical jealousy that the thought of her with another man had aroused. But then sexual jealousy wasn’t an emotion he’d ever previously had to deal with. Sex was sex, a physical appetite satisfied by a physical act. Emotions didn’t come into it and he had never seen why they should. He still didn’t. And he still had no idea what had made him confront her like that, or what had driven such an out-of-character fury at the thought of her with another man, even though she had had yet to become his. It had caught him totally off guard when he had seen the sudden shimmer of suppressed tears in her eyes. At first he’d wanted to believe they were caused by her grief at the breakdown of her marriage, but to his shock, she had told him quietly:

‘Our marriage…our relationship, in fact, was never physically consummated.’

Marco remembered how he had struggled not to show his astonishment, perhaps for the first time in his life recognising that what he had needed to show wasn’t the arrogant disbelief so often evinced by his grandfather, but instead restraint and patience, to give her time to explain. Which was exactly what she had done, once she had silently checked that he wasn’t going to refuse to believe her.

‘I was too naïve to realise at first that Victor making no attempt to approach me sexually might not be a. because of gentlemanly consideration for my inexperience,’ she continued. ‘And then even after we were married—I didn’t want him, you see, so it was easy for me not to question why he didn’t want to make love to me. If I hadn’t lived such a sheltered life, and I’d spent more time with people my own age, things would probably have been different, and I’d certainly have been more aware that something wasn’t right. But as it was, it wasn’t until I…I found him in bed with someone else that I realised—’

‘He had a mistress,’ Marco interrupted her, his normal instinct to question and probe reasserting itself.

There was just the merest pause before she told him quietly, ‘He had a lover, yes. A male lover,’ she emphasised shakily.

‘I should have guessed, of course, and I suspect poor Victor thought that I had. He treated me very much as a junior partner in our relationship, like a child whom he expected to revere him and accept his superiority. For me to find him in bed with one of his young students was a terrible blow to his pride. He couldn’t forgive me for blundering in on them, and the only way I could forgive myself for being so foolish was to insist that we divorce. At first he was reluctant to agree. He belonged more to my grandfather’s generation than to his own, I suspect. He couldn’t come to terms with his sexuality, which was why he had tried to conceal it within a fake marriage. He refused to say why he couldn’t be open about his sexual nature. He got very angry when I tried to talk to him about it and suggested that, for his own sake, he should accept himself. The truth was, as I quickly learned, that to others his sexuality was not the secret he liked to think. There was no valid reason why he should have hidden it, but he was just that kind of man.

‘I’d been left a bit of money by my grandfather, so I came to London and got a job. I’d always been interested in interior design, so I went back to college to get my qualifications and then a couple of years ago, after working for someone else’s studio, I set up in business on my own. I wanted a fresh start and to get away from people who had known…about Victor. They must have thought me such a fool for not realising. I felt almost as though I was some kind of freak… Married, but not married.’

‘And a virgin?’ Marco added.

‘Yes,’ Emily agreed, before continuing, ‘I wanted to be somewhere where no one was going to make assumptions about me because of my marriage.’

Their food arrived before Marco had the chance ask her about the man whom he assumed must have eventually taken her virginity. But he wondered about him. And envied him?

Marco frowned now, not wanting to remember the fierce sense of urgency to make Emily totally his that had filled him then and that had continued to hold him in its grip even when he had ultimately possessed her.

He walked back to the bed whilst Emily watched him, her heart thumping unsteadily into her ribs. They had been lovers for almost three years, but Marco still had the same effect on her as he had done the first time she had seen him; the impact of his male sexuality was such that it both enthralled and overwhelmed her, even now when she could feel the pain of the emotional gulf between them almost as strongly as she felt her own desire. When they had first met, she had immediately craved him, though she hadn’t known then that her desire for him would enslave her emotionally as well as physically. And if she had, would she have behaved differently? Would she still have turned on the heels of those expensive Gina shoes she’d been wearing and have tip-tapped away from him as fast as she could?

Emily was glad of the night’s shadows to conceal the pain in her eyes—a pain that would betray her if Marco saw it. It had been just before Christmas when she had first noticed that he’d seemed irritated and preoccupied, retreating into himself and excluding her. She had thought at first he must have some big business deal going down, but now she was beginning to fear that the source of his discontent might be her and their relationship. If his withdrawal had begun in the months immediately after the accident in which Marco had lost both his parents, she might have been able to tell herself that it was his grief that was responsible. After all, even a man who prided himself on being as unemotional as Marco did was bound to suffer after such a traumatic event. However, the first thing he had done on his return was take her to bed, without saying a word about either the funeral or his family, making love to her fiercely and almost compulsively.

Marco had rarely talked to her about his childhood, and never about his family. That had suited her perfectly at first. She had looked on her relationship with him initially as a necessary transition for her from naïveté to experience, a much-needed bridge across the chasm dividing her past from her future, her passport to a new life and womanhood. Because even then she had hoped that, one day, she would find a true partner: a man with whom she could share her life; a man to whom she could give her love as freely as he would give his to her; a man with whom she could have children.

But how foolish she had been, how recklessly unaware of the danger she had been placing herself in. It had simply never occurred to her then that she might fall in love with Marco! He had been totally open with her about the way he lived his life and what he looked for in his relationships: whilst they were together she could rely on his total fidelity, but once their relationship was over, it would be over, full stop. He wanted no emotional commitment from her nor should she expect one from him. And most important of all, she must not get pregnant.

‘But what if there’s an accident and…?’ she asked him uncertainly.

He stopped her immediately

‘There will not be any accidents,’ he told her bluntly. ‘With modern methods of contraception, there is no reason why there should be an accident—if you have any reason to suspect there may have been, then you must ensure that the situation is rectified without any delay.’

She wanted him too much to allow herself to admit how shocked she was by his cold-hearted attitude. Instead, she told herself that it didn’t really matter, since she wanted to wait to have her children until she had found the right father for them and the right man for her.

Marco had pursued her so relentlessly and determinedly and she had wanted him so badly that the truth was whatever doubts she might have had had been totally overwhelmed by the sexual excitement they generated between them. For the first time in her life she knew the true meaning of the word ‘lust’. Her every waking thought—and most of her dreams too—were of him and what it was going to be like when he took her to bed.

Thanks to the kindness of her first employer, who had passed on to her some of his clients when she had started up on her own, she had established a good and profitable business, which earned her enough to enable her to visit one of London’s more exclusive lingerie shops in search of the kind of discreetly provocative underwear her fevered imagination hoped would delight and excite Marco. Within a week of meeting him, she had taken to wearing the seductively skimpy bits of silk and lace to work, just in case Marco appeared and insisted on taking her to his apartment to consummate their relationship. It made her smile now to remember how sensually brave she had felt. And the things she had imagined might happen.

Her fevered imaginings had come nowhere near to matching the reality of her reaction to Marco’s skilled lovemaking. He had undressed her slowly and expertly, in her pretty bedroom in her small Chelsea house, almost teasing her by making her quivering body wait for his touch. And then, even when he had finally touched her, his caresses had been tantalisingly—tormentingly—light, the merest brush of fingertips and lips, which had fed her longing for something darker and far more intimate. Just thinking about it now was enough to make her heart turn over inside her chest and make her go weak with longing for him. She remembered how she had tried to show him her impatience, but Marco had refused to be hurried. His lips had teased the tight flesh of her nipples, and his fingers had brushed her belly and then stroked lightly against her thighs whilst she had sighed with arousal. His hand had parted her thighs, his fingers stroking over her sex, his touch making her want to moan out aloud with hunger.

He had just begun to kiss her more passionately when the telephone beside her bed had begun to ring. Idiotically she had answered it, only to discover that the caller was one of her more difficult clients who wanted to discuss her idea for a new makeover. By the time she had got rid of the client, Marco had got dressed, smiling urbanely at her, but making it clear that he was not going to take second place to her business.

The incident had shown her that he would always have it his way and she had not made the same mistake again. Or had her mistake been in tailoring her working life around him? That hadn’t been just for his benefit though; she had wanted to make room in her life for him. Something deep inside her, which she had only recently begun to recognise, was showing her that she was the kind of woman who secretly longed to be the hub of her family, both as a wife and a mother. She didn’t want to be on the other side of the world helping a client to choose the right paint shade for her new décor, leaving her partner to come home from work to an empty house and an empty bed. When she did marry and have children, she wanted to be the one those children ran to with their small everyday triumphs and hurts. She enjoyed her work, and she was proud of the ways in which she had built up her business, but she knew that it was the pleasure of creating a happy environment for those she loved that truly motivated her, rather than the excitement of a large bank balance.

Nonetheless, Marco was the kind of man who enjoyed a challenge, and it had made her feel a bit better when, later, he’d admitted how much he had ached for her that night. It could not have been any more than she had ached for him, she knew. Less than three months after they had first met he had asked her to move in with him. And then they’d had their first quarrel, when she had discovered that he’d expected her to give up her business, saying imperiously that he would give her an allowance that would more than compensate her for any loss of income.

‘I want to be with you,’ she told him fiercely. ‘But I will not give up my financial independence, Marco. I don’t want your money.’

‘So what do you want?’ he demanded, almost suspiciously.

‘You,’ she told him simply, and their quarrel was forgotten, as he was appeased by her bold request—or so she had thought. It was only later she had learned that, far from respecting her for refusing his money and his expensive gifts, he was both suspicious of her and slightly contemptuous. Perhaps if she had heeded the warning that knowledge had given her, she would not be in the situation she was now.

CHAPTER THREE

THEY had shared such wonderful months. Marco worked hard, but he believed in enjoying the good things in life as well. He had the air of someone who was used to the best of everything. But whilst sometimes she had deplored his inbuilt arrogance, and had teased him gently about it, Emily admitted that she’d enjoyed the new experiences to which he’d introduced her. Marco had taken her out several times a week but, best of all, as a lover he hadn’t just fulfilled her fantasies, he had exceeded them and then taken her with him to realms of sexual discovery and delight she had never imagined existed.

Within weeks of them becoming lovers she had been so exquisitely sensually aware of him that just the touch of his hand on her arm, or the look in his eyes when he’d needed her to know that he wanted her, had been enough to have her answering with a look of her own that said, ‘Please take me to bed.’ Not that they had always made it to a bed. Marco was a demanding and masterful lover who enjoyed leading the way and introducing her to new pleasures, sometimes taking her quickly and erotically in venues so nearly public that she blushed guiltily af-terwards when she remembered, sometimes ensuring their lovemaking lasted all night—or most of the day. And she had been an eager pupil, wanting him more as time went by, rather than less, as her own sexuality and confidence grew under his expert guidance.

The first Christmas they had shared together, Marco had given her a beautiful three-carat diamond, which he had told her she could have set in the ring design of her choice. Emily knew that it had surprised him when she’d asked him instead to make a donation to her favourite children’s charity.

Marco hadn’t said anything, but on her birthday he had taken her away to a romantic hideaway and made love to her until she had cried with joy. He had then presented her with a pair of two-carat diamond ear-studs, telling her, ‘I have sent a cheque of equivalent value to your charity.’

It had been then that she had realised that she had done the unforgivable and fallen in love with him!

Yes, how very foolish she had been to do that. He was back in their bed now, but lying with his back to her. Outside, the gale that had begun to blow earlier last evening hurled itself against the windows as the storm increased in force.

Normally, the knowledge that she was safe and warm inside whilst outside ice-cold rain sleeted down would have given her a feeling of delicious security, especially if she was wrapped up tightly in Marco’s arms. But of course she wasn’t. Was he tiring of her?

Marco could hear Emily breathing softly behind him. His body craved the release physically possessing her would bring, and why shouldn’t he have it? he asked himself. He had already decided on the financial amount he was prepared to give Emily in recognition of the time they had spent together—a very generous one. So generous that he felt justified now in thinking that he might as well continue to enjoy her. He couldn’t entirely get his head around the fact that he wanted Emily still, when other women who had shared his bed before her—women who had been so much more experienced and sexually enterprising—had bored him so quickly. It surprised him even more that he had actually grown to want her company away from bed, to the extent of talking to her about his business, and allowing her to persuade him to make donations to her precious charity. He had scarcely even been able to believe it at first when he had found out how much of her modest income she gave to helping a foundation set up to help London’s deprived children and teenagers. Emily would not approve of his grandfather’s refusal to do anything to help the least wealthy of Niroli’s people; King Giorgio did not see the sense of educating the poor to expect more out of life than he felt the island could give them.

No, Emily was definitely not suitable material as the King of Niroli’s mistress. But, of course, he was not yet King. Purposefully Marco moved, swiftly reaching for her, briefly studying the outline of her figure, the curve of her breast making him remember how perfectly its softness fitted into his cupped hand. As always, the strongly sensual core of his nature reacted to Emily’s nearness. He might have already made love with her a thousand times and more during their relationship, but that couldn’t dim the fierce desire he felt now. Some-where deep down within himself he registered the potential danger of such a compulsion and then dismissed it. He intended to end his affair with her before he left for Niroli. He’d make sure that no vestige of longing for her would cling to his memory or his senses; he was determined she would be easily replaced in his bed. If his body recognised something in her that was particularly enjoyable, that did not mean that he was in danger of craving her for ever. He relaxed as he dismissed as ludicrous the notion that he was at any kind of risk from his desire for her.

The moment Marco touched her, Emily could feel her body becoming softly compliant, outwardly and inwardly, where it tightened and ached, the desire for him that never left her ramping up with a swift familiarity. Marco pushed back the bedclothes; a thin beam of moonlight silvered her breast, plucking sensually at her nipple and tightening it for his visual appreciation and enjoyment. He traced its circle of light, making her shiver with pleasure whilst her back began to arch in an age-old symbolic female gesture of enticement in offering her flesh to her lover.

Marco’s hands tightened on Emily’s slender form. She looked up at him, her eyes wide with arousal and excitement as she reached up to him. All that mattered to him right now was his possession of her, his pleasure found in witnessing her ecstasy as he took her and filled her, losing himself in her and taking her with him. His need pounded through him, obliterating everything else. He pushed aside her hair and kissed the side of her neck where he knew his touch reduced her to quivering delight, his hands cupping her breasts, kneading them erotically, his erection already stiff against her thigh where he had locked her to him with one out-flung leg.

Emily smiled to herself. Sex to Marco meant physically claiming every bit of her. Even when he kissed her casually, he liked to have her body in full contact with his. Not that she minded. Not one little bit! She loved the possessive sensuality of his desire for her. It was only in his arms, here like this, that she was truly able to let her real feelings have their head, instead of fighting to preserve the protective air of calm control she normally used to conceal them. When he made love to her, Marco never held back from showing her his passion for her, which, in turn, allowed her to set free her equally passionate longing for him. There was sometimes something almost pagan in the way they made love that secretly sometimes half shocked her. Always attuned to Marco’s moods, tonight she sensed an urgency about him that added an extra edge to her own growing sexual tension. She gave a soft whimper as his mouth took the silvered ache of her nipple and his hand accepted the invitation of her open legs.

Once in their early days as lovers, sensing her uncertainty and slight awkwardness with her own sexuality, he had relaxed her with an evening of champagne and slow lovemaking, before coaxing her to let him position both of them where she could see the reflection of their naked bodies in a mirror. Then carefully, and with breathtakingly deliberate sensuality, he had revealed to her the mysteries of her own sex, showing her its desire-swollen and flushed outer lips, caressing them so that she could see her body’s reaction to his touch, sliding his fingertip the whole length of her wetness before focusing on the tight, excited and oh-so-sexually-sensitive flesh of her clitoris. He had brought her to orgasm there in full view of her own half-shocked, half-excited gaze.

But she’d had her own sweet revenge later, turning the tables on him by exploring him with shamelessly avid hands and lips, spreading apart his heavily muscled male thighs so that she could know the reality of his sex with every one of her senses.

Now, as his fingers probed her wetness, she rose up eager to accept their gift of pleasure. But, for once, he didn’t seem inclined to draw out their love-play, instead suddenly groaning and reaching for her, covering her and thrusting powerfully and compulsively into her, as though he couldn’t get enough of her, driving them both higher, deeper, closer to the sanctuary that waited for them.

Instinctively Emily clung to him, riding the storm with him, welcoming him and sharing its turbulence.

Marco could feel an unfamiliar urgency possessing him and compelling him, demanding that he thrust harder and deeper. Emily shuddered beneath the intensity of his passion, immediately responsive to it. Her nails raked his back where his flesh lay tightly against his muscles, inciting him to fill her and complete her. The sensation of the tight heat of her wetness as it gripped and caressed him flooded everything but his ability to respond to her sensual urging from his mind. A primitive need surged through him. It had been some time since he’d last used a condom when they had sex; their relationship was of a long enough duration for him to know that there were no health reasons for him to do so, and that Emily was on the pill. Also, he knew how much she herself loved the skin-on-skin contact of their meshing bodies.

Was Marco aware of how deeply he was penetrating her, Emily wondered dizzily, or how intense and primeval a pleasure it was for her, as surges of sensation built, promising her orgasm? Did he know that when he came he would spill so very close to her womb? Did he know how much she wanted him; how much she ached now, right now, for him? She gave a low soft, almost tormented cry as her orgasm began, clutching at Marco, her head thrown back in pagan ecstasy as her pleasure shuddered through her, only to intensify into a second spiral of even greater intensity that shook her in its grip and melted her bones as Marco came hotly inside her.

Emily blinked fiercely. What they had just shared had been incredibly close and physically satisfying. Emotional tears slid down her face. Surely it wasn’t possible for Marco to make love to her like this and not be in love with her? Perhaps the change she had sensed in him was because he was falling in love with her and he was reluctant to admit it? Tenderness for him, and for the vulnerability she knew he would never admit to, stole through her. She snuggled closer to him, warmed by his body and the intimacy they had shared, and most of all by the glow of the hope growing inside her. She would teach him that their love would make him stronger, not weaker; she would show him, as she’d tried to do all along, that he was what mattered to her and not the things he could give her. Marco had never told her why he was so adamant that love wasn’t something he believed in or wanted, and she assumed that it must be because as a very young man he had been badly hurt and had vowed never to fall in love again. In a man as proud as Marco, such a wound would go very deep. Although people had been quick to gossip to her about him when she’d first met him, and about the stream of glamorous women who’d graced his arm and his bed before her, no one seemed to know much about his life before he had come to London. Marco was fiercely protective of his past and his privacy, and Emily had learned very early on in their relationship how shuttered he could be when she tried to get him to open up to her. So, it had to mean something that they were still together, Emily told herself sleepily. Why shouldn’t that something be that he had fallen in love with her without even realising it?

CHAPTER FOUR

‘AND I want the whole place to—y’know—like be totally me. So there’ll have to be plenty of pink and loads of open-plan storage for my shoes. All my fans know that I’m a total shoe-freak.’

Emily was finding it a struggle to focus on what her latest client was saying, and not just because the reality-TV star’s views on how she wanted her apartment designed and decorated were depressingly banal, she admitted.

The truth was that her normal professionalism and love of her work had in recent weeks become shadowed by her almost constant tiredness and bouts of sickness that had to be the legacy of a virus that she didn’t seem to have entirely thrown off.

The reality-TV star was pouting and looking impatiently at her watch.

‘Do we have to do this?’ she asked the PR executive who was ‘minding’ her. ‘I thought you said that I’d be doing a TV documentary about me designing my new apartment, not doing boring stuff like listening to some decorator.’

Whilst the PR girl attempted to soothe her charge, Emily moved discreetly out of earshot. Marco had left early this morning for his office whilst she had still been asleep, leaving her a scrawled note on the kitchen counter to say that he had some work he needed to catch up on. There was nothing particularly unusual in his early start. As an entrepreneur he often needed to be at his desk while the Far-Eastern financial markets were dealing. But today, for some reason, Emily was conscious of a deep-rooted emotional need to see him, be with him. Why? Surely not just because he had left without waking her to give her a good-morning kiss? A little rueful, she shook her head over her own neediness, determined to dismiss it. But it refused to go away, if anything sharpening so that it became a fierce ache of anxious longing. She looked at her watch. It was almost lunchtime. In the early stages of their relationship before Marco had told her that he wanted her to move in with him, she had, with some trepidation, and with what she had considered to be great daring, taken him up on what she had believed to be a casual invitation to drop in on him if she was ever passing by his office. Emily’s heart started to go faster in a sudden flurry of excited little beats, the grating sound of the TV star’s voice fading, as she recalled how she had taken him up on his offer.

Marco’s initial greeting of her had not been welcoming. ‘You were beginning to annoy me with the way you’ve been deliberately keeping me waiting,’ he told her flatly, after his secretary had shown her into his office and then discreetly left them alone together. ‘In fact you were beginning to annoy me so much that if you left it another day to visit, you wouldn’t have got past my receptionist,’ he added arrogantly.

His verbal attack stunned her into a bewildered silence, which had her shaking her head in mute protest.

‘If you think that by holding me off, and making me wait, you’ll—’

‘Why on earth should I do that?’ Emily interrupted him, too shocked by his accusations to recognise what she was giving away until she saw the satisfaction gleaming in his eyes and he came towards her saying softly,

‘Well, in that case, we’ve got some catching up to do, haven’t we?’ When he took hold of her hands and drew her towards him, she was trembling so much with arousal and excitement that he smiled again. Not that he wasn’t equally turned on; he told her with sexy intent in between his kisses how much he wanted her and what that wanting was doing to him.

If his telephone hadn’t rung, Emily suspected that she would have let him make love to her there and then in his office. She certainly hadn’t tried to stop him when he had unfastened her blouse and peeled back the lace of her bra, exposing her breast to his glitteringly erotic gaze and the skilled touch of his hand. His lips had been on its creamy slope when his phone had rung. She had tried to straighten her clothes as he’d answered the call, but he had stopped her, very deliberately tracing the tight excitement of her nipple with one lazy fingertip whilst he’d spoken to his caller. Emily could feel her body tightening now as she remembered the effect the highly charged atmosphere between them had had on her, and the contrast between the calm, businesslike tone of his voice and the deliberately sensual way in which he had been touching her. By the time he had finished his call she had been aching with longing for him to take their intimacy to its natural conclusion, but instead he had released her, fastening her top and then saying calmly,

‘Come on, let’s go out and have some lunch.’

She hadn’t known him well enough then, of course, to realise that his deliberate arousal of her had been his way of punishing her for what he believed had been her attempt to control their relationship, and him.

Those had been such achingly sweet times, when they had first met. Suddenly she yearned to recapture them. Impulsively,she went over to the PR girl and told her firmly, ‘I’m afraid I have to go. You’ve got my e-mail address if you need to contact me.’ Emily suspected from the look the TV star was giving her that she wasn’t going to get any commission for this project. But then, she told herself, right now being with Marco was more important to her than anything.

Marco stood beside his desk in the sleek modern office suite where he conducted his global financial affairs. When he had left Niroli vowing to make his own mark in the world without his royal status, his grandfather had laughed at him and warned him that he would be back within six months with his tail between his legs. He could have been, Marco admitted: at twenty-two, his belief in his own abilities had been far greater than his financial astuteness; initially he had lost money as he’d played the international stock markets. But, just when he had begun to fear the worst, his mother’s great aunt had died in Italy, leaving him a substantial amount of money. A second stroke of luck had led him to come to the attention of one of the City’s richest entrepreneurs, who had taken Marco under his wing, teaching him to use his skills and hone his killer financial instincts. Within a year, Marco had doubled his inheritance, and within five years he had become a billionaire in his own right.

Emily had designed Marco’s office for him. On the traditional partners’ desk she had given him as a birthday gift, there was a silver-framed photograph of the two of them, taken on the anniversary of their first year together, before the death of his parents. Marco now studied it: he saw Emily looking up at him, her expression filled with laughter and desire, whilst his own was shadowed and half hidden. But then, Marco knew, his eyes reflected the physical hunger he had seen in hers, just as the positioning of their bodies mirrored one another. Emily was gazing at him with open happiness in her eyes, because she knew he was a wealthy man and a skilled lover.

‘Niroli’s kings receive love, Marco,’ his grandfather had told him when he was a young adolescent, ‘they do not give it. They are above other, weaker men, and they do not try to turn physical desire into mawkish sentiment like other, lesser men. They do not need to. You are maturing fast and you will discover very soon that your royal status will draw to you your pick of the world’s most beautiful and predatory women. They will give you their bodies but, in return, they will try to demand that you give them money and status. They will try to scheme, lie and cheat their way into your bed, and if you are foolish enough to let them they will present you with bastard sons who will become permanent reminders of your own folly and permanent dangers to Niroli’s throne. It is not so many centuries ago that a newly crowned sultan would order the death or the castration of all his many male half-siblings in order to prevent them from trying to take his place. You’re welcome to taste the pleasure of the women who offer themselves to you as much as you wish, but remember what I have told you. Ultimately you will make a necessary dynastic marriage with a young woman of royal and unimpeachable moral virtue, and she will give you your legitimate heirs. Your only heirs, if you are wise, Marco.’

Well, he had been wise, hadn’t he? Marco told himself grimly. And he intended to continue to be so. He looked down at the letter on the desk in front of him. It had arrived the previous day, its royal crest and the Nirolean stamp immediately marking it out as the reason why he was in the office so early this morning. It was from his grandfather, setting out the final details of his abdication plans. The people of Niroli, King Giorgio had written, were already being encouraged to expect Marco’s return and to welcome him as their new ruler. He needed to speak with his grandfather. But protocol meant that, yesterday, Marco had patiently followed an archaic, convoluted procedure, which had ensured that none of the ancient statesmen who surrounded his grandfather would have their pride dented, before finally arranging to speak directly to the king. Marco intended to make a clean sweep of these elderly statesmen once he was on the throne. His plan was to bring a forward-thinking modern mindset to the way Niroli was ruled, via courtiers of his own generation who shared his way of thinking. In fact, this new regime was something he already had in hand after a few discreet one-to-one telephone calls.

He looked at his watch: in another twenty minutes exactly, the telephone on his desk would ring and the Groom of the Chamber would announce in his quavering voice that he was going to connect him to his grandfather. Marco sighed. The elderly courtier was hard of hearing, as indeed was his grandfather, although King Giorgio denied it! Marco had a rueful fondness for his older relative, and he knew that Giorgio had a grudging respect for him, but he also knew that both of them were far too similar to ever be willing to be open about those feelings. Instead they tended to conform to the roles they had adopted in Marco’s teenage years, when his grandfather had been the disapproving disciplinarian and he had been the rebellious black sheep. He checked the time again. All this simply so that he could assure his grandfather that he would be returning to Niroli just as soon as he had dealt with his outstanding business in London, something that should have been a simple matter of a quick phone call rather than this long-drawn-out ceremonial.

The part of Marco’s outstanding business that concerned Emily was of course something he did not intend to discuss with the old king. He estimated that it would be a few weeks yet before he would be ready to leave, and he had already decided that there would be no sense in telling Emily their relationship had to end until then. One single clean cut, with no possibility of any come-backs, was the best way to deal with the situation. He would tell her they were finished and that he was leaving the country—and that was all. He had taken her to his bed as plain Marco Fierezza and he saw no point in revealing his royal status to her now. She had known him as her lover and a wealthy entrepreneur, not as the future King of Niroli. It was true that she might at some future point come to discover who he was—the paparazzi took a keen interest in the Royal House of Niroli—but by then their lives would be entirely separate. Their relationship had never been intended to end in commitment. He had told her that right from the start. But they had been together for almost three years, when previously he had become bored with his girlfriends within three months. Marco shrugged away the dry inner voice pointing out things to him he didn’t want to acknowledge. So, sexually they might have been well suited, or maybe at thirty-six the raw heat of his sex drive was cooling and he demanded less stimulation and variety, which made him content to accept a familiar physical diet? It would do him good to get out of that kind of sexual rut, he told himself coolly.

It would do them both good. Marco started as, out of nowhere, a sharply savage spear of sexual jealousy stabbed through him. What was this? Why on earth should he feel such a gut-wrenching surge of fury at the thought of Emily moving on to another man? His mouth compressed. His concern was for Emily, and not for himself. She was after all the vulnerable one, not him. Emily’s sexual past was very different from his own, and because of that—and only that, he assured himself—he was now experiencing a completely natural concern that she was not equipped to deal with a lover who might not treat her as well as he had done.

Marco looked at her picture, reluctantly remembering the first time he had possessed her. He’d planned to surprise her, but in the end she had been the one who had surprised him.

He had seen how excited she’d been when he’d walked into her shop and told her that he was taking her away for a few days, and that she would need her passport. When he’d picked her up later that day, he had seen quite plainly in her expression how much she’d wanted him. As he had wanted her.

He had been totally—almost brutally, some might have said—honest with her about the fact that he had no time for the emotional foolishness of falling in love. He had informed her calmly that he had ended previous relationships for no other reason than that his girlfriends had told him that they were falling in love with him. Emily had greeted his announcement with equal calm. Falling in love with him wasn’t something she planned to do, she had assured him firmly. She was as committed to their relationship being based on their sexual need for one another as he was himself, she had smiled, adding that this suited her perfectly, and Marco had felt she was speaking the truth.

He had booked the two of them into a complex on a small private island that catered exclusively for the rich and the childfree. Everything about the location was designed to appeal to lovers and to cocoon them in privacy, whilst providing a discreet service.

The individual villas that housed the guests were set apart from the main hotel block, each with its own private pool. Meals could be taken in the villas or in the Michelin-starred restaurant of the hotel, where there was also an elegant bar and nightclub.

Amongst the facilities included for the guests’ entertainment were diving and sailing, and visits to the larger, more built-up neighbouring islands could be arranged by helicopter if guests wished.

They had arrived late in the afternoon, and had walked through the stunningly beautiful gardens. Marco recalled now how Emily had reached out to hold his hand, her eyes shining with awed wonder as they had paused to watch the breathtaking swiftness of the sunset. He remembered, too, how he had been unable to resist taking her in his arms and kissing her, and how that kiss had become so intimate it had left Emily trembling.

They had returned to their villa, undressing one another eagerly and speedily, sharing the shower in the luxuriously equipped bathroom. Emily’s physical response to him had been everything Marco had hoped it would be and more. She had held nothing back, matching him touch for touch and in intimacy until he had started to penetrate her. It had caught him off guard to have her tensing as he thrust fully into her, believing she was as eager to feel the driving surge of his body within hers as he was to feel her hot, wet flesh tightening around him.

At first he had assumed she was playing some kind of coy game with him, mistakenly thinking that it would excite him if she assumed a mock-innocent hesitancy. His frustration had made him less perceptive than he might otherwise have been, and more impatient, so he had ignored the warning her body had been giving him and had thrust strongly again. This time it had taken the small muffled sound that had escaped past her rigid throat muscles to make him realise the truth: she was still a virgin.

His first reaction had been one of savage anger, fuelled by the toxic mingling of male frustration and the blow to his own pride that was caused by the fact that he hadn’t guessed the truth. Sex with an inexperienced virgin—and the potential burden of responsibility that carried, both physical and emotional—was something he just had not wanted.

‘What the hell is this?’ he swore. ‘Okay, I know about your marriage, but I would have thought that…if only because of that…’

‘That what? That I’d jump on the first man I could find?’ Emily retaliated sharply. But beneath that sharpness he caught the quiver of uncertainty in her voice, and his anger softened into something that caught at his throat, startling him with its intensity.

‘Well, it did cross my mind,’ she told him. ‘But in the end I was too much of a moral coward to go through with it. Blame my grandfather, if you wish, but the thought of having sex with a man I didn’t truly want, just to get rid of my virginity, has made it harder rather than easier for me to find a man I did want enough.’

Marco shrugged dismissively, not wanting to have to deal with his own unfamiliar feelings, never mind hers!

‘If you’re expecting me to be pleased about this, then let me tell you—’

‘You don’t need to tell me anything, Marco,’ she had stopped him determinedly. ‘It’s rather obvious what you feel.’

‘I don’t know what you’re thinking, or hoping for,’ he told her, ignoring her comment, ‘but, despite what you may want to believe, the majority of sexually mature men do not fantasise about initiating a virgin! I certainly don’t. The reason I brought you here was so that we could indulge our need for one another as two people starting from the same baseline. For me, that means we share matching physical desires for one another and awareness of our own sexual wants and expectations.’

‘I’m sorry if you feel that I’ve let you bring me here under false pretences,’ Emily told him, admitting, ‘Maybe I should have said something to warn you?’

‘Maybe?’

The scorn in his voice made her flinch visibly. ‘I didn’t want to play the I’m-still-a-virgin card for the reasons you’ve just mentioned yourself,’ she defended. ‘I didn’t want it to be an issue and, besides, I wasn’t even sure that you’d notice.’

Marco remembered how she had coloured up hotly when he had looked at her in disbelief.

‘I really am sorry,’ she told him apologetically.

‘You’re sorry? I’m so damn frustrated…’ he began.

‘Me, too,’ Emily interrupted him with such candour that he felt his earlier irritation evaporating.

‘Frustrated, but virginal and apprehensive?’ he felt bound to point out.

‘Yes, but not one of those has to remain a permanent state, does it?’ she responded.

‘You trust me to deal effectively with all three?’

‘I trust you to make it possible for us to deal with all three,’ she corrected him softly. ‘I’m a woman who believes that participation in a shared event makes for mutual enjoyment, even if right now in this particular venture I am the junior partner.’

He wasn’t used to being teased, or to sharing laughter in an intimate relationship and, as he quickly discovered, shared laughter had its own aphrodisiacal qualities.

He made love to her with a slow intimacy which, he was the first to admit, had its own reward when in the end she showed him such a passionate response. It was she who urged him to move faster and deeper, until he was as lost in the pleasure they were sharing as she was. But not so lost that he couldn’t witness the shocked look of delight widening her eyes as her orgasm gripped her…

What the hell was he doing, thinking about that now? It was over; they were over; or rather they soon would be.

Someone was knocking gently on his office door. Marco frowned. He wasn’t expecting anyone and he had expressly told his PA not to disturb him. He was still frowning when the door opened and Emily stepped through, smiling at him. It wasn’t often that Marco was caught off guard by anything or anyone, but on this occasion.

‘My meeting finished early,’ he could hear Emily saying breezily, ‘So I thought I’d come over and see if you were free for lunch?’

When he didn’t answer her she closed the office door and came towards him, dropping her voice to a playfully soft tone as she told him, ‘Or maybe we could forget the going-out and the lunch. Remember, Marco, how we used to. What’s wrong?’ she asked him uncertainly.

Her smile disappeared and Marco recognised that he had left it several seconds too late to respond appropriately to her arrival.

Normally, the fact that his timing was at fault would have been his main concern. But, for some reason, he found that, not only was he acutely aware that he had hurt and upset Emily, he was also suppressing an immediate desire to go to her and apologise. Apologise? Him? Marco was astounded by his own uncharacteristic impulse. He never apologised to anyone, for anything.

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ he told her flatly, knowing that something was very wrong indeed for him to have felt like that. It couldn’t be that he was feeling guilty, could it? a traitorous, critical inner voice suddenly challenged, pointing out: After all, you’ve lied to her and you’re about to leave her…

She knew the ground rules, Marco answered it inwardly. That his own conscience should turn on him like this increased his irritation and, man-like, he focused that irritation on Emily, rather than deal with its real cause.

‘Yes, there is,’ Emily persisted. ‘You were looking at me as though I’m the last person you want to see.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. I just wasn’t expecting to see you.’ He flicked back the sleeve of his suit—handmade, it fitted him in such a way that its subtle outlining of his superb physique was a whispered suggestion caught only by those who understood. ‘Look, I can’t do lunch, I’ve got an important call coming through any time now, and after than I’ve got an appointment.’ That wasn’t entirely true, but there was no way he wanted Emily to suggest she wait around for him whilst he spoke with his grandfather. For one thing, he had no idea just how long the call would last and, for another… For another, he wasn’t ready yet to tell Emily what she had to be told.

Because he wasn’t ready yet to deny himself the pleasure of making love to her, his inner tormentor piped up, adding mockingly, Are you sure that you will ever be ready? He dismissed that unwanted thought immediately but its existence increased his ire. ‘Mrs Lawson should have told you that I’d said I didn’t want to be disturbed,’ he informed Emily curtly.

She heard the impatience in his voice and wished she hadn’t bothered coming. Marco’s arrogance made him forget sometimes how easily he could hurt her, and she certainly had too much pride to stay here and let him see that pain.

‘Mrs Lawson wasn’t there when I came in.’

‘Not there? She’s my PA, for heaven’s sake. Where the hell is she?’

‘She’d probably just slipped off to the cloakroom, Marco. It isn’t her fault,’ Emily pointed out quietly. ‘Look, I’m sorry if this isn’t a good time.’ She gave a small resigned sigh. ‘I suppose I should have checked with you first before coming over.’

‘Yes, you should have,’ Marco agreed grimly. Any minute now the phone was going to ring and if he picked it up she was going to hear his grandfather’s most senior aide’s voice booming out as he tried to compensate for his own deafness, ‘Is that you, Your Highness?’ The Comte had never really accustomed himself to the effectiveness of modern communication systems and still thought his voice could only travel down the telephone line if he spoke as loudly as he possibly could.

Emily’s eyes widened as she registered Marco’s rejection and then she stood still staring blankly at him, the colour leaving her face. He was treating her as though she were some casual and not very welcome acquaintance.

‘Don’t worry about it. I’m sorry I disturbed you,’ she managed to say, but she could hear the brittle hurt in her own voice. Right now, she wanted to be as far away from Marco and his damn office as she could get! She was perilously close to tears and the last thing she wanted was the humiliation of Marco seeing how much he’d wounded her. To her relief, she could hear sounds from the outer office suggesting that his PA had returned, enabling her to use the face-saving fib that she didn’t want to have Mrs Lawson coming in to shoo her out. Emily opened the door and left, barely pausing to acknowledge the PA’s surprise at seeing her, Emily hurried out of the office, her head down and her throat thick with unshed tears.

What was it with her? she asked herself wretchedly, five minutes later as she hailed a taxi. She wasn’t a young girl with emotions so new and raw that she overreacted to every sucked-in breath! She was in her twenties and divorced, and she and Marco had been together for nearly three years, the intimacy of their sex life having given her an outward patina of radiant sensuality. It had been so palpable in the first year they’d been together, one of her clients had told her semi-jokingly, ‘Now that you’re with Marco you’re going to start losing clients if you aren’t careful.’

‘Why?’ Emily had asked.

‘Jealousy,’ had been the client’s succinct answer.

Emily remembered how she had smiled with rueful acknowledgement.‘You mean, because I’m with Marco and they’d like to change places with me?’ she had guessed.

‘They may very well want to do that, but I was thinking more of their concerns that their husbands might be tempted by the creamy glow of sexual completion you’re carrying around with you right now, Emily.’

Emily remembered she had blushed and made some confused denial, but the client had shaken her head and told her wisely, ‘You can’t deny or ignore it. That glow shimmers round you like a force-field and men are going to be drawn to you because of it. There is nothing more likely to make a man want a woman than her confident wearing of another man’s sexual interest in her.’

She doubted that she still wore that magnetic sexual aura now, Emily admitted sadly. That was the trouble: when you broke the rules, it didn’t only make you ache for what you didn’t have, it also damaged what you did.

The taxi driver was waiting for her to tell him where she wanted to go. She leaned forward and gave him the address of Marco’s apartment. Marco’s apartment, she noted—for that was how she thought of it. Not as their apartment, even though he had invited her to make it over to suit her own tastes and had given her a lavish budget for its renovation. Material possessions, even for one’s home that evoked deep-rooted attachments, were nothing without the right kind of emotions to surround them. Why had it had to happen? Why had she fallen in love with Marco? Why couldn’t she have stayed as she was, thrillingly aware of him on the most intimate kind of sexual level, buoyed up by the intensity of their desire for one another, overwhelmed by relief and joy because he had brought her from the dark, wretched nowhere she’d inhabited after her divorce to the brilliant glittering landscape of unimaginable beauty that was the intimacy they shared together? Why, why, why couldn’t that have been enough? Why had she had to go and fall for him?

Emily shivered, sinking deeper into the seat of the taxi. And why, having fallen for him, did she have to torment herself by hoping that one day things would change, that one day he would look at her and in his eyes she would see his love for her? The hope that, one day, it would happen sometimes felt so fragile and so unrealistic that she was afraid for herself, afraid of her vulnerability as a woman who needed one particular man so badly she was prepared to cling to such a fine thread. But what else could she do? She could tell him, honestly, how she felt. Emily bit her lip, guiltily aware that she wasn’t being open with him. Because she was afraid in case she lost him…Why was she letting herself be dragged down by these uncomfortable, painful thoughts and questions? Why did they keep on escaping from the place where she tried to incarcerate and conceal them? What kind of woman was she to live a lie with the man she loved? What kind of relationship was it when that man stated openly that there was no place for love in the life he wanted to live?

The taxi stopped abruptly, catching her off guard. She didn’t really want to go up to the apartment, not feeling the way she was right now, but another person was already hurrying purposefully towards the taxi, wanting to lay claim to it.

Emily got out and paid her fare to the driver, shivering as she waited for her change. Her stomach had already begun its familiar nauseous churning—this time, it had to be a result of Marco’s rejection of her appeal to him, though she had to admit she had also felt too nauseous to want any breakfast this morning. She was definitely beginning to feel slightly dizzy and faint as well as unwell now.

Psychosomatic, she told herself unsympathetically as she headed up to the apartment.

It had started to rain while Emily was getting out of the taxi. Yes, the miserable weather was adding to her feelings of lowness. Why couldn’t she talk to Marco? They were lovers, after all, sharing the closest of physical intimacy. Physical intimacy—but they did not share any emotional intimacy. Emily’s experiences as a child had made her wary of appearing needy. It was now second nature to her to hide the most vulnerable part of her true self. Only in Marco’s arms, at the height of their shared passion, did she feel safe enough to allow her body to show him what was in her heart, knowing that he wasn’t likely to be able to recognise it.

She let herself into the apartment, mutely aware of how empty and impersonal it felt, for all her attempts to turn it into a shared home.

‘Yes, Grandfather, I do understand, but I cannot work miracles. It is impossible for me to return to Niroli before the end of the month as we had already tentatively agreed.’ Marco managed to hold onto his temper as his grandfather’s complaints grew louder, before finally interrupting to say dryly, ‘Very well, then, I accept that whilst I had talked about the end of the month, you had not agreed to it. But that doesn’t alter the fact that I cannot return sooner.’

The sound of his grandfather slamming down the receiver reverberated in Marco’s eardrum. Replacing his own handset, he stood up and turned to look out of the window of his office. It was raining. In Niroli, the sun would be shining. Marco’s grandfather was obviously furious that he had refused to give in and alter the timing of his return and bring his arrival on Niroli forward. But his grandfather’s rage did not worry Marco. He was used to it and unaffected by it, apart from the fact that he too didn’t like having his plans challenged. He looked irritably at his watch. He was hungry and very much in need of the gentle calm of Emily’s company. That, plus the natural reserve that made her the kind of woman who was never going to court the attention of the paparazzi, or expose their relationship to the avid curiosity of others, were two other major plus-points about her. But not quite as major as the sensuality that spilled from her like sweetness from a honeycomb, even if she didn’t realise it.

The direction his thoughts were taking surprised him. It was nonsense for him to be thinking about Emily like this when he was about to end their relationship! Far better that he focused on the things he didn’t like about her, such as. Such as the way she insisted on keeping professional commitments even when he had made other plans. Is that the only criticism you can make of her? an increasingly voluble and irritating inner voice demanded sardonically. Marco sighed, mentally acknowledging the irony of his own thoughts. Yes, it was true that, in many ways, Emily was the perfect mistress for the man he had been whilst he’d lived in London. But he wasn’t going to be that man for much longer.

When the time came for him to take a royal mistress, she would have to have qualities that Emily did not possess. Chief amongst those would be an accepting, possibly older husband. This was an example of the kind of protocol at the royal court of Niroli which, in Marco’s opinion, kept it in the Edwardian era. He certainly planned to bring about changes that would benefit the people of Niroli rather than its king. But perhaps there were certain traditions that were better retained. No, Emily could not continue to be his lover, but even so he could have responded better to her arrival in his office earlier, Marco admitted. He could, for instance, have suggested that she go ahead to one of their favourite restaurants and wait there for him. It had, after all, been predictable that his grandfather would lose his temper and end their conversation so abruptly, once he realised that he wasn’t going to get everything that he wanted.

Marco toyed with the idea of calling Emily now and suggesting that she meet him for a late lunch, but then decided against it. She wasn’t the kind of woman who sulked or played silly games. But honesty compelled him to accept that some measure of compensatory behaviour on his part would be a good investment. Ridiculously in many ways, given the length of time they had been together, just thinking about her triggered that familiar sharp ache of his desire for her. He picked up the phone and rang the number of her shop.

Her assistant answered his call, telling him, ‘She isn’t here, Marco. She rang a couple of minutes ago to say that she’s going to spend the rest of the day working at the apartment. Poor Emily, she still isn’t properly over that wretched virus, is she?’

Marco made a noncommittal reply. He himself was never in anything other than the very best of health, but right now his mood was very much in need of the soothing touch that only Emily could give. She had an unexpectedly dry sense of humour, which, allied to her intelligence and acute perception, gave her the ability to make him laugh, sometimes when he least felt like doing so. Not that her sense of humour or his laughter had been very much in evidence these last few weeks, he recognised, frowning a little over this recognition. It surprised him how sharp the need he suddenly felt to be with her was. It was amazing what a bit of guilt could do, he decided as he told his PA that he, too, would be spending the afternoon working at home.

The best way to smooth over any upsets, so far as Marco was concerned, was in bed, where he knew he could quickly make Emily forget about everything other than his desire for her and hers for him.

***

Emily scowled as she worried over the message she had just picked up from one of her clients. The lady in question was a good customer, but Emily had still felt slightly wary when she’d been asked a while ago to take on the complete renovation of a property in Chelsea.

‘Darling, darling, Emily,’ Carla Mainwearing had trilled, ‘I am so in love with your perfect sense of style that I want you to choose everything and I am going to put the house totally in your hands.’

Knowing Carla as she did, Emily had taken this with a pinch of salt and had therefore insisted on having her work approved at every single stage. Now Carla had left her a message saying that she hated the colour Emily had chosen for the walls of the property’s pretty drawing room, and that she wanted it completely redone—at Emily’s expense. Emily recalled that Carla had previously sanctioned the colour of the paint. But discretion was called for in telling her this, so rather than phone Carla back she decided to e-mail instead. Her laptop was in the study she shared with Marco, as were her files, so she made her way there, firmly ignoring the leaden weight of her earlier disappointment at Marco’s refusal to join her for lunch.

Five minutes later, she was standing immobile in front of the study’s window, her laptop and original purpose of coming to the study forgotten, as she stared in shocked horror at the vellum envelope she was holding. Her hand, actually not just her hand but her whole body, was trembling violently, as she felt unable to move. Waves of heat followed by icy chill surged through her body and somewhere some part of her mind managed to register the fact that what she was suffering was a classic reaction to extreme shock. She could hardly see the address on the envelope now through her blurred vision, but the crest on its left-hand front corner stood out, its royal crest, followed by the address: HRH Prince Marco of Niroli…

She didn’t hear Marco’s key in the apartment door, she didn’t even hear him calling out her name. Her shock was so great that nothing could penetrate it. It encased her in a kind of bubble, which only concentrated the torment of what she was suffering and branded it on her brain so that it could never be forgotten. It was only finally pierced by the sudden opening of the study door as Marco walked in, but of course there was no way his arrival could ease her pain. Instead she gripped the envelope even tighter, her voice high and tight as she said thinly, ‘Welcome home, Your Highness. I suppose I ought to curtsey to you.’

She waited, praying that he would laugh and tell her that she had got it all wrong, that the envelope she was holding, addressing him as Prince Marco of Niroli, was some silly mistake.

CHAPTER FIVE

LIKE a tiny candle flame shivering vulnerably in the dark, her hope trembled fearfully. And then the look in Marco’s eyes extinguished it as cruelly as a hand placed callously over the face of a dying person to stem their last breath. It was over. Now, in this minute, this breath of time, they were finished. Emily knew that without the need for any words, the pain of that knowledge slamming a crippling body-blow into her. Her stomach felt as though she had plunged down a hundred floors in a high-speed lift.

‘Give that to me,’ Marco demanded, taking the envelope from her.

‘It’s too late to destroy the evidence, Marco.’ Emily told him brokenly. ‘I know the truth now. And I know how you’ve lied to me all this time, pretending to be something you aren’t, letting me think.’ She dug her teeth in her lower lip to try to force back her own pain. ‘Do you think I haven’t read the newspapers? Do you think the people of Niroli know that their prince is a liar? Or doesn’t lying matter when you’re a member of the Royal House?’ she challenged him wildly.

‘You had no right to go through my desk,’ Marco shot back at her furiously, his male loathing at being caught off guard and forced into a position in which he was in the wrong making him determined to find something he could accuse Emily of. ‘I thought we had an understanding that our private papers were our personal property and out of bounds,’ he told her savagely. ‘I trusted you…’

Emily could hardly believe what she was hearing.

‘Did you? Is that why you hid this envelope under everything else?’ she challenged him, shaking her head in answer to her own question. ‘No, you didn’t trust me, Marco, and you didn’t trust me because you knew that I couldn’t trust you. And you knew that because you are a liar, and liars don’t trust people because they know that they themselves cannot be trusted.’ She not only felt sick, she also felt as though she could hardly breathe. ‘Everything I thought I knew about you is based on lies, everything. You aren’t just Marco Fierezza, you are Prince Marco of Niroli. You yourself are a lie, Marco…’

‘You are taking this far too personally. The reason I concealed my royal status had nothing whatsoever to do with you. It was a decision I made before I met you. My identity as plain Marco Fierezza is as real to me as though I were not a prince. It has nothing to do with you,’ he repeated.

‘How can you say that? It has everything to do with me, and if you had any shred of decency or morals you would know that. How could you lie about who you are and still live with me as intimately as we have lived together?’ she demanded brokenly. ‘How could you live with yourself, knowing that others, not just me, believed you, accepted and gave you their trust, when all the time—’

‘Stop being so ridiculously dramatic,’ Marco demanded fiercely. ‘You are making too much of the situation.’

‘Too much?’ Emily almost screamed the words at him. ‘Too much, when I have discovered that you have deceived me for the whole time we’ve been together? When did you plan to tell me, Marco? Perhaps you just planned to walk away without telling me anything? After all, what do my feelings matter to you?’

‘Of course they matter,’ Marco stopped her sharply. ‘And it was in part to protect them, and you, that I decided not to inform you of the change in my circumstances when my grandfather first announced that he intended to step down from the throne and hand it on to me.’

‘To protect me?’ Emily almost choked on her fury. ‘Hand on the throne? Don’t bother continuing, Marco. No wonder you told me when you first took me to bed that all you wanted was sex. You knew that was the only kind of relationship there could ever be between us! You knew that one day you would be Niroli’s king. No doubt you are expected to marry a princess. Is she picked out for you already, your royal bride?’

‘No.’

Emily shrugged disdainfully. ‘There’s no point in replying because, whatever you say, I can’t believe you, not now.’

‘Emily, listen to me. This has gone far enough. You are being ridiculous. I know you have had a bit of a shock, but…’

‘A bit of a shock? A bit of a shock?’

When she whirled round and headed for the door, Marco demanded, ‘Where are you going?’

‘To pack my things,’ Emily told him fiercely. ‘I’m leaving, Marco, right now. I can’t and won’t stay here with you. I feel I don’t know you any more, and right now I don’t really want to.’

‘Don’t be stupid. Where will you go? This is your home.’

‘No, this is your apartment, it has never been my home. As to where I will go, I have a home of my own—remember?’ she challenged him.

Marco frowned. ‘Your house in Chelsea? But your assistant is living there.’

‘She was living there, but she moved in with her new partner at the weekend, not that it or anything else in my life is any business of yours, Your Highness. Or should it be Your Majesty?’

‘Emily.’ He reached for her but she started to pull away from him, a look of angry contempt in her eyes that infuriated him. She had accused him of deceit and duplicity, but what about her actions? What about the fact that she had gone through his private papers behind his back? Her accusations had stung his pride, and now suddenly recognising that control of the situation had been taken from him and that she was about to walk out on him awakened all his most deeply held, atavistic male feelings about her. She was his—his until he chose to end their relationship.

Emily’s eyes widened in mute shock as his fingers closed round her wrist, imprisoning her, and she saw the familiar look of arousal darkening his eyes. ‘Let go of me,’ she snapped. ‘You can’t really expect…’

‘I can’t really expect what?’

He wasn’t going to let her go, Emily realised. She felt a quiver of sensation run down her spine—and it wasn’t fear.

‘What is it that I can’t expect, Emily?’ he repeated silkily. ‘Is it that I can’t expect to take you to bed any more—is that what you were going to say? That I can’t expect to touch you or hold you?’

She had edged towards the study door as he’d advanced, but before she could open it and escape Marco reached past her, kicking it shut. Then, he placed his hands on it either side of her so that she was caught between the door and him. A telltale spiral of excitement was sizzling through her, its presence within her reminding her of the early days of their affair, when just to know that Marco wanted her and intended to have her was enough to leave her quivering on the edges of erotic need and surrender. Just as she was doing now. She tried to vocalise her denial, not just of her own arousal but also of Marco’s in- tentions, but the words were locked in her throat. Beneath the soft wool of her sweater she could feel the growing hardening of her nipples and the desire-heavy weight of her breasts. How long had it been since she had felt like this? How long had it been since Marco had shown her this side of himself? So long that she couldn’t remember? So long that, because it was happening now, she couldn’t resist his allure?

Her heart jerked around inside her chest as though it were suspended on a piece of elastic. The ache in her breasts curled down through her belly to taunt her sex and tease from it a throbbing pulse of excitement and longing. She realised that she should be horrified by the way she was reacting to him, in view of what she had now discovered, horrified and determined not to let him touch her, sickened by the thought of him touching her. But she also knew that she wasn’t; instead she wanted him with a physical intensity that held her fast in an unfamiliar, almost violent grip.

‘Is that what you wanted to say to me, Emily—that I can’t make you want me any more, that I can’t arouse you, that I can’t do this…?’ He lifted his hand and stroked a fingertip down the side of her neck and along her collar-bone, making her shudder in violent erotic delight. He had moved closer to her, so close that she could smell the familiar scent of his cologne and the aroused heat of his body. Was it that, with its powerful but subtle message of male sexuality, that was turning her boneless with aching longing for him, even while her mind was telling her that she should resist him, and that this was no way for her to behave if she truly wanted him to believe what she had said?

She should say something, tell him to stop; tell him that there was no point in this for either of them. But she knew that she wouldn’t, just as she knew that some deep-rooted female part of her wanted this show of male dominance from him, wanted her own sense of fierce surging excitement, wanted and needed the pure, fierce searing heat of the mutual lust they had conjured up out of nowhere. She could quite easily have pushed past him, Emily knew, and she knew too that Marco would not try to stop her if she did. But the reality was that she didn’t want to… The reality was that her body was possessed by an incendiary mix of anger and desire that took fire from Marco’s determination to confront her with her own acceptance of his power to arouse her.

‘But that would be a lie, wouldn’t it?’ Marco challenged her softly as he continued his relentless sensual assault, his lips brushing the bare flesh of her throat in between each word, imprisoning her in her own wild arousal.

‘Wouldn’t it?’ he insisted as he slid his hand beneath her sweater and freed her breasts from the constriction of her bra. A low moan of unappeased longing bubbled in her throat as he fed her craving for his possession.

‘You want more?’ he demanded, his voice thickening and softening.

‘No!’ Emily lied. She could feel his hand cupping her breast and his fingertips stroking deliberately against her nipple again. She knew she couldn’t hold out much longer against the dammed-up force of her own need. With a low sound of surrender, she reached blindly for him, drawing his head down towards her own, her lips parting for his kiss and the swift, exultant victory of his tongue.

She could feel the thick hardness of his manhood pressing against her body. In her mind’s eye she visualised his naked body, familiar now after their years together, seeing behind her closed eyes the thick sheathing of smooth flesh over rigid muscle, where it rose from the dark silky thickness of hair. She could almost feel the smooth warmth of him, so enticingly supple to her touch, and so responsive to the caress of her fingers and her mouth. Fresh longing seized her. Impetuously she reached down between their bodies to touch him, spanning his length with the spread of her fingertips, and then stroking his thickness. A deep purr of satisfaction gathered in her throat as she felt him stiffen further and then pulse, becoming a moan of out-of-control urgency when she felt him tugging at the fastening of her skirt.

Not even in their early days together had she experienced this degree of intense need, she recognised. It was so much bolder than anything she remembered feeling before; bolder, and fiercer and hungrier—the sexual desire of a woman who must be satisfied.

The demoralising fear that had in recent weeks sucked from her any delight in their intimacy was as easily sloughed off by their shared passion as were their clothes, unwanted encumbrances that prevented her from taking all that she could. Marco was driving both of them to that place where they had no choice other than to plunge into the turbulent flood of the maelstrom together.

Emily’s fingers trembled over and tugged at his shirt buttons and trouser fastenings, her endeavours deliberately interrupted by him when he raked his teeth against the sensitive thrust of her nipple, causing her to gasp and then moan, unable to do anything other than give in to the intensity of the sensation he was inflicting on her. When pleasure was this intense, she thought frantically, it bordered on the almost unendurable. And yet she wouldn’t have wanted it any other way, wouldn’t have wanted any other man, wouldn’t have been able to reach this lack of inhibition with anyone else.

‘You want me to stop?’ Marco demanded. His breath cooled the aching flesh that had been tormented by his erotic caress, whilst the subtle touch of his fingertips continued to play on her nipple, increasing its dark, swollen call for the renewed heat of his mouth.

Emily couldn’t speak, she could barely stand up any more. But she knew Marco knew she wanted no such thing. She ran her hands along his sweat-dampened naked torso, deliberately bending her head so that she could graze her tongue-tip along his skin and taste the tangy maleness of his flesh, whilst she breathed in his aphrodisiacal Marco-drenched scent. At times like this, just the smell of him was enough to make her go weak with lust.

The ache deep inside her tightened and burned with a heat that could only be slaked by the possession of Marco’s hard flesh filling her and completing her. She could feel the small hungry ripples of sensation caused by her muscles as they tightened with the need to have him fill the empty, wanton place inside her.

‘Now, Marco,’ she urged him fiercely, ‘now!’

When he still waited, she looked up at him. She could see the dangerous look in his eyes, the darkness that said he was on the verge of wanting to punish her and that he was challenging her, needing to force her to acknowledge his supremacy, his ability to control her desire, arouse it and then satisfy it. It was too late for her to try to play him at his own game and deny him his triumph by pretending that she didn’t want him. Her own need was too great and too immediate. She would have to punish herself later for her weakness. Right now, no price was too high to pay for the satisfaction her body craved. She had tried to resist.

‘Now!’ she repeated.

For a second, she thought he was going to refuse, but then he was reaching for her, lifting her up so that she could wrap her legs tightly round him whilst he thrust firmly into her in one long, slow, deliberate movement that made her shudder violently. As he withdrew her muscles tightened, protesting around him, not wanting to let him go, and were then rewarded for their adoration by the almost mind-altering sensation of his second, stronger, deeper thrust. The sensitive nerve-endings in her flesh wept with joy at the intensity. Instinctively Emily drew in her muscles around him, savouring the sensation.

She could feel his hot breath in her ear, the tip of his tongue tracing the curls of flesh. She felt his teeth against the sensitive cord in her neck. Her whole body was being possessed by a pleasure so heightened she thought she might die from it.

‘Marco…’ She moaned his name as a plea, striking a solitary note of female praise as he thrust deeper, harder and faster now.

‘Mmm.more. Marco…more!’ she urged him, gasping out aloud in delight as he obeyed her and his movements became fast and rhythmic. Then he drove them to their climaxes, and she was left so boneless and weak that she collapsed helplessly against him, trembling in the aftermath.

The heat of the fury that had driven him was cooling on his sweat-slicked skin. Where he should have felt satisfaction and triumph at making Emily acknowledge that he could still arouse her, Marco could only feel a dark sense of stark awareness that he had crossed over a boundary he should not have breached. In forcing Emily to give in to the desire he had summoned in her, he’d also forced himself to acknowledge his need for her. A fleeting need, brought on by his justifiable anger, he assured himself, that was all! It meant nothing in the broader picture of his life.

‘I think we both needed that,’ he told her coolly, ‘and perhaps it was a fitting end to our relationship, a tribute to the mutual attraction that brought us together.’

Emily couldn’t believe what she had done—and what she might have betrayed. She couldn’t bear the thought of Marco thinking now how stupid she had been, maybe guessing she had dreamed that, one day, he might fall in love with her as she had done with him. A wave of irritation surged through her—not against him, but against herself. What a fool she had been, deliberately blinding herself to reality and fixating on something that her common sense could have warned her wouldn’t possibly happen. If Marco had really loved her he would have told her so. But he hadn’t, and he never would. She had deceived herself just as much as Marco had deceived her, and if anything her crime against herself was even greater than his. The fierce turbulent, almost torrid heat of their lovemaking had subsided now, and her anger had burned down into stark bleakness and grinding pain. Her dreams had been swept aside, shown to be pitifully worthless. Marco was a stranger to her, but no more so than she felt at this moment she was to herself.

‘Mutual attraction then, but perhaps mutual contempt now,’ she answered Marco pointedly. ‘I’m not the naïve girl that I was when we first became lovers, Marco.’

‘Meaning what?’ he challenged her, frowning.

‘Meaning that I’ve learned enough about sex from you to know that it isn’t always used as an expression of positive emotions. It’s common knowledge these days that couples on the verge of splitting up do sometimes use sex as a way of venting their negative feelings. Some couples say that they had the best sex of their relationship when the emotional side of it was dying. Of course, I know that we aren’t emotionally intimate with one another.’ What she meant of course, Emily admitted, was that Marco had never been emotionally close with her, because he didn’t want to be, whilst she had had to struggle not to be close when she’d wanted to be. ‘But I think both of us would accept that the break-up of any relation ship—even one like ours—does bring things to the surface that aren’t easy to accept.’

Marco’s frown deepened. She was now being far more matter-of-fact about their relationship ending than he had expected—and he didn’t like that! But he was being ridiculous. He should feel very relieved that she was being so sensible, especially after her earlier, uncharacteristic outburst.

CHAPTER SIX

FROM his seat on the royal jet, Marco looked down onto his family’s private runway at Niroli’s airport to where a group of formally dressed courtiers and officials were waiting to greet him. The ostrich-feather plumes of their dress hats fluttered in the breeze as they stood straight-backed, ignoring the heat of the sun. Marco’s lips twisted with irony at the thought of the heavily gold-braided, bemedalled uniform that his grandfather had sent him, along with strict instructions that he must wear it when he landed and was greeted by the courtly welcoming committee. In fact, the uniform, appropriate for the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in Niroli’s ancient Royal Guard, was lying in its leather dress-trunk in the plane’s hold, whilst he wore his own handmade Saville Row suit. His grandfather wouldn’t be pleased. But Marco intended to let him, and the court, know right from the word go that he would make his own decisions and judgements and he wouldn’t allow them to force theirs on him.

Emily would have appreciated and understood his decision, though she would probably have laughed gently, and teased him as well into wearing that undeniably magnificent, beautifully tailored uniform. Emily.he tried to thrust the thought of her away from him, along with the erotic mental image of her alongside him in his bed that was forming inside his head, but it was too late; she was there, smiling at him, wanting him, as he ached for her. What the hell was this?

He stood up so abruptly that the young Niroli air force aide-de-camp, who’d been sent to escort him home, was caught off guard, and his own attempt to get to his feet before Marco was severely hampered by his ceremonial sword. The red-faced young man saluted as he semi-stuttered, ‘Highness, if you wish to have more time in order to prepare, then please allow me—’

‘No, I am ready,’ Marco told the aide shortly and then relented when he saw his anxious expression. It was not the lad’s fault—and he was little more than a boy, a scion of one of Niroli’s foremost titled families. Marco had chosen to be the man he was, rather than the grandson his grandfather wanted him to be. Damn Emily for pursuing him like this, insinuating herself into his thoughts where she now had no right to be! Her abrupt departure from his apartment had decided him that he should leave London earlier than he had originally planned—much to his grandfather’s delight. Marco suspected the old king would not have been so cock-a-hoop over his ‘victory’ if he had known that it owed less to his own power than to his grandson’s loss of his bed-mate.

The aide-de-camp, who was carrying his own plumed hat as protocol demanded, stood beside his king-to-be as the doors to the royal jet were opened. He bowed as Marco walked past him and stepped out onto the gangway steps and into Niroli’s sunshine. Just for a few seconds, Marco stood motionless and ramrod-straight at the top of the steps, not because he was the island’s future ruler, but because he was one of its returning sons. He had almost forgotten the unique scent of sunshine and sea, mimosa and lemons, all of which hit him on a surge of hot wind. Not even the strong smell of jet fuel and tarmac could detract from them, and Marco felt emotion sting his eyes: this was his home, his country, and the crowds he could see lining the wide straight road that ran from the airport to the main town were his people. Many of them had not had the benefit of being part of a wider, modern world, but he intended to change that. He would give to Niroli’s young the opportunities his grandfather’s old-fashioned rule had denied them. Determinedly, Marco stepped forward. The waiting military band broke into Niroli’s national anthem and the waiting officials removed their hats and bowed their heads. Their faces were familiar to Marco, although more wrinkled and lined than he remembered—the faces of old men.

As he reached his grandfather’s most senior minister the elderly gentleman placed his hands on Marco’s arms, greeting him with a traditional continental embrace. His voice shook with emotion and Marco could see that beneath his proud, stern expression and the determinedly upright stance there was a very aged, tired man, who probably would have preferred to spend his last years with his grandchildren than doing his king’s bidding. Tactfully, Marco adjusted his own walking pace to that of the courtiers surrounding him as they escorted him unsteadily to the waiting open-topped royal limousine.

At least his grandfather hadn’t sent the coronation carriage to collect him, Marco reflected ruefully; its motion was sickeningly rocky and its velvet padded seats unpleasantly hard.

This should be his moment of triumph, the public endorsement of the strength he had gained in becoming his own man. Soon the power of the Royal House of Niroli would become his, and he would step into his grandfather’s shoes and fulfil his destiny. So why didn’t he feel more excited, and why was there this sense of emptiness within him, this sense of loss, of something missing?

The cavalcade started to move, the waiting crowds began to cheer, children clutching Niroli flags and leaning dangerously into the road, the better to see him. Marco lifted his hand and began to wave. The cool air-conditioned luxury of the limo protected him from the midday heat. But what about the people? They must be feeling the heat, Marco. As clearly as though she were seated at his side, he could hear Emily’s gently reproachful voice. Angrily he banished it. The limousine travelled a few more yards and then Marco reached forward, rapping on the glass separating him from the driver and an armed guard.

‘Highness?’ the guard queried anxiously.

‘Stop the car!’ Marco ordered. ‘I want to get out and walk.’ As he reached to open his door the guard looked horrified. ‘Sire,’ he protested, ‘the king… it may not be safe.’

Marco’s eyebrow rose. ‘Knowing my grandfather as I do, I cannot imagine he has not had ordered that plain-clothes security men be posted amongst the crowd. Besides, these are our people, not our enemy.’

As they saw Marco stepping out of the limousine the crowd fell silent. At no time in living memory had their ruler done anything so informal as walk amongst them. Marco shook the gnarled hands of working men, his smile causing pretty girls to glow with excitement and older women to feel a reawakening frisson of their youths.

One aged woman pushed her way through the people to reach him. Marco could see from her traditional peasant costume that she came from the mountains of Niroli. Her back was bent from long years spent working in the orange groves and vineyards that covered their lower slopes, her face as brown and lined as a wrinkled walnut. But there was still a fiery flash of pride in her dark eyes and as she held out to him the clumsy leather purse she had obviously made herself Marco felt as though a giant hand were gripping his heart in a tight vice.

‘Highness, please take this humble gift,’ she begged him. ‘May it always be kept full, just like the coffers and the nurseries of the House of Niroli.’ It was plain that the old peasant could ill afford to give him anything. Indeed, Marco felt he should be the one to give something to her, so he was not surprised to see the angry, hostile glower on the face of the shabbily dressed youth at her side.

‘This is your grandson?’ Marco asked her as he thanked her for her gift.

‘Aye, he is, sire, and he shames me with his sullen looks and lack of appreciation for all that we have here on our island.’

‘That is because we have nothing!’ the youth burst out angrily, his face now seemingly on fire with emotion. ‘We have nothing, whilst others have everything! We come to the town, and we see foreigners with their expensive yachts and their fancy clothes. Our king bends over backwards to welcome them, whilst we mountain-dwellers do not even have electricity. They look at us as though we are nothing, and that is because, to our king, we are nothing!’

Suddenly, like a cloud passing over the sun, the mood of the crowd gathered around Marco had changed. He could see the anger in the faces of the group of rough-looking, poorly dressed young men who had joined the outspoken youth. The first of his grandfather’s security guards rushed to protect Marco, but very firmly he stepped between them, saying clearly, ‘It is good to know that the people of Niroli are able to speak their minds freely to me. This issue of getting electricity to the more remote parts of our island is one that has, I know, taxed His Majesty’s thoughts for a long time.’ Marco put his hand on the angry youth’s shoulder, drawing him closer to him, whilst he gave the hovering guards a small dismissive shake of his head. He could see the grateful tears in the old peasant woman’s eyes.

‘My grandson speaks without thinking,’ she told him huskily. ‘But, at heart, he is a good boy and as devoted to the king as anyone.’

The youth’s friends were hurrying him away and Marco allowed himself to be escorted back to his limo. Once inside, he realised that he was still holding the old woman’s carefully made purse. There was anger in his heart now, pressing down on him like an unwanted heavy weight. Niroli’s royal family was the richest in the world and yet some of its subjects were living lives of utmost poverty. He could well imagine how upset and shocked Emily would have been if she had witnessed what had just happened. The leather purse felt soft and warm to his touch. He was the one who should be giving to his people, not the other way around. His time away from the island had changed him more than he had realised, Marco acknowledged, and somehow he didn’t think his grandfather was going to like what he had in mind.

Huddled into an armchair in the sitting room of her small Chelsea house, a prettily embroidered throw wrapped around her like a comfort blanket, Emily let the full rip-tide of her anguish take her over. What was the point in trying to fight it or escape it? The reality was that Marco, no, Prince Marco, soon to be King Marco, she corrected herself miserably, had gone, not just from her life, but from Britain itself, to return to his home, his throne and his people. Ultimately her place in his life would be filled by someone else. She gave a small low cry as more pain seized her, and then reminded herself angrily that the man she loved did not exist; he had been a creation of her own imagination and his deceit. Everything they had shared had been based on lies; every time he had held her or touched her she had been giving the whole of herself to him, whilst he had been withholding virtually everything of his true self. But even knowing this, as the numbing shock of her discovery of the truth rose and retreated, she was left with the agonising reality that she still loved him.

As much as she despised herself for not being able to cease wanting him, because she knew just how much he had deceived her, her self-contempt could not drive out her love.

What was he doing now? Was he thinking at all of her? Missing her? Stop it, stop it, all her inner protective instincts demanded in agony. She must not do this to herself! She must accept that he had gone, and that she had to find a way of living without him and the comfort of being able to look back and know that they had shared something very special. It was over, they were over, and her pride was demanding that she accept that and get on with her life. She was as much a fool for letting him into her thoughts now as she had been for letting him into her life. There was one thing for sure: he would not be thinking about her. He would not have given her a single thought since she had walked out of his apartment, following that dreadful discovery and the bitterly corrosive row that had ended their relationship

What a total fool she had been for deluding herself into thinking that he would ever return her love.

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘SO, MARCO, what is this that the Chief of Police tells me about your welcome parade? About your being threatened by some wretched insurrectionist from the mountains? Probably one of the Viallis. Mind you, you have only yourself to blame. Had you not taken it into your head to so rashly get out of the car, it would not have happened. You must remember that you are my heir and Niroli’s next king. It is not wise to court danger.’

‘There wasn’t any real danger. The boy—for he was little more than that—was simply voicing—’

‘His hostility to the throne!’ King Giorgio interrupted Marco angrily.

His grandfather had aged since he had last seen him, but the old patriarch still had about him an awesome aura of power, Marco admitted ruefully. The problem was that it no longer particularly impressed Marco—he had power of his own now, power that came from living his life in his own way. He knew that his grandfather sensed this in him and that it irked him. That was why he insisted on taking his grandson to task over the incident at his welcoming parade.

‘My feeling was that the boy was more frustrated and resentful than hostile.’

Marco watched his grandfather. There was a larger issue at stake here than the boy’s angry words, one which Marco felt was essential, but which he knew wasn’t something his grandfather would be happy to discuss.

Nevertheless, Marco had been doing some investigation of his own, and what he had discovered had highlighted potential problems within Niroli that needed addressing before they developed into much more worrying conflicts.

‘The boy was complaining about the lack of an electricity supply to his village. He resents the fact that visitors to our country have benefits that some of our own people do not.’ Marco held his ground as his grandfather’s fist came crashing down on the desk between them.

‘I will not listen to this foolish nonsense. Tourists bring money into the country and, naturally, we have to lure them here by providing them with the kind of facilities they are used to.’

‘Whilst some amongst our people go without them?’ Marco challenged him coolly. ‘Angry young men do sometimes behave rashly. But surely it is our duty to equip our subjects with what they need to move into the twenty-first century? Our schoolchildren cannot learn properly without access to computers, and if we deprive them of the ability to do so then we will be maintaining an underclass within the heart of our country.’

‘You dare to lecture me on how to rule?’ the king bellowed. ‘You, who turned your back on Niroli to live a life of your own choosing in London?’

‘You’re the one who has summoned me back, Nonno,’ Marco reminded him, lowering his voice and deliberately using his childhood pet name for his grandfather in an attempt to soften the old man’s mood. It was easy sometimes to forget his grandfather was ninety, yet still immoveable about what the right thing was for Niroli and its people. Marco didn’t want to upset the king too much.

‘Because I had no other choice,’ Giorgio growled. ‘You are my direct heir, Marco, for all that you choose to behave like a commoner, rather than a member of the ruling House of Niroli. At least you had the sense to leave that… that floozy you were living with behind when you returned home.’

Anger flashed in Marco’s eyes. It was typical of his grandfather to have found out as much about his private life in London as he could. It also infuriated him that Giorgio should refer to Emily in that way and dismiss their relationship. Worse, it felt as though, somehow, his grandfather had touched a raw place within him that he didn’t want to admit existed, never mind be reminded about. Because, even though he didn’t want to own up to it, he was missing Emily. Marco shrugged the thought aside. So what if he was? Wasn’t it only natural that his body, deprived of the sexual pleasure it had shared with hers, should ache a little?

‘As to what we agreed, it was simply that I should initially return to Niroli alone,’ Marco pointed out.

Immediately the king’s anger returned. ‘What do you mean, “initially”?’

When Marco didn’t answer him, the old man bellowed, ‘You will not bring her here, Marco! I will not allow it. You are my heir, and you have a position to maintain. The people—’

Marco knew that he should reassure his grandfather and tell him he had no intention of bringing Emily to Niroli, but instead he said coolly, ‘The people, our people, will, I am sure, have more important things to worry about than the fact that I have a mistress—things like the fact that ten per cent of them do not have electricity.’

‘You are trying to meddle in things that are not your concern,’ the king told him sharply. ‘Take care, Marco, otherwise, you will have people thinking that you are more fitted to be a dissident than a leader. To rule, you must command respect and in order to do that you must show a strong hand. The people are your children and need to look up to you as their father, as someone wiser than them.’

This was an issue on which he and his grandfather would never see eye to eye, Marco knew.

‘Emily, why don’t you call it a day and go home? No one else will come into the shop now and you don’t have any more client appointments. I know you hate me keeping on about this, but you really don’t look at all well. I can lock up the premises for you.’

Emily forced herself to give her assistant an I’m-all-right smile. Jemma wasn’t wrong, though she didn’t like the fact that the girl had noticed how unwell she looked, because she didn’t want to have to answer questions about the cause. ‘It’s kind of you to offer to do that, Jemma,’ she answered, ‘but…’

‘But you’re missing Marco desperately, and you don’t want to go back to an empty house?’ Jemma suggested gently, her words slicing through the barriers Emily had tried so desperately to maintain.

She could feel betraying tears burning the backs of her eyes. She had tried so very hard to pretend that she didn’t mind that she and Marco had split up, but it was obvious that her assistant hadn’t been deceived.

‘It had to end, given Marco’s royal status,’ she told Jemma, trying to keep her voice light. Initially, she had worried about revealing the truth of Marco’s real identity. But, in the end, she’d had no need to do so because her assistant had seen one of many articles appearing in the press about Marco’s return to Niroli; most of them had been accompanied by photographs of his cavalcade and the crowd waiting to welcome him. ‘I just wish that he had told me the truth about himself, Jemma,’ Emily said in a low voice, unable to conceal her hurt.

‘I can understand that,’ Jemma agreed. ‘But according to what I’ve read, Marco came over here incognito because he wanted to prove himself in his own right. He had already done that by the time he met you, yet I suppose he could hardly tell you his real identity—not only would it have been difficult for him to just turn round and say, “Oh, by the way, perhaps I ought to tell you that I’m a prince,” he most probably wanted you to value him for himself, not for his title or position.’

Emily could see the logic of Jemma’s argument, and she knew it was one that Marco himself would have used—had they ever got to the stage of discussing the issue.

‘Marco didn’t tell me because he didn’t want to tell me,’ she retorted, trying to harden her heart against its betraying softening. ‘To him, I was just a…a…temporary bed-mate—a diversion he could enjoy, before he left me to get on with the really serious business of his life and return to Niroli.’

‘I think I know how you must be feeling,’ Jemma allowed, ‘but I did read in one article that it wasn’t until the death of his parents in an accident that Marco became the next in line to the throne. I’m sure he didn’t tell you because he assumed he would continue to live in London with you anonymously.’

‘I meant nothing to him.’

‘I can’t believe that, Emily. You always seemed so happy together, and so well suited.’

‘It’s pointless talking about it, or him, now. It’s over.’

‘Is it? I can’t help thinking that there’s a lot of unfinished business between the two of you,’ Jemma told her softly. ‘I know from what you told me that you left the apartment virtually as soon as you discovered the truth. You must have still been in shock when that happened, and my guess is that Marco must have been equally shocked, although for different reasons.’

‘Reasons like being found out, you mean, and resenting me being the one to end our relationship, not him?’ Emily asked her bitterly.

‘So, you wouldn’t be interested if he got in touch with you?’ Jemma probed quietly.

‘That isn’t going to happen.’ But she knew from the look in her assistant’s eyes that Jemma had guessed her weakness and how much a foolish, treacherous part of her still longed for him.

‘Be fair to yourself, Emily,’ Jemma told her. ‘You and Marco have history together, and there are still loose ends for you that need proper closure, questions you need to ask and answers Marco needs to give you. A poisoned wound can’t heal,’ she pointed out wisely. ‘And until you get that poison of your break-up out of your system, you won’t heal.’

‘I’m fine,’ Emily lied defensively.

‘No, you aren’t,’ Jemma responded firmly. ‘Just look at yourself. You aren’t eating, you’re losing weight and you obviously aren’t happy.’

‘It’s just this virus, that’s all. I can’t seem to throw it off properly,’ Emily told her. But she knew that Jemma wasn’t deceived.

Emily was still thinking about her conversation with Jemma more than two hours later as she wandered aimlessly round her showroom, pausing to straighten a line of already perfectly straight sample swatches. Jemma had been right about her not wanting to return to her empty house and correct too about how much she was missing Marco.

It had been all very well telling herself that he had lied to her and that she was better off without him. The reality was very different: the empty space he’d left in her life had been taken over by the unending misery of living without him. He had only been gone just a short time, but already she had lost count of the number of times every night she woke up reaching out for him in her bed, only to be filled with anguish when the reality that he wasn’t there hit her once more. No matter how hard she worked, she couldn’t fill her mind with enough things to block out the knowledge that Marco had left; that she wouldn’t be going home to him; that never again would he hold her, or touch her, or kiss her; never ever again. It was over, and somehow she must find a way to rebuild her life, although right now she had no idea how she was going to accomplish that. To make matters worse, as Jemma had already commented, she was losing weight and felt unable to eat properly. Emily had put it down to a flu bug she had picked up earlier in the year. She just couldn’t seem to get rid of it.

Allied to which, she had an even nastier heartache bug, Emily recognised. Did Marco think of her at all, now he was living his new life, Emily wondered miserably, or was he far too busy planning his future? A future that was ultimately, and surely, bound to include a wife. Pain seized her, ripping at her all her defences, leaving her exposed to the reality of what loving him really meant. Marco…Marco… How could this have happened to her? How could she have avoided falling in love with him? What was he doing right now? Who was he with? His grandfather? His family? She mustn’t do this to herself, Emily warned herself tiredly. It served no purpose, other than to reinforce what she already knew, and that was that she loved a man who did not love her. She reached for her coat. She might as well go home.

‘What is this I hear about you returning to London? I will not allow you to leave Niroli to go to London. What possible reason could you have for wanting to be there?’

Marco had to struggle to stop himself from responding in kind to his grandfather’s angry interrogation.

‘You know why I need to return. I have certain business matters to attend to there,’ he answered suavely instead.

‘I do not permit it.’

‘No? That is your choice, Grandfather, but I still intend to go. You see, I do not need your permission.’

Obstinately they eyed each other, two alpha males who knew that, according to the law of the jungle, only one of them could truly hold the reins of power. Marco had no intention of allowing his grandfather to dominate him. He knew well enough that once he let him have the upper hand, the king would treat him with contempt. Giorgio was the kind of man who would rather die with his sword in his hand, so to speak, than allow a younger rival to take it from him. The truth was that Marco could have dealt with the business that was taking him to the UK from the island, and that, in part, his decision to go to London in spite of his grandfather’s objections had been made publicly to underline his own determination and status. It was more than two weeks since he had first arrived on Niroli, and there hadn’t been a single day when he and his grandfather hadn’t clashed like two Titans. Every attempt he had made to talk to Giorgio about doing something to help the poorer inhabitants of the island had been met with a furious tirade about what a waste of money this would be, and a threat to royal rule.

Marco was determined that electricity should be made available to those living in the more remote villages, and his grandfather was equally adamant that he was not prepared to sanction it.

‘Very well, then, I shall pay for it myself,’ Marco had told him grimly. But the reality was that things were not as simple as that: the topography of the mountain region meant that they would need to bring in expert outside help, and it was of course Vialli country.

Marco suspected that King Giorgio was being difficult for the sake of being difficult, more than anything else. He could also admit to himself that his years in London running his own life and not having to worry about consulting anyone about his decisions was now making it very difficult for him to conform to the role of king-in-waiting. He was very much the junior partner in this new relationship. He started to walk away.

‘Marco, I trust that this visit of yours to London does not have anything to do with that woman you were bedding?’

Marco swung round and looked at his grandfather, his voice flattened by the weight of his fury as he demanded, ‘And if it does?’

‘Then I forbid you to see her,’ his grandfather told him fiercely. ‘The future King of Niroli does not bed some commoner—a divorcée, with no pedigree and no money.’

‘No one tells me who I can and cannot take to my bed, Grandfather, not even you.’ Marco didn’t wait to hear what the older man might say in reply. Instead he strode out of the room, fighting to dampen down the heat of the fury burning along his veins. The bright sunshine that had warmed the air earlier that day was turning to vivid dusk as he left the palace. He had refused the offer of a suite of rooms within its walls, preferring instead to stay in the nearby villa he had inherited from his parents. His grandfather hadn’t been too pleased about that, but Marco had refused to give in. It was very important to him that he retained his privacy and independence. However, right now, it wasn’t the villa he was heading for as he climbed into his personal car. He was bound for the airport, and a flight to London, despite his grandfather’s opposition. How dared Giorgio attempt to tell him that he couldn’t sleep with Emily? He glanced at the clock on the dashboard of his car. It would be early evening in London, just after six o’clock. Emily would most probably have left her shop and be on her way home.

Emily! It hadn’t needed his grandfather’s mention of her to bring her into his thoughts. Indeed, it had surprised and disconcerted him to discover just how much she had been there since they had parted. It was only because he was discovering that he wasn’t enjoying sleeping alone, he assured himself. The fact that Emily was so constantly in his thoughts was simply his mind playing tricks and had no personal relevance for him.

He turned his thoughts back to his grandfather; despite his frustration with the older man’s arrogant and domineering attitude, he was very aware that the king was not in the best of health. He must continue to temper his reaction to him as much as he could. But it wasn’t easy.

‘Emily, why don’t you go and see your doctor?’ Jemma suggested, her face shadowed with concern as she studied Emily’s wan complexion.

‘There’s no need for that. It’s as I’ve said before—it’s just that virus hanging around,’ Emily explained tiredly. ‘The doctor will only tell me to take some paracetamol, and that it’s bound to wear off soon.’

‘You’ve been sick every morning this week, and now you’ve left your lunch. You look exhausted.’

‘I need a holiday, some sunshine to perk me up a bit, that’s all,’ Emily replied lightly. She didn’t want to continue this discussion, but she didn’t want to hurt Jemma’s feelings either; she knew her assistant was genuinely concerned about her.

‘You certainly need something—or someone,’ Jemma agreed forthrightly, leaving Emily regretting that she had ever allowed her guard to slip and admit that she was missing Marco.

‘Why don’t I pop across the road and bring you back a sandwich and a cup of coffee?’ Jemma suggested.

‘Coffee?’ Emily shuddered with revulsion. The very thought made her feel nauseous. ‘I couldn’t face it,’ she protested. ‘Just thinking about the smell makes me feel sick.’

‘I think you’re right about you needing a holiday,’ Jemma told her firmly.

Emily gave her a forced smile. The truth was, what she needed and wanted more than anything else was Marco—Marco’s arms—to hold her close, Marco’s body next to hers in bed at night and, most of all, Marco’s love, and the knowledge that it would last a lifetime. But she wasn’t going to be given any of those. She hadn’t realised just how hard it would be for her after their relationship had ended. The emotional pain she was suffering now was almost unendurable; it tore through her emotions like a fever in her blood, burning up her immunity. Every night when she went to bed she told herself that it couldn’t get any worse and that soon she would start to feel better. But every morning when she woke up it was worse. She hated herself for wanting him like this after the way he had deceived her. However, hating herself couldn’t stop her from loving him.

The business that had brought Marco to London had been concluded, and the first consignment of the generators he’d bought at his own expense were already on their way to the airport to be flown out by a cargo plane to Niroli. He had been on his way back to his hotel when, for no logical reason he could find, he had leaned forward and told the cab driver he had changed his mind, then given him the address of Emily’s small shop in Chelsea. He didn’t owe her anything; she had refused to let him fully explain to her that his decision to conceal his real identity had been one he had made long before he had met her. Sleeping dogs were best left to lie and, anyway, their relationship would have had to end sooner or later.

Marco’s purchase of the generators would infuriate his grandfather, as would the knowledge that he was seeing Emily, he acknowledged as he paid the cab fare and looked along the pretty Chelsea street basking in afternoon sunshine. So was that why he was here? To infuriate his grandfather? Marco’s mouth curled in sardonic awareness. The days when he had been immature enough to need to infuriate the man he had seen as an unwanted authority figure were long gone. No, he didn’t want to upset his grandfather at all. But he was not quite ready to let go or move on. Therefore a little reinforcement to him of the fact that Marco wasn’t going to be dictated to wouldn’t do any harm. Plus, he liked the idea of dealing with two separate issues at a single stroke—Emily had walked out on him without giving him the chance to explain his situation to her rationally. She owed him that opportunity and his pride demanded that she retract the contemptuously angry insults she had thrown at him. That was what had brought him here: his own pride. And no one, not his grandfather, and certainly not Emily herself, was going to stop him from seeing her and demanding that his pride was satisfied. And his body, which needed satisfaction so desperately? Any woman could provide him with that! Marco dismissed the throb that was increasing with every step that took him closer to Emily. No way would he ever allow one woman to dominate his senses to that extent.

He could see into the window of her shop-cum-showroom from where he was standing. The simple elegance of the set Emily had created was both immediately refreshing and soothing on his eye. She had a remarkable, indeed an inspired, gift for transforming the dull and utilitarian. His Niroli villa could certainly do with her skills!

Marco began to frown. Whilst he had to admit how poorly the décor of his villa compared with that of the London apartment Emily had decorated for him, he could well imagine his grandfather’s reaction if he were to return to the island with her at his side, claiming that he needed an interior designer. His grandfather wouldn’t believe him for one moment and he would think that Marco was deliberately flouting his orders. Perhaps he should flout them in this way, Marco reflected ruefully; it would be a sure and certain way of making his grandfather understand that he wasn’t going to be pushed around. And Emily’s presence on Niroli and in his life wouldn’t directly impact on their subjects.

The more he thought about it, the more Marco could see the benefit to himself of Emily’s temporary and brief presence on the island as a sharp warning to his grandfather not to trespass into his privacy. Certainly in the unlikely event of Emily being willing to return to Niroli with him, he would want her to share his bed. He would be a fool not to, given the level of his current sexual hunger. Was that really why he was here now? Not solely because of his pride, but because he still wanted her too?

No!

He was already pushing open the shop door, but then he paused, half inclined to turn round and walk away just to prove how unfounded that motivation was. However, it was too late for him to change his mind: Emily had seen him.

She was sitting behind a desk talking with her assistant, Jemma, and the first thing Marco noticed was how much weight she had lost and how pale and fragile she looked. Because of him? It shocked him to discover that a part of him wanted to believe it was because she was missing him. Why? Why should he feel like this when, in the past, with other women, he had been only too pleased to see them move on to a new partner after he had broken up with them. But in the past he hadn’t continued to want those other women, had he?

He pushed his thoughts to one side, watching Emily’s eyes widen as she looked up and saw him, the blood rushing to her face, turning it a deep pink. He saw her lips frame his name. She pushed back her chair to stand up and then he saw her sway and start to crumple, as though her body were no more than one of the swathes of fabric draped over the back of another chair nearby. That deep pink glow had receded from her cheeks, leaving her so pale that she looked almost bloodless.

He reacted immediately and instinctively, pushing his way through the pieces of furniture, reaching her just in time to hear her saying huskily, ‘It’s all right, I’m not going to faint,’ before she did exactly that.

Through the roaring blur of sick dizziness, Emily could hear voices: Jemma’s sharp with anxiety, Marco’s harsher than she wanted it to be, their words, moving giddily in and out of one another, weaving through the darkness she was trying to free herself from. Then she felt Marco’s arms tightening around her, holding her, and she exhaled on a small sigh of relief, knowing she was safe and that she didn’t have to battle on alone any more. Gratefully she let the darkness take her as she slid into a faint.

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