‘Oh, Matt,’ she murmured, and determination gave way to sympathy and an innate need to comfort him, to ease his suffering. She lifted her fingertips to his shoulder and gently traced his flesh. He was still so warm. A kaleidoscope of butterflies launched in her belly. The sun rose higher; gold slanted across her face. ‘I can’t imagine what that was like for you.’
‘An adjustment,’ he grunted, his nostrils flaring, his eyes pinning her to the spot.
She looked at him with obvious disbelief. ‘Stop acting like you’re too tough to care. No one can go through something like that and not have it change them. You must have been...’
‘It changed me,’ he stated, interrupting her with a voice that was weighted down by his feelings. ‘It changed me a great deal. At fifteen I still believed my parents were infallible, that my sovereignty was guaranteed and that Spiro would spend his life driving me crazy with annoying questions and demands for attention. At fifteen I believed that I was the future King and would one day have the power to do and fix and make just about anything. I truly thought I was omnipotent.’
She nodded slowly, unconsciously bringing her body closer to his. ‘I think most teenagers feel that—royal or not.’
‘Maybe so.’ He didn’t smile but his eyes dropped to her lips, tracing their soft roundness with visible distraction. ‘By the time I turned sixteen I saw the world for what it is.’
Silence throbbed around them, emotional and weary.
‘And what’s that?’ she prompted after a moment.
‘Transient. Untrustworthy.’
She shook her head and the hand that had been tentatively stroking his shoulder curved around it now, so only her thumb swept across his warm flesh. When he still didn’t look at her, she lifted the other hand to his shoulder, needing more contact, as though through her touch alone she could reassure him and somehow fix this.
‘What happened to you is a terrible tragedy,’ she said quietly. ‘But you can’t let it rob you of your own happiness. Your parents wouldn’t want that. Your brother wouldn’t either. You say you’re living for Spiro, but how can you be when you take such a dim view of all there is out there?’
‘I am a realist, remember?’ he said, breathing in deep, so his chest moved forward and brushed against her front. Her nipples tingled at the unintentional contact.
‘A realist? I don’t know, Matt. Sometimes I think you’re nudging into pessimist territory.’
His eyes held hers and the air between them was thick, like the clouds before a storm. ‘Is that so bad?’
‘I...’ Her mind was finding it hard to keep up. She looked at him, shaking her head, but why?
‘Maybe, over time, you’ll change me,’ he said and then his smile was cynical and the air returned to normal. She blinked, like waking up from her own dream.
‘I’m not sure people really change so easily.’
He stepped out of her reach and nodded curtly. ‘Nor am I.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘JUST A LITTLE this way, please, madam,’ the photographer urged, holding a slender tanned arm in the air.
Frankie followed his instructions, but the smile she had pinned to her face earlier was starting to feel as if it was held in place via glue.
‘Perfect. Just a few more—over near the balcony.’
The afternoon sun was streaming in like arrows of gold, no less dazzling than it had been earlier that day, when they’d stood on a different balcony and watched the dawn crest over the ocean. But then he’d been wearing only boxer shorts and the trauma of his dream had clung to him like a dark cloak she’d needed to break him free of. Now, Matthias looked every inch the handsome King. A dark suit with a cream tie, his eyes glinted in his tanned face. Black hair had been styled back from his brow, and it was all she could do not to simply stare at him.
Mathilde had presented Frankie with a cream dress for the formal engagement announcement photo session—it was long and had a ruffle across one shoulder that fell to her waist before swishing out into a narrow skirt, all the way to her ankles. Teamed with a pair of heels, she at least had a small advantage on her usual height, so she didn’t feel so small when standing beside Matthias.
‘It has been forty minutes,’ Matthias bit out, lifting his gold wristwatch and staring at the time. ‘Surely you have enough?’
The photographer, busy looking at the digital screen on the back of the camera, glanced up and blinked, then nodded. ‘Almost, Your Majesty,’ he promised. ‘Just five more minutes.’
Frankie risked a glance at Matthias’s face; it was forbidding and oh, so regal. These engagement portraits were going to make them look as if they were on their way to a funeral rather than a wedding.
‘Do you need a break, deliciae?’ Matthias looked directly at her and her heart thumped in her chest.
She shook her head. ‘I’m fine. You?’
He grimaced in response. ‘Hardly my preferred way to spend time.’
‘Just against the railing, please, sir. Madam.’
Matthias assumed a nonchalant, bored pose and Frankie stood beside him. The photographer shook his head. ‘Lean into him a bit more. Like this—’ The photographer tilted his head and smiled.
Frankie compressed her lips and looked up at Matthias before moving. He was watching her, his expression sardonic.
With a small sigh, Frankie did as the photographer had suggested, but it was like being exposed to flames. Her head rested on his pectoral muscle; she could hear his heart, feel his warmth. Her smile was barely there, a whisper on her face—how could she smile when standing upright was such an effort? Matthias’s hand curved around her back and his fingers splayed wide, moving ever so slightly up and down, up and down, so heat and warmth radiated from where he touched her.
‘Smile!’ the photographer reminded her. Frankie tried, but all of her was tied up in that moment in simply feeling. Sensations were overriding anything else. The desire she was trying to fight with all her being surged inside her, making her nerve-endings quiver, making her want to burst from the room and drag Matthias to bed, to reclaim what she knew they could mean to one another.
Matthias dipped his head forward and said sotto voce, ‘You are trembling like a little leaf, mikró.’
She looked up at him, for a moment forgetting they weren’t alone. Their eyes latched and nothing—no one—existed. They were alone on the balcony, the ancient ocean rolling in the background as it had for millennia. Grey eyes held green, and she lost herself in their depths. She lost herself in the ocean of his eyes, she fell to the bottom, she drowned on the seafloor, wrapped in sand and shells, and she cared not—she forgot everything.
His head dropped slowly, as if on a time lapse, though of course it hadn’t really been so slow. To Frankie, though, it was the work of minutes: long, agonising, tense moments when her lips were tingling and her eyes were holding his and she could think of nothing else but a need to sink into his kiss. It was just a brush of his lips to hers, the lightest, most frustrating contact.
He kissed her, the photographer clicked, and her body snapped to life. The moan that escaped her lips was involuntary, just a small husky sound, and then Matthias lifted his head, his eyes not leaving Frankie’s passion-ravaged face. ‘It is enough,’ he said and his words had a cool tone.
‘Yes, sir, definitely. That’s plenty. Thank you, sir.’
Matthias turned to Frankie and extended a hand, and ridiculously she almost didn’t take it. Fear dogged her every move. Fear of this—what she was fighting, the certainty that this passion could subsume her every good intention and intellectual certainty that Matthias was not someone she could trust with her heart, her life, her love.
How absurd. She was overthinking it!
She took his hand, purely because the photographer was there and to refuse would have seemed churlish and strange, and walked with him through the gallery t
hey’d been posing in earlier. At the door she let go, pulling her hand back softly and rubbing her palms together.
‘So the engagement will be announced when?’
‘Tomorrow.’
They continued to walk down a wide beautiful corridor, lined with enormous floral arrangements. They were fragrant and stunning.
‘I need to tell my parents. They’re going to be...blind-sided.’
Matthias tilted a look at her. ‘Why?’
Frankie pulled a face. ‘Well, I’m getting married, to a man they’ve never even heard of. A king, no less!’
‘You’re marrying your son’s father,’ he said laconically.
‘A man they don’t know from Adam.’
‘Who’s Adam?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s an expression. I mean, you’re just some guy who...’
‘Yes?’
She flicked her gaze to him and then looked away again. Ridiculously, she felt uncomfortable addressing the truth of what had happened between them. ‘Who got me pregnant and disappeared into thin air.’
She wasn’t looking at him, so didn’t see the way his features tightened as though he’d been slapped. She didn’t see the way a muscle jerked in his jaw and his eyes focused more intently on her face. ‘I presume they think the worst of me.’
She shrugged. ‘Can you blame them?’
‘No.’ The forcefulness of his word had her looking at him once more. ‘If we had a daughter and this was her fate—’
‘My fate wasn’t so bad,’ she said with a small grimace. ‘I got Leo, remember?’
Matthias didn’t acknowledge her comment. ‘If I had known there was even the slightest chance of you having conceived that night, things would have been very different.’
‘Different how?’
‘I wouldn’t have missed a moment of his life,’ he said, the words rich with emotion. Foolish hurt dipped in Frankie’s gut—hurt that it was Leo alone he would have wished to see and support. Hurt that a desire to spend more time with her didn’t enter into it, when she had pined for his touch, for his smile, for months.
‘We can’t change the past,’ she said softly.
‘Nor can we secure the future. But here, in this moment, I promise you, Frankie, this is not how I would have wanted things to be. You shouldn’t have had to do this alone. If I could miraculously turn time backwards and change this, I would. With all of myself, I would...’
She swallowed, looking up at him, and she could feel the truth of his regret, his remorse, his desire to have been a part of this from the beginning.
‘I know.’
He stared at her, long and hard, and though he didn’t speak it was as though his gaze was asking a question of her: did she really understand that? Did she really believe that he was not the kind of man to abandon a young, pregnant woman? Did she know how deeply abhorrent that was to him?
And then, as though he saw her answer, he saw her acceptance of his innocence, he nodded. As though a switch had been flicked, he became a man of action. A king. A ruler. A man without doubt and self-recriminations. ‘I will call your parents and explain.’
Frankie let out a laugh. ‘You’ve never even met my parents!’
His eyes glowed with intent. ‘I am the man you’re going to marry, the man who fathered their grandson, even if I haven’t been any kind of a father to him. I owe it to them to explain my absence, and how I intend to remedy that.’
‘Hang on.’ She laughed again and was surprised to find true amusement spinning through her. His eyes clung to her smile and her heart turned over, sobering her. ‘You’re not...this isn’t...you’re not a character in a Jane Austen novel. Nor am I, for that matter. I don’t need you to go to my dad and ask for permission.’
His eyes narrowed imperceptibly. ‘It is a mark of respect.’
‘Respect me,’ she said, ‘and my wishes, and my parents will be okay.’
‘I owe them an explanation...’
‘You owe me an explanation, not them, and you’ve given me one. I understand. I forgive you. They’re nothing to do with this.’
‘It is important to me that your parents understand I had no idea you were pregnant.’
‘They know that,’ she said quietly. ‘What do you think I said to them?’
At this, he was very still, as though it hadn’t occurred to him that she might have painted a picture of him to her family at all. ‘I have no idea.’
‘I told them you were an amazing man, who I couldn’t contact. I told them we didn’t plan to see each other again, and that it wasn’t your fault I couldn’t find you. I told them I’d tried—they knew about the investigator—but, ultimately, they just feel sorry for you. For what you’ve missed. My parents are...’ She swept her eyes shut for a moment, her childhood and reality hitting her hard in that moment. ‘Being parents meant everything to them. The fact you were deprived of that privilege through life’s circumstances is something they were saddened by. Not angry about.’
His expression showed scepticism, but she barely registered it.
She forced a smile to her face. ‘Besides, they got to be grandparents to Leo, and believe me when I tell you: no child has ever been more spoiled nor adored. No baby has ever been so hugged and kissed.’
His frown deepened. ‘Yet they left you living in poverty?’
‘Poverty?’ She rolled her eyes now and gestured down the corridor. ‘My apartment might not have been a palace, but it was hardly a slum either, Matthias. Don’t be such a snob.’
His laugh was involuntary—no one had called Matthias a snob in his life.
‘Mum and Dad aren’t wealthy,’ she said softly, a warm smile touching her lips. ‘They helped when they could, but my dad has needed a heap of operations for his back and that didn’t come cheap.’
Matthias’s brow wrinkled.
‘Insurance wouldn’t cover it.’ She recalled the way her father had delayed the necessary procedures, insisting he could manage, when his body gradually betrayed him. ‘The last thing I wanted was for them to worry about Leo and me.’
‘But you have found it difficult?’
‘Financially?’
He nodded.
‘Yes. But that was my choice, my business. I knew being an artist would be hard. I have had to do things I didn’t particularly like, just to get by, to support Leo. It’s why I need the art show to be a success. I wanted my career to be able to support us, but in reality, who knows if that would ever have been possible.’
‘What things?’ he prompted, homing in on the detail she’d revealed.
‘Oh, nothing terrible. I just mean I’ve worked at school fairs doing sketch portraits, or markets, I’ve waitressed and bussed tables, doing whatever I can to earn money, so that I can keep doing what I really love.’
‘Which is painting.’
She nodded slowly. ‘But I’ve always known I’d probably have to grow up and get a real job some day.’
‘Your talent is rare. You shouldn’t abandon your art.’ The praise, so casually given, made her stomach roll.
‘Thank you. But, talented or not, it’s not an easy world to break into.’
He seemed to take her statement and mull on it, thinking it over for a moment, before nodding, almost dismissively. ‘I must insist on calling your parents for myself, Frankie.’
‘But...why?’
He expelled slowly and his breath fanned her temple, so her blonde hair shifted a little. His eyes lifted to the motion. ‘Because there is no excuse for having left you. You were pregnant. Alone. And I should have been there.’
‘You didn’t know—’
He pressed a finger to her lips, his eyes beseeching her for silence. ‘I am not a man to run from his responsibilities.’ He was so strong, so big, she felt his insistence and understood it. ‘I failed you. I failed Leo.
And your parents deserve to hear that from me.’
Frankie was utterly struck dumb. His admission was almost an apology, one she had never expected from him.
‘You had no idea about Leo,’ she said quietly in an attempt to relieve him of his burden of guilt. ‘I know you would have helped me if you had.’
‘We would have married,’ he agreed with complete confidence, never mind what Frankie might have thought of that. ‘And you would never have known a day of worry in your life.’
She silently disagreed with that. Perhaps not financial worry, but emotional? Oh, yes. This marriage was going to be fraught with stress for Frankie.
CHAPTER EIGHT
AFTER A BAKING-HOT DAY, it was bliss to sink into the cool water of the swimming pool and stare out at the glistening sea. Bliss to be alone, with her hair in a simple braid, her face wiped of make-up, her space clear of servants. Leo had thrown a tantrum in the afternoon and though Liana had remained calm and helped Frankie remember that two-year-olds threw tantrums, that there was nothing abnormal about that behaviour, especially in strong-willed little boys, Frankie was nonetheless drained. And it had less to do with Leo and more to do with Matthias than Frankie wanted to admit. Every encounter with the man who would become her husband required so much effort. So much self-control. It was becoming increasingly difficult to remember why she wanted to keep him at arm’s length. Or to care.
In the face of her desire for Matthias, sex for sex’s sake was a palatable option, even when she’d always believed otherwise. Her need to control this seemed futile and absurd given that they would marry. Wasn’t she only fighting to delay the inevitable? Why not just succumb? Why not enjoy what he was offering?
She duck-dived beneath the water’s surface and swam a lap, holding her breath until her lungs were stinging, then pushing up off the tiled bottom and resting her elbows on the sun-warmed terracotta tiles.
Frustration gnawed at her—she pushed it aside with effort, focusing on the vista before her. She couldn’t imagine a better view from anywhere in the world.
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