He opened his mouth to say something and then appeared to change his mind.
He moved closer, but not to her, towards the painting, and he frowned as he looked at it. Self-conscious—she never liked it when people looked upon her art as it was forming on the canvas—she felt almost as if she’d been walked in on while naked. A work in progress was raw, messy, chaotic.
She tried to see it through his eyes.
It was moody and atmospheric. The destruction she’d foisted on its lower half minutes earlier only added to its brooding intensity. The red line was striking.
‘I bought it, you know,’ he said, and she frowned because she had no idea what he was talking about. ‘The painting you were working on when we met.’
‘You... It sold to a private buyer.’ She shook her head, lifting her eyes from the new painting to his taut profile.
‘To me.’ He looked towards her abruptly, so she had no chance to flick her gaze away. ‘It sold to me.’
‘Why? Why did you buy it?’
His smile was dark, self-deprecating, imbued with anger and scepticism. ‘Because, Frankie, I found it very hard to put you out of my mind.’ He spoke darkly. ‘I bought it to challenge myself—you were always there with me, and yet I knew I could never contact you. I was testing my strength and resolve by keeping that beautiful piece you’d created close to me. Taunting myself with what I couldn’t ever have again.’
It made absolutely no sense.
‘You got into my bloodstream, like some kind of fever, and I refused to let you weaken me.’
She bit down on her lower lip, hurt shifting inside her. ‘I didn’t want to weaken you.’
‘I know that.’ He took in a deep breath, his chest moving with the action. ‘I know that.’ He lifted a hand then, as if to touch her cheek, but then took a step backwards, keeping his body stiff, his expression impossible to read. He was stern. Focused. She would have said unemotional, except she could feel waves of emotion emanating from him.
‘You were at a café with Leo.’
There was a thick undercurrent to the words. They came to her from far away, making no sense. ‘This morning?’
He gave nothing away. ‘It was in the papers. A photograph of the two of you.’
‘Yes.’ She nodded, darting her tongue out and licking her lower lip. ‘I was annoyed about that. I didn’t notice a photographer.’
‘Anyone with a cell phone is paparazzi these days.’
That was true. She nodded.
‘Did you go out without security?’
The question caught her off-guard. ‘I... It was... The island is tiny and the café an easy walk. Leo and I go to the beach often, without guards. I didn’t think...’
And now, as though he couldn’t help himself, he put his hands on her forearms and held her still. He stared down at her and she stared back, but her heart wouldn’t stop racing; blood gushed through her so fast she could hear it roaring inside her ears like an angry ocean.
‘You didn’t think?’ he asked, haunted, and he dragged her body to his, holding her against him, and she didn’t fight him; she didn’t even think about fighting him.
‘What if someone wanted to hurt you? Or hurt him? What if someone kidnapped Leo?’
‘I was with him the whole time,’ she said shakily. ‘Nothing was going to happen.’
‘You don’t know that,’ he groaned, as though he could barely speak. ‘You cannot take those kinds of risks, Frankie. You can’t do it. Please. Please do not take these risks.’
‘It’s not a risk,’ she promised softly, gently, her heart turning over for him.
‘How do you know this?’ His jaw tightened as though he were grinding his teeth. ‘You can’t. You’re acting on blind faith and I am not prepared to. I won’t live with this kind of worry. I can’t.’
Sympathy curled inside Frankie. She reached up and ran her fingers over his cheek so his breath escaped him in a single hiss. ‘I understand why you feel that way,’ she said softly. ‘You lost your family in terrible circumstances. You couldn’t save them, and now you’re worried something will happen to Leo and you won’t be able to save him.’ His eyes flared. ‘But you can’t keep him in some kind of gilded cage. Not here, not in your home. I want him to have as normal a life as is possible. You have to trust that I can keep him safe. You have to trust me.’
She could see as each word hit its mark, she could see the way his face stretched with each statement. ‘I have lost everyone I ever cared for,’ he said finally, the words tight as though being dragged from him against his will. ‘I have no intention of losing you or Leo.’
Stupid, blind hope beat inside her, but she refused to answer it.
‘Tell me why,’ she said, her whole body attuned to every movement of his.
‘Tell you what?’ He was guarded again, cautious. ‘What do you want from me?’
She blinked thoughtfully. ‘Tell me why you’re so furious about this.’
‘You are my wife—he is my son...’
She shook her head. It wasn’t good enough. ‘You were prepared to marry someone else two months ago,’ she reminded him with steady determination. ‘If something happened to us, you could simply remarry. Have another child.’
‘Don’t,’ he ground out, and hope in her chest flared larger, brighter.
‘What? You’re a realist, remember? You can marry whomever you want and have as many children as you need. Why do you care about me and Leo?’
‘He is my son!’ The words were torn from him, and then he was dragging a hand through his hair, pulling at it, his eyes tortured, haunted, and she hated having to push him, but deep down she knew how essential it was.
‘Yes, and you can’t bear the thought of something happening to him, can you? It would kill you if he was hurt in any way?’
‘Of course!’ he roared. ‘Damn it, Frankie, I’m done losing people I—’
‘Say it,’ she demanded, crossing her arms over her chest.
‘I’m done losing people,’ he finished, stepping back from her, putting physical space between them as though that would defuse this.
Frankie wasn’t going to back down though. ‘I never expected you to take a coward’s response, Matthias.’
‘How dare you call me a coward?’ He laughed, but it was a sound of desperation—a dying man trying to grab a life raft.
‘I dare because I faced every single one of my fears when I married you. I married a man I love with all my heart, who claimed he’d never love me. I married you knowing I was relegating myself to a life of loneliness. I married you with only the smallest seed of hope that you might ever care for me how I needed you to. And now you won’t even admit that you love our son? When it’s the most natural thing in the world?’
He glared at her and her heart raced. ‘I love him, okay? I love him so much I am terrified of how I’ll live if anything ever happens to our child. I look at him and I see my brother—my brother as he was in the accident when I couldn’t even reach him, I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t save them, Frankie. My whole family died and I couldn’t do a damned thing. What if something happens to Leo?’ He waved a hand over his eyes, then blinked at her with despair. ‘What if something happens to you?’
She hated seeing him like this. She moved to him and put a hand on his shoulder but he stayed firm, unreceptive.
‘Don’t. I cannot ask you to reassure me, and I don’t want to lie to you. I made a choice that first night I met you that I wouldn’t love you, Frankie. I have made that choice all along, even when, yes—okay, fine—when every single cell in my body aches to say what you need to hear. Even when I know I probably fell in love with you the second we met.’
Frankie drew in a shaking breath.
‘But I chose not to act on that. I chose not to let that control my actions.’
He stood before h
er, a king of men, and she saw only the fifteen-year-old he’d been.
She shook her head, lifting up on tiptoe and brushing her lips to his. He stood rock-still.
‘I can’t do this,’ he said, but his hands lifted into her hair and held her where she was. He pressed his forehead to hers and she made a small sound, deep in her throat.
‘You can’t keep yourself shut off from life because of an accident,’ she said simply when his pain was complex and ran so deep. ‘Just like I can’t live in fear of rejection all my life because my birth parents chose not to raise me. We neither of us need to be defined by our past, Matt.’
‘When my family died—’ he spoke quietly but their faces were so close she heard his words as though they were being breathed into her soul ‘—I wanted to turn my back on the kingdom. I wished I’d died too, Frankie. I wanted to die.’
‘But you didn’t. You became the leader they needed you to be...’
‘Once. I did that once.’ He pressed a kiss to her cheek and she turned her head, capturing his lips with hers. ‘If anything ever happened to you and Leo, if I lost either of you, I don’t think I could do this again.’
Her heart, so broken, so splintered, began to pull together and she knew then that she had to be strong—not just for herself, but for Leo and Matt as well. ‘I can’t promise nothing will ever happen to me. Or Leo. Life comes with so few guarantees. But Matt, you can’t keep pushing us away. Not when we’re right here, your wife and your son, so in love with you. You can’t keep pushing us away just because something might happen, one day. You can’t throw our family away because you’re afraid. Not when, by being brave, there’s a good chance we’ll all get everything we ever wanted in life...’
He shook his head against hers, his hand moving to curl around her cheek, his other fastening around her back.
‘I ruined it,’ he said, the words husky.
She looked up at him, frowning.
‘The painting. I was so... I do not know. Angry. Afraid. No, I was terrified. When I saw that newspaper article, I took the painting from the wall and threw it to the ground, and I stared at the broken frame, the once beautiful object I had destroyed because I was afraid, and I felt... I ruined the painting,’ he said gruffly. ‘And I cannot bear that I have ruined our marriage too. I cannot bear the idea that fear has made me hurt you and push you away, that I have put you through the kind of pain I have felt this last month...’
‘You say fear, but I look at you and I see a man who is so brave. What you’ve been through and turned your life into? I don’t know anyone else who could have done that.’
‘Don’t. Do not speak so highly of me when I have been a coward, pushing you away rather than admitting how I feel for you...’
‘You came here today,’ she said softly. ‘You’re here because you love me, aren’t you?’
His eyes glistened black in his handsome face. ‘Yes,’ he said on a whoosh of relief, a smile crossing his face. ‘I am.’
‘Then you are brave,’ she promised. ‘And I love you.’
‘How is it possible?’ he asked, wonderment and weight in the question.
‘Because you are good and kind and because I believe in fairy tales and for ever.’ She pressed a kiss against his nose and his eyes fell closed. ‘Because I’m an optimist, and because my heart is as much yours as it ever was.’
‘Your heart is a fool,’ he groaned huskily. ‘To love a man so unworthy of you.’
‘You are more worthy of me than you give yourself credit for.’
‘I doubt that,’ he said with a shake of his head. ‘But I will spend the rest of my life trying to deserve you.’
He scooped down and lifted her up, cradling her against his chest, and she laughed at the sudden movement. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I have missed you, Frankie, in every single way. This last month has been an agony. I have longed to talk to you. To show you my kingdom—our kingdom. I have wanted to see your wonder as you discover what is so special about Tolmirós, and I have missed Leo with an intensity that is impossible to describe. I have missed you in every way, and right now I want to make love to you as I should have all along—hold you close and tell you that I love you, tell you that everything you have wanted all your life is right here. I want this day to be the first day of your fairy tale, Frankie.’
‘I thought you didn’t believe in fairy tales,’ she couldn’t help teasing.
‘I didn’t.’ He was serious. ‘Until I met you—and I found myself living in one regardless.’
He kissed her then, a kiss of longing and love, and it inflated her soul. ‘You have given me everything I ever wanted—my wife, my son, a family, a future. And I almost lost you because I couldn’t admit that. I’ve been such a vlakás.’
She had no idea what the word meant. ‘Yes.’ Her agreement was sanguine as she wrapped her arms around his neck. ‘But I forgive you.’
‘You were right about my upbringing,’ he said throatily. ‘I don’t often think about my childhood. I try not to, anyway.’ He furrowed his brow. ‘But that day, when you were so angry with me, you said my childhood wasn’t cold. That it was full of love. And you were right. My mother adored Spiro and me. She would have fought like a wildcat, as you did, to protect her children.’
Frankie’s stomach churned with sadness for this woman, this poor woman. ‘I’d like to know more about her,’ she said honestly, and lifted her hand to his chest. ‘I’d like to hear about your family.’
She could feel his resistance; she could see that it was something he was fighting, but then he nodded tightly. ‘I think I’d like to talk to you about them. In time.’
It was enough. She lifted up and pressed a kiss to his cheek. ‘We have all the time in the world, Matthias. I’m not going anywhere.’
EPILOGUE
NINE MONTHS LATER to the day, baby Emilia Vasilliás was born—a beautiful little sister for Tolmirós’s thriving Crown Prince Leo.
Matthias had been by his wife’s side the entire time—from the moment they’d discovered she was pregnant, only a week after her return to the palace, all the way to the delivery.
As he’d promised, in his office he was King, but he was also a man. A husband and a father, and as he watched her deliver him of another beautiful child he was mainly a bundle of nerves.
He hated seeing her in pain; he longed to be able to carry that pain, to experience it for her, so that she didn’t need to feel the agony she was enduring. But she was so strong, so brave, and after hours of labour a baby’s cry broke through the hospital and they looked upon their princess for the first time.
‘She is beautiful, like you,’ he said, the words thick as he placed the bundled-up child on his wife’s chest.
Exhausted but delirious, Frankie stared at her daughter, emotions welling inside her. ‘She’s so like Leo was,’ Frankie murmured, a smile on her lips, tears on her lashes. ‘The same little nose and look, your dimple,’ she said, looking up at Matthias. Her heart exploded at the sight of the big, strong King with suspiciously moist eyes of his own.
‘She is divine,’ he agreed, the words thick with feeling. ‘A princess for our people.’
‘A sister for Leo.’ Frankie grinned, stroking their baby’s dark pelt of hair. She pressed a kiss to Emilia’s forehead and then relaxed back against the bed. ‘How perfect she is.’
‘How perfect you are,’ Matthias corrected, kissing Frankie’s cheek. ‘A true warrior queen.’
* * *
Their marriage was blessed with three more children—a family of seven—and each birth was rejoiced at and celebrated by the people of Tolmirós, just as the country cheered when Leo, a young man of twenty-eight, announced his engagement to an Australian doctor. His parents were beside him when he married, and by the time Leo welcomed his first child onto this earth, Matthias’s life was so rich and full, his family so
extensive, that he loathed to think of a time when he had almost turned his back on what could have been. He remembered, of course, the instinct to push Frankie away, to close himself off to love because he had lost so much once before.
But brave warrior Queen Frankie had seen through that and she’d fought for what they were, regardless of her own fears and insecurities. And for that he loved her almost more than anything.
Fairy tales generally ended with the idea of people living happily ever after, but Matthias no longer thought about endings—he thought about each day as it came, and he lived with gratitude and peace. Come what may, he had been blessed, and blessed again—more than all the fairy tales in all the land.
* * *
If you enjoyed Shock Heir for the King by Clare Connelly you’re sure to enjoy these other Secret Heirs of Billionaires stories!
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