‘I intend to—once I’ve conquered her every last defence.’ The truly relaxed, flirtatious Eduardo had returned. ‘I’m thinking lap-dancing and whisky...’
But they played the board game for the duration of the flight. It didn’t take long for him to run through the rules and for her to grasp the idea. He was a good tactician, but so was she. Both advanced quickly to secure large tracts of the board. Both claimed territory the other had held. Both took prisoners. Both held the board steady on the table through the descent. And once the plane had landed and slowed to a stop Eduardo met her gaze with a belligerent edge to his jaw.
‘I’m not leaving until you have capitulated control of the south-west quarter,’ he said.
‘Well, I’m not leaving until I have your ultimate surrender,’ she answered smugly.
‘You do not do things by halves, do you?’ He shook the dice furiously. ‘And you never give in.’
‘As if you do!’
Their eyes met again, the frisson of tension building. She liked it that he was as determined, as competitive, as dominant as she. She liked so damn much about him. And the more she got to know him, the more she liked. Which made her even more determined to beat him—to have something over him, just the once.
She had no idea how much time passed before his phone buzzed. He ignored it the first time. And the second. It wasn’t until the seventh consecutive buzz of the device that he finally reacted.
With an irritated sigh he read the messages and then looked up, his expression grim. ‘We have to go to the palace—now.’
He sent a quick text reply and less than a minute later the aircraft door was opened.
The back of her neck prickled as she saw the uniformed attendants. ‘How long have we been sitting here?’
‘Too long,’ he admitted wryly.
She stood and realised he was right. ‘I’m stiff.’ She considered herself to be fitter than most, but the sailing had used muscles she didn’t know existed.
‘If you’re lucky—’ Eduardo paused at the top of the stairs and turned back to send her a heated look ‘—I’ll give you a massage when we get home.’
‘Don’t forget the lap dance.’
She stepped out after him. He took her hand and walked her into the terminal. More uniformed staff whisked them along a private corridor and out to a waiting limousine before she could believe it. Her smile faded when she saw Matteo sitting in the car waiting for them, an iPad in his hand.
‘Problem?’ Eduardo asked as he opted to sit beside his lawyer.
‘I’m sorry, Eduardo.’ Matteo glanced back at the screen. ‘I tried, but there was no way to hold back the flood.’
Stella’s blood iced.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
STELLA SAID NOTHING Eduardo grabbed the iPad and stared at the screen. He swiped it a few times, scrolling down. Then he looked at her. Without saying anything he tilted the tablet so she could see what he’d been reading.
Eduardo’s Secret Soldier Bride!
The headline was emblazoned across the top and there was a picture beneath... Shock rolled through Stella.
‘How did they get that photo?’ All the amusement of the past few hours disappeared. ‘Someone leaked it?’
Eduardo was like granite. Expressionless. Unmoved.
‘Not Giulia?’
‘No.’ Eduardo shook his head. ‘She has been in service with my family for decades.’
‘All her life?’
‘All mine,’ he replied shortly. ‘She was my nanny.’
‘Really?’ She was momentarily diverted, touched that he’d wanted his old carer present at his marriage. And now she understood why Giulia had worked so quietly and endlessly to help her get ready. The woman had a soft spot for the spoilt second son. ‘Then who?’
He frowned and turned away. ‘I will find out. But it does not matter—it was going to become public anyway.’
Stella looked at the photograph, scarcely recognising herself. She was standing just outside the chapel, at the moment when Giulia had gone to check all was ready. They must have Photoshopped it because she looked soft and pretty, and so happy, holding that bouquet of roses up with a small smile curving her lips.
She scrolled down and read the text. Her name. Her history. Her entire service record, there for everyone to read. Horrified, she scanned the words.
‘How did they find all this out?’ she asked. ‘How did this happen?’ She squinted at the screen. ‘Do they know about—?’
‘It is not mentioned.’ Eduardo guessed her concern and answered, flicking a glance at Matteo, who was busy scrolling through another iPad. ‘I’ve checked the other papers—they’ve picked up on the story but there is nothing.’
It was all suddenly very real. And yet it wasn’t real.
‘It says we’ve been in love for ages.’ She could hardly speak for the shock. ‘That we fell in love in the palace. That you met me there because of my father...’ The Prince and the General’s daughter. Star-crossed lovers whose relationship was forbidden by the Crown Prince...
‘You might want to hit Refresh,’ Matteo said apologetically.
Stella stared as new pictures were loaded onto the screen. There were the ones from the café. And then pictures of them walking across the tarmac from the ‘baby jet’. Pictures taken only five minutes ago. They looked dishevelled, in their water-stained shorts and tee shirts, her hair in a loose, wild ponytail.
The headline made a meal of them having spent an hour on the tarmac before disembarking. They’d speculated that it had been so that the new Princess could make herself pretty before being snapped by the paparazzi... But then she and Eduardo had stepped out and she’d looked like that. Apparently it was ‘obvious’ that they’d spent the time engaged in ‘other pursuits’. But she knew the flush she’d worn wasn’t from orgasmic pleasure but board-game victory.
Before her eyes crude joke after crude joke filled the ‘comments’ section.
‘I must see Antonio,’ Eduardo said grimly. ‘Release the wedding pictures,’ he said to Matteo. ‘They will counteract these.’
‘Wedding pictures?’ Stella asked faintly.
‘Matteo took some inside the chapel,’ he answered distractedly, scrolling through the images again.
He had? She’d not been aware of anything but Eduardo in that moment.
And now Eduardo was busily tapping out emails. Wham-bam—back to business. She had to remember that this marriage was little more than another of his business deals. They’d signed the paperwork and everything.
This was not a fairy tale. This was not for ever. Their fantasy escape was over.
CHAPTER TWELVE
STELLA STRODE QUICKLY, trying to match Eduardo’s pace through the vast gilded corridors to his private rooms. Even though she’d spent chunks of her childhood in the immense palace, she now found it forbidding, and she’d certainly never been into the Princes’ wing before. Now she’d learnt that Antonio had one floor, Eduardo another, and there were formal reception rooms on the floor between the two, where they’d meet.
‘There’s a gym, but I will have a treadmill brought up to our rooms so you can have greater privacy,’ said Eduardo as he opened a door, waving away the servants who’d materialised.
‘I prefer to run outside.’
‘You can’t here,’ Eduardo said flatly, closing the door behind them but not stepping further into the room. ‘It isn’t safe, and I don’t want the paparazzi getting pictures of you pounding the pavement.’
‘That isn’t what princesses do?’ she asked wryly. ‘It seems I have a lot to learn.’
‘You’ll do fine.’ He met her sharp look. ‘I already know you’re a fast learner.’
The atmosphere smouldered between them but the constraints niggled at her. ‘
You’d better tell me what else I can and cannot do.’
‘Just continue to be your discreet, dutiful self and you’ll be fine.’
She scowled, but Eduardo had already turned away.
‘I must see him,’ Eduardo said distractedly. ‘Shower and change. I’ll come for you in half an hour.’
Stella walked through his expansive apartment. It was beautifully decorated but impersonal—there was none of the ‘stuff’ that had littered the shelves of the library on Secreto Real.
In the sumptuous bedroom there was an adjoining dressing room. Her clothes, cleaned and pressed, hung on the rack. There were other clothes too—the outrageously expensive ones, purchased especially by a servant, that she’d never worn. The ones that would make her look the part. She turned her back on them. She wasn’t going to pretend to be anything other than herself when she dealt with the Crown Prince.
It wasn’t Eduardo who fetched her forty-five minutes later, but one of the liveried staff.
The second she walked in she knew things weren’t going well. The brothers stood on opposite sides of the room. Eduardo had that fiery, ruthless look he’d had the day he’d announced they were marrying. Antonio had no expression at all. They shared much—the same colouring, similar stature—but where Eduardo’s eyes were hot, Antonio’s were ice.
‘You are Carlos’s daughter?’ Antonio addressed her.
‘Yes.’
He didn’t look at her—he looked through her. It was like being dunked in an Antarctic dive-hole.
‘May I offer my congratulations?’
Stella couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. He was expressionless. Bloodless. So unlike his brother.
‘All of Europe will wish to do the same,’ Antonio added. ‘So the ball scheduled for Saturday shall become a marriage celebration—’
‘Antonio, no.’ Eduardo interrupted him, moving to stand beside Stella. ‘You’re not still planning—?’
‘It has been planned for months, as you well know,’ Antonio said brusquely. ‘Guests have been arriving all week while you’ve been “ill”.’
‘But she’s not ready—’
‘I am cast as the evil older brother in this scenario you have created.’ Antonio turned his icicle eyes onto his brother. ‘I will not remain so.’
Eduardo glared back. ‘Antonio—’
‘The ball has been planned for months—or do you expect us all to act rashly and ruin the happiness and expectations of others? You have deprived the nation of a royal wedding. This celebration is the least you can give the people,’ Antonio went on, his cold fury now evident. ‘She has less than forty-eight hours to get “ready”.’ Antonio sent her another dismissive glance. ‘But the sapphire, a dress and a smile are all that will be necessary.’
Didn’t he like her jeans? What a cold, patronising jerk to relegate her to ‘decorative only’ status.
‘I think you’ll find Stella has more to offer than that,’ Eduardo answered, before she had a chance to breathe.
Antonio’s eyebrows lifted almost imperceptibly, giving him a supercilious look. ‘You should have come to me first.’
‘Even you have to agree this solves several problems. Leave it, Antonio, it is done,’ Eduardo answered. ‘I promise we’ll parade beautifully and dutifully at the ball. We won’t let you down.’
It was obvious Antonio thought they already had.
‘You will attend the pre-ball functions tonight and tomorrow as well,’ Antonio ordered. ‘But to maintain the “mystery” and heighten anticipation, the ball will be Stella’s first formal public appearance.’
Stella’s pulse tripped as Antonio issued his wintry instructions. She recognised that look in his eyes. It was the same one she saw in her father’s. She was a disappointment. He didn’t want Eduardo to have married her. Yet again she was not ‘right’. Not for her job. Not for this relationship.
Was Antonio’s disapproval because she wasn’t nobility? Her father was the first General who had earned his position through work—not via his birth, name and lineage. Did that make her unworthy of the wretched sapphire Eduardo had hung around her neck?
Or was it just her?
Eduardo’s hand was firm on her back, guiding her out of the room. She didn’t bother saying goodbye to the Crown Prince, as protocol and common politeness dictated. She was too hurt.
‘Please excuse my brother,’ Eduardo said briefly, but he didn’t offer any explanation for Antonio’s frostiness. ‘I’m sorry, I need to leave you alone again for a while. Ask Giulia if you need anything.’
‘Of course.’
It wasn’t ‘a while’ that he was gone. It was hours. She dined alone in his apartment, waited up, but in the end sleep overcame her before he returned.
‘Stella...’ He woke her in the morning with a whisper and a kiss.
She opened her eyes and found herself wrapped in his arms.
‘I’d better get on that treadmill,’ she groaned.
‘You’d better get on me first.’
His gaze drilled into her. His body invaded. Devastated. It was so good. It so wasn’t enough. So much for easy.
As soon as she’d recovered some energy she left him in the bed and went to maintain her routine. She would resist when she wanted to.
She was twenty minutes into her time on the treadmill when he placed an iPad on the stand in front of her.
‘My assistant has prepared a dossier on many of tomorrow night’s guests. Photos, names, positions.’
‘That’s useful,’ she puffed as she jogged and swiped the screen. ‘Thank you.’
‘I have other duties I must fulfil,’ he said, a hint of apology in his eyes. ‘I’ll be back later tonight.’
Already she understood that he meant very, very late.
Was this to be her future? To be left locked in the palace with nothing to do but pretty herself for a ball and grow a baby, and at night be a sexual plaything for her insatiable husband? Sure, she was every bit as insatiable as he, but this wasn’t the life she wanted. She wanted her control back.
So she’d control this. She knew how to fight. She just needed different armour from her usual. Antonio had been right—in part. At the very least she needed ‘the sapphire, a dress and a smile’ and the ability to remember a couple dozen names and faces.
Because she wasn’t going to fail.
As she ran on the treadmill she memorised the names and faces. Then she called Giulia and requested a beautician and a hairdresser to be summoned for later in the day. She’d damn well become the Princess San Felipe had wanted for so long.
‘Can you get Dr Russo to come and see me at his convenience as well?’ she asked Giulia, trying to sound as relaxed as she had when she’d asked for the beautician.
‘Of course.’
The doctor arrived within twenty minutes. Because of that swift timing, Stella was certain Giulia knew about her condition.
‘Is everything all right, Your Highness?’ Dr Russo bowed as he entered the private sitting room.
‘Please call me Stella.’ She gestured towards the chairs. ‘I’m sorry to trouble you, I just wanted to talk to you about my pregnancy.’
‘No trouble.’ He sat down. ‘What did you want to discuss?’
She curled her hands into small fists, hiding the dampness of her palms, and smiled. ‘It sounds stupid, but where are my symptoms? I haven’t had any morning sickness, I haven’t been particularly tired, I’ve got no cravings... It’s like it’s not real.’
What if it wasn’t growing properly? Shouldn’t she hate the smell of coffee or something?
To her relief, the doctor didn’t laugh.
‘Perhaps you’re one of the lucky few,’ he suggested calmly.
‘Or perhaps there’s something wrong.’
He regarded her steadily. ‘Why would there be anything wrong?’
She hesitated. Her throat tightened. But this was the one person she had to speak to. ‘My mother died a few hours after giving birth to me.’
His eyes widened and the professional smile faded.
‘I didn’t mention it on the island because I didn’t want to panic anyone,’ she added quickly.
‘Do you know any details?’ he asked carefully.
‘I think she had some kind of haemorrhage. My father doesn’t speak of it.’ He never spoke of her mother. He never spoke to Stella about anything personal or important. ‘I don’t know much else.’
Dr Russo remained calm. ‘You were born in San Felipe?’
‘The main hospital—yes.’
‘Then, with your permission, I’ll check the records there. And we will get a scan arranged for you as soon as possible.’
‘Please... After the ball.’ She needed to know. To understand and prepare.
‘Of course.’ Dr Russo suddenly lifted his case onto the table. ‘I brought a Doppler with me today. It’s a small device we can use to listen to your baby’s heartbeat. You’re far enough along in your pregnancy for us to be able to do that. Would you like to hear your baby?’
For a second Stella’s own heart stopped, then started pounding. ‘Okay.’
Fleetingly she wished Eduardo was there, but he was busy. And she didn’t want to tell him about her mother. Or her fears.
She lay on the sofa, her shirt lifted. The doctor switched the small machine on and held the wand to her stomach.
‘It sounds like hoofbeats,’ she said, her eyes filling.
‘It sounds strong.’ Dr Russo looked pleased. ‘And you are very strong. I will research, but what caused your mother’s haemorrhage probably isn’t going to be hereditary. You will be in the hospital here, with the world’s best specialists. The most important thing is for you to relax and enjoy your pregnancy and this special time with all the celebrations.’
Enjoy it? She was too scared.
‘Have you talked to Eduardo about your concerns?’ he asked quietly.
The Secret That Shocked De Santis Page 14
