‘Was your mother…?’
‘Nowhere. Back in Europe. If I wouldn’t acknowledge you as Adam’s father she washed her hands of me.’
‘But your father took care of you?’ The thought of her facing her baby’s death alone seemed insupportable.
‘Are you kidding? He’d gone on a bender the day my mother walked out and was still drunk. God knows where he was the day I buried my baby but he wasn’t with me.’ She shook her head. ‘Leave it. I’m on my own. I buried my little boy myself and I’ve taken care of myself since. Now is that all? I don’t know why you’ve brought me here, Andreas, but you might as well let me go. There’s nothing left between us but a dead baby, and that’s the truth. Let me go and be done with me.’
CHAPTER THREE
T HEY walked back to the pavilion side by side. Holly said nothing and Andreas could think of nothing to say. He could barely remember the echoes of his fury that she’d borne his son and not told him. Her story had been flat and truthful and dreadful.
Her loneliness appalled him.
That he’d left her to face childbirth and the babe’s subsequent death alone seemed unthinkable. He’d been so young. He’d left her to come home to a magnificent royal wedding. Thinking of Holly had hurt so he’d tried not to think of her at all.
He’d been a boy.
That was no excuse. He should have…
‘There’s no reason to berate yourself for what happened ten years ago,’ Holly said with sudden asperity. ‘Adam’s death wasn’t your fault. For the rest…I knew I was being seduced by a prince and I liked it.’
‘You weren’t…’
‘Seduced?’ she demanded with a trace of the old Holly. ‘What do you call what happened between us? Hair like gold filigree, I believe you told me. Eyes like stars. Breasts like-’
‘There’s no need to-’
‘There’s not, is there?’ she agreed and fell silent again.
‘It was good,’ he said cautiously, glancing at her sideways. Maybe he did remember the overblown compliments. Maybe he even remembered his older brothers coaching him.
‘Being a prince has definite advantages where women are concerned.’ He remembered Alex telling him this. ‘There’s hardly a woman you can’t get into your bed. It’s just a matter of a few pretty words and they’re yours for the taking.’
It had been heady stuff for a young prince to hear. Heady advice for a young prince to live by.
Maybe, God help him, he’d even believed it.
‘It was fun,’ Holly conceded, interjecting over his thoughts. ‘But before you get all smug, if I hadn’t wanted to be seduced you wouldn’t have had a chance.’
‘As you don’t want to be seduced now?’ Hell, where had that come from? But the words were out before he could stop himself saying them.
Maybe it wasn’t the wisest come-on. And it certainly wasn’t the way to lead into Sebastian’s plan for them.
She gasped. She stopped walking-and then she started again, very fast.
‘We were children, Andreas. We’re not children now. If you think you have a snowball’s chance in a bushfire…’
He grinned, distracted as he’d been distracted years ago by her Aussie expressions. Flat out like a lizard drinking. Barmy as a bandicoot. Mad as a cut snake.
‘I remember the way you talk,’ he said and she glared back at him as if he were crazy.
‘Shut up,’ she snapped. ‘Just shut up. If I get one more compliment from you I’ll choke. How soon can I get off this place?’
‘There are things we need to sort.’
‘What things?’
‘We do need to talk,’ he said gravely, but she was hardly listening. She’d crested the last hill before the pavilion and was speeding up.
‘So we speak at dinner?’ he asked.
‘Go home, Andreas,’ she snapped.
‘This is my home.’
‘You live on Aristo. With your wife. With your children.’
‘There is no wife,’ he said. ‘No children, either.’
She whirled to face him then, her face blanching. ‘Oh, Andreas…’ She swallowed. ‘Not…not dead?’
‘Not dead,’ he said, fast, wanting desperately to take away the pain he saw surge behind her eyes. Of course. This woman had seen tragedy. It was natural she’d expect it in his. ‘Christina and I never had children,’ he said gently. ‘We divorced six months ago.’
‘Oh,’ she said, her face still white. The pain in her eyes was replaced by blank acceptance. She turned away again. ‘I’m sorry.’
But not very, he thought. Not even very interested. For a moment he came close to wishing that Christina had died, so the sympathy in her face would have stayed. What he saw now was something close to contempt.
It was a new sensation for Andreas. Women didn’t show contempt to the royal princes of Karedes.
Women?
Yes, there had been women. Christina had been a faithless wife, finally leaving him for a shipping tycoon. And Andreas…well, the last few years hadn’t been without their comforts.
They were being dredged up now, one after another, he thought bleakly, as the press scrambled to make the royal princes look a bunch of pleasure-seeking womanizers. Culminating in this. An accusation that had the capacity to bring down a throne.
The urgency of the current situation slammed back. Holly was assuming he could put her on a plane and send her calmly back to where she’d come from.
Maybe he could. If she could swear…
‘Holly, is there anyone who could prove the baby…Adam…’ he corrected himself hastily as he saw her face. ‘Is there any way it can be proved that Adam was mine?’
Until now he’d thought she was so angry she could scarcely be angrier.
He was wrong.
She’d dropped her towel at some point and had simply left it. She stood now, facing him, bare of everything but her skimpy bikini. She was only five feet four or so, but she looked much taller. She was all heaving bosom and flashing eyes-and temper to the point of explosion.
‘I beg your pardon?’ she said at last, dripping ice with every word.
But it had to be asked.
‘I have to know,’ he said. He was feeling sick at what he’d just learned but this couldn’t be the end of it. What was at stake was too important.
‘You want to know if I can prove you were Adam’s father?’ she demanded, incredulous.
‘I know I fathered your child,’ he said flatly. ‘I accept your word, the dates fit and I know you were a virgin.’
‘Thank you so much,’ she said, scorn dripping as well as ice.
‘But…’
‘But what?’ They were too close. She was glaring up at him, tugged so close he could feel her breasts beneath the fine linen of his shirt. Her anger was a palpable force, holding them together with fire.
‘Holly, I’m in trouble,’ he said simply. ‘We’re all in trouble. If anyone else can prove the baby was mine, then I’m going to have to marry you.’
As a conversation stopper it was magnificent. It set up a boundary over which Holly would not step. She stared at him for one long, incredulous moment and then she closed her eyes.
‘You’re mad and I’ll have nothing to do with you,’ she spat, and that was all she’d say. She wrenched herself away with a viciousness he could scarcely credit for a woman so small. She slapped his hands away and, unless he was prepared to hold her back with force, he had no option but to let her go.
She marched back to the pavilion with her head held high. Sophia met them at the main entrance as if she’d been on the lookout for them, her shrewd eyes filled with unasked questions.
‘His Highness has had too much sun,’ Holly said to her. ‘I think he needs a doctor. I’m going to take a shower and cool off.’
She marched across the tiled courtyard to the apartment Sophia had obviously allocated her. She hauled the oak doors wide, marched in and slammed the doors so hard behind her that the ceiling fans in the
vast entrance hall wobbled on their bearings.
Sophia and Andreas were left staring after her. And staring at each other.
‘Do you want dinner?’ Sophia said at last, though Andreas knew there were a dozen other questions her eyes were asking.
‘In an hour.’
‘I’d imagine Holly will have it in her room,’ she said cautiously, staring at the very shut doors.
Enough. He was a prince of the blood. He was here with a mission. ‘Holly will have her dinner out by the pool with me,’ he snapped, a score or more of his exceedingly autocratic ancestors snapping to attention behind him, stiffening his spine. ‘Tell her that.’
‘You might want to tell her yourself,’ Sophia said, still cautious.
‘It’s your place to tell her.’
‘My Andreas is being a coward?’ Sophia said and she smiled.
‘Yes, he is,’ he admitted, raking his hair and giving her a rueful smile. Autocratic ancestors might come at will, but they never hung round long enough to be really useful. ‘Please, Sophia, would you tell her?’
‘I’ll tell her,’ Sophia said and smiled up at him some more, and then reached up and raked his black curls back into place as she’d done when he was six years old. ‘I’ll tell her you’re distressed and need to talk.’
‘No…’
‘You are distressed. You tell that one the truth,’ Sophia said sternly. ‘I’ve seen her long enough now to know that nothing but the truth will serve.’
He swam.
It was an hour until dinner, there was nothing to do but pace and he’d wear a hole in the magnificent tiles in his bedchamber if he paced as he felt like doing. So he abandoned himself to the pleasure of his internal lagoon. The pool was a perfect circle, with an island in the centre, set up with lounges, umbrellas, a bar with every drink a man-or woman-would want.
He wanted none of them now. He simply swam, circling the pool over and over, his long, lean body cutting through the water with the ease and grace that had come from years of hard physical training.
Swimming was to Andreas a time of something akin to meditation. A time when he could block out everything: the demands of royalty; the problems with a disastrous marriage; even the impending crisis of the missing diamond.
But he couldn’t block out Holly. Not here. Not now. She was in his thoughts every moment as he circled the pool, and no matter how fast he swam there was no escape.
He’d thought he’d forgotten her. Ten years ago he’d walked away from her because there was no choice. Now…now it seemed there was a choice again.
He had to be disinterested. He had to explain things calmly, setting the future before her in terms she must understand.
But she had a choice. He couldn’t marry her out of hand. Could he?
No, he conceded as he swam. The days of dragging an unwilling bride to the altar were long gone, and shame could no longer be used as an incentive.
She’d been shamed before, when he’d left. The thought of what she’d faced alone…
It couldn’t matter. He had to put the gut-wrenching emotion he’d felt as she’d described her baby’s death aside. For now, for his country’s sake, he needed to be level-headed, sharp and persuasive.
But he didn’t know how to be, when the moment he looked at her he felt like a kid again; a young prince with the world at his feet. With Holly at his feet…
Holly.
He had to get his mind clear. He had to get his arguments in order.
All he could think of was how beautiful she was. And that she’d borne his son.
He’d had a son and he’d never known him. The thought was enough to shift his foundations. To make him unsure of who he was in the world.
He’d let this woman down. She had to agree to his proposal. Somehow he had to make amends, but that had to fit with Sebastian’s demands.
The demands of his king.
He’d know she could see him.
Every apartment in the pavilion looked over the pool. Andreas swam with the ease of a shark circling his prey, she thought uneasily, watching him rounding the island with lazy ease and a speed that looked deceptively easy to obtain.
Holly conceded that he looked magnificent, but then she’d thought he was magnificent once before. This time she had to use her head. This time she had to keep her emotions firmly in the background as she held Andreas at arm’s length.
Or further.
He had to marry her? The concept was ridiculous. He was a royal prince. She was broke, a single mother of a dead baby. Her home was half a world away from here. Further.
Enough. She whirled away from the window, refusing to look at him any longer. His easy good looks, his wicked smile, his domineering personality…they had the power to rip her world apart as it had been ripped apart ten years ago.
She was not the same innocent as she was then. She’d been little more than a child. She was all woman now, and she’d meet him on her terms.
At dinner?
That was what he’d ordered and what he ordered was what Andreas generally got.
Not now. She had to stand up to him.
On equal terms, she thought, feeling desperate. She was still in her bikini. She had no clothes of her own here, apart from one battered pair of jeans and a tattered shirt.
She wouldn’t see him like that.
Well, then.
She eyed the massive wardrobe with caution. Maybe Andreas had provided her with the weapons she needed.
It would take courage, but then…what did she have to lose?
Sophia provided a dinner fit for royalty-when had she not?-but this night the meal was enough to make even Andreas’s eyes widen. He’d showered and dressed in casual trousers and an open-necked linen shirt, and then he’d thought better of it and donned a tie and jacket. It behoved him to step carefully, he thought. There were major decisions to be made tonight.
Sebastian’s words were still ringing harsh in his ears. ‘You’ll have to marry her. There’s no choice. If the child really was yours then a Cinderella wedding is the best we can ask for-a fairy tale to distract from reality. That’s what the PR people are telling us. It’ll take the sordid mess of your divorce away from people’s minds. You’ll be forgiven if you do the honourable thing, and there’s very little honour in our family right now.’
So he emerged formally attired, he glanced at the amazing table setting-glimmering crystal and silverware, a table groaning with seafood, set up under a netted canopy under the stars-and all that was missing was Holly.
All that was missing was his bride.
‘I’ve let her know dinner’s served,’ Sophia said, watching him cautiously from the shadows. ‘But she says she’s eating in her room. She’s strong willed.’
‘So am I,’ Andreas growled, and strode along the courtyard to knock at her door.
No answer.
‘Holly?’
‘Go away.’
‘Sophia will not serve you in your apartment.’
‘Then I’ll go hungry because I’m not eating with you.’
‘That’s childish.’
‘So I’m childish. You, on the other hand, are overbearing, arrogant and crazy. Go away, Andreas.’
‘I order you to-’
‘Order away, you big oaf. I’m staying here.’
His face darkened. He stared at the door in gathering anger. Then he put his shoulder against the wood and pushed.
Nothing.
Damn, this was how they did it in the movies. He tried again, shoving with all his strength.
Nothing.
He’d get Nikos. But one last shove…He gathered himself, bunching his muscles in sheer frustration and shoved for all he was worth.
The door swung inward, unlatched, free, and he sprawled full length onto the bedroom carpet.
He lay, winded. Above him Holly stood looking down, seemingly solicitous.
‘Oh, dear,’ she said, her lips twitching. ‘Did the prince fall over?’
He stared up at her and amazingly the corners of her mouth were curved into the delicious smile he’d fallen in love with ten years back. ‘Do you need a hand up?’
He put out a hand without thinking. She tugged, he came up too fast and all of a sudden they were way too close. She staggered backwards, his hands came out to steady her and they were closer still.
She felt…fabulous. She felt like the Holly he’d remembered for all these years. The smell of her was reminiscent of citrus lemon; very faint. He’d always assumed it was her perfume but she’d hardly been given time to pack perfume.
And what was she wearing?
This was no cringing kidnap victim. Nor was it a woman dressed to calmly eat in her bedroom. She was wearing a dress that was beautiful enough to make his eyes water. It was a simple jade cocktail dress, sleek, closely fitting, its tiny shoestring straps holding it just barely above the lovely curve of her breasts. The soft silk clung to every gorgeous curve. A slit in the side revealed a flash of thigh so tantalizing that he felt his body respond in primeval need.
His hands tightened on hers involuntarily in a gesture of pure possession. He’d wanted this woman the first time he’d seen her, and he wanted her now.
But she didn’t want him. Her hands came up, they wedged against his chest and she shoved so hard that he let her go. Why had he done that? It felt like tearing part of himself away.
She looked…She looked…
‘You’re staring,’ she said, almost kindly. ‘Don’t.’
‘Why are you wearing that?’
‘What does it look like on me?’ she asked, seemingly determined to be casual, even though he could see she was fighting the mounting colour on her cheeks. She deliberately twirled so he could see it from all angles-or maybe so she had some breathing space where she wasn’t forced to meet his gaze head on. ‘Compared to every other woman who’s worn it?’ she demanded, cutting across his thoughts. The amusement had gone from her voice and anger had returned. ‘Dresses in every size, Andreas. Negligees, nightwear, even lingerie. How many women do you drag here against their will and then dress in your fancy outfits? This is some harem.’
‘It’s not a harem.’
‘Not?’
Well, maybe. He thought back a few months to when Christina had finally achieved her precious divorce. ‘You’re free, brother,’ Alex had told him. ‘You set that island up for seduction and you’re set for life. Fill it with things women love. Clothes that are worth a fortune. Seriously sexy stuff. The one thing you don’t have on that island is shopping, and you need to make up for it if you want hot women. I’ll tell you what-as a gift to celebrate your divorce to that harpy I’ll equip the wardrobes for you.’
The Prince’s Captive Wife Page 4
