Crowned for the Prince's Heir

by Sharon Kendrick

  ‘I know. I know. I shouldn’t have done it.’ She gave a helpless shrug. ‘But you were just too delicious to resist.’

  But he didn’t smile back. In the glaring light she could see how stony his sapphire eyes looked. He finished dressing and slipped on his shoes. ‘I have to go,’ he said, giving a quick glance at his watch. ‘I shouldn’t even be here.’

  ‘Oh?’ Her voice was very quiet as she looked at him. ‘Have you suddenly decided that my new downmarket accommodation is a little too basic for His Royal Highness? Can’t wait to get away now you’ve had what you came for?’

  ‘Please don’t, Lisa,’ he said. ‘Don’t make this any more difficult than it already is. This should never have happened. We both know that.’

  She sat up in bed then, her hair falling over her shoulders as she grabbed at the rumpled sheet to cover her breasts, shielding them from the automatic darkening of his eyes as they jiggled free. ‘But you were the one who came into my shop!’ she protested furiously. ‘The one who practically bribed me into going to that wedding party with you—’

  ‘And you were the one who came onto me on your doorstep when I had already decided to resist you.’

  ‘I didn’t hear you objecting at the time!’

  ‘No, you’re right. I didn’t.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘Maybe I was just too damned weak.’

  ‘Okay. So we were both weak. We wanted each other.’ She stared at him. ‘But what’s the big deal? Why start regretting it now? I mean, it’s not as if we’re hurting anyone, is it?’

  Luc let out a low hiss of air. He didn’t want to tell her, but maybe telling her was the only option. The only way she might get the message that this really was the last time and it could never happen again. Yet he wouldn’t have been human if he hadn’t experienced a sense of regret. His heart clenched in his chest as he looked at her—at the golden-brown curls tumbling down over her milky skin. He stared into the spiky-lashed green-gold of her eyes and felt another unwanted jerk of lust. Another deep desire to go over there and kiss her until there was no breath left in her lungs—until she was parting her thighs and pulling him deep inside her again. And judging from the hunger in her eyes, she was feeling exactly the same.

  He wondered if she was aware of just how irresistible he still found her. Perhaps she thought there might be more episodes like this in the future. Maybe she was labouring under the illusion that he would start making regular trips to see her, which would all end up with this seemingly inevitable conclusion. And didn’t part of him long for such a delicious scenario?

  Yet his sexual hunger was tempered by a deep sense of guilt at what had just happened, because hadn’t he just betrayed the woman who had been waiting so patiently for him on the island of Isolaverde? Hadn’t he broken his self-imposed celibacy—big time—and with the very last woman he should have chosen?

  ‘I’m afraid it is a big deal,’ he said slowly.

  She looked at him and grew completely still, as if sensing from the sudden harshening of his voice that she was about to hear something she would prefer not to.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘There’s someone else.’

  The words hung in the air between them and for a moment they were met with nothing other than a disbelieving silence before her shoulders stiffened in shock.

  ‘Someone else?’ she repeated blankly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You mean...?’ she managed at last, her green-gold eyes icing over. ‘You mean you’re sleeping with two women at the same time? Or is that a little conservative of me? Maybe there are more than two—are you operating some sort of outdated harem?’

  ‘Of course I’m not!’ he gritted back. ‘And it isn’t that simple. Or that easy.’

  ‘Oh, Luc. Your tortured face is a picture. You poor thing! My heart bleeds for you.’

  ‘I have been betrothed to a princess since she was a child,’ he said heavily.

  ‘Betrothed?’ Lisa gave a brittle little laugh, as if sarcasm could protect her from the pain which was lancing through her heart. As if it would blind her to the fact that she had misjudged him. Worse, she had trusted him. She hadn’t asked him for the stars but she had expected him to behave with some sort of integrity towards her. But why should she expect integrity when she knew how ruthless men could be? ‘This is the twenty-first century, Luc. We don’t use words like betrothed any more.’

  ‘Where I come from, we do. It’s the way things work in my country.’ He picked up one of his gold cufflinks which were lying next to the vase of purple flowers. ‘The way they’ve always worked, ever since—’

  ‘Please! I don’t want a damned lesson in Mardovian history!’ she hissed. ‘I want you to tell me how you’ve just had sex with me if there’s...someone else.’

  He clipped first one cufflink and then the other, before lifting his eyes to hers. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You bastard.’

  ‘I made it very clear from the beginning that there could never be any future between us. I always knew that my destiny was to marry Sophie.’

  Sophie. Somehow knowing her name made it even worse and Lisa started to tremble.

  ‘But you didn’t think to tell me that at the time.’

  ‘At the time there was no reason to tell you, for she and I had an agreement that we should both lead independent lives until the time of the wedding approached.’

  ‘And now it has.’

  ‘Now it has,’ he agreed, and his voice was almost gentle. Like a doctor trying to find the kindliest way of delivering a deadly diagnosis. ‘This was my last foreign trip before setting the matrimonial plans in motion.’

  ‘And you thought you’d have one final fling—with the woman who would probably ask the least questions?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that!’ he said hotly.

  ‘No? What, you just happened to come into my shop last week?’

  ‘I wanted to tie off some of the loose ends in my life.’

  There was a pause. Lisa had never imagined herself being described as a loose end and something told herself to kick him out. To get his cheating face out of her line of vision and then start trying to forget him. But she didn’t. Some masochistic instinct made her go right ahead and ask the question. ‘What’s she like? Sophie.’

  He winced, as if she had committed some sort of crime by saying the Princess’s name out loud while she sat amid sheets still redolent with the scent of sex.

  ‘You don’t want to know,’ he said roughly.

  ‘Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong, Luc. I do. Indulge me that, at least. I’m curious.’

  There was a brief pause before he answered. ‘She is young,’ he said. ‘Younger even than you. And she is a princess.’

  Lisa closed her eyes as suddenly she wished this night had never happened. Because if he hadn’t come back she would never have known about Sophie. Luc would have existed in her imagination as the perfect lover she’d had the strength to walk away from and not as the duplicitous cheat he really was. ‘And how does she feel, knowing just what her precious fiancé is up to the moment her back is turned?’ she questioned in a shaking voice. ‘Or doesn’t she mind sharing you with another woman?’

  ‘I have never been intimate with Sophie!’ he bit out. ‘Since tradition dictates she will come to me as a virgin on our wedding night.’ He paused as he surveyed her from between his lashes, his expression suddenly sombre. ‘Because that is my destiny and the duty which has been laid down for me since the moment of my birth. And a prince must always put duty, Lisa, above all else. That has always been my guiding principle.’

  She shook her head, terrified she was going to do something stupid, like picking up the vase of purple flowers and hurling it at him. Or bursting into useless tears. ‘You wouldn’t know the meaning of the word principle if it was staring out of a dictionary at you!’

  His voice tensed, but he forged on—sounding as if someone had written him a script and he was reading from it. ‘And once my ring
is on her finger, I will stray no more.’

  Lisa closed her eyes. So that was all she was to him. Someone to ‘stray’ with. Like a stray cat—lost and hungry and taken in by the first person to offer it a decent meal. What a stupid mistake she’d made. She’d let herself down. She’d tarnished the past and muddied the present. And all because of one little kiss. Because she’d reached up and brushed her lips over his and the whole damned thing had got out of hand.

  So show some dignity. Don’t scream and rage. Don’t let his last memory of you be of some woman on the rampage because he’s passing you over for someone else. Because she had never given him access to her emotions and she wasn’t about to start now. Bitterness and vitriol were luxuries she couldn’t afford, because she might not have much—but she still had her pride. She opened her eyes and met the sapphire glint of his, only now she barely noticed their soft blaze—just as she no longer saw the beauty in his olive-skinned features. All she saw was duplicity and deceit.

  ‘Just go, Luc,’ she said.

  He hesitated and for a moment she thought he might be about to come over to the bed and kiss her goodbye, and she tried to tell herself that she would slap his cheating face if he attempted that—because how was it possible to want something and to fear it, all at the same time? But he didn’t. He just turned and walked out of the bedroom and Lisa slumped back on the pillows and lay there, listening to the sounds of his leaving. The front door clicked shut and she heard the thud of his footsteps on the pavement before a door slammed and his powerful car pulled away.

  She lay there until she needed to go to the bathroom and then padded across the room to where her discarded green panties lay and beside them a small, cream-coloured card, which must have fallen from his trouser pocket.

  She picked it up and stared at it and a feeling of self-disgust rippled over her shivering skin. She’d thought it wasn’t possible to feel any worse than she already did but she was wrong. Oh, Luc, she thought. How could you? He had taken her to a party and had sex with her afterwards—but had still managed to bag himself a calling card from the beautiful Hollywood actress she’d seen at the wedding.

  Compressing her lips together to stop them from trembling, Lisa crushed the card between her fingers and dropped it into the bin.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘JASON THINKS YOU’RE PREGNANT.’

  Lisa almost dropped the toddler-sized dress she had been in the process of folding and slowly turned her head to stare at her sister. They were sitting side by side on the carpet as they sorted out Tamsin’s clothes, deciding which ones would still fit her for the cold winter months ahead. But now the tiny dress dangled forgotten from her fingers as she looked into green-gold eyes so like her own. ‘What...did you say?’

  Brittany appeared to be choosing her words with care. ‘Jason says you’ve got the same look I had when I was carrying Tamsin. And I’ve noticed that you’ve stopped wearing your own dresses, which struck me as kind of strange.’ Brittany gave a little wriggle of her shoulders. ‘Since you’ve always told me that wearing your own dresses was your best advertisement. And you’ve never been the kind of woman to slop around in jeans and a loose shirt before.’

  Lisa didn’t answer as she put the dress down and picked up a tiny pair of dungarees, knowing she was playing for time but not caring. She didn’t owe Brittany an explanation. Or Jason, for that matter. Especially not Jason—who was so fond of judging other people but who never seemed to take the time to look at his own grasping behaviour.

  But Jason’s scrounging was irrelevant right now, because somehow he had unwittingly hit on the truth and passed it on to her sister—and the hard fact remained that she was starting to show. At just over sixteen weeks Lisa guessed that was inevitable. Unless she was still in that horrified state of denial which had settled over her at the beginning, when the countless pregnancy tests she’d taken had all yielded the same terrifying results—but at least they’d explained why she’d felt so peculiar. Why her breasts had started aching in a way which was really uncomfortable. Eventually, she had taken herself off to the doctor, who had pronounced her fit and healthy and then smilingly congratulated her on first-time motherhood. And if Lisa’s response had been fabricated rather than genuine, surely that wasn’t surprising. Because how could she feel happy about carrying the child of a man who no longer wanted her? A man who was about to marry another woman?

  ‘So who’s the father?’ questioned Brittany.

  ‘Nobody you know,’ said Lisa quickly.

  There was a pause. ‘Not that bloke you used to go out with?’

  Lisa stiffened. ‘Which bloke?’

  ‘The one you were so cagey about. The one you never wanted anyone to meet.’ Brittany sniffed. ‘Almost as if you felt we weren’t good enough for him.’

  Lisa bit her lip. It was true she’d never introduced Brittany or Jason to the Prince—and not just that she had been worried that Jason might attempt to ‘borrow’ money from the wealthy royal without any intention of ever paying it back. She’d known there was no future in the relationship and therefore no point of merging their two very different lives.

  And she didn’t want to bring Luc into the conversation now. If she told her sister that she was expecting the child of a wealthy prince, Brittany would inevitably tell Jason and she wouldn’t put it past him to go hawking the story to the highest bidder. ‘I’d rather not discuss the father,’ she said.

  ‘Right.’ Brittany paused. ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘Do?’ Lisa sat back on her heels and looked at her sister blankly. ‘What do you mean, do?’

  ‘About the baby, of course! Does he know?’

  No, he didn’t know—though she’d done her best to try to contact him. Lisa chewed on her lip. Even that had been another stark lesson in humiliation. She had tried to ring him on the precious number she still had stored in her phone—but the number was no longer in service. Of course it wasn’t. So she’d summoned up all her courage to telephone the palace in Mardovia, somehow managing to get through to one of his aides—a formidable-sounding woman called Eleonora. But Eleonora had stonewalled all her attempts to speak to the Prince and, short of blurting out her momentous news on the phone, Lisa had eventually given up—because how could she possibly disclose something like that to a member of Luc’s staff?

  And if she was being totally honest, she had been slightly relieved, thinking perhaps it was better this way. He was due to marry another woman. Someone called Princess Sophie—a woman who had never done her any harm. How could she ruin her life by announcing that an impulsive one-night stand had resulted in another woman carrying his baby? Damn Luc Leonidas, Lisa thought viciously. Damn him for not bothering to tell her about his impending marriage before he’d jumped into bed with her.

  ‘No,’ Lisa said, steeling herself against the curiosity in her sister’s eyes. ‘He doesn’t know and he isn’t going to. He doesn’t want to see me again and he certainly doesn’t want to be a father to my child. So I’m going to bring this baby up on my own and it’s going to be a happy and well-cared-for baby.’

  ‘But, Lisa—’

  ‘No, please. Don’t.’ Lisa shook her head, feeling little beads of sweat at the back of her neck and so she scooped up the great curtain of curls and waved it around to let the air refresh her skin. She looked pointedly at her sister, her gaze intended to remind her of the harsh truth known to both of them. That a child brought up in a home with a resentful man was not a happy home. ‘I’m not asking your opinion on this, Brittany,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m just telling you how it’s going to be.’

  There was a pause. ‘Is he married?’

  Not yet.

  ‘No comment. Like I said, the discussion is over.’ Lisa gave a grimace of a smile as she rose to her feet. ‘But you’ve given me an idea.’

  ‘I have?’ Brittany looked momentarily puzzled.

  ‘Yes. I keep saying that you’re much cleverer than you give yourself credit for.’ Lisa na
rrowed her eyes, her mind suddenly going into overdrive. ‘And if I’m going to spend the next few months getting even bigger, I might as well do it in style.’

  Brittany’s green-gold eyes narrowed. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It means that although I’ve had a few extra orders since I went to that fancy wedding back in August, it hasn’t been enough to take the business forward as I’d hoped. What I need is a completely new direction—and I think I’ve just found one.’ Lisa sucked in a deep breath as she patted her expanding stomach. ‘Think about it. There aren’t many really fashionable maternity dresses on the market right now—especially ones in natural fabrics, which “breathe”. I can work in more fabrics than just my trademark silk. Cotton and linen and wool. There’s an opportunity here staring me right in the face, and it seems I’m the perfect person to model my new collection.’

  ‘But...won’t that get publicity?’

  Lisa smiled and it felt like the first genuine smile she’d given in a long time. ‘I sincerely hope so.’

  ‘You aren’t afraid that the father will hear about it and come to find you?’

  Lisa shook her head. No. That was one thing she wasn’t worried about. Luc certainly wouldn’t be trawling the pages of fashion magazines now that he’d turned his back on his playboy life and locked himself away on his Mediterranean principality. Luc had made his position very clear.

  ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘He won’t find out.’

  She sat back on her heels and as a rush of something like hope flooded through her, so did a new resolve. She needed to be strong for her baby and that wasn’t going to happen if she sat around wailing at the unfairness of it all. She was young, fit and hard-working and she had more than enough love to give this innocent new life which was growing inside her.

  Her baby would be happy and well cared for, she vowed fiercely. No matter what it took.

  * * *