Stepping into the Prince's World

by Marion Lennox

  His grandparents?

  This wasn’t just about his grandparents, he thought. His bodyguard consisted of two skilled, decent men who’d feel as if they’d failed. The top brass of the army would be mortified. His friends would be appalled. And, back home, the media would be in a feeding frenzy. Heir to the Throne Disappears! It didn’t bear thinking about.

  He would have groaned if it would do any good.

  It wouldn’t.

  ‘Raoul...’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘We all do dumb things,’ she told him, and put her good hand on his knee. ‘Some dumber than others. But, hey, you’ve lived to be embarrassed. The supply boat’s due next Monday. You’ll climb aboard, they’ll let everyone know, and by the time you reach Hobart the fuss will have died down. You might need to apologise to a few people and go home and hug your grandparents, but it’s no big deal. So one soldier’s gone AWOL? If they don’t think you’ve drowned then they’ll probably assume you’re in a bar somewhere. Or with a woman.’

  And then she had the temerity to grin.

  ‘Actually, they’re both true. You’re very much with a woman, and if you go through that door there’s a truly excellent bar.’

  ‘I think I need it,’ he said, and she chuckled and tried to stand.

  She wobbled a bit and he rose to steady her.

  ‘What did you give me?’ she demanded. ‘I feel like I’ve had enough drugs to down an elephant.’

  ‘Or to not scream when your arm went back in. You were very brave.’

  ‘I was, wasn’t I?’ she said smugly. ‘So I’m brave and you’re lost. And my arm’s back to where it belongs. They’re the givens. For the rest...we just have to get on with it.’

  ‘I really can’t get off this place until next Monday?’

  ‘We can try and fix the transmitter,’ she told him. ‘Are you any good with electronics?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I’m vetoing that as a plan straight away,’ she told him. ‘I have no intention of saving you twice. Now, Raoul...?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Put some logs on the fire while I feed Rocky. We have life to get on with.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, because there was nothing else to say. Nothing at all.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THIS MORNING SHE’D been bored.

  This morning her entire desire in life had been a decent cup of coffee.

  She was not bored now, and her desire was taking a new and entirely inappropriate direction.

  Maybe she should be nervous. This guy was seriously big. He had the brawn and build of a well-honed military machine. Even washed up on the beach he’d looked awesome.

  She stood under the shower and let the hot water run over her battered body as she let her mind drift where it willed.

  It willed straight to Raoul.

  She was alone on this island with a guy she didn’t know. A seriously big guy. A seriously good-looking guy. He was dark-haired and tanned and his grey eyes were creased at the edges. Was the weathering on his face from years of military exercises in tough conditions? She wasn’t sure if she was right, but she guessed she was.

  He was kind. He was also skilled. He’d managed to get her arm back into place and the relief had been enormous. He was also worried about his grandparents. She could see that. One lone soldier AWOL from the army wouldn’t cause a fuss, but she’d seen that he was distressed. Of course the army would contact his family, and of course it distressed Raoul that his grandparents would worry. Because he was...a good guy.

  Raoul. Nice name, she thought. Nice guy. And a seriously sexy accent. Almost French, with something else in the mix.

  Sexy.

  And there lay the rub. There lay the reason why she should stop thinking about Raoul right now.

  ‘Are you okay in there?’

  His voice almost made her jump out of her skin and when she landed she had to fight to get her voice in order.

  ‘F... Fine.’

  ‘Dinner’s ready when you are. I already ate, but I’m ready to eat again.’

  ‘You already ate?’

  ‘Your refrigerator’s amazing. Or should I say refrigerators, plural. Wow. I opened one to check and three eggs almost fell into my hand. So I ate them. You do realise eating’s been low on my priority list over the last few days? Having had my pre-dinner boiled egg snack, I’m now serious about making dinner proper. But first I’m here to towel my lady’s back, if she wants it towelled, because it’s occurred to me that one-arm towelling might be hard.’

  There were things there for a woman to consider. A lot of things. She was alone on the island with this guy. Every sensible part of her said she shouldn’t accept his help.

  Raoul had put a plastic outdoor chair in the shower before he’d let her into the bathroom. He’d fussed, but she’d assured him she was okay. She’d been able to kick off her salty clothes herself, and sitting under the hot water had been easy. She’d even managed to shampoo her hair with one hand.

  But now... The wussy part of her said she didn’t know how she could towel herself with one arm, especially as the painkillers were still making her feel a bit fuzzy. And there was a tiny part of her—a really dangerous part—that was saying she wouldn’t mind being towelled by this guy.

  She was twenty-eight years old. She was hardly a prude. He was...

  Yeah, enough.

  But she had three voices in her head now. One saying, Safe, one saying, Sensible, the other saying, Yes!

  She had an internal vote and Safe and Sensible were outvoted by about a hundred to two.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered, but he didn’t hear.

  ‘Claire? Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘And, yes, please—I think I do need help to get dry.’

  * * *

  It wasn’t a bad feeling.

  Okay, it was an incredible feeling. He had his hands full of lush white towel and he was carefully towelling Claire Tremaine dry.

  She was beautiful. Every inch of her was beautiful. She’d emerged naked from the shower. She’d stood with rivulets of warm water streaming down her body and he’d never seen anything more beautiful in his life.

  If he hadn’t spent the last two days having cold shower after cold shower, he might have seriously thought of taking one now. Instead of which he had to get his thoughts under control and do what he was here for—get the lady dry.

  She’d grabbed a towel, too, but with only one good hand she could do little. She dried her face and rubbed her front, which was okay because that meant he didn’t have to dry her breasts. Which would have been hard. But he did have to towel her hair. He did have to run the towel down the smooth contours of her back. He did need to stoop to dry her gorgeous legs.

  She was a small woman, but her legs seemed to go on forever. How did that happen?

  She was gorgeous.

  When he’d knocked on the bathroom door he’d just put steak in the microwave to defrost and until he’d entered the bathroom that steak had been pretty much uppermost in his thoughts.

  Not now. The steak could turn into dust for all he cared. Every sense was tuned to this woman.

  Every part of his body...

  ‘I think I’m dry,’ she said, in a voice that was shaky, but not shaky in a pained kind of way. It was shaky in a way that told him she was as aware of him as he was of her.

  He could gather her up right now...

  Yeah, like that could happen. This woman had hauled him out of the water and let him into her home. She’d been injured on his behalf. She was still slightly drug-affected. No, make that a lot drug-affected. He’d given her more painkillers before she’d gone to shower.

  Hitting on her now would be all sorts of wrong.

&n
bsp; But she was looking at him with huge eyes, slightly dazed, and her fingers were touching his hair as he stooped to dry her legs.

  ‘Raoul...’ she whispered, and he rose and stepped away fast.

  ‘Yeah. You’re done,’ he told her. ‘Where can I find you some clothes? Something sensible.’

  He spoke too loud, too emphatically, and the emphasis on the last word was like a slap to them both. Sensible. That was the way to go.

  ‘I... My bedroom... It’s right next door. There’s a jogging suit in the third drawer of the dresser. Knickers in the top drawer. I’m ditching the idea of a bra. But I can get them.’

  ‘Stay where you are,’ he said roughly, and backed away fast.

  Because it might be sensible to help her into the bedroom and help her get dressed, but there was a bed in the bedroom, and a man had limits, and his were already stretched close to breaking.

  So he headed into the bedroom and found the jogging suit, and then he opened the knicker drawer and had to take a deep breath before he felt sensible again. He picked up the first pair of knickers that came to hand and practically slammed the drawer shut. A pair of sheepskin bootees stood beside the bed. Excellent. They weren’t sexy in the least.

  He headed back to the bathroom, thought about helping her, then decided it might be hard but she should be able to cope herself and it would be far, far safer if he stayed on his side of the door.

  He knocked and slipped the clothes around the door, without opening it wide enough for him to see her. They needed barriers, he thought. Big barriers. Preferably barriers with locks on them.

  He stepped away from the door as if it was red-hot.

  ‘Steak in ten minutes,’ he said. ‘If you’re up to it. If the painkillers aren’t making you too dizzy?’

  ‘The painkillers aren’t making me too dizzy,’ she told him, and then she stopped.

  And he thought he knew what she was about to say because he was feeling the same.

  The painkillers weren’t making her dizzy, but something else was.

  The same something that was doing his head in?

  * * *

  She dressed, and replaced the basic sling Raoul had fashioned for her.

  Her arm was still painful, but it was a steady, bruised ache, not the searing pain she’d experienced when it was dislocated.

  She was dry, she was warm, and she was dressed. She hauled a comb through her curls and thought she looked almost presentable. Almost respectable. Yeah. She looked at herself in the mirror. Her jogging suit was baggy and old. She had on her huge sheepskin boots. Her hair was combed but still damp and she didn’t have the energy to dry it. There was no way she had the energy for make-up, either.

  ‘It’s take me as I am,’ she said out loud, and then winced.

  Take me?

  What was she thinking?

  Rocky was sitting at her feet. He looked up at her quizzically, as if guessing her thoughts, and she gave him a rueful smile.

  ‘You and I have been alone too long,’ she told him. ‘Four months and one lone guy enters our world...’

  One gorgeous guy. A guy with an accent to make a girl’s toes curl. A guy who was gentle and kind. A guy who’d lost his parents, who knew what being alone felt like.

  A kindred spirit?

  ‘Yeah, those drugs are really doing something to you,’ she muttered, and adjusted her sling a bit—not because she needed to, but because adjusting it caused her arm to twinge and she felt she needed a little bit of pain right now.

  Pain equalled reality. Reality was good.

  Reality was getting this guy off her island and going back to her stint of self-imposed exile.

  She could smell steak. And onions. Raoul was cooking for her.

  ‘It needed only that,’ she muttered, and took a last moment to try and grasp at a reality that was looking more and more elusive.

  And then she went to find Raoul.

  ‘Hey.’ Raoul turned as she entered the kitchen.

  He smiled at her, his eyes raking her from her toes to the top of her head, and his smile said he approved. Of the saggy jogging suit. Of everything. That smile was enough to do a girl’s head in.

  ‘Well done. Feel better?’

  ‘I...yes.’ Of course she did. A thousand times better. She was clean and she was warm and she was about to be fed. What else could a woman want?

  Who else?

  ‘I feel great,’ she said, a bit too heartily, and then blinked as he tugged a chair out for her. All this and manners, too?

  ‘You don’t need to do this,’ she told him. ‘I’m the servant here, remember?’

  ‘The servant?’

  ‘Don and Marigold own the island, but they never come here in winter. They needed a caretaker. Rocky and I applied for the job.’

  ‘Just Rocky and you?’ He turned to flip the steaks. ‘That’s hardly safe.’

  ‘There’s also supposed to be a handyman-cum-gardener. What they didn’t tell me was that he’d quit. He left on the boat I arrived on, and Don and Marigold headed to Europe without finding a replacement.’

  He was organising chips on plates. Chips! Yeah, they were the frozen oven variety, but she totally approved. Steak and chips and onions. And baby peas, and slivered carrots sautéed in butter. Wow, she thought. Turn back the rescue boats. I’m keeping him.

  Um...not.

  Drugs, she reminded herself. She really had had a lot of them.

  ‘Don and Marigold need to wake up,’ he told her, organising the plates to his satisfaction.

  He flipped the steak and veggies on, then carried them to the table, sitting down before her as if this was something they did every day of the week. Then he looked at her sling and leaned over and chopped up her steak. The sensation of being cared for was almost indescribable.

  Yeah, maybe she was bordering on delusional...

  ‘They’re breaking every rule in the Occupational Safety Code,’ he told her, sitting back down again and turning his attention to his own meal. ‘Leaving someone in such isolation. Or don’t they have those rules in Australia?’

  ‘They do.’

  ‘So why are you still on the island? Come to think about it, why were you here in the first place?’

  She didn’t answer for a while. She didn’t need to. The steak was excellent, as were the accompaniments. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast and she’d had a swim and a shock. She could be excused for making food her priority.

  But the question hung. ‘Why were you here in the first place?’

  It wasn’t his business, she thought. But a tiny voice in the back of her mind said, Why not tell him? Why not say it like it is?

  She hadn’t told anyone. She’d simply fled.

  ‘I’ve been accused of fraud,’ she said.

  He said nothing.

  So what had she expected? Fireworks? Shock? Horror? At least a token of dismay? Instead he concentrated on his second piece of steak as if it was the most important thing in the world. And, because there was nothing else to do, she focused on her food, too. She ate a few more chips and her world settled a little and she felt better.

  Lighter.

  It was as if the elephant was in the room, but at least it was no longer inside her.

  ‘It couldn’t have been a very big fraud,’ he said at last, eying the near empty bowl of chips with due consideration.

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘You’re not in jail and you’ve taken a job as a caretaker in one of the most inhospitable places on the earth. This might be a great house, but you’re not living in luxury. So it was either a very small fraud or you’ve cleverly stacked what you’ve defrauded away so you can be a billionaire in your old age.’

  ‘I could have paid it back.’

 
‘I suspect if you’d paid it back you wouldn’t be on this island. Do you want to tell me about it?’

  No, she thought. And then she thought, Okay, the elephant’s out. But it was still a very big elephant. Regardless of how trivial this guy made it sound.

  ‘It was big,’ she told him. ‘Something like seven million Australian dollars.’

  He shook his head in disbelief. ‘Ma’am, if you’re hiding that kind of cash you shouldn’t let strange men rifle through your knicker drawer.’

  And she chuckled. She couldn’t help herself.

  She laughed, and then she thought, That’s the first time I’ve laughed since...since...

  She couldn’t remember.

  ‘I didn’t do it,’ she said, and her desire to laugh died. Her thoughts went back to that last day, standing in her boss’s office, white with shock. I didn’t do it.

  He hadn’t believed her. Why would he?

  ‘So?’ Raoul said encouragingly. ‘I believe you. You didn’t do it, so...the butler?’

  She choked again, and he smiled and took another chip and handed it across the table to her.

  She took it and ate it, and he kept smiling at her, and his smile was doing something to her insides...

  ‘That’s it,’ he told her. ‘Nice, greasy carbohydrates. Best thing in the world for trauma. Like telling me all about the butler. Jam doughnuts would be better, but for now we’re stuck with chips. If not the butler, who?’

  ‘Felicity,’ she whispered, and he nodded.

  ‘Of course. I should have guessed. I was lacking a few clues, though. So tell me about Felicity.’

  ‘She’s perfect.’

  ‘You mean she probably has the seven million?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Yep, she’s perfect, then. Pretty, too, I’ll bet.’

  And Claire thought of pretty, perfect Felicity and found it hard not to start shaking. But suddenly Raoul’s hand was over hers—big, comforting, warm. Joking was put aside.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, and so she did.

  From the beginning. All of it.

  Of the tiny town where she was raised, of her single mum, of being treated like trash. Of her mum’s death when she was fifteen. Of the scholarship and her determination to get out. Of law school and commerce, a double degree. Of academic brilliance and sheer hard work.