Nathaniel stood by his car, wiping away the fresh load of snow that had been dumped on them since his arrival. From the look on his face, it was a job he found abhorrent.
‘Are you ready now?’ he asked through gritted teeth. His handsome face conveyed perfectly his true thoughts, namely that she had better be ready.
She had packed quickly enough but had refused to leave the cabin until she’d satisfied herself that everything was as it had been when she’d first been given the keys. She had also gone through the cabin removing the wads of cash she’d stuffed in all manner of places before placing it all into a rucksack she’d bought in the pretty town and handing it to him.
‘What if you’d been burgled?’ he’d said as he’d taken it from her, his face creased with anger.
‘Then I imagine it would have been like Christmas for them,’ she’d answered flippantly, although it had been the one thing that had worried her during her time there. Doing domestic things for the first time had been easy compared to living with the guilt of stealing the money and then the worry of someone else stealing it in turn.
Now his phone buzzed. He answered it and had a brief conversation before disconnecting the call and sighing.
‘That was the helicopter pilot. There’s a problem with the engine.’
She’d flown in enough helicopters to know this meant it had been grounded. ‘Any idea how long it will take to fix?’
‘Tomorrow at the earliest.’
‘It looks like we’ll be staying another night here after all, then.’ That was all she wanted. One more night in the place where she had felt so close to her mother.
‘I’ll drive us to the airport,’ he said grimly. ‘Get in the car. Please.’
Complying, she strapped herself in. Nathaniel got in beside her, made a call to Alma, telling her to notify the car hire company that he would be leaving the car at the airport, and then started the engine.
Dusk was falling as they set off. It was a sight Catalina appreciated as much as she enjoyed the sunsets here.
‘If it wasn’t to get at me, why did you choose this place to hide in?’ he asked after a good ten minutes of silence had passed.
‘My mother spoke about coming here when she was a child. She always said it felt like Christmas.’ She looked at him, taking in the concentration on his face. The roads in the mountains were extremely well maintained and the car had snow chains on but she sensed he didn’t like driving up here. She attempted some humour. ‘I thought that seeing as Christmas was ruined, I would try and capture the magic of it here.’
He answered with a monosyllabic grunt.
‘And I didn’t think my father would look here for ages. Isabella and I were never allowed to go skiing in case we crashed into a tree and smashed our pretty faces. He thought ruining our looks would ruin our marriage prospects.’
She saw his knuckles tighten their hold on the steering wheel.
‘Why do you dislike it here so much?’ she asked.
He didn’t answer.
‘You keep implying that I’m only here because I wanted to hurt you in some way,’ she probed.
His laugh was tight and bitter. ‘You cannot be so naïve to think I would be happy being forced to come to such a place?’
‘I truly don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.’
‘You know my history. I was at school with your brother. Do you expect me to believe he wouldn’t have taken joy in reciting to you how I lost my family when he spent our school years pointing out every avalanche tragedy to me? As if dying like that was entertainment to him?’
Her brain caught up quickly as coldness seeped into it. ‘Is that how your parents died?’
A sharp nod. ‘In the French Alps.’
‘I didn’t know.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I knew you were an orphan but...’ She shook her head, unable to think of the words to express her horror.
How had she not known that? She racked her brains trying to remember if she’d ever heard or read about any hint about it, but Nathaniel kept his private life so close that reports on it were negligible. His school had a code of honour even her brother abided by: never speak of their school years to the press. The press had clearly never found another friend or family member willing to discuss his childhood either.
His past had remained a mystery.
She knew perfectly well why Dominic wouldn’t have mentioned it; the last thing he would have wanted was for his sister to have any sympathy for his arch enemy.
‘How old were you?’
‘Seven.’
More silence enveloped them before he said, ‘My parents had taken my sister, Melanie, to a ski bar in the mountains for some lunch while I had a skiing lesson.’
She hadn’t known he’d had a sister either. ‘Did you...?’ She couldn’t finished her question; the words lodged in her throat.
‘See it?’
She nodded.
‘Not while it was happening. But I heard it. They say it sounds like a freight train coming towards you but it doesn’t. It sounds like hell. The whole ski bar was flattened. They didn’t stand a chance. No one in there did. They all died.’
‘Nathaniel...’ She could only imagine the horror he must have gone through. Actually, she couldn’t even imagine it. She’d lost her mother when she’d been eighteen and that had felt like the end of her world. Nathaniel had lost both of his parents and his sister in horrific circumstances when he’d been only a child. A child. ‘What happened to you?’
‘The authorities called my grandmother as my next of kin but she suffers from chronic arthritis and was in no position to have me. So my uncle and his wife took me in.’
There was something hard in his tone that made her stare at him, wondering what was behind it.
‘They didn’t treat you well?’
He slowed the car as they approached a particularly tight bend. ‘Angelique disliked children. She only agreed to take me on the condition I was sent to boarding school.’
‘That’s cruel.’
He nodded grimly in agreement. ‘I was sent away as soon as I turned eight. My parents weren’t wealthy people but they had insurance policies. The funds paid out were spent on my education, which, as you know, doesn’t come cheap at that school.’
‘Why England though? Why not send you to boarding school in France?’
‘My uncle said if I was to be sent away then I should go to the best school available. Angelique didn’t care where I went so long as I was out of her hair. I would go to their home every Christmas and for summer holidays but they were the only occasions where she had to put up with me. And even then she employed help to take care of me.’
‘Did you live with them after your expulsion?’
He jerked up his chin. ‘For a time.’
‘A time?’
‘A time.’
She wanted to press the subject but could tell by the set of his jaw it would be futile.
She wished she’d known. She should have known.
No wonder he was such a lone wolf, always flitting from one woman to the next, one country to the next, always moving. He’d lost his love and stability at seven and what he’d lost had never been replaced.
If she’d known... She couldn’t honestly say she wouldn’t have taken off as she’d done but she would have called him from the start. She wouldn’t have kept him in limbo while she carried his only real family inside her.
‘How did they react to you being expelled?’ she asked quietly. ‘Were they cruel about it?’
‘My uncle was never cruel to me. He did the best he could under difficult circumstances. He was in Germany at the time on business. Angelique was there to take me in.’
‘Angelique the child hater.’
He paused for l
ong moments, slowing the car again as they approached a small village. ‘I was no longer a child then.’
‘You were seventeen. In Monte Cleure you don’t come of age until you’re twenty-one.’
‘I thought we’d already established that your country is an archaic antiquity.’ Something dark glittered in his expression. ‘I was a teenage mass of hormones and rebellion. But I’m guessing you wouldn’t understand that.’
‘Probably not.’ She couldn’t take her eyes off him. ‘Hormones and rebellion came late to me. Just over two months ago, to be precise, when I committed the only rebellious act of my life.’
He turned his head to meet her gaze for the briefest moment, and in that moment the intensity of his stare was so real and piercing that heat crawled through her, uncurling from her navel and spreading out into her limbs and up her neck.
It was the look he’d given her right before he’d peeled her robe off her shoulders...
The beautiful memories of that rebellious night were as fresh in her mind as they had been when he’d slipped from her room.
If she could take a silver lining from having to return to her home country, it was that Nathaniel was no longer treating her like an opaque ghost. She knew he was furious with her and fully accepted she deserved it, but his anger was a hundred times better than the indifference she’d been living with. He was finally treating her like a real person again, not as the perfect Princess who was judged incapable of lifting a kettle for herself.
The Nathaniel she’d desired from afar for all those years had returned.
The fire that had swirled through her at his stare reignited as she imagined him treating her like a woman again...
CHAPTER NINE
THE SNOW WAS coming down thick and fast and Nathaniel had to use all his concentration to navigate roads that were fast becoming treacherous.
All he needed was to get to the airport. His jet was waiting there and the airport staff were used to keeping the runway perfectly gritted and usable.
Catalina must have sensed his need to concentrate for she fell silent again.
If only he weren’t so aware of her...
This was why he’d avoided spending time alone with her. Every time it was just the two of them he had to fight with his own fingers not to reach out and touch the creamy skin, to gather the long, thick raven hair in his hands and inhale the sultry scent that had driven his senses wild from the very start. He knew he shouldn’t desire someone he no longer trusted, even if a part of him parroted her excuses, trying to justify her actions and pass the blame onto him.
Yet their conversation earlier had changed the whole complexion of their relationship. As much as he loathed what she had done, an understanding had grown between them. For want of a better term, they were now partners in crime, both prepared to put on a face to get what they wanted.
What he couldn’t trust was that she wouldn’t take her desired freedom if another opportunity presented itself.
‘We’re going to have to find somewhere to stop for the night,’ he muttered as they approached another small town. The snow was now so thick he couldn’t clear it quick enough to see through the windscreen before it was covered again.
‘I told you we should have stayed in the cabin,’ she said, smothering a yawn with the back of her hand.
‘You’re tired?’
‘A little.’
Wiping away the thought of rousing her in more senses than one, he crawled the car through the town’s entrance.
Unable to see more than a couple of feet in front of him, he brought the car to a halt. ‘Wait here a moment.’
The moment he stepped out of the car, the chill, along with what felt like a foot of snow, enveloped him.
Shielding his eyes with a rapidly freezing hand, he saw he’d parked safely enough. A neon sign with ‘Hotel’ on it glowed in the distance like some commercialised North Star guiding them.
He opened the car. ‘There’s a hotel up there. I’m going to see if they’ve got any rooms available.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘There’s no point in us both making a wasted journey.’
She rolled her eyes and unbuckled her seat belt. ‘Can you get my bag for me, please?’
‘Catalina...’
‘I don’t want to wait in here on my own. They’ll have room for us. Have faith.’
Faith was something he’d lost too many years ago to count, on the morning after a snowstorm much like this one.
Of all his memories of his family, that one, of the night before he’d lost them, was the clearest. They’d been in their log cabin, his and Melanie’s noses pressed against the window, watching the snow fall in delight and amazement. It had been evening and they should have been in bed but their parents had taken them outside to build a moonlit snowman.
Was the memory so clear because it was his last with them? Or was it just because it had been such a happy moment? If he closed his eyes he could still see his mother’s mischievous smile, his father’s twinkling eyes and his sister’s cute dimples. If he closed his eyes hard enough he could still hear the laughter that had carried through the windless cold air.
This was why he avoided the snow. There was no escaping the memories of all he missed.
He slammed the door shut and treaded carefully to the boot, grabbing Catalina’s small case and the rucksack filled with what was left of the stolen money.
Why had he felt like a tyrant taking the cash-crammed rucksack from her? It was his money. Catalina should never have taken it.
He opened the passenger door. She took his hand with her own gloved one and allowed him to help her out.
‘You must be freezing,’ she said, her teeth chattering. The temperature had dropped substantially since they’d started their drive. ‘Take my hat. I’ve more hair than you.’
‘I’ll be fine.’ He dismissed his offer. His coat was warm. The main thing was that Catalina was bundled up well under her thick snow coat and boots, her hair hidden under a black woolly hat, a thick scarf covering half of her face.
Keeping a firm grip on her hand, Nathaniel led them up the steep deserted road to the hotel, which upon closer inspection was a very pleasant-looking two-storey wooden lodge. They made it there without any mishaps, and opened the front door to a blast of warmth and the blare of distant music.
First impressions were good. The reception was airy and spacious, a place that, while maybe not fit for a princess, was good enough for a woman who no longer wanted to be a princess.
Nathaniel rang the bell on the front desk, which was answered by a frazzled-looking teenage girl.
‘Can we have two rooms for the night?’ he asked carefully in Spanish. He spoke it well but not as fluently as some of his other languages.
The girl stared at him and held up a hand, then called something over her shoulder in a tongue he didn’t recognise.
Catalina pushed forward and said something in what he took to be the same language.
The girl’s eyes lit up, and suddenly there were nothing but smiles and sweetness as the two women chattered away. A middle-aged man appeared from a door behind the desk, saw everything was in hand, and closed the door once again.
After a couple of minutes, Catalina turned to Nathaniel looking concerned. ‘Do you have your passport? She says she needs it.’
He pulled it out of his inside pocket while Catalina opened her small case and removed hers.
‘I didn’t know it was a law to show passports in a hotel.’ She blinked in amazement.
He bit back a laugh. ‘It’s a law us mere mortals have been dealing with for a number of years now.’
He handed them over to the girl along with his credit card. She opened Catalina’s passport first and was inputting the details on a computer when her eyes
suddenly widened and she looked back up at them.
Catalina leaned forward to speak quietly to her, the girl nodding vigorously in agreement to whatever was being said. A few minutes later she presented them with an old-fashioned key and got to her feet, and Catalina took her hands between both of her own. The girl pointed to a door to their left and sat back down.
‘We’re in room eighteen,’ Catalina said, waving goodbye to the awestruck teenager. ‘And we’ve a table booked in the restaurant for thirty minutes.’
He opened the door, which led into a long, wide corridor. ‘We have only one room?’
‘We were lucky to get that.’
As she replied he caught a trace of her scent.
He could laugh. Caught a trace of it? She’d disappeared for ten days and her scent had never left him. It had fuelled him.
Gritting his teeth together, Nathaniel said, ‘Why didn’t she understand me?’
‘She only speaks minimal Spanish—this town considers itself Catalan and mostly caters to fellow Catalan tourists. She’s only filling in because the blizzard has brought a swarm of guests in.’
‘I didn’t know you could speak Catalan.’
‘My mother was Spanish and was raised speaking Spanish and Catalan. She taught Isabella and I Catalan so we could be free with what we said to each other.’
‘Your mother was a member of the Spanish royal family, wasn’t she?’
‘She was a cousin to the King.’
‘Monte Cleure and Spain have strong links, don’t they?’
‘Yes. They’re as strong as our links to France, which is good seeing as we’re sandwiched between the pair of them.’
‘I can imagine. And I imagine your mother’s upbringing meant she adapted easily to life in the Royal Palace of Monte Cleure.’
Catalina grimaced in response and came to a stop by the door with a number eighteen on it.
What secrets would the Queen and her daughters have wanted to share that had necessitated them speaking a language no one else understood?
Claiming His Christmas Consequence Page 11
