by Annie O'Neil
With her silent agreement, he led her to the discreet exit towards the rear of the hospital where he was parked. He drove them to one of the higher outcrops overlooking Williamtown, that featured sprawling tropical gardens dappled with secret little nooks and crannies where, with any luck, they could have a private conversation.
Silently they walked along the paths, tension crackling between them, until Oliver pointed towards an area with a small brook running through it. He gestured to a bench, waiting for her to sit before he took his own seat.
‘Your Highness—’ he began.
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Please. It’s Amelia...or Lia. Or—’ her voice shook slightly as she swallowed, then forced herself to continue ‘—or the mother of your child.’
The news hit him like a wrecking ball. Bashed into his heart and then lodged there, where, in the blink of an eye, it turned into a hot, brilliant ball of sunshine.
‘Seriously?’ He shook his head in disbelief. They’d used protection. Was this real? A chance to be a father? ‘You’re...you’re pregnant?’
She nodded.
‘You’re going to keep it?’ he asked, before he could stop himself.
She looked at him as if he were mad even to consider otherwise. He forced himself to regroup. This was Lia, not Sarah. Lia had chosen to tell him about the pregnancy, to include him. Surely she wanted this baby?
‘So...if you’re going to keep the baby, if it’s what you want, why do you look so serious? So...’ He sought a gentler word and couldn’t find one. ‘Unhappy?’
Lia dropped her head so he couldn’t see her eyes, and mumbled something he couldn’t quite make out.
He put his hand on her shoulder, then crooked his finger under her chin so they were looking at one another properly. Her light blue eyes glistened with tears.
‘They want us to be married,’ she bit out, as if the idea were detestable.
‘Who?’ He shook his head, confused.
‘The palace,’ she explained, just as he came to the same realisation. ‘My grandparents and I spoke early this morning and they have spoken to the council—’ She stopped herself, as if the life had been drained out of her, then met his gaze and said, ‘The King and Queen of Karolinska will not have any heir to the throne born out of wedlock.’
‘Fine.’
Lia’s clear blue eyes blazed as if he’d just insulted her. ‘What?’
‘Fine. Good. Yes. I’ll do it.’
Oliver clapped his hands together and gave them a rub, trying to channel the adrenaline coursing through him and failing. Whatever it took. He’d do it. There was no chance he was stepping away from another chance to raise a child. His child. Their child.
‘Sooner the better.’
‘You don’t want to think about it?’ she asked with a dry laugh.
‘No.’
There was a side of him that was telling him to slow down. Think about it. But he wanted to lift her up and twirl her round. Shout, I’m going to be a father! so loud the entire island heard. He wanted to take care of her. Peel her grapes. Swaddle her in cotton. Rub her feet. Whatever it took.
But he could see she was anxious, weighing up the options—and why wouldn’t she? Her life and her body were changing for ever, and it was all so unexpected. Understandable, then, that she might not seem excited. Even though for him—whether he wanted it to or not—an ancient, protective, paternal instinct was overriding everything else.
Lia’s features were decidedly wary. ‘You know what marrying me means, don’t you?’
He shrugged and looked around, as if the answer was obvious. ‘Live our lives, raise our child—’ He stopped himself as the penny dropped. ‘The palace will want full coverage of the new royal baby.’
Lia nodded. ‘And the engagement and the wedding. If there is one,’ she added gravely, her expression now completely guarded. ‘It’s not all glitz and glamour, you know.’
He nodded. He knew. First-hand, he knew.
‘We won’t be going to galas like the one where we met every night. I won’t be prancing around in a tiara.’
‘That’s a shame,’ he said, realising too late that she was in no mood to make light of the matter. And she was right. A child’s future was at stake, and her life was about to change. Both their lives were about to change.
She gave a heavy sigh and dropped her head into her hands. ‘They haven’t had the council vote yet, so there’s still a chance they won’t make me do it.’
‘Make us do it,’ he corrected firmly. Whether or not she liked it, they were in this together.
She sat up straight, her expression morphing from helpless to defiant. ‘We can’t...we can’t just let them play us.’
‘It’s not playing if we set the rules.’
‘We don’t have the power to set our own rules. Not with them.’ Her laugh was utterly bereft of humour. ‘Besides... You don’t know me. You’re not in love with me. You won’t fight to the death for me.’
She held her hands apart and stared at him as if the last condition was the most crucial.
‘I’d do anything for you—and for our child.’
There must have been something in his voice that reached her heart, because her next question sounded softer, as if he just might have cracked open the doors of possibility.
‘Why?’
Everything in him stilled. This was a moment that could change the rest of his life. It was up to him if it was for the better or, more worryingly, for the worse.
He took her hands in his and looked her straight in the eye. ‘I want to be a parent.’
The word seemed to resonate. She nodded, sucked in her teeth, wrinkling her brow as she considered him. ‘Let me guess... Boarding school as early as they would take you?’
He smiled at how easily she’d made the connection. ‘Yup.’
‘Snap.’
Their smiles broadened and held long enough for them to exchange a mix of relief and empathy at this shared understanding, but his was swiftly tinged with guilt.
He should tell her the story. The whole story.
He curled his hands into fists, trying and failing to tamp down the vein of pain he’d thought long since extinguished.
Lia wanted to keep the baby, but it was her body. Her life. He respected that. Yet he couldn’t forget the fact that his ex-girlfriend had taken matters into her own hands when she’d found out she was pregnant.
They’d been finishing their internships at a hospital in Oxford, filling out application after application for the futures neither of them had been able to wait to begin, when, one day she had casually informed him that she’d fallen pregnant but had ‘sorted it’.
He had understood that it was her body, and her choice to make—that she was on the verge of a new life that didn’t include a baby and so was he. Yet he would have been happy to support her, make a life with her and their baby. It had hurt that she hadn’t wanted to discuss it with him, or considered his feelings in any way just as his parents had done on countless occasions.
‘You’ll stay with Nanny.’
‘You leave for boarding school on Monday.’
‘You’ll be home in time for six as your father needs you for a father-son photograph for the papers.’
It was why living here was about as close to heaven as it got. His life. His decisions. His future.
But now he was going to be a father.
‘What kind of parent do you want to be?’
Lia’s question was so quiet it was almost as if she had thought it rather than spoken it.
‘A present one,’ he answered, with enough darkness to make her raise her eyebrows.
She stared at him hard, then looked away—as if his answer had raised a thousand new questions, none of which she knew how to ask.
His had been a soulless upbringing, by
parents whose only real interest in having a child had been producing an heir. Job done, they’d left his upbringing to staff—which, to be honest, had been perfectly fine. Perhaps wise beyond his years, he’d never been compelled to seek love where he knew it couldn’t and, more to the point, wouldn’t be returned. Which was why, when his relationship had gone south and his medical internship had been completed, he’d come here to St Victoria—to live an anonymous life as plain old Dr Oliver Bainbridge.
Lia shifted on the bench, then swept her hands across her belly. The reality that their child was growing in there hit him afresh.
He was going to be a father.
A husband, if—
Well, there were a lot of ifs.
If Lia would have him.
If the Karolinskan Crown was satisfied by him.
If he thought he’d be doing the best by his child by marrying her at all.
Because once she found out he came with his own set of aristocratic baggage that symbiotic link he thought they shared might evaporate as quickly as the morning cloudbursts here did.
Some women—like his ex—simply weren’t suited to marrying into a family like his. He closed his eyes at the memory of his parents meeting Sarah. Her lack of a title hadn’t made for warm chitchat over the canapés. But, to be fair to his parents, Sarah hadn’t exactly been all smiles and how-do-you-dos either. She’d talked about how outdated the aristocracy was, and how large estates like the one he’d grown up on and would one day inherit were shameful symbols of a past mired in inequality and the unfair bias of bloodlines rather than merit.
She’d been rude.
They’d been rude back.
None of it had ended well.
He blamed himself. He should have realised earlier that it would never work.
Moving here had seemed the best way to try and chisel away at a ‘to-do’ list that had seemed impossible back in England. He really did want to meet a girl and fall in love...have a family of his own. The trouble was, shaking off the darker edges of his past wasn’t easily done. It wasn’t how he was built, to turn his back on everything.
He’d thought of relinquishing his title, but the anguish he knew it would cause his parents wasn’t the sort of pain he wanted to inflict on them. He didn’t want to inflict any pain on them. He just... He wanted them to understand he was cut from a different cloth. A new cloth. One that didn’t need to be edged in gilt or embroidered with his initials.
They weren’t bad people—they were just of another generation in a so-called ‘class above’. One that dotted its ‘i’s and crossed its ‘t’s and had five-thousand-acre estates and stately homes that echoed with emptiness when they should be filled to the brim with life, laughter...grandchildren.
He pulled a couple of bottles of water out of the backpack he’d brought from his car—keeping some there was a habit he’d developed when he’d first moved to the hot, tropical island. He offered Lia one and then, after taking a swig of his own, felt an idea hit. The fact he was heir to a dukedom would probably help his stance in whatever the Karolinskan palace thought of him, but it probably wouldn’t help with Lia. He had a limited amount of time before she found out who he was, and something told him there was no chance she would agree to marry him until she got to know him.
The real him.
He took another swig of water, then said, ‘Before you call the palace...how about you and I go out on a date?’
She crinkled her nose and half smiled at him. ‘What?’
‘You know...’ His own grin grew as he continued. ‘One of those old-fashioned things. Dinner and a movie?’
She snorted. ‘You want to go to the movies?’
He shrugged. ‘Your call. Movies. Dinner. A walk on the beach.’
Now she outright laughed. ‘Walking on the beach is what got us into this pickle!’
Flashes of their shared night returned to each of them. Their eyes met and the air between them crackled with electricity—a physical reminder of the sexual chemistry they shared.
‘Good point.’ He got down on one knee, then looked her in the eye, enjoying the return of that crackle of attraction. ‘Lia?’
‘Yes?’ she replied, still wary, but also struggling to keep a smile off her face.
‘Would you like to join me for dinner tonight?’
She burst into hysterics. ‘Oh, thank God. I thought you were going to push the marriage thing. I seriously would have to consider moving to a desert island if you were that quick to agree.’
He let the comment lie where it had landed. Between them. He wanted to get married. She didn’t. But she’d pushed the door of possibility open just a little bit further.
Just enough space for him to stick his foot in it.
He rose and held out his hand. ‘Have you ever been to Anton’s Fish Shack?’
CHAPTER SIX
‘IS THIS QUESTION eighteen or nineteen?’
Lia shrugged. She was losing count. ‘Eighteen?’
Eighteen questions out of twenty and she still hadn’t asked the important ones.
Namely, the Do you really want to marry me? question. There might be Crown Jewels and ermine capes involved, but there was also the proverbial shotgun.
How could someone marrying a woman under duress ever fall in love with her?
She parted her lips, felt the words surge up her throat and lodge there. She finally managed to squeak, ‘Favourite colour?’
‘Green.’
‘Favourite fish?’ Lia gave a pointed nod at the mouthful of fish Oliver was about to bite.
‘The one in the film.’ Oliver grinned.
‘What? Jaws?’ Lia joked.
‘The stripy one that talks and makes jokes.’ Oliver shook his head as if it were obvious.
Then he handed her a chip. An extra crispy one. Her favourite.
Lia couldn’t help it. She sighed a little. ‘You really were destined to be a paediatrician, weren’t you?’
He grinned and looked down at the ketchup on his tray, which he’d squirted in two circles and one arced stripe. In other words, a smiley face. He dunked a chip along the length of the smile, then gave her a cheeky grin. Her heart skipped a beat as she saw a dimple appear. She fought the urge to reach out and touch it with her fingertip.
His smile changed as their eyes met. Softened. Then he licked his lips.
Her heart slammed against her ribcage and her vision blurred everything around her apart from his mouth. Too easily she could imagine climbing over the table and demanding a thousand kisses. Something she never, ever in her life considered doing. Her tongue swept along her own lips. His was a mouth she could easily enjoy kissing for the rest of her life.
Was that enough?
Could lust keep a couple together?
A car horn sounded, jarring her back into reality. This wasn’t about lust. It was about love, and whether or not it was something they might ever have. Even more importantly, it was about mutual respect.
She considered the last hour they’d spent down here on the harbour. She pretty much hadn’t stopped talking. He drew information out of her like water out of a tap. Not deep, dark feelings, more the tiny little things that made up the woman she was. Loving sapphire-blue—the colour of his eyes—mac and cheese being her favourite comfort food, especially if it was combined with her favourite activity: curling up with a good book on a rainy day.
She’d talked a bit about boarding school, leaving out the part about how achingly lonely she’d found it, and how rejected she’d felt by her father, who’d kept himself holed up in the palace, and her mother, heartbroken after her failed marriage, who had not only left the country, but the hemisphere, and was now pouring herself into a life of charity work on a remote island in Southeast Asia, proactively blocking out the fact she’d ever had a daughter.
She’d admitted to wanti
ng a dog one day, to dreams of starting a vegetable patch because she loved baby carrots. And she’d confessed, with a flush creeping along her cheeks, how much she would love, love, love the impossible chance to relive some of her childhood, so that she could experience, ‘You know...a childhood.’
Oliver nodded now, as if he’d been taking down the symptoms of an illness, then said, ‘You know what they used to call me at school?’
Lia hazarded a guess. ‘Doc?’
‘Mr Fix-It.’
Lia tried and failed to shove sexy images of the adult Oliver with nothing but a tool belt around his waist, addressing her life’s problems. ‘Did you have a fix-it kit?’
He shook his head. ‘First-aid kit.’
‘Seriously?’ Wow. Medicine really was his calling.
‘It was mostly filled with sweeties and plasters, but...’ something dark shadowed his eyes. ‘I don’t like seeing people in pain. Especially children.’
She felt a depth of compassion in his voice, as if he’d pulled her into his arms and assured her he would do everything in his power never to let her feel pain ever again.
Her phone rang. They both looked at the screen.
Grandmama.
Also known as the Queen.
‘Want me to give you some space?’
She picked up the phone but kept her eyes on him and shook her head. If Oliver and she actually agreed to this insane wedding, he’d need to see the vice-like grip the palace could put on a person if it wanted to. It had ended her own parents’ marriage. It could easily prevent hers from ever happening.
She put the phone on speaker. ‘Hello, Grandmama.’
‘Amelia? We’ve got some notes for you to take down,’ her grandmother said, in lieu of something normal, like hello.
She rolled her eyes. No need to ask who ‘we’ was, but for Oliver’s sake she did it anyway.
Queen Margaretha rattled off the names of her own press officer, the King’s, her father’s, and the palace’s private secretary.
