Revelations of a Secret Princess

by Annie West

  Every time he thought he had Caro pegged she surprised him. She awakened a host of unexpected feelings.

  He turned a corner and slammed to a halt. There, silhouetted against the window, was Caro near the door to his office.

  Jake recalled the feel of her slender body curving into his, the baffling intensity of the emotions she’d evoked and the less puzzling arousal. Then she’d worn next to nothing. Now she was in one of her drab skirt and jacket sets, in a colour that reminded him of mud. And still excitement throbbed in his blood.

  She stared at a painting on the wall, the early sunlight limning her profile. Jake told himself she wasn’t stunning the way some of his lovers had been, yet there was something about that pure profile, the angle of her chin, the neat curve of her ear and that long slender neck that drew his eye.

  She moved and he caught a glint of russet in her brown hair. It reminded him of the fire that ignited in his belly last night. And of the volatile, passionate woman who’d turned to flame when he’d kissed and caressed her.

  Heat punched low. All night he’d struggled against the need to go to her room.

  To check if she was okay, he reasoned.

  To take up where they’d left off, he knew.

  Only the depth of her hurt had stopped him.

  Caro swung around. Had she heard the sudden heft of his breath? Her eyes widened.

  It was back, that pulsing heat. She bit her lip and he absorbed the fact she looked nervous, no, more than that. Scared. She swivelled back to the painting, fingers plaiting restlessly before her.

  Her fear made him hesitate. She couldn’t be scared of him.

  ‘You like it?’ Jake asked as he neared, forcing himself to look at the picture. He’d barely paid any attention to it. In the flood of morning light he discovered the face of a sombre man holding a globe and surrounded by maps and papers.

  Caro shrugged and he noticed the movement was stiff, as if her shoulders were too tight.

  Was she self-conscious after last night? He couldn’t blame her, yet he wanted to make her turn and look at him.

  ‘It’s...interesting. At least four hundred years old.’ She spoke quickly as if to fill the silence. As if nervous. ‘I can’t work out what it’s doing here, in the direct sunlight. It should be in a protected position.’

  ‘Maybe it’s a copy.’ Jake knew little about art and, though the castle’s owner had provided an inventory, he hadn’t looked at it. He was here to work, and build a relationship with Ariane, not stare at paintings.

  Caro shook her head. ‘Unlikely.’ She bent closer. ‘Highly unlikely.’

  ‘You know old paintings?’ If he’d been watching the portrait instead of her he would have missed her flinch.

  ‘I studied art history.’ She darted a sideways glance that didn’t meet his eyes.

  ‘I don’t remember that on your résumé.’

  She lifted one shoulder. ‘I didn’t finish and it didn’t seem relevant.’

  True, but Jake wanted to know more. Much more.

  ‘It’s my fault about the painting.’ At his words she swung to face him. Jake felt that familiar tug low in his belly when their eyes met. As if someone dragged a weight through his insides. ‘It looked gloomy so I had it moved out of my study.’

  ‘I see.’ For a moment longer their eyes held, then her gaze slewed back to the painting and Jake found himself cursing her discomfort with him. He preferred her passionate and bold.

  And eager for sex.

  Heat spiralled like smoke up from his groin and he had to work at keeping his distance. Clearly she was nervous.

  ‘I think you should move it.’ Another darting glance. ‘It shouldn’t be here in the full sun.’

  ‘I’ll get Neil onto it.’ He paused, watching the tic of her pulse at her throat and the way her hands refused to be still. ‘Caro, we need to—’

  ‘I have to—’

  Both pulled up short. ‘You first,’ he invited.

  Caro nodded but didn’t look eager. ‘In your office?’

  ‘Sure.’ He pushed open his study door and invited her to precede him. As she walked past he caught a hint of her warm, spicy scent and it went straight to his head. For a second he closed his eyes.

  He’d be good. He wouldn’t seduce the nanny in his office.

  No matter how much he wanted to.

  * * *

  Caro’s fingers twisted together, echoing the churning inside. This was more difficult than she’d thought.

  She’d half hoped she could blame last night and the way she’d thrown herself at Jake on the high-octane mix of fear and elation resulting from Ariane’s near accident. But it was still there, the desire for his touch, the yearning for his tenderness and passion.

  Worse, she wanted to blurt out everything, ignoring the need to approach this carefully.

  Hurriedly she looked down, veiling her eyes from that sharp scrutiny.

  Her heart hammered and no matter how she tried she couldn’t pull off the mask of composure she’d come to rely on. Because she wasn’t just fighting her attraction to Ariane’s uncle. Now her father had thrust his oar into these turbulent waters she felt in danger of being tugged under by forces too strong to withstand.

  Now, instead of telling Jake the truth and trusting he was truly a decent man with Ariane’s best interests at heart, she was forced to lie again. Because she couldn’t afford to risk him withdrawing and taking her daughter away.

  She felt sick.

  ‘Caro?’ A firm hand closed around her elbow. ‘You look like you’re going to keel over. Here.’ He ushered her to a chair. ‘Sit.’

  She subsided thankfully, even as she castigated herself for weakness. This wasn’t how she’d meant to face him. But when she’d seen him, all her hard-won resolve had disintegrated. She’d jabbered on about art instead of cutting to the point.

  ‘Thank you. Sorry, I’m fine. I...’ She shook her head. ‘Something has come up. I need to go away for the rest of the week. I know it’s not usual and I should give you notice but it’s urgent.’

  ‘Away?’ His eyebrows tilted down. In curiosity or annoyance?

  ‘To St Ancilla. I had a call from my...father this morning.’ She couldn’t suppress the shiver down her spine.

  ‘Bad news?’

  ‘A family matter. I’m needed there.’ She paused and licked dry lips. ‘Normally I’d never dream of asking for time off so soon but I don’t have a choice.’ Her father had seen to that. Caro straightened. ‘I’d be back next week.’

  * * *

  Finally she looked him square in the face. What Jake saw there made everything inside him still. Not just tension but distress, and that fear he’d picked up on in the corridor. He’d read it as embarrassment after last night’s intimacy. Clearly it was caused by something far deeper.

  Not everything revolves around you, Maynard.

  ‘Your family needs you.’

  ‘I know it’s inconvenient and I apologise but—’

  He stopped her with a wave of his hand. Clearly this was important. From her expression he guessed serious illness or accident.

  ‘Of course you can go.’ What wouldn’t he have given for the chance to spend even a few extra minutes with Connie, instead of being informed from the far side of the world that his sister was dead? ‘Take what time you need. Lotte and I will manage.’

  For a second her lip wobbled then she nodded briskly. ‘I’ll be back next week. You can count on me.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘JAKE, DID YOU say it was St Ancilla Caro went to?’

  Reluctantly Jake looked up from his emails. This project grew more complex by the hour and he wasn’t devoting as much time to it as he should. He’d spent the morning with Ariane.

  On the other hand, his niece’s ease with him felt like victory. He owed her thawing,
in part, to Caro, who’d done an amazing job in a short time. He’d been right to hire her.

  Neil sank into the chair on the other side of his desk. His expression was unreadable, yet the fine hairs on the back of Jake’s neck stood to attention.

  ‘That’s right. What’s happened?’

  Jake leaned back in his chair. A tough early life, a stint in the army then years devoted to wheeling and dealing in the turbulent field of international finance meant it took a lot to unnerve him.

  ‘I tracked down another on our list of potential investors and discovered they were in St Ancilla for a big event.’ Neil passed his tablet across the desk. It displayed a news article. If you could call it real news. Some royal event.

  ‘So? Wait a few days then make contact.’

  ‘Check out the photo. The second one.’

  Jake looked again, scrolling past a photo of a young, formally dressed couple smiling at the camera with all the animation of marionettes. Prince Paul of St Ancilla and Princess Eva of Tarentia, just engaged.

  Beneath was a group photo. An ornate balcony on an imposing building, crammed with elegant women and men in heavily decorated dress uniforms.

  ‘And?’ Jake had no interest in aristocracy. He did business with them but his personal experiences with them hadn’t been happy. First had been the entitled foreigner who’d lured his mother away, on condition she abandon her kids. Then just months ago, his own girlfriend suggested he put Ariane in an orphanage rather than bother with her. Both had been uncaring of anyone else, expecting the world to revolve around them.

  ‘Look closely. The one in blue.’

  Jake frowned. Several of those uniforms were blue, plus a blonde in ice blue and...

  He stared. It couldn’t be.

  Of course it couldn’t. The woman in the deep blue dress was a vibrant redhead, not a brunette. Yet Jake felt adrenaline burst into his blood with a jolt.

  He zoomed in on the woman, amazed at the likeness.

  ‘Princess Carolina of St Ancilla. The King’s eldest child.’ Neil’s voice was flat with suppressed excitement.

  ‘Princess Carolina?’ Carolina. Caro.

  No. It was impossible. Mere coincidence.

  Yet the buzz in Jake’s bloodstream didn’t abate.

  ‘Yes, but she’s not his heir. Her younger brother is. Carolina isn’t in the limelight these days. She lives fairly quietly in the north of the island though she’s very active in a number of charities, especially relating to children.’

  Jake peered at the woman. She was a ringer for Caro, except for the clothes and hair. And the royal connections.

  ‘Maybe our Caro is a distant relative.’

  Our Caro? His choice of words made her sound—

  ‘There’s more.’ Neil took the device and opened another page, handing it back. With his usual efficiency he’d collated a precis on the woman.

  The Princess had a string of names, had been born almost twenty-five years ago and lost her mother early. Her father had remarried when she was two and she had three half-brothers. She’d studied in the US but didn’t finish her degree. There’d been a scandal. He read headlines about wild parties and drug use. Jake wasn’t surprised. Most of Fiona’s privileged friends preferred parties to work. What did surprise him was that after returning to St Ancilla, Princess Carolina had all but dropped off the radar. She didn’t live in the palace, merely appearing in the press at charity events or major royal celebrations like this, her half-brother’s engagement.

  He scrolled lower, studying the shots Neil had collected. Stiff and formal on the same balcony with her family when she was a little girl. Again in her teens, looking almost gawky despite her expensive clothes and with her flame-coloured hair now turning auburn, her head turned towards her father, her expression curiously closed. A shot of her with one of her brothers, both smiling for the camera but neither looking happy.

  Jake began to feel almost sorry for her. Had the wild partying been rebellion after an unhappy childhood?

  Then he scrolled lower and his breath caught.

  This photo was different. Candid. He doubted she knew it had been taken. She wore casual clothes, her hair in a ponytail and she was in a crowd with other young people. At a party, by the look of it. She was half turned away, looking over her shoulder, but there was no mistaking the warmth in her expression as she smiled at someone beyond the camera. Her eyes, a remarkable deep violet, glowed. She glowed. Jake felt the impact of her joy judder through him.

  He swallowed, mesmerised by those eyes. They were so like Ariane’s that for a moment everything, his pulse and his breathing, seemed to stop. He’d always thought the colour rare. Maybe not so on St Ancilla.

  He touched the screen, enlarged the photo and then his breath really did stop.

  There, on the back of her shoulder next to the strap of her top, was a small birthmark shaped like a comma.

  Jake had seen that mark three nights ago.

  It had peeked out beneath the strap of a grey camisole when he’d held Caro in his arms.

  * * *

  By midnight the scowl on Jake’s face threatened to take up permanent residence. His emotions veered between shock—he who’d believed nothing had the power to surprise him any more—fury and grim determination.

  There was pain too, a sliver of hurt that he’d allowed her to play him as she had, but he buried that deep.

  There was no time for such luxuries. With every hour came a new revelation. That was what happened when you could afford the best investigators.

  No wonder the initial check of her application hadn’t found any criminal record for Caro Rivage. She didn’t exist, except technically, for Rivage was the family’s name though royalty traditionally didn’t use it.

  Caro was royal. Daughter of a king. Her full name and titles took up four lines on the report filling his computer screen.

  Jake stared at it and felt the blood jump in his arteries as if seeking a way out. His body was screwed so tight even an hour with a punching bag had done nothing to relieve it.

  Once they knew which direction to pursue, the investigators hadn’t taken long to prove Princess Carolina and Caro Rivage were the same person.

  Some of what she’d said was even true. She had worked in a preschool. The references had checked out because she’d actually worked as a nanny for a couple of families. In between swanning off in couture clothes to charity events and royal parties. That in itself was curious. From socialite royal to nanny wasn’t a normal progression. But she was definitely royal.

  There was a photo of her taken six months ago at a ball, wearing a tiara and a complacent smile that made him grind his teeth. A tall guy with medals across his chest and a hungry expression was at her side, holding her as if he didn’t want to let her out of his sight.

  Jake swore and shoved his chair back, stalking the length of the room. He understood the feeling. The woman couldn’t be trusted an inch.

  Yet still he registered that hum of expectation deep inside. The expectation of what would happen when he held her in his arms again. Even her bald-faced deceit hadn’t destroyed his desire for her.

  He ploughed his fingers through his hair and spun on his heel, pacing again.

  She’d lied from the first. Not only about her identity. About everything.

  That scene by the spa? Had she waited for him, knowing he often worked out at night? She’d sucked him in with her passion and counterfeit distress. First reel him in by giving him a taste of what he wanted, a taste of mind-blowing sex, then play on his protective instincts to stop things going further. She’d teased and distracted him.

  Ego told him she had been attracted to him. He’d seen the evidence almost from the first.

  His brain said it was all a lie. Or if it wasn’t, even if she had wanted him, she’d wanted something more, to lure him into feeling sorry
for her. She’d wanted him in the palm of her soft little hands.

  That sob story about needing to go to her family? The implication, unspoken but there in every throbbing silence, that some terrible tragedy had occurred? All lies.

  She’d gone to a party!

  Was the tall guy with the possessive look there with her? Or had she moved on to some other gullible bloke?

  Jake frowned as pain radiated up his arm. He looked down and saw he’d pounded his fist against the stone wall beside the bookshelves. Gingerly he unfurled his fingers, feeling pain slice through his hand and seeing a graze of blood.

  The woman had got under his skin in ways he could barely believe.

  Even Fiona hadn’t made him so furious. Because he’d begun to see her true colours despite her efforts to paper over the cracks of her innately selfish personality.

  With Caro... Carolina, he’d been completely taken in. Except for that tingle of premonition that she wasn’t what she’d seemed. He’d been distracted by his need to find a way to connect with his niece, and his attraction for a charlatan.

  She hadn’t just lied about her identity. If only that were the worst of it!

  He shoved his hands in his pockets, peering out at moon-washed peaks, taking in the twinkle of lights further down the valley that made him feel, for the first time in years, as isolated as he’d been as a kid, shutting himself off in an attempt to lessen the pain of his mother’s desertion.

  He’d actually felt for Caro. Had wanted to care for her as much as he’d wanted her in his bed.

  Whereas she didn’t want him. She wanted Ariane.

  Nausea swirled in his belly and he swallowed the rancid taste of disgust.

  If the investigators were right, Ariane’s birth mother was Princess Carolina of St Ancilla. Everything pointed to it. The way she’d been bundled home when news broke of her wild partying. Her seclusion at a convent on the northern end of the island for the better part of a year. The fact that Ariane’s adoption took place in the same region and there appeared to be a link to the same convent.