Andreas drove himself out to meet it. He didn’t need Sebastian to tell him that the fewer people who saw this first reunion, the better. He’d like to get rid of Holly’s minders and the aircrew first, but that was impossible. They’d have to be paid well for their silence.

He reached the plane and waited with ill-concealed impatience for the steps to be put in place and the doors to open.

Georgiou emerged first. The big man stopped on the top step and looked helplessly down at Andreas. He held up his hands, as if in surrender.

‘You want us to carry the cargo down?’ he asked, with a wary glance at the airport workers within earshot. ‘She…we could have trouble.’

‘You and your men leave the plane,’ Andreas said grimly. ‘I’ll come up.’

‘You’ll be…safe?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he snapped, and climbed the steps with purpose. This was getting farcical. Even though he hated the idea that she’d been abducted, he needed to remind himself that this woman had deceived him. She was here because of that deceit. He had every reason to be angry and the sooner he had it out with her, the better.

Or maybe there was some simple explanation. Maybe this could be a five-minute conversation and she could leave again. It could all be a mistake.

Maybe.

‘She’s up the back. She’s hardly spoken to us since we left Australia, and only then in anger,’ Georgiou said, standing aside, and Andreas nodded and entered the cabin. And saw her.

For a moment his world stood still.

Holly.

She was just the same. His Holly. The Holly he’d held in his heart all these years. Holly, in her tattered jeans and T-shirt, her hair wild and tumbled, always laughing, always teasing. The image he’d loved most was of her riding bareback across the paddocks, daring him to keep up with her if he could.

Lovely Holly, with her beautiful body. Her bright, sapphire-blue eyes, her fierce intelligence, her low, throaty chuckle…

She wasn’t chuckling now. Her face looked set and grim. Her arms were crossed firmly across her breasts as she sat where she’d clearly sat for the entire journey. She looked dishevelled and weary and very, very angry. She met his gaze and it was almost a physical jolt. A stormy tempest about to break.

‘Holly,’ he said, and maybe he even said it tenderly before he could help himself, but the tenderness stopped right there.

‘How dare you?’ she snapped and, as he took a step towards her, she rose and moved out into the aisle.

‘I wished to see you,’ he said and her eyes flashed fire.

‘You’re seeing me. Your thugs dragged me into their helicopter without a word. They brought me here with no explanation. Your thugs. That’s what they are, Andreas, and so are you for employing them. A stupid, cowardly thug to set four men on a defenceless woman.’

‘You’re not defenceless,’ he said, taking a further step toward her and feeling the faint tug of a smile at the corners of his eyes. ‘You bit Maris.’

‘So I did.’ If looks could kill he’d be stabbed to the heart. ‘I wish I’d bitten him harder, but then I’d probably catch something vile. You’re pond scum, the lot of you. Why have you dragged me here?’

‘There are things we need to talk about,’ he said, forcing his tone to mildness.

‘So use the phone.’

‘That wouldn’t have been wise,’ he said and took another step forward and maybe that was a mistake. For her hand came up and slapped, a solid, ringing slap that pushed his face aside and echoed around and around the confines of the cabin. He gasped, his face darkening in anger. Instinctively his hand came up and caught her wrist, dragging it down.

‘Don’t you touch me,’ she snapped and lashed out with her feet. Her leather boot hit his shin and it was all he could do not to yelp.

‘Do you know what the penalties are for assaulting royalty?’ he demanded, astounded, moving adroitly so she was held out of kicking range.

‘Do you know what the penalties are for international kidnap?’ she countered, still trying to kick. ‘For grabbing me and hauling me here against my will? I don’t know what you want with me, Andreas Karedes. Tell your thugs to turn the plane round and take me home.’

She wrenched her wrists so hard he released them. She staggered back. His hands came out and caught her shoulders. She steadied and her hand came up and slapped again. Harder.

Ouch. If he wasn’t careful he’d have a black eye to explain to the press.

‘I just want an explanation…’ he started, but she was too angry to let him go on.

‘I don’t care what you want. Let me go.’

‘Not until you tell me what I need to know.’

‘You can’t do this.’

‘Holly, it seems I already have,’ he said wearily. ‘I’m sorry you were abducted. I meant to persuade you to come—not to coerce you. But now you’re here, you need to accept the royal imperative. You’ll stay until we have an explanation.’

Um…maybe that hadn’t worked. As an apology for what had happened, maybe it lacked a certain finesse. Holly certainly seemed to think so.

She stared at him blindly, two spots of flame high on her cheeks revealing that her temper had her right out of control. She glanced out the window. There was a cluster of airport workers in sight, clearly waiting to do the plane’s routine maintenance, or at least assist it to leave the runway it was blocking.

‘Aristo is a civilized country,’ she said, suddenly thoughtful, almost civil.

‘What…?’

‘You have laws,’ she continued. ‘Laws that even include kidnapping, I believe. Royalty may have been able to rape and pillage in the past, but I’d imagine those days are well and truly over.’

‘What I say, goes,’ he snapped, startled.

‘Does it? I wonder?’ She eyed him thoughtfully. She closed her eyes—and she screamed.

It was a scream to end all screams. It was a scream perfected years ago by a lonely child who’d had a taste for dramatics and miles of open space to practise. It was a scream that had every head within two hundred yards of the plane swivelling to see what was happening.

He grabbed her and hauled her towards him, reaching for her mouth. She elbowed him in the ribs and kept right on screaming.

His fingers closed on her mouth.

She bit. Hard.

Andreas swore, then strode across to haul the door closed, giving them a measure of privacy. Just in time, for Holly had taken a breath and was opening her mouth to scream again.

‘I wouldn’t bother,’ he said, staring down incredulously at the small teeth marks on his palm. That she could do such a thing… ‘You’ll not be heard through the doors.’

‘I demand the police,’ she spat. ‘I want the consulate. You can’t do this.’

‘This is Aristo and I’m the royal family,’ he said. ‘I can do what I want.’

‘Not with me you can’t.’

And then Georgiou was back, shoving his way urgently through the aircraft door and staring at his boss’s hand in incredulity. ‘You’re bleeding.’

‘It’s nothing.’

‘I hope he gets rabies and dies,’ Holly hissed.

‘So he might, being bitten by a mad—’

‘Leave it,’ Andreas snapped. ‘You’ll have to take her to Eueilos.’

‘Sir, she’s out of control,’ Georgiou said urgently. ‘There’s no one on Eueilos except Sophia and Nikos, and they’re too old to defend you.’

‘I’ll tell them to lock up the firearms,’ Andreas said dryly. ‘She won’t hurt one elderly couple who have nothing to do with this, and there’s no way she can get away from the island.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I can’t stay. I need to face parliament in an hour and if I’m not there, there’ll be questions.’

Georgiou gave a wry smile. ‘Very good,’ he murmured. ‘But can we keep this one under wraps?’

‘I’m not staying under any wraps,’ Holly hissed, kicking backward at him. ‘Andreas, what the hell do you think you’re doing?’

What was he doing? He thought of the report lying on his desk at home and his face hardened. She was threatening everything. One secret, which surely he’d had the right to know…even before his marriage?

But she’d gone past the point of hysterical.

‘I’m protecting my own,’ he said at last. ‘I have no idea what happened to you after I left Australia, but it’s threatening the future of this country. I’m sorry it’s had to come to this, Holly, but I want the truth. You’ll go to Eueilos and you’ll await my pleasure. I’ll see you when I’m ready.’

CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS four days before he could leave. The corruption enquiry was reaching its zenith and, as head of the investigative committee, Andreas had to work through the mess of corrupt officialdom while trying to figure when he could get to Eueilos.

Maybe Holly would be better off with time to calm down, he decided, but only he knew how hard it was to concentrate on the issues at hand. When he finally left it was with a sense of relief—but also apprehension.

The island of Eueilos, an idyllic hideaway given to him on his coming of age by his father, King Aegeus, had long been his refuge. From childhood, Andreas had shown a distaste for the pomp and splendour of royalty. He was caught in the royal web. To walk away was an impossibility instilled in him from birth, but Eueilos was his. His wife had never liked it. Christina had loved the bright lights of the city, and even the capital of Aristo was too quiet for her, so he’d always been free to do with his island as he wished.

He’d built a pavilion—a whim, fashioned on the desert tents used by his royal cousins on the neighbouring island of Calista. From a distance it looked like a series of vast marquees, joined together in a circle. As a visitor grew closer he’d realize the ‘tents’ were in fact made from whitewashed timber panels. Every wall could be drawn back, opening almost the entire pavilion to the sea breezes that blew softly all year round.

In the centre of the pavilion, exposed when the walls were drawn back, was a vast swimming pool, large enough to classify as a lagoon. The island’s beaches were wide and golden, the sea always inviting, so the swimming pool was pure luxury, for when one was simply too lazy to walk the hundred yards or so to the shore.

He came as often as he could, when the demands and public spotlight of royalty became overpowering. He had a discreet couple as housekeeper and groundsman, and that was his total staff.

He loved it, as once he’d fallen for Holly’s home, he thought as his plane came in to land. He was flying himself—a small Cessna he’d learned to fly on Holly’s farm. Holly herself had taught him the rudiments, and every time he flew he…

No. He didn’t think of her. Hell, he’d been married, divorced—so much had happened since he’d last seen her.

He was about to see her now.

His hand came up to touch his face in remembrance. His dark skin didn’t show a bruise, but he still felt the imprint of her slap. Had she calmed down yet?

She must have calmed down sufficiently to answer his questions. There was no choice. He was here to stay until his questions were answered.

And until Sebastian’s outrageous suggestion was dealt with?

Sophia, his housekeeper, met him at the entrance to the pavilion. She’d been baking, and the smell of baklava assailed his senses, making him smile as this place always did. Sophia had been his nanny until he was ten. When he’d been granted the island he’d gone to find her. She and her husband, Nikos, ran this place and their comfortable presence always had the capacity to make his cares seem less.

But: ‘She’s not here,’ Sophia said and his cares came flooding back.

‘What?’

‘She’s at the beach on the far side of the island,’ Sophia told him, watching his face. ‘It’s the furthest place from this house. Georgiou told her you would come. She says to tell you not to bother, unless it’s to arrange her flight away from here.’ She frowned at him. ‘Andreas, this woman… Holly…she is very angry.’

‘Not as angry as I am,’ Andreas said grimly.

‘I didn’t raise you to take revenge on women,’ Sophia said, and folded her arms across her bosom and glared up at him. She was five feet nothing compared to his six feet one, but height was nothing. She’d box his ears if she thought it necessary, he thought ruefully. Of all the people in his life, Sophia was the only one who didn’t treat him as a royal prince. Rather she treated him as a boy, to be indulged but also to be brought into line as necessary.

‘She’s a good girl,’ Sophia added, still aggressive. ‘And she’s frightened. I’ve told her there’s nothing to be frightened of while I’m on this island. I don’t know why you’ve brought her here, Your Majesty, but you touch her and you’ll answer to me.’

Sophia only ever called him Your Majesty when she was in the presence of others—or was really troubled. Andreas forced a smile to reassure her.

‘I won’t hurt her.’

‘You already have. There are bruises on her wrists.’

‘That wasn’t me.’

‘It was Georgiou and that’s the same thing.’

‘It’s not.’

‘Don’t give me this,’ she said, and she stood on her tiptoes and poked him in the chest. ‘You go and see her and you treat her gently. And know that you’ll answer to me if you don’t. And, no, there’s no baklava for you until you make things right with Holly. She’s borrowed swim clothes—that you have such a collection here for women to wear makes her more angry, by the way. As it makes me angry. You’ll need to tread on eggshells to make your peace with that one.’

He walked across the island to find her. He could have taken one of the Jeeps but he needed time to collect himself. To figure out how to approach what came next.

It seemed that ever since the reporter had come to him with the news about Holly, he’d been moving on autopilot. He’d been trying to get answers fast, but now it behoved him to move a little more cautiously. Sophia was right. Nothing would be gained by having Holly as hysterical as when he’d last seen her.

Mind, it was hard for him to stay calm. The words of the reporter still bit deep.

‘Did you know there’s a child’s grave on her property? The gravestone says “Adam Andreas Cavanagh. Died 7th October 2000 aged seven weeks and two days. Cherished infant son of Holly. A tiny angel, loved with all my heart.”’

Adam Andreas Cavanagh. The name—what the reporter was suggesting—had generated a pain he’d never thought he was capable of feeling. Even before he’d worked back through the dates, he’d known the truth. For he remembered her saying:

‘Your home’s Adamas? I love that. Adam’s such a strong name. If I ever have a son I’d love him to be called Adam.’

They’d been lying in thick grass on a rocky verge that looked out over her home. Normally the outback cattle station was dry and dusty, but the rains had come just before he’d left. The change to Munwannay had been almost miraculous, dust turning to verdant green almost overnight.

So they’d made love that last time on a bed of soft grass and wildflowers. She’d clung to him with fierce passion, she’d talked of naming a son—hypothetically, he’d thought—and then he’d left to get on with his real life.

Leaving behind… Adam Andreas Cavanagh. He had no doubt that the reporter’s suspicions were right. Holly had been a virgin when he’d met her. It had to be…

But if it was, it was a disaster.

‘I must have left an impression, then,’ he’d joked to the reporter. ‘For Holly to give her son one of my names. Maybe she hasn’t met many royal princes. You’d think the baby’s father might have been a bit resentful.’

It had been a remark meant to avert suspicion, but he wasn’t sure whether the reporter had swallowed it. With the current scandals rocking the royal family, anything more could cause descent into chaos. The press knew it and was actively looking for trouble.

Holly was trouble. Holly screaming her head off because he’d had her brought here. Did she realize she might have the power to bring down the throne?

He walked round the final sand-hill before the beach Sophia had said she was on, and he stopped dead.

She was lying not ten yards away. She was wearing the bottom of a tiny, crimson bikini. Nothing else. She was lying face down but she was propped up on her elbows, reading, and he could see the generous curve of her lovely breasts. Her fair curls were tangled down her shoulders. She’d been swimming and her hair was still damp. She looked…free, he thought suddenly; free in a way he could never be. And quite extraordinarily beautiful.

The knot of anger and tension that had been clenched inside him for weeks dissolved, just like that. It was replaced by a sensation so strong he had to fight to stand in the one spot. She hadn’t noticed his approach. He could just walk forward and lie down beside her, let his body touch hers, take her in his arms as he’d taken her all those years ago.

Right. He was here to avert calamitous gossip—not make more.

‘Get yourself decent,’ he growled in a voice he scarcely recognized, and her head jerked up and she hauled herself upright in fright, reaching for her discarded bikini top. She clutched it, hauling it against her but not before he’d seen what lay beneath.

She was almost ten years older than last time he’d seen her. She had a woman’s body now. A full, sensuous collection of curves that together could make a man…

‘What are you doing here?’ she snapped, cutting across his thoughts. She frantically retied her top, then reached down and grabbed her towel, wrapping it round herself tightly and hanging on to it for dear life.

‘I own the island,’ he said mildly and waited for her reaction.

It didn’t come. She didn’t say anything.

‘I need to speak to you,’ he said at last. ‘That’s why I brought you here.’

‘You could have telephoned. We aren’t exactly in the Dark Ages.’

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘But telephones are bugged.’

‘Yours?’

‘Yours.’

She gasped at that, incredulous. ‘Why would anyone bug my telephone?’

‘Because my entire kingdom wants to know what happened with us.’ He hesitated. ‘Let’s go back to the house.’

‘If you want to drag me back screaming.’

‘Holly, cooperate.’

‘Give me one good reason why I should.’

‘You owe me the truth!’ It was said with such passion that it brought her up short. Her eyes widened and there was suddenly a trace of uncertainty in her eyes.

‘I owe you nothing,’ she whispered.

‘You bore my son.’

It was said with such heaviness, such dull certainty that it hurt. He saw her flinch. The fingers that had been clutching her towel so tightly loosened. It was as if she suddenly had nothing more to protect.

‘I did,’ she whispered. Her gaze met his, steady, unapologetic, but behind the defiance he saw a hurt that ran bone deep.

‘You never told me.’ The roughness had gone from his voice. The confused fury that had driven him for the last weeks had unexpectedly weakened.

‘No.’ It was a flat negative, nothing more.

He said nothing. There was almost perfect stillness around them—the faint lapping of the water on the golden sand but nothing, nothing, nothing.

Nothing to distract them from this thing that was between them. This awful, immutable truth.

‘I believe I had the right to know,’ he said at last, heavily, and he watched as the anger flashed back into her eyes.

‘As I had the right to receive the letters you told me you’d write. Not a phone call, Andreas. Nothing. One polite note to my parents thanking them for their hospitality, written on royal letterhead—typed by some palace secretary—and that was it.’

‘You know I couldn’t…’

‘Extend the relationship? Of course I did. You were engaged before you came to Australia. But we were kids. I was a teenager, Andreas. I’d never had a boyfriend. You had no right to take advantage…’

‘It wasn’t all one way!’

‘It wasn’t, was it?’ she said, and he thought he saw a faint trace of a smile behind her eyes. ‘But I was still a kid.’

That was the problem. He knew it. They both knew it. She’d been seventeen when he first met her. Seventeen. Not eighteen.

It made all the difference in the world.

‘Did you know you were pregnant when I left?’ he asked, trying to focus on the personal, rather than the political, ramifications of what had happened.

‘Yes,’ she said, and he flinched. Suddenly the personal was all that mattered.

‘So that last time…’

‘Oh, I didn’t know for sure,’ she said. ‘My home is hardly the place where you can pop down to the supermarket for a pregnancy test. But I guessed.’

‘Then why…’

‘Because you were engaged to be married,’ she said, sounding out each syllable as if she were talking to a simpleton. ‘Andreas, I don’t want to talk about this. Tell me, what would you have done if you’d discovered I was pregnant?’

‘Married you.’

It was said with such certainty that she blinked. But then she smiled drearily and shook her head.

‘No. That’s air-dreaming. We talked about it—don’t you remember? How we loved each other and wanted to be together for always. How you’d take me to Aristo and I’d be a princess. How my parents would cope without me and your father would forgive you eventually. Only there was already a princess, Andreas. Christina was waiting in the wings, and your marriage was meant to help to strengthen international ties. You talked about defying your father but you never once said you could break your engagement to Christina.’

‘We were promised as children,’ he said and he knew it sounded weak. It had sounded weak then, too. Holly hadn’t understood how such marriages worked. How Christina, five years older than he, had been raised from childhood to see herself as his wife. Christina would never have looked at another man. To tell Christina—aged twenty-five—that he no longer intended to marry her, would have been personally devastating to her, as well as politically disastrous.

He had a duty and he’d known it. Holly had known it, too.

She shivered and her towel dropped. She bent to retrieve it but he was before her, wrapping it round her shoulders, ignoring her involuntary protest.

‘I’m getting sunburned,’ she said, flinching at the feel of his hands on his shoulders, stepping away from him, her voice flat and dull. ‘I need to go back to the house. If that’s all you want to say to me…well, you’ve said it. Can you arrange transport back to Australia immediately?’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘Why not?’ She hauled away from him, turning toward the path. She was turning her back on him? She shouldn’t do that, he thought. To turn your back on royalty…

He could have her put in prison for insubordination.

But she was already walking away. He watched her and thought she looked tired. She shouldn’t be tired. She’d had time here to rest.

There was a long, ragged scar running from the back of her knee almost to her ankle. It showed white against her tan. That hadn’t been there before.

She was a different woman from the girl he’d fallen in love with. But the girl he’d fallen in love with would never have been afraid of accusations of insubordination. Some things hadn’t changed.

She wasn’t waiting for him. She was simply ignoring him, trudging slowly back to the pavilion. He caught up with her in a few long strides and fell in beside her.

‘What happened to your leg?’

‘I don’t have to—’

‘Tell me? No, you don’t. But I’d like to know. It’s a nasty scar and I hate to think that you’ve been hurt.’

She cast him a look that was almost fearful. ‘You think a cut on the leg can hurt me? That’s a minor cut, Andreas Karedes. You have no idea what can really hurt. And don’t you turn on the royal charm to me,’ she snapped. ‘I’m impervious.’

‘Are you?’ He smiled and she gasped and turned deliberately to face ahead.

‘Leave me alone. You seduced me once. If you think you’re seducing me again…’

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