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Royals: His Hidden Secret: Revealed: A Prince and A Pregnancy / Date with a Surgeon Prince / The Secret King
Royals: His Hidden Secret: Revealed: A Prince and A Pregnancy / Date with a Surgeon Prince / The Secret King

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Royals: His Hidden Secret: Revealed: A Prince and A Pregnancy / Date with a Surgeon Prince / The Secret King

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‘Nice touch,’ said the chef. ‘Although I’d have given him the Cognac.’

‘There’s the nicest secluded garden nook, about halfway to the house,’ said Inigo. ‘Perfect for—’

‘Move,’ said Rafael and Simone hastily complied and headed for the door.

A chorus of farewells followed their departure, the kitchen door closed behind them, and night air wrapped around them, cool and dewy after the warmth of the day.

‘You don’t have to—’

‘Stop,’ he said sharply. ‘I don’t want to hear it.’

Simone stopped. Searched for conversation that would assure him that she’d not embarrass him with yet another unwanted advance. ‘Have you been in contact with Etienne de Morsay again?’

‘Yes. I put him off. Gabrielle was adamant about not wanting him to come here.’

‘Really? Did she say why?’

‘No.’ Rafael ran an impatient hand through his hair. ‘Not exactly. Nothing that made sense, at any rate. I’m meeting him in Sydney tomorrow. Hopefully, I’ll get some answers then.’

Simone chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip. ‘Did you ask Luc about him?’

‘No.’

‘You should have.’

‘He was a little preoccupied, Simone.’

‘Though he still had time to make wine, eat a manly breakfast and muster cattle before heading out to get married.’

‘Exactly.’

Simone hitched up her gown a fraction to keep it off the grass. Bridesmaid gowns weren’t really designed for grass.

‘Princess,’ he murmured.

‘Practical,’ she corrected smoothly.

‘It suits you,’ he said reluctantly. ‘The gown. The colour. Whatever you’ve done with your hair.’

‘Was that a compliment?’

‘Yes.’ Rafael glared at her.

Simone glared back. ‘Thank you.’

This time, he looked away. ‘I never really realised before tonight, exactly how much I asked you to give up for me,’ he said after they’d walked in silence for a while.

‘You mean my position in European society?’ Simone judged the risks involved with continuing with this line of conversation. The risk of further quarrelling was high. The chance of her and Rafael resolving their issues was low. She went ahead and plunged into the heart of things anyway. ‘I’d have given it up in a heartbeat for you, Rafael. But I had my father and Luc to consider as well, and in the end I couldn’t abandon them. They needed me.’

‘More than I needed you?’

She’d wanted this, Simone reminded herself grimly. This clearing of the air, never mind that the mirror he held up to her actions revealed her in an ugly light.

‘You needed to escape the chains that bound you to Caverness. You burned to make your own way in life, and you have. What had I to offer you, Rafael? Tell me that? An unbreakable link to a place you never wanted to return to and not one single skill that would come in useful outside of the niche that had been created for me.’

‘You underestimate yourself.’

‘Maybe I did. And maybe I realise that now. But I was eighteen, Rafael, and I was scared. You were my heart. Caverness was my home. And my duty lay with the House of Duvalier. I could not have all three. Right or wrong, I chose to stay. You chose to leave.’

‘I had to leave,’ he said curtly.

‘I know that,’ she said. ‘Josien…I know how she treated you…I knew you only stayed as long as you did in order to protect Gabrielle from her rages. I always knew you’d leave. I’ve never blamed you for that.’

‘I blamed you,’ he said. ‘Hell, I blamed you for everything. It got me through the early days of being alone.’

‘Happy to help,’ she said faintly.

His lips twisted. ‘I don’t know where I’m going with this, Simone. I don’t know what I want from you. Anger. Absolution. Affection. I’ve got no idea.’

That made two of them. ‘You know what I thought when Gabrielle told me the wedding would be held in Australia and that you were to be Luc’s best man?’ she said tentatively. ‘I thought that finally, finally, I might be able to make my apologies and move on. I wanted to let go of the thought of you.’ They’d reached her tiny courtyard. ‘I wanted to stop measuring every man I met against you.’

‘And have you?’ he asked quietly as he leaned against the wall, nightcap in one hand and watchfulness in his eyes.

‘Well, I certainly have a new measure of man in place.’ Unfortunately, it was still firmly based on him. ‘Whether it serves me any better than the old one remains to be seen.’ Simone fished the key to the sliding door from her evening bag and went about unlocking it and sliding the door wide open. Surrendering her shoes at the door, Simone slipped inside, not daring to turn and see if Rafael had followed her.

She switched on the dining-room lamp, belatedly remembering that she’d left the room in a shambles and that the dining table had been awash with morsels of food meant to tempt Gabrielle into eating something before the ceremony. It wasn’t awash with food any more. Someone, probably the magnificent Sarah, had whisked it all away and tidied up in the process. ‘How do you think Sarah, Inigo, and the chef would feel about relocating to France?’ she asked, only half in jest.

‘I think Deidre who owns the guest house would shoot you.’ Rafael had ventured inside after all. Heaven help them both.

‘Just checking.’ Simone’s mouth suddenly felt very dry as Rafael set the Frangelico down on the counter and headed for the refrigerator. He found the jug of water and poured some into a tall glass. He poured one for her too. It sat there on the counter, untouched, a decision she did not want to make for fear that she would get it wrong. Princess or wanton? She could be either, and sometimes both, but Rafael did not want the wanton. No. For all his mockery, it was the princess he responded to. The princess who’d earned his compliments, and so it was that the princess stood before him now, trying desperately to appear composed and in control of her wayward emotions.

‘Are you heading off in the morning?’ he said.

‘Yes. Yes, to Sydney for a day before I fly out.’ She hadn’t wanted to linger. Not with Gabrielle and Luc gone and this so very clearly Rafael’s territory.

‘Whereabouts in Sydney?’

‘The Four Seasons.’

He nodded. ‘Will you be able to find it okay?’

‘The car has GPS.’

He nodded again. Conversation stalled. It was time to let go. Time to start dreaming of a life without an angel in it, avenging or otherwise.

Simone stepped woodenly towards him and held out her hand. She would weep once he’d gone but right now she gave him what he wanted and played the princess as she said goodbye. ‘Good luck with Etienne tomorrow.’

He looked at her and something flickered behind his eyes. He ignored her hand. Put the tips of his fingers to her cheek and kissed her softly on the lips. ‘That’s for the princess who helped make my sister’s wedding day a memorable one.’

Her lips clung; she couldn’t help it. He meant too much to her, this man, and always had.

Rafael’s gaze sought hers, searing and tormented as his hand slid around to the back of her neck and he tilted her head, his lips hovering millimetres above her own. ‘Damn you,’ he whispered raggedly. ‘Damn you to hell, because this is for me.’

And then his lips crushed down on hers as he unleashed his passion and his fury, all of it, all at once, and dragged her with him to a place where a dark and sensual madness ruled them both.

He wanted her wanton and naked before him. He wanted to possess her until she convulsed around him and screamed out his name. Heaven help him, he wanted to break her, and remake her, and scar her soul the way she’d scarred his. ‘Say you want what only I can give you,’ he murmured as he backed her against the counter and his lips found hers again and then her cheek, and then the vulnerable spot behind her ear. ‘Say it.’

‘I do want it,’ she whispered, her hands inside his jacket, her fingers seeking the buttons on his vest, and then the shirt, and then her hands slid to his chest as she dragged her lips across his throat. ‘All of it.’ His jacket fell to the floor. He found the zipper of her dress and slid it south. Flesh, warm and fragrant. Softness and curves and a taste he’d never forgotten. Urgency, and madness as he finally got her naked and lifted her in his arms the better to take what he wanted and he wanted it all.

Flesh cleaved to flesh and lips upon lips as she gave and he took without care for the price.

A bed and some sheets and Simone in his arms, crying out his name as he buried himself deep inside her, one hand on the curve of her behind as he positioned her exactly where he wanted her and, with his heart pounding and his soul fighting to be free of its cage, began to move.

‘Slower,’ she whispered as her body responded instantly, hot and slick and tightening as she spoke. ‘It’s been too long for me. Rafael, please. You have to slow down or I won’t last a minute.’

He didn’t want her to. He wasn’t asking her to. ‘Say my name.’ He wanted her screaming, he wanted it now, and, calling on the ruthlessness that always lingered just below the surface, he sought her centre with his thumb and stroked. ‘Say it.’

She cried out as she came for him, a ragged word escaping her lips, a broken word, both curse and plea. She clawed at him to join her and he did, tumbling down after her, over her, as he gave himself up to unbearable pleasure and to hell with the pain that would come of it. Simone surfaced hard from the depths of pleasure, gasping as tiny aftershocks rocked her body. Pleasure flowed, desire consumed, and Rafael’s touch gentled as he rolled to one side, still cradling her tightly in his arms.

He gave her no words, there were no words for this.

But touch, he gave her that, and the thundering of his heart beneath her cheek, he gave her that too.

‘Are you protected?’ he said gruffly.

‘From pregnancy? Yes.’ From losing her heart to this man all over again? She feared not. Simone eased up onto one elbow the better to study him. Rafe’s eyes glittered in the dim light, so boldly blue and almost sated. His lips curved as she slid over him and settled on top of him more fully, her hands either side of his head as her hair fell across one shoulder to curtain them both. ‘I want to spend the night with you,’ she said as her lips brushed his jawline.

‘Yes.’

‘The whole night.’

‘Yes.’ He drew her down for another kiss. Not sated, that kiss told her. Not nearly.

Good.

She let his possession of her mouth inflame her. She let the feel of his body beneath hers consume her. The hard and rippling planes of his chest. She wanted to go slow this time, to record and to remember, and, wordlessly, he made the world turn slow as he rebuilt the flames of desire caress by deliberately slow caress.

Only when she was on the brink of ecstasy did he enter her and with unerring certainty drive her once more towards oblivion; that place where the world fell away and there was only one anchor and his name was Rafael. Rafael dozed in the aftermath of Simone’s lovemaking. He wanted to remain awake the better to remember every moment, but with his body urging him towards sleep and with Simone already embracing it, he knew he’d soon surrender to the pull of night. Rafe knew how to live in the moment. He knew how to seize it.

Keeping it was the hard part.

One hand above his head and his other around the only woman he’d ever loved with all that he was. The only woman he’d ever exposed his scarred but steadfast soul to.

It hadn’t been enough.

His love for her. His dreams of a future together if only she would believe in him, and be with him. His confidence in her love for him.

It hadn’t been enough.

Simone had stayed on at Caverness, Rafael had stormed away in anger and in grief, and, God, it hurt to look back. Don’t look back. Don’t ever look back.

He closed his eyes and willed sleep to come.

There was nothing there he wanted to see.

Chapter Five

MORNING came too soon for Simone.

‘No,’ she murmured when Rafael shifted restlessly beside her. A half-asleep protest as she opened her eyes and realised the advent of the day. She closed her eyes tightly and rolled onto her stomach as she reached for the pillow to fill the space Rafael had just vacated. ‘No.’

‘Shower,’ he said huskily. ‘Care to join me?’

‘No.’ And then with one eye cautiously open…‘Maybe.’

His smile was lazy. His eyes were bold. ‘Suit yourself.’

He left and closed the bathroom door behind him. The shower came on. The sheets came off. Simone had never been one to linger in bed when a challenge had been issued. She recalled with a tiny smile the firm hardness of every bit of Rafael’s lean and luscious body.

Challenge had most certainly been issued.

She almost chickened out as she stood on one side of the glass shower door with Rafael and a cascade of steaming water on the other. And then the door slid open and a hand reached for her and dragged her inside and that was the end of that.

‘You’re very decisive,’ she murmured. ‘It’s irritatingly appealing.’

He smiled a devil’s smile as he pinned her against the cubicle wall. ‘I know. Come with me today. To Sydney. I’ll get someone else to drive your hire car back.’

She wanted to. Badly. But caution had arrived with the day. Bedding Rafael had solved none of the issues hovering between them. Okay, maybe it had solved one, but the rest remained in place.

‘The meeting with Etienne won’t take long,’ he said next. ‘You could come along, and then afterwards I’ll show you Sydney.’

She slid from his grasp, stalling for time, as she stood beneath the spray. ‘Will you show me where you got your tattoo?’

His eyes grew shadowed. ‘No.’

‘Turn around,’ she ordered next, and pushed and prodded until she had Rafael where she wanted him, with his head flung back and his arms raised, hands resting on the tiles as water ran in rivulets down his back, over the words and the picture she’d striven so hard to forget.

‘I hate you for this,’ she murmured, tracing the darkened words that flowed across his back with the tips of her fingers, before finally pressing her mouth to the ink that graced his shoulder blade. ‘I love you for it too.’

Pleasure and pain. More pleasure than pain as he turned and thrust his hand into her hair and kissed her hard. They wouldn’t make it out of the shower before he took her again, she knew that much already.

She wouldn’t make it through the day without sacrificing her heart. She knew that too.

‘Show me your Sydney, then,’ she murmured as the last of her resistance to this man was crushed beneath the feel of his hands on her. ‘I’ll give you this day.’

They made it to Sydney with half an hour to spare before Rafael’s meeting with Etienne. By the time they’d parked the car underground and Rafael had caught her and kissed her as she got out of the car, and they’d made it to the lifts and into the foyer of the hotel, and found the washrooms and freshened their appearances, they only had five minutes to spare.

Being five minutes early to a meeting with a reigning monarch who wanted to offer you a plum commission wasn’t such a bad thing, she assured Rafael laughingly, before asking him yet again if he thought she would be in the way.

‘I’ve never met the man before, Simone. He’s known you since childhood. You won’t be in the way.’

Etienne had chosen to meet Rafael for lunch in the restaurant attached to the hotel. He stood as they approached him. A big, spare-framed man, immaculately attired in a dark suit and shirt. A man with a handsome face and a brilliant blue gaze that fixed on Rafael and never wavered.

Simone stopped abruptly, sucker punched into immobility.

Comprehension dawned.

Etienne’s knowledge of Rafael’s achievements. Gabrielle’s insistence that Etienne stay away. Not from the vineyard, but from Rafael. ‘Oh, no.’ She shook her head. ‘No.’

Rafael had stopped too, his eyes on her, puzzled and questioning. ‘Simone? What is it?’

‘Rafe—’

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

‘I don’t…I can’t…’ She shook her head, trying to clear it. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t…’

‘Shouldn’t what?’ His words echoed her unspoken ones.

‘Let’s just forget this meeting and go,’ she implored him.

‘Go where?’

‘Anywhere!’ Anywhere but towards Etienne de Morsay, who was currently heading towards them. ‘Rafael, please. I’m…I’m feeling unwell. Please, let’s just go.’

Rafe slid his hand beneath her elbow and frowned. ‘How unwell?’

The lies were making her sick to her stomach. Her distress must have shown on her face.

‘Okay,’ he said hurriedly. ‘A room. We’ll get you a room where you can lie down. Let me make our apologies to de Morsay.’

‘No!’

‘No to what?’

Simone was fast making a spectacle of herself. Rafael looked to be fast losing patience. Etienne was fast approaching. Maturity fled as she reverted to childhood and tugged urgently on Rafael’s arm. ‘Run,’ she said pleadingly. ‘Rafael, run.’

And then Etienne was holding out his hand and Rafael was taking it, shaking it, as blue eyes met blue and Simone watched in white-knuckled silence. And then Rafael was making their apologies and saying that she was unwell and two sets of concerned blue eyes were upon her and Simone looked from one to the other and prayed to the gods that this was all just a dream and knew that it was not.

‘Here,’ said Rafael gently and herded her towards a chair. ‘Sit for a little, while I see to a room.’

Rafael run, her mind screamed at him. ‘Yes,’ she said threadily, and then in a stronger voice as her mind began to function. ‘Yes, but I already have a room booked somewhere.’ She fumbled in her handbag for the details. ‘I just need to get there.’ She just needed to get Rafael there. Anywhere but here.

‘I have a suite here,’ Etienne was saying. ‘It’s closer. Please, it’s at your disposal.’

‘You’re very…’ She would choke on the word kind if she uttered it. Where had this man been during Rafael’s childhood? Where the hell had he been when Josien was whipping the light out of her son in punishment for imaginary wrongs? ‘I can’t…’

‘A glass of water, then,’ said Etienne and almost as soon as he said the words one was being pressed into her hand. She grasped it and drank deeply. Rafael’s eyes warmed and his lips tilted upwards. ‘Hoyden,’ he murmured as he brushed her temple with his lips. ‘Feeling a little better?’

She set the glass down on the table. ‘Yes.’ No. But she would recover and shield Rafael as best she could from this man. She had to.

She turned to the reigning king of Maracey. ‘My apologies, Your Highness. And my belated greetings.’

Etienne waved her apology away with a flick of his hand and offered up a charming smile and she winced inside because she knew that smile, she knew it well, and had never once made the connection. Until now.

‘You used to call me Etienne, young Simone,’ he said. ‘Would that you do so again.’

‘Thank you, Your Highness.’ But she would rot in hell before she would claim any kind of friendship with this man. She stood on wobbly legs.

‘My suite, I think,’ said Etienne.

‘No,’ she said. ‘The dizziness has passed. I’m okay.’

‘Are you sure?’ Rafael was in front of her now, blocking out Etienne’s image. Remaking it.

‘Oh, Rafael.’ Her heart wept for the lies that surrounded him. How long had Gabrielle known? Did Luc know? Harrison had to know. Didn’t he?

‘We won’t stay long,’ he murmured. ‘Sit for a few minutes and make sure you’re really feeling okay, and then we’ll go.’

Simone summoned a smile and called on years of social conditioning to get her through these next few minutes. ‘Of course.’

Etienne saw them seated at his table, calling immediately for more water, and some fruits and an array of food to nibble on. ‘To lift your energy levels,’ he said. ‘My late wife often took dizzy spells early in her pregnancies. Food always helped.’

‘I’m not pregnant,’ said Simone, glancing at Rafe from between her lashes to see how he had reacted to Etienne’s statement. ‘And your wife. Mariette. I was sorry to hear that she’d passed away. She was a remarkable woman.’

‘Yes, she was. Alas, she never carried a child to term. It was not to be,’ said Etienne.

‘A pity.’ Simone lifted her chin and stared at the monarch. She thought she knew where Etienne was heading with this conversation. Why he was being so frank about his so-called ‘childless’ state. But he would have to go through her to get there. ‘Rafael mentioned that you’re looking to restore a vineyard,’ she said smoothly.

‘Yes, I am.’

‘A passing interest, is it?’

‘A long-awaited project,’ Etienne countered politely. ‘It’s been on my mind for years.’

‘A pity you never managed to get to it years ago,’ she said sweetly. ‘Sometimes it’s just too late.’

‘Time will tell.’ Etienne turned to Rafael. ‘Of course, I don’t expect anyone to take on such a project, sight unseen. I’m hoping to persuade you to come and view the vineyard for yourself.’

‘And what of Rafael’s own vineyard commitments?’ snapped Simone. ‘Do you expect him just to drop them, so as to accommodate your every whim?’

‘Simone,’ murmured Rafael, shooting her a sharp glance, accompanied by the slight shake of his head.

‘You have many champions, señor,’ murmured Etienne.

‘So it seems.’ Not that Rafael had the foggiest notion as to why Simone had seen fit to leap to his defence. He didn’t need it. He could see no reason for her antagonism towards her father’s old friend. ‘But Simone is correct in that regard. Any project I undertook for you would have to fit in around my own schedule.’

The look Simone sent de Morsay was darkly triumphant and in no way friendly. Etienne swallowed it down whole, with a rueful smile. First Gabrielle, and now Simone. What was it about Etienne de Morsay that upset them so? Rafael had seen Simone’s formidable social skills in play at the wedding. She wasn’t using them now.

‘Rafael, I’d like to leave,’ she said. ‘Now.’

‘In a minute.’ Rafael turned to Etienne. ‘I have no reputation as a winemaker within your part of the world. Frankly, I’m still building a reputation in my part of the world. I’m curious about how you came to hear of me.’

‘I’ve always known about you, Rafael.’

‘No,’ said Simone, white-faced as she pushed to her feet and confronted Etienne. ‘You can’t do this.’

‘Needs must,’ said Etienne quietly, rising from his chair and executing a slight bow. Anyone looking on would have thought it nothing more than a courtly gesture. Rafael didn’t know what to think, but he stood as well.

‘Whose needs?’ Had Simone been a cat she would have spat at him. ‘Yours?’

‘The monarchy demands it.’

‘I care nothing for your monarchy.’

‘So I see. Some days I don’t care much for it either.’ The older man’s shoulders sagged and he seemed to age at least ten years. He turned towards Rafael, every weary movement a silent apology. ‘I had hoped to do this differently,’ he murmured. ‘But every other avenue was closed to me. I want you to know that.’

‘Speak your piece,’ said Rafael. He had a bad feeling about this. Simone’s open hostility. Gabrielle’s alarm when he’d mentioned Etienne de Morsay. De Morsay’s vivid blue eyes drilling holes in Rafael. There was something familiar about him. Something Rafael struggled to place.

He watched in silence as the older man drew himself upright. Finally, he spoke.

‘My name is Etienne de Morsay. Husband to Mariette Sulemon of the Ardennes—lately deceased. Son of Francisco de Morsay—also deceased. Grandson of Pieter. Great grandson of Alain. I am reigning monarch of the territory of Maracey, bordered by Spain, and you, Rafael Francisco Pieter Alexander, are my son.’

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