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

He was spared further indecision when the kitchen door burst open and Gabrielle flew out, her face alight as she flung herself into his arms. ‘You came,’ she said as she covered his cheeks with kisses. ‘I knew you would.’

Luc appeared in the doorway, his stance relaxed but his expression guarded. Gabrielle herded Rafe towards the door. Luc headed down the steps and started towards them. Rafael met his gaze warily. He knew this man like a brother. He knew exactly how fierce Lucien could be in defence of the people he loved.

‘Gabrielle,’ he muttered. ‘Maybe you should go inside.’

‘Have a little faith,’ she whispered as she studied her husband. ‘Luc sees both sides of this mess.’

‘He has to do right by his sister. Honour demands it,’ murmured Rafe as he set Gabrielle firmly behind him. He didn’t think Gabrielle quite understood a brother’s feelings towards a man who would take a woman to his bed for the night and then walk away without a backward glance. No matter what his reasons for doing so.

‘If I didn’t love you, I’d kill you,’ said Luc simply as he stepped forward and drew Rafe into a fierce embrace. ‘I still might.’

‘You will not,’ said Gabrielle sternly. And as Rafael stepped out of Luc’s embrace, ‘We’ve been waiting for you to arrive for two days. What took you so long?’

‘I drove. I needed time to think.’

‘Told you,’ Luc said to his wife. ‘Pay up.’

‘Later,’ said Gabrielle. ‘You drove? You must be exhausted?’ She eyed him critically. ‘You are exhausted.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Fatherhood’s going to suit you,’ murmured Luc.

‘It will.’ He exchanged another long glance with Luc.

‘Told you,’ Gabrielle said to her husband. ‘Pay up.’

‘Where is she?’ said Rafael. Much as he wanted their company, he wanted Simone’s more.

‘In the old orchard garden,’ said Gabrielle. ‘Rafael?’

He’d already moved off. He stopped and forced his impatience into subservience as he turned back towards Gabrielle and Luc.

‘I told her that I’d called you.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘She wasn’t very happy with me.’

‘I’ll sort it out.’

‘Well, yes. That’s the plan. I’m hoping she’ll forgive me eventually. Sisters should not fall out over men.’

‘Fine,’ he muttered, and started once more for the garden.

‘Rafael?’

‘What?’ He stopped again, patience so clearly not one of his virtues that Luc started to laugh and Gabrielle rolled her eyes.

‘I got you something to give to Simone. I didn’t think you’d mind.’ She speared him with a pointy finger and then pointed to the ground at his feet. ‘Wait right there.’ She disappeared back through the kitchen doorway and returned moments later with a small butter-coloured bundle in her arms.

Rafael looked closer.

The bundle had a nose. Two ears. Paws. Liquid brown eyes.

‘It’s a puppy,’ he said stupidly.

‘It’s a golden retriever,’ said Gabrielle as she bundled it into his arms. ‘And it’s a she.’

‘She’s fat,’ he said next.

‘Puppy fat,’ said Gabrielle as she stroked the puppy’s head. ‘Don’t you listen to him, sweetheart. You’re not fat, you’re Rubenesque, and you’re going to grow up to be a rare beauty.’

The puppy squirmed in Rafael’s arms. ‘What is it you would have me do with this puppy?’ he asked.

‘You give it to Simone. As a gift.’

‘Why?’

‘Because.’

As far as reasoning went, it seemed a little…loose. ‘Is this a pregnancy thing?’ he said suspiciously.

‘No, it’s a “you need something to help you even get a hearing” thing,’ said Gabrielle. ‘Whatever it was you did to Simone, or said to her or didn’t say to her, you hurt her, Rafael. Badly. You need to be part of a puppy package deal.’

‘Are you sure about this?’ He eyed the warm ball of puppyhood currently chewing on his watchband sceptically. Colour him practical, but he wasn’t at all convinced that what Simone needed right now was a puppy. ‘I really don’t think you’ve thought this through.’

‘Trust me,’ said Gabrielle. ‘Just do it.’

He found her in the old orchard, planting bulbs beneath an apple tree. She wore cut-off denim shorts, a pale pink T-shirt, a pair of old gardening gloves, and she’d pulled her silky black hair back into a loose ponytail at the base of her neck. Freshly pulled weeds sat in a pile on one side of her, fresh bulbs sat in a pile to the other side of her. He put the fat puppy down and watched in resignation as she headed straight for Simone and the bulbs and the dirt.

‘Hello. Where did you come from?’ Simone’s voice came to him on the breeze, amused and welcoming. The puppy thought there was welcome in that voice too and, with her tail wagging furiously, she began to chew one of Simone’s gardening gloves. Simone tapped the puppy lightly on the nose. ‘And where are your manners?’

The Rubenesque puppy sat back, scratched its collar and promptly fell to chewing on the pile of weeds. Simone laughed and looked around, presumably for the puppy’s owner.

And saw him.

Her laughter died as she scrambled to her feet and took the gloves off and brushed the dirt from her clothes. Apart from that first startled glance, she didn’t look at him once.

‘I like what you’ve done with the garden,’ he said, by way of small talk. At this point, any type of talk would do, but Simone did not reply. Instead, she bent down and patted the puppy for at least half of eternity.

‘What’s her name?’ she asked, after carefully checking the puppy’s collar for a tag.

Name? What name? Pet owners decided on names. Not him.

‘Or am I to assume that, like so many other animals in your possession, she simply doesn’t have one?’ said Simone.

‘Ducks and swans do not need names,’ he said a touch desperately. ‘And this is…ah…’ He watched in silence as the puppy abandoned its investigation of the weed pile in favour of digging in the dirt and retrieving some of the bulbs Simone had planted. What was he supposed to say? Yours? What on earth had his sister been thinking? ‘Ruby,’ he said. ‘Ruby N Esquire.’

‘How long have you had her?’

‘Not long,’ he said.

Simone stood up, shoving her hands in her back pockets as she did so. Her gaze held his for a moment before skittering away.

‘I heard you were in Maracey,’ she said quietly.

‘I heard you were pregnant.’ So much for small talk.

‘Yes.’ She lifted her chin, a tiny tilt of her head that he remembered of old, from the days when as a young girl she would square up and step up to take the blame for something that someone else had instigated. The children of Caverness protected their own. ‘Yes, I am.’

‘Is it mine?’

‘It’s a funny thing, the concept of ownership,’ she said softly. ‘I mean, we can care for things and tend things—I tend to this garden—but do we ever really own them?’

‘Yes.’ Rafael had no problem with the concept of ownership. ‘Answer the question, Simone. Is this baby mine?’

‘Given that hard-line ownership seems to be your thing, I’m going to start in the middle and call it ours.’ She looked at him then and he saw it in her eyes already: a mother’s protectiveness, fuelled in full by a mother’s love. He wanted to weep.

He needed to apologise.

‘Simone, those things I said to you at the hotel. I’m sorry. I was wrong and I knew it the moment I said them. I wanted to come after you. I wanted to talk to you about a million things. I wanted—’ You. Just you. But the neediness of that statement made it too hard to voice. ‘I wanted to come after you.’

‘But you didn’t.’ She smiled tiredly and it struck him like a knife wound to his soul how fragile and defeated she looked. ‘You never look back, Rafael. And sometimes…sometimes you should.’

‘Come with me to Maracey,’ he said desperately.

‘Why?’

‘So I can take care of you.’

‘Look around you, Rafael. Am I short of money? In need of help?’ She shook her head. ‘If I need care, I can get it here. No. If you want me to accompany you to Maracey or Australia or wherever else you might end up, you’ll need to offer me something else.’

‘I’m offering to be a father to this child,’ he said raggedly. ‘Do you want marriage? Is that it?’ He ran a hand around the back of his neck. ‘I-I can do that too.’

‘You just don’t get it, do you?’ she said quietly. ‘Offer me something else.’

He would, but he had nothing else of any value to give. ‘Would you like a puppy?’

She laughed at that, only it sounded more like a sob. ‘Rafael, why are you here?’

‘Because I have a responsibility to this baby and to you and I will not sit back and watch history repeat itself. I’m not like him, Simone. I’m not!’

Tears filled her beautiful brown eyes, but she blinked them back and looked away. ‘I can’t do this,’ she whispered.

‘Simone, please.’ The puppy was back at his feet. He scooped it up and tucked it under one arm as he moved towards her, stopping just short of actually touching her, because if he did that he might never let her go. ‘I’m trying to be what people want me to be and it’s driving me mad. Nothing seems real any more. Not the past. Not the life I’m living in Maracey. Not the work that once consumed me.’ He took a very deep breath. ‘Not even this baby.’

She closed her eyes at that, shutting him out. ‘My baby’s real,’ she whispered.

‘Maybe to you. Please, Simone. I stood here before you years ago and offered you everything I had—all that I was—and it wasn’t enough. It’s still not enough—do you think I don’t know that? But what else can I do?’

‘Rafael, I—’

‘Please.’ There was no other way around this for him. ‘Come with me to Maracey. We’ll work something out. Just…come. Believe in me. Please. I won’t let you down.’

He couldn’t see it, she thought, and bled for him a little more. He couldn’t see how many people already believed in him and loved him.

He thought he was alone.

‘All right,’ she said and patted the fat puppy in his arms and wondered why he’d called her Ruby, and lost her heart all over again as Rafael gently touched his fingers to her face and tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. She took his hand and, with a tremulous smile, pressed her lips to his palm, before dropping his hand and stepping away, because if she touched him and held him, she might never let him go. ‘Let me clean up here first.’

‘And then?’

He stood there, an angel in her garden, so lost and wounded, so thoroughly prepared for rejection. How on earth could she ever convince such a scarred and weary warrior to lean on her, just a little, and maybe one day let her back in? ‘And then I’ll come with you to Maracey.’

Chapter Eight

RAFAEL brought the car to a smooth halt beside the tiny village parkland. Simone stifled a sigh. They’d spent the last two days on the road and the last two nights sleeping in farmhouse pensions, and, if Simone’s Spanish sign reading served her correctly, they had just entered the territory of Maracey. Rather than push on to the vineyard estate, though, Rafael had stopped for a break.

In a moment the angelic-looking man occupying the driver’s seat would turn towards her and ask her if she needed to stretch her legs or see to her toilette, or if she would like a drink or something to eat. He would look at her as if she were made of glass and she would glance down just to check that she wasn’t, at which point she would look back up at him as if he’d gone mad.

Because, clearly, he had.

‘Why have we stopped?’ she asked sweetly. ‘Again.’

‘Puppy pit stop,’ he said.

The puppy lay fast asleep at Simone’s feet.

Rafael got out of the car and scanned his surroundings before leaning back down again to study her intently. ‘Care for a walk? Drink? Something to eat?’

A kind woman would have said no, and that she was just fine thank you because she’d walked, drunk and eaten less than two hours ago. A kind woman would have reassured him that pregnancy was a perfectly natural state for a woman and did not require such solicitousness on his part. Only a terrible woman would send the man off in search of some exotic juice that he’d never be able to find in a small village shop.

‘I’m thinking kiwi-fruit juice,’ she said airily.

‘Kiwi-fruit juice.’

‘Oh, yes. You see, kiwi fruit is green and green is good for the baby. I’ve been reading up on these things.’

‘Right,’ he said distractedly. ‘Green.’

‘And chicken.’ Was it lunch time? Simone glanced at the dashboard clock. Close enough. ‘I’d like some fried chicken too.’

‘Right,’ he said again and off he went. Man on a mission.

‘Come on, Ruby,’ Simone told the puppy as she nudged her awake and scooped her up. ‘He wants us to walk.’

By the time Rafael returned some twenty minutes later, Simone and Ruby had done all the walking they intended to do and Simone had fished the picnic blanket from the car and spread it out beneath the dappled shade of an old oak tree. She’d just settled down on her back to partake of a tiny snooze when Rafael returned with lunch.

‘Are you ill?’ he said abruptly. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Fine,’ she said, sitting up and regarding him with no little exasperation, while Ruby greeted him ecstatically. ‘I’m feeling fine. Blooming marvellous.’

Rafe’s gaze sped to her stomach. Oh, yes. This baby business had messed with his mind, good and proper.

‘I couldn’t find any kiwi-fruit juice,’ he said and handed her a white polystyrene hot food container. Simone opened the lid, expecting chicken. She shut it again fast.

‘I had them pick it and prepare it for you,’ said Rafael.

She peeked again. ‘What is it?’

‘Boiled spinach.’

‘Oh.’

‘It’s green,’ he said helpfully.

‘It certainly is.’ And it served her right. She eyed the larger plastic bag he carried hopefully. Ruby eyed it too. ‘Is there chicken?’

‘Yes.’ He studied her again, as if examining her for flaws. ‘Gabrielle said you weren’t eating properly.’

‘Gabrielle exaggerates.’

‘Or sleeping properly.’

That one was true. ‘Let’s just say that trying to figure out how and when to tell you about this baby was weighing on my mind. I know there are still a lot of decisions to be made about what we’re going to do from here on in, but at least that bit’s done.’

‘So you’ve been sleeping a little easier?’

‘A little.’ No thanks to him. Rafael had slept in a separate room these past two nights, and kept physical contact with her to a minimum during the day. Neither action was particularly to her liking. She set the spinach aside and leaned back on her elbows as Rafael settled on the blanket beside her—not too close—and unpacked the shopping bag. Fried chicken, plain water, napkins, a kilo or ten of snow peas, and two green apples.

She shifted uncomfortably, turning her stomach towards him as she tilted over onto her side and smoothed the blanket beneath her, before settling back down.

‘What is it?’ he said in instant alarm.

‘A stick digging into my backside.’

‘Do you need a pillow?’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Simone yanked her T-shirt up to her midriff, grabbed Rafe’s hand, and placed it palm down on her stomach. Maybe if he felt for himself, he wouldn’t be so worried about this baby’s current position in the world. ‘You can’t feel any movement yet,’ she told him. ‘It’s too early for that, but this baby is well protected and healthy, Rafael, and so am I.’ She stared up into those vivid blue eyes and offered him a smile. ‘Can you feel it?’

‘Feel what?’ All Rafael could feel was skin, warm and silky. All he wanted was more. His body responded instantly, brutally focused on the one woman he had absolutely no notion of how to handle. What did she want from him?

And what dared he give?

‘My body,’ she said, as if he needed the reminder that his hand now caressed it. ‘It’s rounder. Fuller.’

He couldn’t feel a difference.

‘Lower,’ she murmured and covered his hand with hers and slid his hand lower and lower still so that their fingers disappeared beneath the waistband of her loose cotton trousers. Her fingers slid away, leaving only his in place, and her gaze met his dark and knowing. ‘Can you feel it now?’

He couldn’t. He was too busy trying to stem the insatiable need erupting inside him.

‘Lower,’ she whispered and arched her lower body up into his hand. She smiled. It was not the smile of a Madonna with child.

Rafael cursed and snatched his hand away fast, and put some distance between them along with whatever objects came to hand. The chicken. A thousand snow peas. A roly-poly puppy.

‘Oh, look,’ she said, staring across the park towards a small hotel. ‘A pension.’

‘No,’ he said gruffly.

‘You don’t want me?’

He did want her. Insanely. ‘Are pregnant women always this forward?’

‘Are fathers-to-be always this batty?’ she countered. ‘You got me pregnant the regular way, Rafael. I’m really not the fragile virgin Madonna type.’

‘I noticed.’

‘I’m so pleased,’ she said, eyeing him darkly. ‘And just for future reference, my sexual appetite hasn’t dimmed with early pregnancy. If anything, it seems to have increased.’ She sat up and eyed the basket of fried chicken. ‘I just don’t know what comes over me at times. Chicken wing?’

‘No.’ If his voice sounded a little hoarse there was good reason for it. Denying one’s deepest instincts took effort.

‘Oh, good,’ she said, and picked up the wing and bit into it with every appearance of profound enjoyment.

Simone let the angelic man with the fire of retribution in his eyes be after that, and concentrated on eating a balanced meal. The chicken wing. A little of the spinach. The snow peas were sweet and crunchy, and a much nicer green. She ate a handful of those and settled back to quiz Rafe about his status in this land as he finished his meal.

‘What exactly is it that Etienne expects of you?’ she asked him.

‘My presence at certain state functions. My presence, on occasion, at politically sensitive meetings.’

‘And how does Etienne introduce you?’

‘As his son.’

‘Does he ask for your input?’

‘Yes.’

‘And do you give it?’

‘Sometimes.’

Simone studied Rafael solemnly. Etienne asked a lot from his newfound son.

‘Does he give you time to relax?’

‘Overseeing the restoration of the vineyard is relaxing.’

‘You’ve taken that on too? As well as running your own vineyard from afar?’

‘I’ve put a manager in place at Angels Landing.’ The grimness of Rafael’s features told her just how much it had pained him to do so. More than any of the other projects surrounding him, Angels Landing was his dream, and he’d worked hard for it. It didn’t seem right that he’d had to give it up to make room for other people’s agendas.

‘Is this manager any good?’

‘Maintenance-wise, he’s very thorough. Vision-wise, he still needs guidance, but Harrison’s overseeing that at the moment. Harrison says he’s doing all right.’

‘Good.’ Simone nodded and made a mental note of Rafael’s reliance on Harrison’s judgement. She made another note to ask Harrison to visit them in Maracey as soon as practicable. Rafael needed people he could trust around him. The list of people who’d earned such trust would not be a long one. ‘Does Etienne reside at the vineyard estate?’

‘No. He’s based at a castle in the capital. There are rooms in the castle set aside for my use should I wish to stay there, apparently, but I prefer the vineyard. Whether I stay in Maracey at all is an issue currently up for debate amongst Etienne’s senior statesmen.’ Rafael’s expression hardened. ‘It seems not everyone is happy to see me.’

‘Is that so?’ Simone smiled tightly. She wondered if those statesmen knew how used to rejection this man was and how fiercely he’d learned to fight for the things he considered his. Heaven help them if he decided he wanted Maracey.

‘You’ll be staying with me at the vineyard,’ said Rafael next. ‘I’ve asked the staff to prepare a suite for you. Hopefully sleep will come even easier to you once you’re settled there.’

‘No.’

‘Pardon?’

Simone sighed heavily. She’d tried showing him what she wanted from him, but to no avail. It was time to spell it out for him using words he could understand. The ‘fragile virgin Madonna’ treatment had to stop. She was not fragile, and she was certainly no virgin. She quite liked being thought of as a Madonna, but that was probably just the pregnancy talking. ‘No. No separate suite, no separate bed. And no treating me like a stranger. I have a different proposal for you.’

‘If you want me to marry you, I’ll marry you,’ he said curtly.

He would too. Simone sighed. For an intelligent man, he seemed exceptionally good at missing the point. ‘Put your obligatory proposal and your narrow-eyed looks away,’ she said evenly. ‘I don’t want to marry you. Marriage requires love and intimacy. Trust. And you and I…We don’t have any of those things.’ Yet. ‘No, my proposal is designed to see us through our stay at Maracey, that’s all.’ And perhaps foster a few of those things that they didn’t yet have.

‘What did you have in mind?’ he asked warily.

‘A far less complicated merger,’ she said carefully. ‘You give me something that I want, and I’ll give you something that you want.’

‘What would you have of me?’

‘A little of your time during each day.’ She speared him with a glance. ‘And your bed every night. I find I like it there.’

He absorbed her blunt words with considerable aplomb. He leaned back against the trunk of the tree, put his hand to his neck and rubbed. ‘Well…’ he said slowly. ‘Some of that sounds manageable.’ His gaze didn’t leave hers. ‘What would you give me in return?’

‘I know social politics, Rafael. I know the ruthless games of big business. I know them very well. I can be of use to you when it comes to Maracey and its nervous statesmen if you let me. I can watch your back on the rare occasion that you’re not standing against the wall.’

He said nothing.

She didn’t bother with telling him that she would do this for him whether he wanted her to or not and that she’d do it because she loved him. He wouldn’t believe her. Eventually, though, he would have to believe in her love for him. The evidence would have it no other way. Then all she had to do was make him fall in love with her and everything would fall into place. This baby. This lifestyle, whatever it was…

Rome wasn’t built in a day, she reminded herself by way of encouragement, and set about laying another brick. ‘I didn’t come all this way with you to be treated like a porcelain princess, Rafael. I swear I’ll go nuts if you continue to treat me like one.’

‘My mistake.’ He smiled slightly, a tiny glimpse of sunshine on a cloudy day. ‘What sort of princess would you like to be?’

She favoured him with a gentle smile. ‘Yours.’

They arrived at the fortress just after four in the afternoon. The sun still burned high in the sky, but later it would disappear behind the hillside and shadows would creep over the valley. This was a place of sunrises, not sunsets. Of shimmering beginnings that stole slowly across the landscape before bathing a body in light.

Rafael hoped Simone would like it here. They’d discussed no long-term plans beyond her accompanying him to Maracey, the main reason for that being that he didn’t currently know what the future would hold or whether he wanted to stay in Maracey permanently and become heir to the throne. Now Simone’s thoughts and feelings would have to be added to the already complex mix.

At least she was here. That was the main thing. Here at his begging; he remembered that too. Not loving him, not wanting to marry him. Wanting only his bed.

Heaven help them both.