Кейт Хьюит – Royal Christmas: Royal Love-Child, Forbidden Marriage (страница 12)

Phoebe sat tensely across from him, watching as Leo took out a sheaf of papers and a gold-plated pen and set to work. What was he working on? she wondered. What kind of work did a playboy prince have to do? Except he wasn’t a playboy prince any more, she reminded herself. He was the heir apparent.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked when Christian had fallen into a doze and the silence seemed to stretch on for ever, taut and unyielding. Leo glanced up.

‘A pet project of mine,’ he said with a little shrug. ‘Facts and figures, very boring.’

‘You’re quick to dismiss many things as boring,’ Phoebe replied, and with surprise she heard the teasing lilt in her voice. Was she actually flirting? Or just being friendly?

Leo shrugged again. ‘It’s a charity,’ he said after a moment. ‘I’m one of the trustees and I’m simply going over the endowment figures.’

‘What kind of charity?’ Phoebe asked, now genuinely curious.

‘A relocation programme for political refugees. Amarnes was a neutral country during World War Two, and we took in many of those fleeing persecution. I like to see the tradition continue today.’

‘Very admirable,’ Phoebe said, yet her mind was spinning. This new version of Leo—a man who concerned himself with refugees—bore little resemblance to the pleasure-seeking playboy she’d encountered six years ago.

Had he really changed so much? Yet his smile was as sardonic as ever as he remarked in a drawl, ‘It’s easy to be admirable when you have the money and time.’ He capped his pen and put his papers away. ‘You should get some sleep. The jet lag can be brutal.’ And, seeming to dismiss her, he settled back in his own seat and closed his eyes.

Although he kept his eyes closed, sleep remained elusive. Leo was aware of the uncomfortable prickling of his conscience as he’d spoken with Phoebe. He wanted to gain her trust, he needed her pliant, and the best way to do that was to show her how he’d changed. How he was on her side. It would be all too easy, and yet when the opportunities came Leo found he didn’t want to take them. He didn’t want to use Phoebe. He wanted to … protect her. What a ridiculous and inappropriate notion. The only reason he was bringing her to Amarnes at all was because he knew he couldn’t pay her off in New York. Sooner or later he would find a way to keep her out of the picture—or at least removed from it.

Just like your own mother was.

His jaw clenched and he forced his conscience back into the shadowy corner of his mind, where it had remained for most of his playboy years. Back then he hadn’t had a conscience because he hadn’t cared; he was the unneeded spare, and so he’d do what he damn well liked.

Yet Anders’s abdication had changed everything. Leo felt the familiar guilt eat at him and he pushed it resolutely away. For the last six years he’d lived the life of a monk, a saint, chaste and diligent, and had won the respect of his people. He’d put his country and crown first, always, and he would continue to do so. No matter what it cost him … or Phoebe.

They were more important than the tender feelings of a woman he couldn’t afford to care about. He shouldn’t even want to care, he told himself irritably. Phoebe was an inconvenience, that was all. All she could be.

Forcing himself to relax, to forget that woman sitting across from him with every anxiety and fear reflected in her wide grey eyes even as she kept her tone light and upbeat for the sake of her son, Leo finally—by sheer force of will—drifted into a doze.

Phoebe couldn’t sleep. Christian was snoring, his cheek pillowed against the plastic back of his dinosaur, and even Leo seemed to have dozed off, yet Phoebe sat there, tense, anxious, too many emotions and questions and desires coursing through her. What would happen when they arrived in Amarnes? How would the king receive Christian … and her? What was she going to do?

Too many questions, and none of them had answers. Yet. Phoebe pushed them away, and her gaze fell on Leo’s sleeping form. He’d shed his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his crisp white shirt, exposing strong, tanned forearms now loosely crossed. Phoebe’s gaze fell on those arms and stayed there, noticing the fine dark hairs, the sinewy muscles, the long, elegantly tapered fingers. She knew she should look away—she should want to look away—but she couldn’t.

That dark tug of fascination was pulling at her insides, and while Leo slept she found her gaze roving over him almost hungrily, noting the cropped, dark hair, the chiselled cheekbones and sculpted lips, the ridiculously long eyelashes. She let her gaze drop from his face to his shoulders—how did a plain white shirt emphasise the powerful muscles of his chest so wonderfully?—and lower still to his trim waist and hips and long legs, stretched out in front of him, his butter-soft leather loafers just inches from her own feet.

He was a beautiful man. A dark angel with the heart of a devil … or so he’d seemed all those years ago. But now …?

‘What would have happened, do you suppose, if you’d met me first?’

The question he’d asked her six years ago slipped slyly into her mind, and the answer Phoebe had given back then—nothing—seemed to echo uselessly through her.

All right, so she was attracted to him. Phoebe straightened in her seat and forced herself to look away, out of the window. The plane had risen above the city fog and now there were only a few wisps of cottony cloud in an otherwise perfect blue sky.

Of course she was attracted to him; he positively oozed sexuality and charm. And, to be perfectly blunt, she’d been without male companionship of any kind for too long.

Yet it still shamed her to admit to something so basic, so impossible to ignore or deny. How could she be attracted to Leo, the man who had insulted her, belittled her, tried to buy her? Was she so enslaved to her own senses?

Again Phoebe felt that dark tug of longing, of need.

Apparently she was.

‘You mean you haven’t changed?’

‘Judge for yourself.’

Was it possible that Leo had really changed, put his playboy days behind him? She thought of him bantering with Christian, the glimmer of humour in his amber eyes, and forced back another treacherous wave of desire and, worse, hope.

She couldn’t afford to believe Leo had changed. As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t afford to trust him. She was on her own here, and she’d better remember that.

‘Look.’ Leo reached over and touched her shoulder, causing Phoebe to jump as if he’d branded her with a hot poker. She must have fallen into a doze without realising it. ‘Amarnes,’ he told her, and, swallowing audibly, Phoebe refocused her gaze on the vista outside.

Amarnes. It nestled in a slate-blue North Sea, a tiny, perfect jewel. The eastern side of the island was carved into deep fjords; from the sky Phoebe could see the steep sides of the valleys they created, lush and green, their rocky peaks capped with snow. As the plane moved over the fjords, Phoebe saw a cluster of brightly painted fishermen’s cottages near the shore, and then, on a plain on the northern end of the island, Amarnes’s capital city, Njardvik.

For a moment Phoebe let herself remember the last time she’d come to Amarnes, standing on the deck of a ferry, the salt spray stinging her face, Anders at her side. Back then she hadn’t known Anders was a prince, hadn’t known anything. She’d met him ten days earlier, while backpacking through Norway, and she’d fallen for him right away. Anders had had a gift of making her feel as if she were permanently fixed at the centre of his universe. It was only later—when a single piece of paper declared them married—that she realized he made everyone feel that way.

On the ferry he’d pointed to Amarnes, just a smudge of dark green on the horizon, and said, ‘That’s my home.’ He had leaned against the railing and with a self-conscious smile added, ‘I should probably tell you, I’m a prince.’

Phoebe had laughed disbelievingly, until Anders explained that he wasn’t joking; he was actually heir to a throne. Phoebe had stared.

‘I don’t want any of it,’ he’d told her. ‘You can’t imagine the pressure, the expectations.’ His brilliant blue eyes had met and held hers. ‘I just want you, Phoebe.’

What a joke. An outright lie. Anders might have believed it at that moment, Phoebe thought fairly, but it was simply that. A moment. Yet six years on Phoebe couldn’t summon the energy to feel bitter or angry. She’d been as reckless as Anders, plunging into a marriage with a man she barely knew, and now that he was dead she only felt a distant kind of sorrow and even pity for the man he’d been and the life he’d wasted.

The plane began its descent, and Christian stirred. Phoebe’s gaze slid involuntarily to Leo, and she was unsettled to realise he’d been watching her, his lips curved in a knowing smile that she didn’t like.

‘Welcome home,’ he said softly, just for her ears, and Phoebe bristled.

‘Hardly.’

Leo just smiled.

The next few minutes were a blur as they exited the plane, the cold, clean air hitting Phoebe like a slap—she’d forgotten how fresh everything was here, so new and bright and clean. Even the colours seemed sharper, the deep green of the fir trees that flanked the winking blue sea, the grey, craggy mountains with their majestic white peaks. And the sleek black limousine that purred to a halt as Leo directed their luggage to be loaded in a van and ushered them into the car.