Conveniently Wed To The Prince. Nina Milne
“Truly Terrible Twins”?’
An image of his half-brothers splashed on the front page of the tabloids crossed his mind. Emerson and Barrett rarely set foot in Lycander, but their exploits sold any number of scurrilous rags.
‘Yes,’ he stated—though even he could hear that his voice lacked total conviction.
Holly surveyed him through narrowed eyes. ‘Forget tradition. What about duty? Wouldn’t you have felt a duty to rule? A duty to your country?’
‘Nope. I think Frederick’s a first-class nutcase to take it on. I have one life, Holly, and I intend to live it for myself.’ Exactly as he so wished his mother had done. ‘I don’t see anything wrong with that as long as I don’t hurt anyone.’
She leaned across the table and her blue eyes sparkled, her face animated by the discourse. ‘You could argue that by not taking the throne Frederick would have been hurting a whole country.’
Stefan surveyed her across the table and she nodded for emphasis, her lips parted in a small ‘hah’ of triumph at the point she’d made, and his gaze snagged on her mouth. Hard to remember the last time a date had sparked this level of discussion, had been happy to flat-out contradict him. Not that Holly was a date...
As the silence stretched a fraction too long her lips tipped in a small smirk. ‘No answer to that?’
‘Actually, I do. I just got distracted.’
For a moment confusion replaced the smirk. ‘By wh—?’ And then she realised, and a small flush climbed her cheekbones.
Now the silence shimmered. Her eyes dropped, skimmed over his chest, and then she rallied.
‘Good excuse, Mr Petrelli, but I’m not buying it. You have no answer.’
For a moment he couldn’t even remember the question. Think. They had been talking about Frederick. What might have happened if he had refused the throne...
‘I have an answer. It could be that Emerson or Barrett would turn into a great ruler. Or Lycander would become a successful democracy.’
‘And you would be fine with that?’
‘Sure. It doesn’t mean I don’t care about Lycander—I’m just not willing to give up my whole life for it, for the sake of tradition or because I “should”. One life. One chance.’
His mother’s life had been so short, so tragic, because of the decisions she’d made—decisions triggered by duty and love.
‘Don’t you agree?’
‘No. Sometimes you have to do what you “should” do because it is the right thing to do. And that is more important than what you want to do.’
Stefan frowned, suspecting that she was speaking in specific terms rather than general. ‘So what are your dreams? Your plans for life. Let’s say you win Il Boschetto di Sole and give it to your father—what then?’
‘Then I will help him—work the land, have kids...’ Her voice was even; the animation had vanished.
‘And if you don’t win?’
‘I will win.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Humour me. It’s a hypothetical question.’
‘I don’t know... I would have to see what my father wished to do—whether he wanted to stay on at Il Boschetto di Sole, what your plans for the grove would be.’
‘OK. So let’s say your father decides to retire, live out the rest of his life peacefully in his home or elsewhere in Lycander.’ A memory of her utter focus on her work earlier came to him. ‘What about marketing? Would you like to give that a go? Build a career?’
There was a flash in her blue eyes; he blinked and it was gone.
‘My career is on Il Boschetto di Sole.’
‘What is your job there?’
‘I’ve helped out with most things, but I was working in admin before...before I came to London.’
‘Tell me about what you were working on earlier today. In the suite.’
A hesitation and then a shrug. A pause as the waiter arrived with their starters. She thanked him, speared a king prawn and then started to speak.
‘Lamberts have a pretty major client in the publishing field and they’re looking to rebrand their crime line. I’ve been working on that.’
Her voice started out matter-of-fact, but as she talked her features lit up and her gestures were expressive of the sheer enthusiasm the project had ignited in her.
‘I’ve helped put a survey together—you know, a sort of list of twenty questions about what makes a reader choose a new book or author, what sort of cover would inspire them to give something a try... Blood and gore versus a good-looking protagonist. Also, do people prefer series or stand-alones? We’ll need to analyse all the data and come up with some options and then get reader opinion across a broad spectrum. Because we also want to attract readers who don’t usually read that genre. Then we need some social media, some—’
She broke off.
‘Oh, God. How long have I been talking for? You should have stopped me before you went comatose with boredom.’
‘Impossible.’
‘To stop me?’
Her stricken look made him smile. ‘No! I meant it would have been impossible for me to have been bored. When you speak of this project you light up with sheer passion.’
The word caused him to pause, conjuring up other types of passion, and he wondered if her thoughts had gone the same way.
Unable to stop himself, he reached out, gently stroked her cheek. ‘You are flushed with enthusiasm...your eyes are alight, your whole body is engaged.’
Stop right there. Move your hand away.
Yet that was nigh on impossible. The softness of her skin, her small gasp, the way her teeth had caught her under lip as her eyes widened... All he wanted to do was kiss her.
Cool it, Petrelli.
Failing finding a handy waiter with an ice bucket, he was going to have to find some inner ice.
Leaning back, he forced his voice into objective mode. ‘Sounds to me as though what you want to do is pursue a career in marketing. Not take up a job on Il Boschetto di Sole.’
She blinked, as if his words had broken a spell, and her lips pressed together and her eyes narrowed as she shook her head. Shook it hard enough that tendrils of hair fell loose from her strategically messy bun.
‘That is not for me. I couldn’t do what you did. Walk away from my duty to pursue a career.’
Her words served as effectively as an ice bucket could have and he couldn’t hold back an instinctive sound of denial. ‘That’s not exactly how it went down.’
‘So how did it go down? As I remember it, you decided to renounce Lycander and your royal duties to live your own life—away from a country you felt you had no allegiance to. But you were happy to accept a severance hand-out from Alphonse to help set you up in the property business.’
Gall twisted his insides that she should believe that.
‘Alphonse gave me nothing.’
And Stefan wouldn’t have taken it if he had tried.
‘I ended up in property because it was the only job I could find.’
He could still taste the bitter tang of grief, fear and desperation. He’d arrived in London buoyed up by a sense of freedom and relief that he’d finally escaped his father, determined to find out what had happened to his mother. His discoveries had caused