‘Which… which is… ’
‘Which is that you marry me.’
FOR a moment he thought she’d faint. The colour bleached from her face. She stared at him in incredulity. Instinctively his hands caught Michales and held.
She was so stunned she let her baby go. He stood, holding his son. Not sure how to hold him. Not sure where to go from here.
‘Maybe I didn’t do that too well,’ he said at last. Then he said dryly, ‘Maybe I should go down on bended knee.’
‘Or maybe you shouldn’t.’ Colour washed back, a flush of anger. Better, he thought. Angry was good.
He could deal with anger.
‘I think you need to leave,’ she said. ‘I’m talking about getting on with the rest of my life. You’re talking fairy tales.’
‘I’m not.’
Michales wriggled in his arms. He looked up at Alex and he smiled, a wide, toothless grin that made Alex feel as if the rug was being pulled from under his feet.
He had to keep hold of his anger. He couldn’t think while holding… his son.
He laid him on the square of carpet under the window. The little boy pushed himself into a sitting position and crowed with delight.
Alex gazed down at him in astonishment. ‘He can almost sit up. He wasn’t doing that in Sappheiros.’
‘As if you’d have noticed.’
‘I did notice,’ he told her. ‘Even before Mia left I was worrying about him. The nursery staff were worrying about him. His mother seemed to be ignoring him.’
‘Yeah,’ she said, sounding dazed. ‘Alex, go away.’
‘I can’t,’ he said soberly, and instinctively he caught her hands. They were cold. Too cold. She didn’t pull away, though—she didn’t move.
Okay. Get this right, he told himself. Stay logical and unemotional.
‘It’s politics,’ he told her. ‘If we leave things as they are, if he stays here with you, the islands will be in a mess. They’ll see me as a usurper, and rebellion is a real possibility. But if we marry… ’
She tugged her hands back in instinctive protest, but he didn’t let her go. He had to impart the urgency of the situation, and at the same time he was trying to figure how to take the blank look from her face.
She looked… battered. It might be a front, but he needed to back off.
He needed to talk a language they both understood.
‘You obviously don’t understand,’ he said. ‘But I’m talking money.’
And here it was. He’d come prepared.
‘There’s a cheque in my pocket for more money than you can dream of,’ he told her. ‘Call it paternity payment if you like, but it’s yours the moment you marry me.’ Then, as she stared at him in stupefaction, he ploughed on. ‘This is not personal. Think of it as a business proposition. The proposal is that you marry me—a real wedding to reassure everyone that we stand together—you stay on Sappheiros for at least a year so our marriage can’t be annulled, and then we can be seen as gradually drifting apart. Once the island is stable we can divorce. You can do what you want. You’ll be rich and you’ll be free. I can put democratic reform in place so the Crown is titular head only, and you can do whatever you want for the rest of your life.’
And, before she could respond, he produced the cheque and handed it to her.
She took the cheque without saying a word. She stared at him. She stared down at the cheque—and she gasped.
It’d be okay. Money talked. He had this covered. As long as he married her.
He had no choice.
‘This… this is for real?’ she whispered.
‘Absolutely,’ he said. ‘We’ve thought of every option and this is the only one we believe can work.’
She was staring at him as if she’d never seen him before. She was staring at him as if he was a lunatic.
‘There’s more,’ he said into the silence. ‘We’ve done a lot of digging in this last week. My researcher knows all about you and the people you work with and we’ve come up with a package deal. Apparently the only strong connection you seem to have is with Spiros and his team. We’ve learnt that Spiros’s boatyard is struggling. As an inducement—because it would be best for everyone if Michales does stay on the island, and thus you, too—I’m also offering Spiros something he can’t refuse. We’ll relocate this boatyard to Sappheiros, with every cost taken care of. We’ll give him transport of boats between the Diamond Isles and the rest of Europe. We’ll give him blanket international advertising. My researchers tell me Spiros has been fighting to make a living here, and he’s homesick. He and his wife want to live somewhere they can speak their native Greek. So all you need to do now is agree.’
She said nothing. She was staring at the cheque as if she couldn’t believe it.
She was so shocked. She was so…
Beautiful?
Don’t go there, he told himself sharply. This was a business proposition—nothing more, nothing less. His lawyers had worked it out as a done deal. ‘There’s no way she’ll knock back this offer,’ he’d been told, and for good measure, thinking of Mia’s greed, they’d added another zero to the cheque.
As Crown Prince, Alex would inherit all Giorgos’s wealth. The lawyers’ thinking was that he should use a fraction of this to ensure the island’s future. This marriage of convenience was necessary. Michales’s continued presence on the island was desirable. So pay her and get it sorted. But…
‘Get out,’ she said.
He didn’t move.
‘Get out.’ She was breathing too fast, her eyes flashing daggers. ‘How dare you… ?’
‘Propose marriage to the mother of my son?’
‘He’s not your son.’
‘You said… ’
‘By birth, yes. You want him back on the island for you? For you? Michales hasn’t come into this discussion once except as a tool to keep the monarchy safe. Neither have I. For you to manipulate me… to find out about Spiros and use him as a tool… Get out and stay out.’
‘Lily, look at the amount on that cheque,’ he said urgently. ‘You can’t possibly knock back what I’ve just offered.’
‘Watch me,’ she said and she ripped the cheque in half, in half again and then kept on going until it lay in shreds round her feet. She snatched Michales up and stalked to the door. ‘Out!’
‘You’re being ridiculous. If you want more… ’
‘You’re being ridiculous,’ she snapped back at him. ‘Don’t you understand? I have everything I want, right here, right now. I have something you and Mia and people like you can’t understand. I have enough. I can stay working on the boats I love, and I can raise my son. I have my future and I’m free. Why would I possibly jeopardise that by diving into the royal goldfish bowl?’
Free? How did free come into it? She spoke as if she’d