‘He planted the garden?’
‘He and my mother did the basics. My father died when I was five and my mother was forced to leave. My mother and I rebuilt the garden when she came back.’ His voice softened. ‘She was passionate about gardening. Like you are about boats.’
She’d been steering the conversation to him. There was no way she’d let him deflect the conversation straight back.
‘Your mother died when you were… seventeen?’
‘Almost seventeen. She was sick for a long time before that.’
‘You told me you were raised in the royal nursery.’
‘I was,’ he said, latent anger suddenly in his voice. ‘My uncle hated my father and when I was born that hatred turned… vindictive. Giorgos holds… held… the titles to the entire island. When my father died he banished my mother from the island. Because I was heir to the throne, he demanded I stay.’
‘He loved you?’
‘He hated me. But if I was to be his heir, he’d control me.’
‘Oh, Alex.’
‘Yeah, it was tough,’ he said. ‘The law supported him, and my mother’s pleas were ignored. My pleas were ignored.’
‘But… you got her back?’
‘I did,’ he said and she heard a note of grim satisfaction enter his voice. ‘Finally. By the time I was fifteen… well, even by fifteen I’d learned things Giorgos didn’t want me to know. I was making his life uncomfortable, and he no longer wanted me at the castle. So finally my mother was allowed to return and he allocated an allowance for us to live on. We came back here to live, for all the time she had left.’
There was an untold story here, she knew. A fifteen-year-old standing up to a King. But instinctively she knew he wouldn’t tell her more.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.
‘There’s no need.’
She was still in the bathroom. She had her clothes on now. Jeans, T-shirt.
There was no reason for standing in the bathroom any longer.
She walked out, cautious. Michales had finished his bottle. Her son was looking up at Alex, sleepy but expectant. Alex was looking at Lily, expectant.
The resemblance was unnerving. She was unnerved.
She smiled. It was impossible not to smile at these two.
Her men.
The thought was weird.
‘Tell me about your illness,’ Alex said softly and her smile died, just like that.
‘You don’t need to know.’
‘I do.’ His gaze met hers. Calm. Firm. Unyielding.
The time for dissembling was past.
Okay, then. There was, indeed, no practical reason for her to dissemble—apart from increasing her vulnerability—and she felt so vulnerable anyway she might as well toss in a bit more to the mix.
‘I had a brain tumour,’ she said, so quickly, so softly that she wasn’t sure he’d hear. But the flash of horror in his eyes told her he had.
‘A brain tumour… ’
‘Benign.’ The last thing she wanted from this man was sympathy, but sympathy was in his eyes, right from the start, wanted or not. There was also horror.
When the doctors had told her the diagnosis she’d gone to the Diamond Isles to talk to Mia. She’d been hoping for something. Support? Love? Even kindness would have done. But of course Mia had been caught up in her own world. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she’d said when Lily had tried to tell her. ‘You’ve always had your stupid headaches. I won’t even begin to think you’re right.’
She’d been bereft, lost, foundering. Calls to her mother had gone unanswered. She’d never felt so alone in her life.
Then came the night of the ball. She might as well attend, she’d thought, rather than sit in her bedroom and think about a future that terrified her.
And so she’d met Alex. When Alex had smiled at her, when he’d asked her to dance, she’d found herself falling into his arms. Doing a Mia for once. Living for the moment.
And for two glorious days he’d made her forget reality. He’d smiled at her and she’d let herself believe that all could be right in her world. She’d blocked out the terror. She’d lost herself in his smile, in his laughter, in his loving…
And in his body.
And now here he was, looking at her as if he really cared, and she was lost all over again.
She couldn’t be lost. Not when her world was so close to being whole again.
‘I always had it,’ she said, still too fast, searching for the quickest way to tell him what he had to know. ‘Okay, potted history. You probably know my father was a Scottish baronet, a childless widower. My mother was a distant relation of the Greek royal family, fearsomely ambitious. She set her cap at my father’s money and title, even though he was forty years her senior. Mia and I were born, two years apart.’
‘I know this. The country’s been told this.’
‘Yes, but as Mia’s story. This is mine.’
‘Okay,’ he said, cradling the almost sleeping Michales. His eyes never left her face. ‘You want to sit down and tell me the rest?’
She cast him a scared look. Scared and resentful. Sure she wouldn’t be believed.
‘No one’s pushing you into a chair,’ he said gently. ‘There’s no naked bulb swinging eerily above your head as you spill state secrets. Just tell me.’
She nodded. She closed her eyes. She opened them again and somehow found the strength to say what needed to be said. ‘When I was six I started getting headaches,’ she told him. ‘I was diagnosed with a tumour, benign but inoperable.’ She shrugged. ‘I guess that was the end of my parents’ marriage. My mother loathed that I was sickly. It was almost an insult—that any daughter of hers could be less than perfect. And then Dad’s money ran out.’
She paused. This was too much information. Dumb.
She didn’t want this man’s sympathy.
Alex’s silence scared her, but she had to go on.
‘So my mother left, taking Mia with her. Dad and I muddled through as best we could. When Dad died my mother’s uncle, a man as different from my mother as it was possible to be—took me in. He was a boat-builder in Whitby in the north of England, and I learned my passion for boats from him. When he died, Spiros, my uncle’s friend, persuaded me to go to the States and work for him. So that’s what I did. My headaches were a nuisance I’d learned to live with. I made great boats. I was… content.’
‘You didn’t come to Mia’s wedding.’
‘I wasn’t invited. We’d hardly seen each other since our parents separated and, believe me, I wasn’t fussed. Would you have liked to be Mia’s bridesmaid?’
She tried a smile then, but she didn’t get one in return. His gaze made her feel he was trying to see straight through her. It left her feeling so exposed she was terrified.
Get on, she told herself. Just say it.
‘Then the headaches got worse,’ she said, trying to get to the point where Alex could stop looking… like he scared her. ‘I was getting increasingly dizzy. Increasingly sick. Finally I had tests. The doctors told me the tumour had grown. They thought… unless there was a miracle I had less than a year to live.’
His eyes widened in shock.