Kate Hardy - Crown Prince, Pregnant Bride

Instantly his pupils dilated and there was a slash of colour in his cheeks.

‘Touché,’ he whispered. ‘Indigo, we need to stop this. Now.’ He dragged in a breath. ‘It wouldn’t be fair or honourable of me to lead you on. I’m going back to Melvante soon. My life’s going to change out of all recognition.’

Of course it was.

He looked tortured. ‘I can’t offer you a future.’

‘I know. And even if you could, I’d be the worst person you could ask,’ she said. What with the scandal surrounding her birth, and the fact that she’d been naive enough to trust Nigel and not work out for herself that he was already married, she was totally unsuitable even to be a king’s mistress. ‘I take it you need to find yourself a princess.’ Which would put her totally out of the running. Not that she wanted the formal, rigid life of a royal family.

He rolled his eyes. ‘I probably do have to choose a bride within the next six months, yes. And she probably has to be from a noble family. Though, just for the record, I don’t care if your parents aren’t aristocrats. It’s how you treat other people that matters to me, not how many coronets are in your family tree.’

‘Actually, my father’s an earl.’ He looked surprised, and honesty made Indigo add, ‘The problem is, though, he was still married to his countess when he had a fling with my mother and she fell pregnant with me.’

‘So that’s why you ended up at the same school as Lottie?’ he asked.

‘It was my father’s idea of providing for me,’ she said dryly.

‘Money instead of attention?’

He’d hit the nail right on the head. ‘My father and I are never quite sure if we ought to acknowledge each other or not,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to hurt his family by claiming him as kin—I mean, I’m the child of an affair, and it’d be horrible to rub their noses in that. It wasn’t their fault that he behaved badly. So it’s easier...’ She sighed. ‘Well, for me not to acknowledge him and for him to pretend that I don’t really exist.’

‘But that hurts you.’

Did it still show? Or was Lorenzo just particularly perceptive? She shrugged. ‘I’m lucky: my grandparents loved me. I was never deprived of love, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘But your grandparents let you go to boarding school at such a young age?’

‘They didn’t exactly have a lot of choice. My grandmother wasn’t very well at the time—they had enough on their plates without having to look after a small child.’

He frowned. ‘What about your mother? Why didn’t she look after you?’

She blew out a breath. ‘You might as well know the worst. When it was obvious that the earl wasn’t going to leave his wife for my mother, she left me with her parents and bolted.’ She looked away. ‘With someone else’s husband.’

* * *

Lorenzo knew first-hand what kind of damage affairs could cause. Collateral damage, too. His own mother’s affair had blown his whole world apart. If she’d been able to cope with life in the royal family, then she wouldn’t have had the affair—and his father wouldn’t have reacted by driving their car into a wall. And just maybe he would’ve grown up with both his parents, in a happy family, and it would’ve been another thirty years before he’d had to think about becoming king.

Or maybe it would’ve been a different kind of unhappy childhood, with his parents always arguing in private and pretending everything was just fine and dandy where the public was concerned.

Not that he was going to tell Indigo about that. He didn’t talk about the scars on his heart to anyone. Ever. ‘That’s tough on you.’

She shrugged. ‘As I said, my grandparents loved me.’

The implication was clear: her mother hadn’t. ‘Do you see your mother now?’

Indigo shook her head. ‘She ended up in a yachting accident with Married Man Number Four. She drowned. All I have of my mother are photographs and some very fleeting memories.’

It was the same for Lorenzo. Photographs and fleeting memories. Except nobody knew the true circumstances of his parents’ accident. Nobody except his grandfather and their legal adviser. They wouldn’t have told him the truth, except some papers had been misfiled and he’d come across them when he was eighteen and discovered the truth for himself. He’d gone off the rails for a week, shocked to the core that his father could’ve done something so terrible. The paparazzi had taken a picture of him looking haggard and with the worst hangover in the history of the universe; and then his grandfather had hauled him back to the palace, had a very honest and frank discussion with him, and Lorenzo had reassumed his stiff upper lip.

‘That’s tough on you,’ he said again.

‘It was tougher,’ she said, ‘proving to everyone that I wasn’t like my mother.’

Yeah. He knew all about that, too—having to convince his grandfather that he wasn’t like his father.

‘Especially when I wanted to leave boarding school. But I hated the rigidity of the place, and the sense of entitlement that so many of the girls had.’

‘What did you do?’ he asked.

‘Gave my father a business plan,’ she said. ‘If I went to a normal state school at the age of fourteen, he’d save four years of fees—which would be enough to buy my grandparents’ cottage. If he let them live there rent-free for the rest of their lives, then he’d get his investment back when he sold the cottage. Win-win. He got money, and I got freedom.’

Lorenzo’s heart bled for her. How could her father have been so cold-blooded that she had to offer him a business plan as a way out of a school that she hated? ‘And he agreed to it?’

‘Yes.’

For a second, he saw pain in her eyes.

And then she grinned. ‘I told him the alternative was that I’d behave so badly, I’d get thrown out of every boarding school in England. But he knew I was right. And I proved to my grandparents that I wasn’t like my mother. I wasn’t running away, I was making the right choice. I got a weekend job in the local supermarket as soon as I was old enough, and a bar job to keep me going through art college until I graduated.’

‘And you got a First?’ he asked.

She inclined her head. ‘I made my grandparents proud of me before they died.’

Though her father had obviously not acknowledged her achievements. ‘Indi. I’m not pitying you, but right now I want to hug you,’ he said.

‘It’s OK. I’m a big girl. I learned to deal with it years ago.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s the earl’s loss, not mine.’

And what an idiot the man was, not realising what a treasure he had in Indigo.

Lorenzo stole another kiss. ‘Indigo. Will you please tell me to stop this?’

She kissed him back. ‘Colour me bad, Your Royal Highness, but what’s the alternative to stopping?’

His breath hitched. ‘I think you’ve just spiked my blood pressure. Are you suggesting...?’

‘We both know where we stand. You’re about to take over from your grandfather and become king. You don’t have time for a relationship. I have an empire to build with my business—I don’t have time for a relationship, either.’ She paused. This was crazy. But, at the same time, it was safe, because what she was proposing involved a time limit. Which meant she wouldn’t get involved with him. ‘I’m here until the end of the month. You said you don’t have to go back to Melvante for a little while. Are you staying here until you go back?’

‘Yes.’

‘So we’re in a private house. Among friends who would never rat us out to the press. Lottie’s my oldest friend, and I’m guessing that Gus is one of your oldest friends, too.’

‘He is. And I trust him totally.’ He lifted her hand to his face and pressed his lips against her wrist, feeling the way her pulse beat hard against his mouth. Indigo Moran was everything he couldn’t have. A breath of fresh air. Vibrant and lively. Totally unsuitable. And he knew without having to ask that she’d hate his world just as much as his mother had. This was never going to work.