Marion Lennox - Cinderella - Hired by the Prince / The Sheikh's Destiny

Instead of being lovers.

She’d never felt like this. She’d melted against Ramón’s body the morning of the whales and she felt as if she’d melted permanently. She’d shape shifted, from the Jenny she once knew to the Gianetta Ramón loved.

For that was what it felt like. Loved. For the first time in her life she felt truly beautiful, truly desirable—and it wasn’t just for her body.

Yes, he made love to her, over and over, wonderful lovemaking that made her cry out in delight.

But more.

He wanted to know all about her.

He tugged blankets up on the deck. They lay in the sun and they solved the problems of the world. They watched dolphins surf in their wake. They fished. They compared toes to see whose little toe bent the most.

That might be ridiculous but there was serious stuff, too. Ramón now knew all about her parents, her life, her baby. She told him everything about Matty, she showed him pictures and he examined each of them with the air of a man being granted a privilege.

When Matty was smiling, Ramón smiled. She watched this big man respond to her baby’s smile and she felt her heart twist in a way she’d never thought possible.

He let the boom net down off the rear deck, and they surfed behind the boat, and when the wind came up it felt as if they were flying. They worked the sails as a team, setting them so finely that they caught up on time lost when they were below, lost in each other’s bodies.

He touched her and her body reacted with fire.

Don’t fall in love. Don’t fall in love. It was a mantra she said over and over in her head, but she knew it was hopeless. She was hopelessly lost.

It wouldn’t last. Like Kieran, this man was a nomad, a sailor of no fixed address, going where the wind took him.

He talked little about himself. She knew there’d been tragedy, the sister he’d loved, parents he’d lost, pain to make him shy from emotional entanglement.

Well, maybe she’d learned that lesson, too. So savour the moment, she told herself. For now it was wonderful. Each morning she woke in Ramón’s arms and she thought: Ramón had employed her for a year! When they got back to Europe conceivably the owner would join them. She could go back to being crew. But Ramón would be crew as well, and the nights were long, and owners never stayed aboard their boats for ever.

‘Tell me about the guy who owns this boat,’ she said, two days out of Auckland and she watched a shadow cross Ramón’s face. She was starting to know him so well—she watched him when he didn’t know it—his strongly boned, aquiline face, his hooded eyes, the smile lines, the weather lines from years at sea.

What had suddenly caused the shadow?

‘He’s rich,’ he said shortly. ‘He trusts me. What else do you need to know?’

‘Well, whether he likes muffins, for a start,’ she said, with something approaching asperity, which was a bit difficult as she happened to be entwined in Ramón’s arms as she spoke and asperity was a bit hard to manage. Breathless was more like it.

‘He loves muffins,’ Ramón said.

‘He’ll be used to richer food than I can cook. Do you usually employ someone with special training?’

‘He eats my cooking.’

‘Really?’ She frowned and sat up in bed, tugging the sheet after her. She’d seen enough of Ramón’s culinary skills to know what an extraordinary statement this was. ‘He’s rich and he eats your cooking?’

‘As I said, he’ll love your muffins.’

‘So when will you next see him?’

‘Back in Europe,’ Ramón said, and sighed. ‘He’ll have to surface then, but not now. Not yet. There’s three months before we have to face the world. Do you think we can be happy for three months, cariño ?’ And he tugged her back down to him.

‘If you keep calling me cariño ,’ she whispered. ‘Are we really being paid for this?’

He chuckled but then his smile faded once more. ‘You know it can’t last, my love. I will need to move on.’

‘Of course you will,’ she whispered, but she only said it because it was the sensible, dignified thing to say. A girl had some pride.

Move on?

She never wanted to move on. If her world could stay on this boat, with this man, for ever, she wasn’t arguing at all.

She slept and Ramón held her in his arms and tried to think of the future.

He didn’t have to think. Not yet. It was three months before he was due to leave the boat and return to Bangladesh.

Three months before he needed to tell Jenny the truth.

She could stay with the boat, he thought, if she wanted to. He always employed someone to stay on board while he was away. She could take that role.

Only that meant Jenny would be in Cepheus while he was in Bangladesh.

He’d told her he needed to move on. It was the truth.

Maybe she could come with him.

The idea hit and stayed. His team always had volunteers to act as manual labour. Would Jenny enjoy the physical demands of construction, of helping make life bearable for those who had nothing?

Maybe she would.

What was he thinking? He’d never considered taking a woman to Bangladesh. He’d never considered that leaving a woman behind seemed unthinkable.

Gianetta…

His arms tightened their hold and she curved closer in sleep. He smiled and kissed the top of her head. Her curls were so soft.

Maybe he could sound her out about Bangladesh.

Give it time, he told himself, startled by the direction his thoughts were taking him. You’ve known her for less than two weeks.

Was it long enough?

There was plenty of time after Auckland. It was pretty much perfect right now, he thought. Let’s not mess with perfection. He’d just hold this woman and hope that somehow the love he’d always told himself was an illusion might miraculously become real.

Anything was possible.

‘How do you know he’ll sail straight to Auckland?’

In the royal palace of Cepheus, Sofía was holding the telephone and staring into the middle distance, seeing not the magnificent suits of armour in the grand entrance but a vision of an elderly lawyer pacing anxiously on an unknown dock half a world away. She could understand his anxiety. Things in the palace were reaching crisis point.

The little boy had gone into foster care yesterday. Philippe needed love, Sofía thought bleakly. His neglect here—all his physical needs met, but no love, little affection, just a series of disinterested nannies—seemed tantamount to child abuse, and the country knew of it. She’d found him lovely foster parents, but his leaving the palace was sending the wrong message to the population—as if Ramón himself didn’t care for the child.

Did Ramón even know about him?

‘I don’t know for sure where the Prince will sail,’ the lawyer snapped. ‘But I can hope. He’ll want to restock fast to get around the Horn. It makes sense for him to come here.’

‘So you’ll wait.’

‘Of course I’ll wait. What else can I do?’

‘But there’s less than two weeks to go,’ Sofía wailed. ‘What if he’s delayed?’

‘Then we have catastrophe,’ the lawyer said heavily. ‘He has to get here. Then he has to get back to Cepheus and accept his new life.’

‘And the child?’

‘It doesn’t matter about the child.’

Yes, it does, Sofía thought. Oh, Ramón, what are you facing?

They sailed into Auckland Harbour just after dawn. Jenny stood in the bow, ready to jump across to shore with the lines, ready to help in any way she could with berthing the Marquita . Ramón was at the wheel. She glanced back at him and had a pang of misgivings.

They hadn’t been near land for two weeks. Why did it feel as if the world was waiting to crowd in?