Natalie Anderson - Mr Right All Along

She nodded and stepped onto the machine.

‘Is all this exercise what’s best for the baby?’ He tested her—would she talk?

‘You said this marriage was what’s best for the baby.’ Stella started jogging. ‘But you plan for this baby to be the next Crown Prince or Princess of San Felipe.’

His focus sharpened. She wouldn’t look at him and was obviously angry—was she sorry she’d talked to him last night? Did she regret opening up to him even that little bit?

‘Right?’ she prompted him. ‘So this baby will have a life of even greater restriction than your own?’

She was back to this again. Pushing for a way out instead of telling him what she was really scared of. Pushing him away.

‘You’ve known all along that this is a royal child,’ he challenged her. ‘The possibility of the crown has always been there.’

‘But you’ve planned it.’

‘I hardly planned for you to get pregnant,’ he said. Her bitterness multiplied his.

‘But you’ve orchestrated everything since you found out.’

‘Because I’ve had to.’ And she appreciated none of his efforts. She didn’t want anything he had to offer. She didn’t trust him at all.

Stella glanced over and saw Eduardo’s expression close down. How could he go so quickly from caring to completely cold-hearted? It scared her. She couldn’t trust in those precious moments of last night because now he gave her that damn silent, ‘dare you to talk first’ treatment. And that made her anger incandescent.

‘Is there some ancient decree that whichever of you has the first child then she or he gets the crown?’ she asked. ‘Is this some kind of sibling jealousy and you’re determined that the lineage will continue from the seed of your loins because you can’t be the one thing you want so very badly?’

She was spouting rubbish now, just aiming to get a reaction other than ice—she didn’t care how.

Now that fire in his eyes kindled—but it wasn’t passion. ‘Says you, the woman who’s spent all her life trying to be the one thing she can’t be—’

‘I am an exceptional soldier.’

‘But you can’t be the son your father wanted.’

She recoiled, jumping off that damn treadmill.

‘You can’t even please him,’ he added.

‘Yet you want to do that same thing to your own child,’ she pointed out to him angrily. ‘To place all those unwanted expectations on a baby.’

‘This is different.’

‘No, it’s not.’ She shook her head. ‘You set everything up. It’s like a slickly edited tourism video. The photos. That sapphire, with that whole legend around it. Releasing my service record. All fodder for the press.’

‘We need the public to believe in you. In us.’

And he’d gotten them to. He’d also made her believe—in herself and in the possibility of them. He’d known which buttons to push, how to pull her in, because she was so starved of attention and so stupid. He’d been so suave and convincing and she’d fallen in love with him. It had just been a couple of steps from crush to complete adoration. But the tenderness she’d thought he felt for her had been a façade. He was as frozen and as duty-filled as his brother.

‘And that’s all that matters to you, isn’t it?’ She realised now the extent of his emptiness. ‘You’re never going to open up to me,’ she said slowly. To think she’d thought he could love her... No one loved her. And it hurt. ‘You can’t let anyone in. Not your brother. Not a woman. No one.’ She blinked to hold back the stinging tears.

But something had changed in his eyes. He was still watching her intently, but the fire had died. Something cold had taken its place. ‘Maybe the pregnancy hormones are finally getting to you.’

‘No, they’re not.’ She wasn’t letting him pin this on her hormones.

That was when she recognised his expression—it was disapproval.

‘Maybe you’re tired.’

‘Tired of this, yes.’ She was so tired of not being what anyone wanted.

‘Then I’ll see you later, when you’ve had a chance to rest.’ He walked away from her.

‘Seriously? You’re leaving?’

‘I have business I must attend to,’ he said. He was no suave, joking prince now. His eyes were almost as dead as Antonio’s.

‘Business that’s more important than this?’ More important than her?

‘You’re tired, Stella.’

‘And you can’t cope with any emotion, can you? Other than sexual hunger,’ she called after him, satisfied when he turned back to face her. ‘What are you going to do when your child is crying—walk away then too?’ He turned away again, but she stalked after him. ‘You’re as closed-up as your brother. You can’t trust and you can’t love,’ she said, her voice husky and breaking as he got to the door. ‘I’m not staying here.’

‘What do you think you’re going to do?’ he taunted softly. ‘Walk out through the front door? It doesn’t work like that, Stella.’

‘I’ll make it,’ she promised angrily. ‘Because I won’t let my child grow up with such an emotionally stunted father. You think you can give this child riches, but you’re poor in what really matters. I won’t let my child grow up in an atmosphere devoid of love.’

‘Then you love it, Stella. That’s why you’re here,’ he said bluntly. ‘Because I have to do my duty.’

‘Of course you do,’ she said bleakly, feeling the blow to her heart. ‘And I have to do my duty—to my baby.’

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

STELLA GRIPPED THE back of a chair as Eduardo slammed the door behind him. Leaving her. He didn’t think for a minute that she’d escape. And he was right. How could she, with all the royal protection officers, the cameras, the security here keeping people out? Keeping her trapped.

Then you love it. That’s why you’re here.

He couldn’t have been clearer. He wasn’t going to be the father she needed for her child. And she knew how much it hurt to have a parent who let you down time and time again. To have a husband who was just as emotionally unavailable and unsupportive... That would tear her in two.

He’d been so cold. A different person from the man who’d held her, listened to her, cared for her last night. For an hour she’d felt that heaven might be right here. But he’d ripped that façade away in seconds this morning.

She crumpled to the floor, tears running down her face.

‘Stella?’

She looked up as the door opened again. Then she groaned and lifted her hands to hide her face. Her father was here. He’d finally turned up and it was when she least wanted to see him.

‘Stella?’ He rushed towards her. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Nothing.’ She quickly stood up and stepped back. As if she could ever tell him.

But the tears wouldn’t stop. And she couldn’t breathe properly.

‘I’m sorry you have to see me like this. Crying like a...girl.’ She sniffed. So angry and hurt and humiliated. ‘Can we talk later?’

‘No.’ Her father had stopped a foot from her, his face ashen. ‘This can’t wait.’

She pulled a handful of tissues from a box on the desk and drew in another deep breath. But she couldn’t control the sobs.

‘Stop, Stella.’ Her father reached out and touched her shoulder.

She froze, waited for what felt like eons before he spoke again, gravelly, sombre and slow.

‘When I saw you last night at the ball with him I wondered. Thought maybe I’d been wrong. But it seems I wasn’t.’

‘Wrong about what?’ What was her uncommunicative father trying to tell her?

He sat down heavily in a nearby chair and looked up at her. ‘A few months ago you went missing from the barracks for the afternoon,’ he said slowly, looking more tired than she’d ever seen him. ‘That same day Prince Eduardo pulled out of a public appearance at the last minute. He was due to speak at a gallery not far from the base. When he was seen the next day he had a black eye. He made lame jokes about falling over but there was conjecture—it was the kind of bruise you got from a fight, not a crash into a door.’