Melissa James - His Princess in the Making

Ten years of dreaming Lia’s dreams for her, making her every wish come true, and seeing how she’d grown and changed. She’d become a woman before Toby’s blinkered eyes. And now she’d gone so far ahead of him he couldn’t see her.

The title and tiara were the least of his problems. She loved him, wanted him—but she didn’t love him, didn’t want him. After half a lifetime of him being everything to her, she trusted him with the truth only now—when she believed it was too late.

But if Lia wanted a man to show her just how much he wanted her, she was about to get it.

Melissa Jamesis a mother of three, living in a beach suburb in New South Wales, Australia. A former nurse, waitress, shop assistant, perfume and chocolate demonstrator—among other things—she believes in taking on new jobs for the fun experience. She’ll try anything at least once, to see what it feels like—a fact that scares her family on regular occasions. She fell into writing by accident, when her husband brought home an article stating how much a famous romance author earned, and she thought, I can do that! She can be found most mornings walking and swimming at her local beach with her husband, or every afternoon running around to her kids’ sporting hobbies, while dreaming of flying, scuba diving, belaying down a cave or over a cliff—anywhere her characters are at the time!

BY

MELISSA JAMES

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To an old friend who waited long years

for his damaged love to come to him.

I know the reward was worth the wait.

Thanks to Rachel, Robyn Grady

and Barbara Jeffcott-Geris for helping shape this book,

and special thanks to Barbara Daille-White

for an outsider’s perspective.

Sydney clinic for eating disorders, ten years ago

“How is she today?”

The middle-aged specialist smiled up at the brown-skinned young giant hovering over him, with intense blue eyes filled with anxiety and stress. “I’d say you’d know the answer better than I do, Toby, since you stayed overnight and have spoken to her twice already today.”

One side of the boy’s mouth curved up in acknowledgement of the comment, but he said, “I meant to ask how her counselling session went.”

The doctor reached up to lay a hand on the other’s shoulder—a massive, muscled shoulder, evidence of his active profession. “Lia says what we want to hear, so we’ll send her home. You know she only talks to you.”

The doctor spoke without anger or frustration. Indeed, he’d never known a boy like this one. Not brother, not lover, but the most devoted friend any girl in this clinic had ever had. Here day and night for the girl he called “his best friend’s sister,” there were undercurrents that made everyone on staff smile.

But they never laughed. Not when the boy always knew what the near-silent girl wasn’t saying, what she’d eat and when she’d eat—and when she needed a few hours in the outside world, going on a bushwalk or sitting on the beach.

Toby Winder was the most unorthodox support person everyone at the clinic had ever known. He’d read every book written on anorexia nervosa, and yet tossed out the rule books half the time, using his knowledge of Lia instead—and somehow his unique method of treatment worked. Lia was not only putting on weight, she was happy . She ate when he didn’t coax her, but made her smile and laugh and feel cherished. He seemed to heal young Lia Costa just by being there, by knowing her as few family members or friends knew anyone with this secretive, killing disease.

Lia had lost so much in a year. First, her parents had died in a car crash. Within five months of their deaths she’d been rejected by the Australian Ballet because of her height. Now her grandmother had been diagnosed with breast cancer. It was enough to drive a girl as intense as Lia, with so little self-esteem, into starving herself.

Toby Winder was the single miracle keeping her alive. The biggest threat to recovery was feeling alone, ugly or unloved. He made her feel safe and beautiful and loved, made her feel special by calling her by her real name, Giulia, when everyone else called her Lia.

A first-year fireman, he’d managed to arrange his schedule to be the opposite to Lia’s brother Charlie, a fellow fireman, so that if one of them couldn’t be there the other could, or so her grandfather could visit Lia around his wife’s visiting hours. Toby had asked them both to hide their anxiety, which only put an added burden on Lia. He’d shown them the parts of the garden she liked at the clinic, and the games she enjoyed playing, eating when she was so absorbed in the fun she barely noticed.

When he’d discovered that Lia exercised all night if left alone, still trying to lose the last vestiges of the slender yet curvaceous figure that she believed had kept her from the ballet, Toby had cajoled the staff into putting a camp-bed beside her at night. How he slept with his six-foot-five frame on that squeaky old bed, the staff never could work out. He simply said that if she was sleeping he could sleep.

And, when she needed to visit her ill grandmother, Toby took her—and by some miracle Lia never starved herself afterwards to deal with the stress, because Toby was there beside her.

Nobody on the staff had ever seen a case like this. They’d never seen an anorexic girl’s face light up the way Lia’s did when she saw Toby come through the gates, or when she heard his voice. Anorexic girls rarely welcomed touch the way she did with Toby. And nobody had seen a nineteen-year-old boy put aside his entire life to help someone who wasn’t even his girlfriend to recover from this unrecoverable disease, giving and giving without a hope of reward apart from her return to health.

All of which made the doctor’s task so much harder now.

“You’ve been incredibly devoted to her recovery,” the doctor began gently. “We’ve all been amazed by the way she responds to you.”

Toby reddened and shrugged a shoulder. “She’s my friend.”

“I think she’s a little more than that to you…or a lot. Isn’t she?” he pressed.

The boy turned towards the window. “I think I’ll go find her.”

“This is for her sake, Toby. I need to know.”

Toby didn’t turn back, but the way he rubbed his neck told the doctor he’d rather have him stick pins in him than answer these questions. “We’ve been friends for five years, since Charlie took me home to meet the family. She was only eleven. She was like one of my little sisters to me. I moved in with the family a year later.” He didn’t elaborate why, and Dr Evans realised Toby was as secretive as Lia.

“When did it change for you?” the doctor asked, gentle but remorseless.

A long silence followed. Then, slowly, he said, “When she came here. When she collapsed. I knew then.”