Christina Hollis - His to Command - the Housekeeper - The Prince's Chambermaid / The Billionaire's Housekeeper Mistress / The Tuscan Tycoon's Pregnant Housekeeper

‘Asking me to change your dirty sheets?’ she questioned bluntly.

‘Cathy!’

‘Well, it’s true, isn’t it?’ Because he had sketched out the possible scenario and now wasn’t it up to her to colour in the blanks? To imagine the whole ghastly reality of what he was saying to her. And that way, surely, there would be no space left for illusion or any more hurt? ‘And, yes, you’re right, Xaviero. It really would be very awkward for both of you if I were still around.’

‘Well, there isn’t any both , is there? At least, not yet there isn’t.’ He traced the trembling line of her lips with a questing fingertip but she did not clamp her little white teeth around it and suck on it, as usually she would have done. ‘Though I don’t want you to feel you have to leave, just because of me.’

She stared at him, his royal status now forgotten—because in the circumstances it was irrelevant. This was her life, she realised—a life so very different from his. And it was where their two lives had merged and were now about to divide again, propelling her towards a scary and unknown future. ‘Oh, of course I have to leave, Xaviero. There’s no other alternative.’ Or did he imagine that she would hover in the background of his life—some pale-faced little ghost of a woman he’d once known, while he made a new life and a family with his suitable bride?

Desperately, she tried to scrabble back a little dignity. ‘But please don’t feel bad about it, when we both know it’s inevitable—we’ve known that all along. It’s probably just the kick-start I needed. I’ve been telling myself I’ve been in a rut for ages and kept meaning to change—I just never got around to it before.’

His eyes narrowed as they studied her. ‘If you want—I could perhaps help.’ He saw the confusion in her face. ‘You know—set you up in something, somewhere else.’

She recoiled. ‘You mean…like…pay me off? What’s that for—services rendered?’

‘That isn’t what I meant at all!’ he snapped.

‘Well, that’s what it sounded like!’

For a moment he was tempted to leave her right then, to storm out of her little cottage and its surprisingly beautiful garden. A place where he had been able to shrug off privilege and position with his biddable little virgin whom he’d transformed into a near-perfect lover. And another man would one day benefit from all his tuition, he thought—with a sudden and unexpected spear of jealousy.

‘Cathy, don’t let’s fight—not now,’ he said, in as placating a tone as he had ever used, pulling her face towards his.

And to Cathy’s everlasting shame, she let him begin to kiss her. Even after all the things he had said to her, she just let him. All those stark statements he’d made which had hammered home her rightful place in the Prince’s life. Which was nowhere. What woman with a shred of pride could sink back and revel in his expert caresses like this? But she wanted one more taste of him. One more erotic coupling with a man she recognised would never be equalled—not in anyone’s life, but certainly not in hers.

He lifted his head and looked down into her wide aquamarine eyes and saw in them the telltale glimmer of tears. But for once he accepted the unnecessary intrusion of emotion—knowing that his biddable little pupil was about to learn that saying goodbye was the hardest lesson of all.

WITHOUT Xaviero, life suddenly felt lonely and scary—but Cathy did what all the advice columns suggested as a way of trying to forget him. Instead of sitting around and moping, she changed her life completely—deciding to grab every opportunity which came her way instead of just sitting back and going with the flow. Her Prince had gone, yes—but she had known from the beginning that he would. He had gone and he wasn’t ever coming back and so she had better start learning to live with that and hope that this gnawing pain in her heart would some day lessen.

The first step in her recovery was leaving Colbridge—though really she didn’t have much choice. Hadn’t Xaviero himself spelt out in cruel and accurate detail just how difficult it would be if she were still there when he returned from South America?

Saying goodbye to friends and colleagues was harder than she’d thought, though it was no hardship leaving an openly curious Rupert, who had spent some of his profit on a red Lamborghini and was planning to open up another hotel in the south of France.

This time he did come right out and ask her if she’d been sleeping with the Prince, but although Cathy blushed she remained tight-lipped and told him it was really none of his business.

‘I think your response speaks for itself,’ he drawled.

‘You can think what you like, Rupert.’ Her cool reply clearly startled him—but, while Xaviero might have taught her about the pain of love, there was no doubt that sleeping with a prince had given her confidence.

It was harder to leave her little cottage where she’d lived for much of her life, and harder still to walk away from the garden on which she had fostered so much love and attention. But she rented it out to a plant-lover who promised to look after it, and moved to London, where she got a job in a famous bookshop situated right on Piccadilly, just along the road from Green Park. In a big, noisy capital city a bookshop seemed a warm and friendly place to be, and when they discovered her passion for plants and flowers she was quickly assigned to the Gardening, Cookery and Sport section of the store.

With the money she made from letting out her home she was able to rent a modest little studio flat just down the road from the bookshop. It was small, the heating was haphazard and it took a hundred and eight rickety steps just to reach it—but once you did, the view over the city was worth…

Worth what? mocked a voice in her head. A prince’s ransom?

Heart racing, Cathy tried to shift the taunting thoughts her mind seemed determined to hang onto—but it was far from easy. She missed Xaviero. Really missed him. This felt like a broken heart. Like the real thing—while her break-up with Peter had been forgotten in a couple of days. This felt uncomfortably like love—even though she tried to tell herself again and again that she couldn’t possibly have been in love with the golden-eyed Prince. It had just been a wonderful sexual awakening, she reasoned—and all she was doing was seeking to put a respectable label on the way she’d behaved.

And Cathy soon realised that being the spurned lover of a prince was a hopeless situation to be in. People always said there was no point in bottling things up—but she had little alternative. She couldn’t tell anyone what had happened; quite apart from anything else—who in their right minds would ever believe her? Maybe the healing hands of time would help the vivid memories fade. And even though she enthusiastically threw herself into her new life, each night she cried softly into her pillow for the man who had captured her heart and her body so profoundly.

Autumn was approaching and she took to walking round Green Park in her lunch-hour and watching as the leaves began to turn golden brown and scrunched beneath her feet. And she drank her morning coffee in the dark staffroom at the very top of the building, and tried to make friends with the rest of the staff. There were all kinds of people working there, because bookshops seemed to attract a strange mixture. Lots of them were would-be writers, but there was also an ex-soldier, a hand model and a man who had once trained in Paris as a clown. And a part-time girl called Sandy who painted portraits of cats, which then went on to grace the covers of greetings cards.