Robyn Donald - Royals - Wed To The Prince - By Royal Command / The Princess and the Outlaw / The Prince's Secret Bride

‘Everything under control?’ It was all he could trust himself to say, and even then his voice sounded guttural and aggressive.

Grey eyes wary, she looked up. Clearly, she hadn’t heard him come in. ‘Yes, thank you. I wondered if I should go home to reassure them that their darling daughter is safe and healthy, but my father wouldn’t hear of it.’

Guy wrestled his simmering rage into enough of a strait-jacket to say curtly, ‘A thoughtful father.’

So she was going to Marc Corbett’s house. It could mean nothing more than that they were on good terms even though their relationship had ended. It wasn’t so unusual; he prided himself on staying good friends with his previous lovers. He’d have offered a holiday house to any of them.

But it might also mean that the time they’d spent together meant nothing more to her than an exotic interlude.

He tried for a mental shrug, wondering coldly why his usual practical logic had abandoned him. So what? They’d made no commitment; Lauren might be every man’s dream lover, but their idyll was over. She could go wherever she wanted, sleep with whomever she wanted. And so could he.

Her tone deepened. ‘My father’s a darling.’ She joined him on the tiled terrace outside the airy sitting room and said carefully, ‘Guy, it’s been magic. Thank you so much.’

‘You sound like a small child at the end of a party,’ he said, exasperated by the rasping undertone in his voice.

Her face went still. Without moving she met his eyes, her own now as opaque as burnished silver, but her withdrawal hit him, palpable as a blow.

Steadily she said, ‘Probably because that’s what I feel like. It’s been a lovely, lovely party, but like all good times, it’s come to an end.’

Hiding his astonishing anger with the disciplined control he’d fought to acquire, Guy relaxed hands that were curling into fists by his sides. ‘You’d better give me an address so I can contact you if I need to.’

At first he thought she was going to refuse, but she nodded and reached into her bag for a small notebook. He watched her write down the address, tear the page out and hand it over. ‘I’ll be there for three weeks,’ she told him, that seamless poise firmly in place.

Guy wanted to smash it into splinters. Get a grip, he told himself roughly. A few days making love to a woman gave you no claims to her.

‘Right, we’d better go,’ he said, and picked up the bags.

They got back to Valanu not too long before her plane was due to leave. As the banana boat sputtered across the brilliant blues of the lagoon, Lauren gazed around, pretending that nothing had changed, that Guy wasn’t steering with an expression of such concentrated authority it shut her out as effectively as a barred door.

A car was waiting at the docks; Guy must have organised it. He walked her towards it, and as the driver slung her bag into the boot she held out her hand in farewell and said steadily, ‘Goodbye. Thank you for everything.’

Equally formal, his golden eyes dark and unreadable in his handsome face, he bowed over her hand. But there was nothing formal about the way he lifted it to his mouth; his kiss burned against her skin like a brand, quickening her heart and tightening inner muscles accustomed now to enclosing him in their subtle grip.

‘It was,’ he said with silken distinctness, ‘my complete and utter pleasure.’

Colour scorched along her cheekbones; she looked away, blinking at the figure of a man in the distance. ‘Mine too,’ she said uncertainly.

He held open the door and she slid into the back of the car. It drew away and she didn’t look back; she didn’t even notice the man who stared into the vehicle as it passed him, then straightened to examine Guy, a big figure striding into the distance.

During the flight to Sant’Rosa’s capital and then on to Fiji, she fought a savage, unrelenting emptiness, refusing food and anything to drink except water and fruit juice. Once aboard the big jet for New Zealand, she watched the jewel that was Fiji’s main island drop away from beneath the plane’s wings and forced herself to eat something that tasted like a mixture of plastic and sawdust in her mouth.

Afterwards she saw the sun go down in a splendour of blood-red and scarlet, and blamed the sight for eyes that felt heavy and dry, as though if she relaxed they might sting with tears.

Stop that right now, she told herself roundly. You knew right from the start that once you left you’d never see Guy again. You knew, and you accepted it—you can’t renege on the deal now.

She was not in love with Guy Bagaton.

But halfway to New Zealand she finally accepted something she’d been refusing to acknowledge. She had done the exact same thing as her mother—without considering anything other than her own desires, she’d embarked on a wild, defiant, unrestrained affair with a man she didn’t know.

At least, she thought tiredly, she wasn’t married, as her mother had been. And there would be no pregnancy—Guy had seen to that. A hollow sadness took her by surprise, and was hastily banished.

But Isabel Porter had known more about her lover than Lauren knew about hers. The genetic father Lauren shared with Marc Corbett had been a businessman of note, a lover of beautiful women and a rampantly unfaithful husband notorious for his affairs. Although her mother had known he was married—and been married herself—she’d been unable to resist his powerful magnetism.

Just like me, Lauren thought, hands tensely locking together in her lap. I am truly my mother’s daughter.

And my father’s!

Well, her genetic father’s. Her true father was Hugh Porter, who discovered that the daughter he had considered his own was the result of his wife’s adultery only when Lauren was in her early twenties. As he was already fighting heart disease, the shock had almost killed him, but he had forgiven Isabel and reassured Lauren of a love that had never faltered.

Her mouth setting into a straight line, she steered her thoughts away from that period. Guy could be a planter of some sort; rice, or indigo or copra—whatever planters produced on tropical islands. He could be a scout for one of the forestry companies that were buying tropical hardwoods; he’d been scathing enough about the sali nut scheme to make this possible.

Half-pirate, half-warrior, he lived on an island marooned in the endless blue waves of the Pacific Ocean. Apart from sharing a blazing sexual attraction, they had nothing in common. She lived and worked in London. She loved her career, and her favourite city was Paris—about as different from the steamy heat of Sant’Rosa as any place could be.

Her lips formed the words nothing in common as they echoed in her mind with cold resonance. A giant fist squeezed her heart into a painful knot.

Of course she had to repay the money he’d lent her, but that wouldn’t need personal contact. She didn’t have his address, but she’d soon find one; everyone was traceable on the Internet. And even if he wasn’t, any letter addressed to him in Sant’Rosa would find its way to him. Everyone there seemed to know him.

And he had her address…

For the rest of the journey to New Zealand she stared unseeingly ahead while her treacherous mind replayed images of the time she’d spent in Guy’s arms.

Once she got to Marc’s house in New Zealand she’d be fine. She’d recover from this inconvenient and heady rush of blood to the loins, and be her normal self again.

Well, she thought drearily, I now know what happens when you hit the tropics—madness.

Lauren stroked the elderly golden retriever’s insistent head.

‘No, Fancy,’ she said patiently, ‘I don’t want to go for a walk along the beach, and no, I don’t want to row you around to Cabbage Tree Bay, and no, I don’t want to climb the hill either. Nor do I want to throw your ball or feed you treats.’