Crown Prince's Chosen Bride Read online

  ‘No.’ She put her hand over his mouth to stop him. ‘Don’t go there,’ she said. ‘You can’t say the L word until you can follow it with a proposal. And we know that’s not going to happen. Not for us. Not for a prince and a party planner. I...I feel it, too. But I couldn’t bear it if we put words to it. It would make our parting so much more painful than...than it’s already going to be.’

  She reached up and pulled his head down to hers, kissed him with all the passion and feeling she could bring to the kiss. Felt her tears rolling down her cheeks.

  ‘This. This is all we can have.’

  * * *

  Tristan held Gemma close as she slept, her head nestled in his shoulder. He breathed in her sweet scent. Already he felt that even blindfolded he would recognise her by her scent.

  His physical connection with this special woman was like nothing he had ever experienced. Their bodies were in sync, as though they had made love for a lifetime. He couldn’t label what they shared as sex—this was truly making love.

  Being together all day, cooking companionably—even doing the dishes—had brought a sense of intimacy that was new to him. Was this what a real marriage could be like? As opposed to the rigid, hypocritical structure of a royal marriage?

  What he felt with Gemma was a heady mix of physical pleasure and simple joy in her company. Was that how marriage should be?

  There was no role model for a happy marriage in his family. His parents with their separate lives... His brother’s loveless union... And from what he remembered of his grandparents, his grandmother had spent more time on the committees of her charitable organisations than she had with his grandfather. Except, of course, when duty called.

  Duty. Why did he have to give up his chance of love for duty?

  Because he didn’t have a choice.

  He had never felt for another woman what he felt for Gemma. Doubted he ever would. She was right—for self-protection neither of them could put a label on what they felt for each other—but he knew what it was.

  She gave a throaty little murmur as she snuggled closer. He dropped a kiss on her bare shoulder.

  The full impact of what he would miss out on, what he had to give up for duty, hit him with the impact of a sledgehammer.

  Feeling as he did for Gemma, how could he even contemplate becoming betrothed to another woman in three months’ time? He could taste the bitterness in his mouth. Another loveless, miserable royal marriage for Montovia.

  He stayed awake for hours, his thoughts on an endless loop that always seemed to end with the Montovian concept of honour—sacrificing love for duty—before he eventually slept.

  * * *

  When Tristan awoke it was to find Gemma dropping little kisses over his face and murmuring that breakfast was ready. He had other ideas, and consequently it was midmorning before they got out of bed.

  They rode the horses back down to the river. He was pleased at how competent Gemma was in the saddle. Despite their differences in social status, they had a lot in common, liked doing the same things, felt comfortable with each other. If only...

  He felt a desperate urgency as their remaining time together ticked on—a need to landmark each moment. Their last swim. Their last meal together. The last time they’d share those humble domestic duties.

  He was used to being brave, to denying his feelings, but he found this to be a kind of torture.

  Gemma had not been trained in self-denial. But she was brave up until they’d made love for the last time.

  ‘I can’t bear knowing we will never be together like this again,’ she said, her voice breaking. ‘Knowing that I will never actually see you again, except in the pages of a magazine or on a screen.’

  She crumpled into sobs, and there was no consoling her. How could he comfort her when he felt as if his heart was being wrenched out of him and pummelled into oblivion?

  Tristan tilted her chin up so he could gaze deep into her eyes, reddened from where she’d tried to scrub away her tears. Her lovely mouth trembled. It was a particular agony to know he was the cause of her pain.

  He smoothed her hair, bedraggled and damp with tears, from her face. ‘Gemma, I am sorry. I should not have pursued you when I knew this could be the only end for us.’

  She cleared her voice of tears. Traced his face with her fingers in a gesture he knew with gut-wrenching certainty was a farewell.

  ‘No. Never say that,’ she said. ‘I don’t regret one moment I’ve spent with you. I wish it could be different for us. But we went into this with our eyes open. And now...and now I know what it should be like between a man and a woman. I had no idea, you see, that it could be like this.’

  ‘Neither did I,’ he choked out. Nor what an intolerable burden duty to his beloved country could become.

  ‘So no beating ourselves up,’ she said.

  But for all her brave words he had to take the wheel of her car and drive back to Sydney. She was too distressed to be safe.

  Only too quickly he pulled up the car near his hotel and killed the engine. The unbearable moment of final farewell was upon them.

  He gave her the smartphone he had bought to use in Australia so they could easily stay in touch. ‘Keep it charged,’ he said.

  ‘I won’t use it, you know,’ she said, not meeting his eyes. ‘We have to make a clean break. I’ll go crazy otherwise.’

  ‘If that’s what you want,’ he said, scarcely able to choke out the words with their stabbing finality. But he stuffed the phone into her bag anyway.

  ‘It’s the only way,’ she said, her voice muffled as she hid her face against his shoulder. ‘But...but I’ll never forget you and...and I hope you have a good life.’

  All the anger and ambivalence he felt towards his role as heir to the throne threatened to overwhelm him. ‘Gemma, I want you to know how much I—’

  She pushed him away. ‘Just go now, Tristan. Please.’

  He wanted to be able to say there could be more for them, but he knew he could not. Instead he pulled the hoodie up over his face, got out of the car and walked back to his life as crown prince without looking back.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Ten weeks later

  GEMMA SAT ON the bed in a guest room at the grand gated Georgian house belonging to her newly discovered English grandparents. She was a long way from home, here in the countryside near Dorchester, in the county of Dorset in the south-west of England.

  In her less-than-steady hand she held the smartphone Tristan had insisted on leaving with her on the last day she’d seen him. It was only afterwards that she’d realised why. If she needed to get in touch with him she doubted the castle staff would put through a call to the crown prince from some unknown Australian girl.

  The phone had been charging for the last hour.

  She had never used it—rather had kept to her resolve never to contact him. That had not been easy in the sad black weeks that had followed the moment when he had stumbled from her car and had not looked back. But she had congratulated herself on how well she had come through the heartbreak of having her prince in her life for such a short time before she’d had to let him go.

  The only time she had broken down was when she had flicked through a gossip magazine to be suddenly confronted by an article about the crown prince of Montovia’s upcoming birthday celebrations. It had included photos of Tristan taken at the Sydney reception, looking impossibly handsome. A wave of longing for him had hit her with such intensity she’d doubled over with the pain of it.

  Would contacting him now mean tearing the scab off a wound better left to heal?

  When she thought about her time with him in Sydney—she refused to think of it as a fling—it had begun to take on the qualities of a fondly remembered dream. After this length of time she might reasonably have expected to start d
ating again. Only she hadn’t.

  ‘Don’t go thinking of him as your once-in-a-lifetime love,’ Andie had warned.

  ‘I never said he was,’ Gemma had retorted. ‘Just that he could have been if things had been different.’

  Now, might she have been given another chance with Tristan?

  Gemma put down the phone, then picked it up again. Stared at it as if it might give her the answer. Should she or shouldn’t she call him?

  She longed to tell Tristan about her meeting with the Cliffords. But would he be interested in what she had to say? Would he want to talk to her after all this time? Would he even remember her?

  She risked humiliation, that was for sure. By now he might be engaged to some princess or a duchess—that girl in Sydney a distant memory.

  But might she always regret it if she didn’t share with Tristan the unexpected revelation that had come from her decision to seek out her birth father’s family?

  Just do it, Gemma.

  With trembling fingers she switched on the phone and the screen lit up. So the service was still connected. It was meant to be. She would call.

  But then she was astounded to find a series of recent missed calls and texts of escalating urgency flashing up on the screen. All from Tristan. All asking her to contact him as soon as possible.

  Why?

  It made it easy to hit Call rather than have to take the actual step of punching out his number.

  He answered almost straightaway. Her heart jolted so hard at the sound of his voice she lost her voice. She tried to say hi, but only a strangled gasp came out.

  ‘Gemma? Is that you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she finally managed to squeak out.

  ‘Where are you?’ he demanded, as if it had been hours rather than months since they’d last spoken. ‘I’ve called the Party Queens office. I’ve called both Andie and Eliza, who will not tell me where you are. Are you at the cottage? Are you okay?’

  Gemma closed her eyes, the better to relish the sound of his voice, his accent. ‘I’m in Dorset.’

  She wondered where he was—in some palatial room in his medieval castle? It was difficult to get her head around the thought.

  There was a muffled exclamation in Montovian. ‘Dorset, England?’

  She nodded. Realised that of course he couldn’t see her. ‘Yes.’

  ‘So close. And I didn’t know. What are you doing there?’

  ‘Staying with my grandparents.’

  ‘They...they are not alive. I don’t understand...’

  She could almost see his frown in his words.

  ‘My birth father’s parents.’

  ‘The Clifford family?’

  He’d remembered the name. ‘Yes.’

  What else did he remember? She hadn’t forgotten a moment of their time together. Sometimes she revisited it in dreams. Dreams from which she awoke to an overwhelming sense of loss and yearning for a man she’d believed she would never see again—or hear.

  ‘The people who paid your mother off? But they are not known to you...’

  She realised she was gripping the phone so tensely her fingers hurt. ‘They are now. I came to find them. After all your talk of your birthright and heritage, I wanted to know about mine. I told my mother I could no longer deny my need to know just because my stepfather felt threatened that she’d been married before.’

  Her time with Tristan had made her want to take charge of her life and what was important to her.

  ‘Those people—did they welcome you?’

  ‘It seems I look very much like my father,’ she said. In fact her grandmother had nearly fainted when Gemma had introduced herself.

  ‘They were kind?’

  The concern in his voice made her think Tristan still felt something for her.

  ‘Very kind. It’s a long story. One I’d like to share with you, Tristan.’ She held her breath, waiting for his answer.

  ‘I would like to hear it. And there is something important I have to tell you.’

  ‘Is that why you were calling me?’

  ‘Yes. I wanted to fly to Australia to see you.’

  ‘You were going to fly all that way? But it’s only two weeks until your birthday party.’

  ‘I want to see you. Can you to come to Montovia?’

  For a long moment she was too shocked to reply. ‘Well, yes, I would like to see Montovia,’ she finally choked out. Tristan. She just wanted to see Tristan. Here, there, Australia—she didn’t care where. ‘When?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  Excitement or trepidation? Which did she feel more? ‘I’ll look up flights.’

  ‘I will send a private jet,’ he said, without hesitation.

  Of course he would.

  ‘And a limousine to pick you up from where you are in Dorset.’

  ‘There’s no need. I have a rental car... I can drive—’

  ‘I will send the car.’

  When she’d flown to England from Australia she’d had no intention of contacting Tristan. Certainly not of visiting Montovia. The meeting with her grandparents had changed everything.

  It wasn’t until after she had disconnected the phone that she realised she hadn’t asked Tristan what was so important that he’d left all those messages.

  * * *

  The next day the limousine arrived exactly on time and took her to Bristol airport. She was whisked through security and then onto the tarmac.

  It wasn’t until she began to climb the steps to board the plane that she started to feel nervous. What the heck was she doing here?

  She’d been determined to take charge of her own life after so many years of acquiescing to men, but then with one word from Tristan—actually, two words: private and jet—she’d rolled over and gone passive again.

  Then he was there, and thoughts of anything else were crowded out of her mind.

  Tristan.

  He stood at the top of the steps, towering over her. Tall, broad-shouldered, wearing an immaculately tailored business suit in deepest charcoal with a narrow grey tie. His hair was cut much shorter—almost military in style. When she’d last seen him he hadn’t shaved for two days and had been wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt. The time before that he’d been wearing nothing at all.

  He looked the same, but not the same.

  And it was the not the same that had her feet seemingly stuck to the steps and her mouth unable to form words of greeting.

  He was every bit as handsome as she remembered. But this Tristan appeared older, more serious. A man of wealth and stratospheric status—greeting her on board a private jet that was to fly her to his castle. While she was still very much just Gemma from Sydney.

  * * *

  Gemma looked the same as Tristan had remembered—her hair copper bright, her heart-shaped face pretty, her lovely body discreetly shown off in deep pink trousers and a white jacket. As he watched her, he thought his heart would burst with an explosion of emotion.

  He had never lost faith that he would see her again. That faith had paid off now, after all those dark hours between the moment he had said goodbye to her in Sydney and this moment, when he would say hello to her again. Hours during which he had honoured her request not to contact her. Hours when he had worked with all the driven frenzy of the Montovian fisherman searching for his water nymph to find a way they could be together.

  But Gemma stood frozen, as though she were uncertain whether to step up or back down. There wasn’t a dimple in sight.

  Was it fear of flying? Or fear of him?

  He hadn’t said he’d be on the jet to meet her—he’d had to reschedule two meetings with his father and the inner circle of court advisers to make the flight. He hadn’t wanted to make a promise he might not have been able to keep. Perhaps sh
e was too shocked at his presence to speak.

  He cursed under his breath. Why hadn’t he thought to radio through to the chauffeur?

  Because he’d been too damn excited at the thought of seeing her so soon to follow through on detail.

  Now he wanted to bound down those steps, sweep her into his arms and carry her on board. The dazed look in her cinnamon-coloured eyes made him decide to be more circumspect. What had he expected? That she would fall back into his arms when, for all she knew, the situation hadn’t changed between them and he still could not offer her anything more than a tryst?

  Tristan urged himself to be patient. He took a step down to her, his arms outstretched in welcome. ‘Gemma. I can’t believe you’re in Europe.’

  For a long moment she looked up at him, searching his face. He smiled, unable to hide his joy and relief at seeing her again.

  At last her lovely mouth tilted upwards and those longed-for dimples flirted once more in her cheeks. Finally she closed the remaining steps between them.

  ‘Tristan. I can’t believe it’s you. I...I thought I would never see you again. Your smile...it’s still the same.’

  That puzzled him. Of course his smile was still the same. Probably a lot warmer and wider than any smile on his face since he’d last seen her. But all he could think about was Gemma. Back in his arms where she belonged.

  He held her close for a long moment measured by the beating of her heart against him. He breathed in her essence, her scent heart-rendingly familiar.

  Gratitude that everything had worked out surged through him. He didn’t know how she had come to be just an hour’s flight away from him, but he didn’t question it. The need to kiss her was too strong—questions and answers could come later.

  He dipped his head to claim her mouth. She kissed him back, at first uncertainly and then with enthusiasm.

  ‘Tristan...’ she murmured in that throaty, familiar way.

  At last. Now everything was going to be as he wanted it.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN