Crown Prince's Chosen Bride Page 6

  He’d loved the freedom of living in another country, but home had always been a draw card for him—the security and continuity of the castle, the knowledge of his place in the hierarchy of his country. His parents, who were father and mother to him before they were king and queen.

  Gemma pulled a face—which, far from contorting her features, made her look cute. Had she cast a spell on him?

  ‘Your home might have been more...welcoming than mine,’ she said.

  A shadow darkened her warm brown eyes at what was obviously an unpleasant memory. It made him sad for her. His memories of childhood and adolescence were happy. Life at the castle as the ‘spare’ had been fun—he had had a freedom never granted to his brother. A freedom sorely lost to him now—except for this trip. There had always been some tension between his father and mother, but it had been kept distanced from him. It hadn’t been until he’d grown up that he’d discovered the cause of that tension—and why both his parents were so unhappy.

  ‘You were not welcome in your own home?’ he asked.

  ‘My mother was always welcoming. My stepfather less so.’

  ‘Was he...abusive?’ Tristan tensed, and his hands tightened into fists at the thought of anyone hurting her.

  She shook her head. The sunshine slanting in through the windows picked up amber highlights and copper glints in her hair as it fell around her face. He wanted to reach out and stroke it, see if it felt as fiery as it looked.

  ‘Nothing like that,’ she said. ‘And he wasn’t unkind—just indifferent. He didn’t want children, but he fell in love with my mother when I was a little kid and I came as part of the package deal.’

  ‘A “package deal”? That seems a harsh way to describe a child.’

  Again he felt a surge of protectiveness for her. It was a feeling new to him—this desire to enfold her in safety and shield her from any harm the world might hurl at her. A girl he had known for only a matter of days...

  Her shrug of one slender shoulder was obviously an effort to appear nonchalant about an old hurt, but it was not completely successful. ‘He couldn’t have one without the other. Apparently he wanted my mother badly—she’s very beautiful.’

  ‘As is her daughter.’ He searched her face. It was disconcerting, the way she seemed to grow lovelier by the minute.

  ‘Thank you.’ She flushed again. ‘My mother always told me I had to be grateful to my stepfather for looking after us. Huh. Even when I was little I looked after myself. But I did my best to please him—to make my mother happy.’ She wrinkled her neat, straight nose. ‘Why am I telling you all this? I’m sure you must find it boring.’

  ‘You could never be boring, Gemma,’ he said. ‘I know that about you already.’

  It was true. Whether or not she’d cast some kind of witch’s spell over him, he found everything about her fascinating. He wanted nothing more than to find out all about her. Just for today, the rest of his life was on hold. It was just him and Gemma, alone in the curious intimacy of a boat in the middle of Sydney Harbour. Like a regular, everyday date of the kind that would not be possible for him once he was back home.

  ‘Are you sure you want to hear more of my ordinary little story?’ she asked, her head tilted to one side.

  ‘Nothing could interest me more.’

  She could read out loud the list of ingredients from one of her recipes and he’d hang on every word, watching the expressions flit across her face, her dimples peeking in and out. Although so far there didn’t appear to be a lot to smile about in her story.

  The good-looking dark-haired waiter came to clear their coffee cups and plates. Gemma looked up and smiled at him as she asked him to leave the fruit. Tristan felt a surge of jealousy—until he realised the waiter was more likely to be interested in him rather than her. Gemma thanked him and praised the chef.

  After the waiter had left, she leaned across the table to Tristan. Her voice was lowered to barely above a whisper. ‘It feels weird, having people I know serve me,’ she said. ‘My instinct is to jump up and help. I’m used to being on the other side of the kitchen door.’

  Tristan had been used to people serving him since he was a baby. An army of staff catered to the royal family’s every need. He’d long ago got used to the presence of servants in the room—so much that they’d become almost invisible. When he went back he would have a hand-picked private staff of his own to help him assume his new responsibilities as crown prince.

  The downside was that there was very little privacy. Since his brother had died every aspect of his life had been under constant, intense scrutiny.

  Gemma returned to her story. ‘Inevitably, when I was a teenager I clashed with my stepfather. It made my mother unhappy. I was glad to leave home for uni—and I never went back except for fleeting visits.’

  ‘And your father?’

  ‘You mean my birth father?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He died before I was born.’ Her voice betrayed no emotion. It was as if she were speaking about a stranger.

  ‘That was a tragedy.’

  ‘For my mother, yes. She was a ski instructor in the French resort of Val d’Isère, taking a gap year. My father was English—also a ski instructor. They fell madly in love, she got pregnant, they got married and soon after he got killed in an avalanche.’

  ‘I’m sorry—that’s a terrible story.’

  Skiing was one of the risky sports he loved, along with mountaineering and skydiving. The castle staff was doing everything it could to wean him off those adrenaline-pumping pastimes. He knew he had to acquiesce. The continuity of the royal family was paramount. His country had lost one heir to an accident and could not afford to lose him, too.

  But he railed against being cosseted. Hated having his independence and choice taken away from him. Sometimes the price of becoming king in future seemed unbearably high. But duty overruled everything. Tragedy had forced fate’s hand. He accepted his inheritance and everything that went with it—no matter the cost to him. He was now the crown prince.

  Gemma made a dismissive gesture with her hands. ‘I didn’t know my father, so of course I never missed him. But he was the love of my mother’s life. She was devastated. Then his posh parents arrived at the resort, looked down their noses at my mother, questioned the legality of my parents’ marriage—it was totally legit, by the way—and paid her to forget she was ever married and to never make a claim on them. They even tried to bar her from the funeral back in England.’ Her voice rose with indignation.

  ‘You sound angry,’ he said. But what her father’s parents had done was something his parents had done when he and his brother were younger. They would have paid any amount of money to rid the family of an unsuitable woman. Someone who might reflect badly on the throne. A commoner. Someone like Gemma.

  His parents’ actions had slammed home the fact that marriage for a Montovian prince had nothing to do with love or passion. It was about tradition and duty and strategic alliance. When he had discovered the deep hypocrisy of his parents’ relationship, his cynicism about the institution of marriage—or at least how it existed in Montovia—had been born.

  That cynicism had only been reinforced by his brother’s marriage to the daughter of a duke. The castle had trumpeted it as a ‘love match’. Indeed, Carl had been grateful to have found such a pretty, vivacious bride as Sylvie. Only after the splendid wedding in the cathedral had she revealed her true self—venal and avaricious and greedy for the wealth and status that came with being a Montovian princess. She’d cared more for extravagant jewellery than she had for his brother.

  Consequently, Tristan had avoided marriage and any attempts to get him to the altar.

  He schooled his face to appear neutral, not to give Gemma any indication of what he was thinking. Her flushed face made it very clear that she would not be sympathetic to t
hose kind of regal machinations.

  ‘You’re darn right. I get angry on behalf of my poor mother—young and grieving,’ she said. ‘She wanted to throw the money in their faces, but she was carrying me. She swallowed her pride and took the money—for my sake. I was born in London, then she brought me home to Sydney. She said her biggest revenge for their treatment of her was that they never knew they had a grandchild.’

  Tristan frowned. He was part of a royal family with a lineage that stretched back hundreds of years. Blood meant everything. ‘How did you feel about that?’

  Gemma toyed with the remainder of the grapes. He noticed her hands were nicked with little scars and her nails were cut short and unpolished. There were risks in everything—even cooking.

  ‘Of course, I’ve always felt curious about my English family,’ she said. ‘I look nothing like my mother or her side of the family. When I was having disagreements with my stepfather, I’d dream of running away to find my other family. I know who they are. But out of loyalty to my mother I’ve never made any attempt to contact my Clifford relatives.’

  ‘So your name is really Gemma Clifford?’

  She shook her head. ‘My stepfather adopted me. Legally I bear his name. And that’s okay. For all his faults, he gave me a home and supported me.’

  ‘Until you went to university in Newcastle?’

  ‘Whatever his other faults, he’s not mean. He kept on paying me an allowance. But I wanted to be independent—free of him and of having to pretend to be someone I was not simply to please him. I talked my way into a part-time kitchen hand’s job at the best restaurant in the area. As luck would have it, the head chef was an incredibly talented young guy. He became a culinary superstar in Europe in the years that followed. Somehow he saw talent in me and offered me an apprenticeship as a chef. I didn’t hesitate to ditch my degree and accept—much to my parents’ horror. But it was what I really wanted to do.’

  ‘Have you ever regretted it?’

  ‘Not for a minute.’

  ‘It seems a big jump from chef to co-owning Party Queens,’ Tristan said.

  Gemma offered the remaining grapes to him. When he refused, she popped some more into her mouth. He waited for her to finish them.

  ‘It’s a roundabout story. When my boss left for grander culinary pastures, his replacement wasn’t so encouraging of me. I left the Newcastle restaurant and went back to Sydney.’

  ‘To work in restaurants?’

  ‘Yes—some very good ones. But it’s still a very male-dominated industry. Most of the top chefs are men. Females like me only too often get relegated to being pastry chefs and are passed over for promotion. I got sick of the bullying in the kitchen. The sexist behaviour. I got the opportunity to work on a glossy women’s magazine as an assistant to the food editor and grabbed it. In time I became a food editor myself, and my career took off.’

  ‘That still doesn’t explain Party Queens,’ he said. ‘Seems to me there’s a gap there.’ He’d trained as a lawyer. He was used to seeing what was missing from an argument, what lay beneath a story.

  She leaned across the table and rested on her elbows. ‘Are you interviewing me?’ Her words were playful, but her eyes were serious.

  ‘Of course not. I’m just interested. You’re very successful. I want to know how you got there.’

  ‘I’ve worked hard—be in no doubt about that. But luck plays a part in it, too.’

  ‘It always does,’ he said.

  Lucky he had walked in on her in her kitchen. Lucky he’d been born into a royal family. And yet there were days when he resented that lucky accident of birth. Like right here, right now, spending time with this woman, knowing that he could not take this attraction, which to his intense gratification appeared to be mutual, anywhere. Because duty to his country required sacrificing his own desires.

  ‘There’s bad luck too, of course,’ Gemma went on. ‘Andie was lifestyle editor on the magazine—she’d trained as an interior designer. Eliza was on the publishing side. We became friends. Then the magazine closed without warning and we were all suddenly without a job.’

  ‘That must have been a blow,’ he said. He had never actually worked for an employer, apart from his time as a conscript in the Montovian military. His ‘job prospects’—short of an exceedingly unlikely revolution—were assured for life.

  Again, Gemma shrugged one slender shoulder. ‘It happens in publishing. We rolled with it.’

  ‘I can see that,’ he said. He realised how resilient she was. And independent. She got more appealing by the minute.

  ‘People asked us to organise parties for them while we were looking for other jobs—between us we had all the skills. The party bookings grew, and we began to see we had a viable business. That’s how Party Queens was born. We never dreamed it would become as successful as it has.’

  ‘I’m impressed. With you and with your business. With all this.’ He indicated the Argus, the harbour, the meal.

  ‘We aim to please,’ she said with that bewitching smile.

  He could imagine only too well how she might please him and he her.

  But he was not here in Sydney to make impossible promises to a girl next door like Gemma. Nor did he want to seduce her with lies just for momentary physical thrills.

  Or to put his own heart at any kind of risk.

  This could be for only one day.

  CHAPTER SIX

  GEMMA COULDN’T REMEMBER when she’d last felt so at ease with a man. So utterly comfortable in his presence. Had she ever before felt like this?

  But she didn’t want to question the why of it. Just to enjoy his company while she had the chance.

  After she’d polished off all the grapes, she and Tristan had moved back out onto the deck. He hadn’t eaten much—no more cake and just some mango. She’d got the impression he was very disciplined in his eating habits—and probably everything else. But getting to know Tristan was still very much a guessing game.

  The Argus had left the inner harbour behind and set course north for Manly and their lunchtime destination of Store Beach. The sun had moved around since they’d gone inside for coffee, and the crew had moved two vintage steamer-style wooden deckchairs into the shade, positioned to take advantage of the view.

  She adjusted the cushions, which were printed with anchor motifs, and settled down into one of them. Tristan was to her right, with a small table between them. But as soon as she’d sat down, she moved to get up again.

  ‘My hat,’ she explained. ‘I need to get it from my bag. Even though we’re in the shade, I could get burned.’

  Immediately, Tristan was on his feet. ‘Let me get it for you,’ he said, ushering her to sit back down.

  ‘There’s no need. Please... I can do it,’ she protested.

  ‘I insist,’ he said in a tone that brooked no further resistance.

  Gemma went to protest again, then realised that would sound ungracious. She wasn’t used to being cared for by a man. ‘Thank you,’ she conceded. ‘It’s right at the top of the bag.’

  ‘Next to the rolling pins?’ he said.

  ‘But no wooden spoons,’ she said with a smile.

  Not only would Alistair not have dreamed of fetching her hat for her, he would have demanded she get him a beer while she was up. Good manners were very appealing in a man.

  Tristan held himself with a mix of upright bearing and athletic grace as he headed back into the cabin. Gemma lay back and watched him through her sunglasses. His back view was every bit as pleasing as his front. Broad shoulders tapered to a wide back and then narrow hips. There could be no doubt that a good butt was also an asset in a man.

  He looked effortlessly classy in the white linen trousers and the loose white shirt. They were so perfectly cut she wondered if they’d been tailored to fit him. Could
you get men’s casual clothes made to measure? She knew you could have suits bespoke. Anything was possible if you had enough money, she supposed.

  He returned with her hat—a favourite white panama. She reached out to take it from him, but he came to the side of her chair and bent down to put it on her head. His face was very close. She could almost imagine he was bending down to kiss her. If he did, she wouldn’t stop him. No...she might even kiss him first. She was thankful her sunglasses masked her eyes, so her expression didn’t give her away.

  ‘Nice hat,’ he said as he placed it on her head. As he tugged it into place, his hands strayed lightly over her hair, her ears, her throat—just the merest touch, but it was enough to set her trembling.

  She forced her voice to sound steady—not to betray how excitingly unnerving she found his nearness. ‘I’ve had this hat for years, and I would be greatly distressed if I lost it.’

  Again she caught his scent. She remembered how years ago in high school she’d dated a perfectly nice boy who’d had everything going for him, but she hadn’t liked the way he’d smelled. Not that he’d been unclean or unwashed—it was just his natural scent that had turned her off. But Tristan’s fresh scent sent her nerve endings into a flurry of awareness.

  Was there anything about Tristan she didn’t find appealing?

  His underlying mystery, that sense of him holding back still had her guard up—but perhaps that mystery was part of his appeal. And it was in her power to find out what made Tristan tick. Just ask him, Gemma.

  There were many points of interest she could draw his attention to on their way to Manly. But she would not waste time on further guidebook lectures. The only sight I want to see more of is you, he’d said.

  Did he have any idea of how good those words made her feel?

  Her self-esteem had taken a terrible battering from Alistair. Six months had not been enough to fix it fully. Just hours in Tristan’s company had her feeling better about herself than she had for a long time. The insistent twitching of her antennae told her that his charming words might be calculated to disarm and seduce. But her deeper instincts sensed sincerity—though for what purpose she was still at a loss.