The Ordinary King

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Apart from that …

Time to get to work. He could only pray that she was ready to do the same.

Simon sighed out loud and sniffed.

He was doomed.

Kate stood on the terrace looking out towards the ocean, with her fingers clasped hard around the smooth wooden rail, willing herself to be steady, resolute and professional and failing on every count.

She had never expected the sight of Simon Reynolds to destroy her composure like this, but it had—in every way possible. And it had nothing to do with the past few exhausting days and everything to do with how much she still felt about this man.

Which made her so angry she clenched her nails even harder into the wooden railing.

He had been the one who had walked out on her.

He had been the one who had been full of promises and not kept one of them.

He had been … He had been the love of her life, who had left her behind just like all the other men in her life who had abandoned her when the going got tough. If it had not been for her stepfather, Tom, she would have given up on the whole sorry lot of them a long time ago. Now Simon was here, in this stunning country, and she was going to have to deal with him.

A peal of happy children’s laughter rang out from the beach below, interrupting her thoughts, and Kate blinked hard in the dazzling bright morning light to focus on the stunning view before her.

The hotel terrace faced the ocean, and the beautifully kept lawns stretched out to a wide strip of glowing white sand, where her view of the lapping waves was broken only by the thin trunks of tall palm trees.

It was like a poster of a dream beach from the cover of a holiday brochure, complete with a long wooden canoe on the shore and umbrellas made from palm fronds to protect the professional sunbathers from the heat of the African sun in January.

Palm trees. She was looking at real African coconut palm trees. The sky was a cloudless bright blue, and the warm breeze was luxuriously dry and scented with the salty tang from the sea blended with spice and a tropical sweet floral scent.

A great garland of bougainvillea with stunning bright purple and hot pink flowers wound its way around the handrail, intertwined with a wonderful frangipani which spilled out from a blue ceramic pot, attracting nectar-seeking insects to the intensely fragrant blossoms.

Kate spent most of her life in small air-conditioned computer rooms surrounded by office equipment and machinery. It was only natural that she should bend down to appreciate the frangipani flowers close up. Only the biggest insect she had ever seen in her life was inside one of the flowers at the time, and decided to leave just as she bent her head to sniff the blossom. Insect and cheek collided, and the insect was just as unhappy about that fact as she was.

Ouch! ‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ Kate mumbled as she stood up and wafted the offending creature away. ‘No wasp stings. Not on my first morning in Africa.’

‘Hello, Katie,’ came a voice as familiar as her own. ‘Talking to yourself again?’

CHAPTER TWO

‘WELL, this is quite a surprise,’ Simon said, in that educated formal voice which could only come from a lifetime of privilege and expensive private schools. And it was still as amazingly, jaw-droppingly able to light a match under her fire more than any other voice she had ever known.

Her heart and body leapt to attention at the sound of his voice, so fast and so loudly she was surprised that he had not heard it. Speech was impossible, and it maddened her more than she could say that he still had the power to unsettle her so badly.

But she was determined not to let him see that he had got to her. Those days were long gone.

‘Hi, Simon,’ she said through a dry throat, in as casual and controlled a voice as she could imagine. ‘Likewise. I had no idea that you were still in Ghana.’

‘Oh, yes,’ he answered. ‘Still here, still working, still unpaid and still a volunteer. I’m even in the same village. Unlike some people I could mention. It seems like you have come up in the world, Katie.’ He tilted his head to one side and grinned. ‘Congratulations. The company must have a lot of faith in you to suggest you take over from Andy at such short notice. That is quite an achievement.’

Simon pushed one hand deep into his trouser pocket as he leant his other elbow on the railing and towered over her, blocking the blazing sunlight from blinding her, but also shading her with his shadow.

To her unending shame Kate felt her neck flame red in embarrassment and delight that Simon should take pleasure in her promotion—or was it just the impact of that killer grin of white teeth against his unshaven deeply tanned skin?

‘Thank you,’ she whispered, ‘although I certainly hadn’t planned to be here. Yesterday morning I was in Mexico, expecting to fly home to a grey London for the weekend. Instead of which …’ Kate waved her right hand in the air towards the rolling waves under the azure blue sky. ‘Andy Parsons’ little boys arrived ahead of schedule, so the company asked me to take his place for a few weeks.’

And then she paused, lifted her head, and looked deep into Simon’s face. They were standing so close together that none of the other delegates who had ambled onto the wide long terrace around them could possibly hear what they were saying.

But that did not change the fact that their history together was real, and as far as she was concerned not as much in the past as she had imagined. The only way was to go forward and face the consequences.

‘I hope my being here is not going to be a problem for you?’

Simon paused for a second, before turning slightly away from the rail so that his whole body was facing towards her. It was just the two of them on that part of the terrace.

And in those few seconds of silence every one of her senses was attuned to every tiny movement he made.

The way his once soft hands and arms had filled out to become sinewy, strong and powerful. The way the hairs on the back of his hands had been bleached almost blond by the sun, which made them stand out pale and golden against the deep brown tan. And the way his pale grey eyes widened and then narrowed as he looked away from the ocean and back to her. The crease marks at the corners of his eyes were paler than the rest of the tan that if anything made him even more handsome than before—if that was possible.

He had always been able to mesmerise her with just a look.

And then his gaze hardened, and with one look straight into her eyes Simon answered her question without having to say a word.

The surface might have changed, but on the inside he was exactly the same man who had walked away from her and the chaos he’d left behind on that hot July morning three years ago—and he had not forgiven her for choosing to stay with her family instead of coming out to Africa with him, just as she had not forgiven him for leaving. One. Little. Bit.

‘It’s wonderful news about Andy. But does that mean you’re taking his place just for the conference or as project manager for all the local IT initiatives?’ Simon asked in a low, calm, steady voice—his serious voice, with a tiny lift of concern at the end.

‘Both,’ she replied with a slight nod. ‘I’ll be covering the conference, then shadowing Molly on a field visit to Andy’s two new projects along the coast. In the meantime I need to catch up with the progress reports. According to Molly, Andy was supervising the project you are working on. I suppose that means that I’ll be your acting project supervisor for the next few weeks.’

She gulped down her apprehension and disquiet.

‘I need to know whether we can work together, Simon,’ she said quickly, but Simon was already ahead of her, and he shook his head slowly as his grey eyes bored into hers.

‘Don’t worry about me, Katie. I can work with you any time. The real question is are you willing to work with me? I need to know that I can rely on you completely over the next few days. Especially during the press conferences and TV interviews.’

Kate felt her blood rise, and her fingers clutched even tighter into the handrail until she feared that she would have no nails left.

‘What do you mean, TV interviews? That wasn’t on the agenda I saw,’ she replied, bristling with indignation at his implied accusation that she was not capable of doing the job as well as Andy could.

Simon raised both hands in the air in submission. ‘I don’t mean to criticise. It is just that there is a lot at stake here, and I really need to bring you up to date with my project as Andy’s replacement. Whatever happens, we are going to have to work together as a team.’

‘Then I suggest you start talking.’ Kate picked up her dossier and waved it at Simon, still bristling at his implied concern. ‘Which areas of the report do you expect to be asked questions on?’

Simon nodded. ‘I have known Andy so long he probably didn’t record the details, but the local tribal leaders in my village have invited me to do something pretty special, and Andy was going to use it as part of the PR plan to help with extra fundraising for the project.’

Kate looked from the report back to Simon in confusion, her throat dry.

‘Okay,’ she replied in a quivering voice, trying to sound confident and not in the least upset that all the plans she had carefully sketched out for her day had probably just been blown away. ‘Can you tell me about it now?’

Before Simon could answer there was a great cacophony of loud car horns mixed with angry shouting and lively chatter coming from the road leading up to the hotel. Both Simon and Kate leant out over the terrace railing just in time to see a huge white TV camera van drive across the pristine lawns to overtake two large off-road estate cars which had tried to squeeze through the narrow road at the same time. They had crashed into one another and were now blocking the entrance to the hotel

‘Too late. Sorry, Katie, I’ll have to tell you all about it later. I need to find a shower and get changed before the media frenzy gets underway.’

Kate threw up her hands and pointed to his chest, blocking him from running back inside.

‘Frenzy! Simon Reynolds, you are not moving from this terrace until I know what is going on. What is it that you are not telling me?’

‘Oh. Right. Yes. A few weeks ago the principal King of my village invited me to become their Chief of Development—the Ngoryi-Fia—which means that I am now officially a royal prince of the tribal kingdom I call home. It is an amazing honour.’ Simon took one glance at Kate’s shocked face and smiled. ‘My coronation is next Saturday, if you’re still around. It could be your only chance to see a geek being crowned as King.’

‘Prince? Royal? King?’ Kate squawked, and Simon grinned at her and shrugged his shoulders as she pressed one hand to her chest in shock.

‘I know that it is hard to take in. I’m still getting used to the idea myself. We only have one royal family in Britain, while in Ghana …?’ He raised his hands in the air. ‘It is a very different story.’

‘But … how? I mean, when did all this happen?’ Kate spluttered, her head still spinning.

‘A few weeks ago. I only hope the press pick up the real story, about how much the community suffered when the cocoa business failed. The whole region needs as much sponsorship as we can get. Your company has done a brilliant job with the pilot scheme I am running, but there are a dozen villages where they need the same support.’

‘Sponsors, story, prince,’ Kate murmured, and shook her head. ‘Any more shocks you would like to spring on me? Just to get them all out of the way at once, as it were?’

Simon frowned and pretended to think. ‘No, I don’t think there is anything else at the moment. But I wasn’t joking about having to put on a united front for the media. Andy wanted to make sure that the press knew that your company were still going to fund the next phase of the pilot study. Sort of a win/win for both of us. That was the plan. If you are up for it?’

She scowled at him. ‘Oh, I am up for it. If we need to create a united front for the media then I’ll see it through.’

Then she smiled and waved at a group of hotel guests who had wandered onto the terrace. ‘Just as long as you don’t expect me to bow and scrape and call you Prince Simon!’ she hissed under her breath.

‘Not at all. We are old friends, after all,’ he replied without a hint of sarcasm. ‘And you know the sacrifices we made to make this happen.’

Kate lifted her chin. At last he had said something she could relate to.

‘Oh, I never had any doubt that you would get the job done. You made it abundantly clear that was the only thing that you were interested in when you left.’

Simon turned and focused his laser-sharp gaze on her face as she continued to smile at the other people behind his back. His voice was just low enough to make sure that his calm words were for her alone.

‘You know that my father made commitments and promises to the people and the villages. He promised that he would not let them down, and I wasn’t prepared to let all that work go to waste. It was my job to continue the work he had started and make good those promises. And that is what I’ve been doing this last three years, Katie. Building on what he started.’

‘Terrific. Then I look forward to hearing your presentation this afternoon.’

The air was fierce between them, crackling with energy and emotion, and the feeling was so intense that Kate was almost grateful when the new arrival of delegates burst through onto the terrace, filling the space with lively chatter and energy and bringing her down to earth with a smash.

She glanced at her watch, then peeked inside the lounge, which was starting to fill up.

‘You’ll have to excuse me. I need to go through the project timelines before the conference presentation starts.’

A shadow of a smile flashed across Simon’s mouth so fast that anyone else would have missed it. Strange how she remembered that little twitch at the side of his mouth so well. It was like an old friend saying hello.

‘Of course. I was hoping to report back to the tribal elders tonight about how the press events went, so it would be nice to make a start—Miss O’Neill.’

It was the first time he had used her surname. And the way he threw it down to her like a gauntlet across the face shocked her more than she wanted to admit. Three years ago she had been forced to choose between keeping her own promises and helping Simon keep the promises his dead father had made. Now he was getting his own back. And she was going to have to take it because, like it or not, it looked as if Simon Reynolds was her project leader, and her promotion depended on her ability to work with him. One to one.