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‘You catch lobsters?’ he said cautiously.
‘We weigh them, sex them, tag then and let them go,’ she said briefly from the front.
‘You have a boat?’
‘The university supplies one. But I only go when Zoe can come with me.’
‘It’s really fun,’ Zoe said. ‘I like catching the little ones. You have to be really careful when you pick them up. If you grab them behind their necks they can’t reach and scratch you.’
‘We have lobsters on the Diamond Isles,’ he told her. ‘My friend Nikos is a champion fisherman.’
‘Do you fish?’ Zoe demanded.
‘I did when I was a boy.’
They chatted on. Elsa was left to listen. And fret.
He was good, she conceded. He was wriggling his way into Zoe’s trust and that wasn’t something lightly achieved. Like her father before her, Zoe was almost excruciatingly shy, and that shyness had been made worse by people’s reaction to her scars.
Stefanos hadn’t once referred to her scars. To the little girl it must be as if he hadn’t noticed them.
The concept, for Zoe, must be huge. Here was someone out of her papa’s past, wanting to talk to her about interesting stuff like what he’d done on Khryseis when he was a boy with her papa.
She shouldn’t be driving him back into town. She should be asking him to dinner, even asking him to sleep over to give Zoe as much contact as she could get.
Only there were other issues. Like the Crown. Like the fact that he’d said that Zoe had to return to Khryseis. Like crazy stuff that she couldn’t consider.
Like asking a prince of the blood whether he’d like to sleep on her living room settee, she thought suddenly, and the idea was so ridiculous she almost smiled.
He was leaving tomorrow. He’d stopped talking about the possibility of Zoe coming with him. Maybe he’d given up.
She glanced into the rear-view mirror and he looked up and met her eyes.
No, she thought, and fear settled back around her heart. Prince Stefanos of Khryseis looked like a man who didn’t give up—on anything.
The township of Waratah Cove had two three-star hotels and one luxury six-star resort out on the headland past the town.
Without asking, she turned the car towards the headland and he didn’t correct her.
Money, she thought bleakly. If she could have the cost of one night’s accommodation in this place…
‘Can you stop here?’ Stefanos asked and she jammed her foot on the brake and stopped dead. Maybe a bit too suddenly.
‘Wow,’ Zoe said. ‘Are you crabby or something?’
‘Or something,’ she said neutrally, glancing again at Stefanos in the rear-view mirror.
‘Your nanny thinks I spend too much money,’ he said, amused, and she flushed. Was she so obvious?
‘Elsa’s not my nanny,’ Zoe said, amused herself.
‘What is she?’
‘She’s just my Elsa.’
My Elsa. It was said with such sureness that he knew he could never break this bond. If he was to take Zoe back to Khryseis, he needed to take them both.
He had to get this right.
‘So why did you want me to stop here?’ Elsa asked.
‘Because the ambassador to the Diamond Isles leaked to the media that I was coming here,’ he said bitterly. ‘That’s why I had to find myself a uniform and attend the reception. I’ve already had to bribe—heavily—the chauffeur they arranged for me so he wouldn’t tell anyone my location. I imagine there’ll be cameramen outside my hotel, wanting to know where I’ve been, and I don’t want a media circus descending on Zoe. I can walk the last couple of hundred yards.’
‘Maybe you should check your trousers,’ Elsa said, and there was suddenly laughter in her voice. ‘Cat fur isn’t a great look for a Royal Prince.’
‘Thanks very much,’ he said, and smiled.
And, unaccountably, she smiled back.
Hers was a gorgeous smile. Warm and natural and full of humour. If he’d met this woman under normal circumstances…
Maybe he’d never have noticed her, he thought. She didn’t move in the circles he moved in. Plus he liked his women groomed. Sophisticated. Able to hold their own in any company.
She’d be able to hold her own. This was one feisty woman.
He needed to learn more about her. He needed to hit the phones, extend his research, come up with an offer she couldn’t refuse.
Unaccountably, he didn’t want to get out of the car. The battered family wagon, loaded with lobster pots, smelling faintly—no, more than faintly—of fish, unaccountably seemed a good place to stay.
He thought suddenly of his apartment in Manhattan. Of his consulting suite with its soft grey carpet, its trendy chrome furniture, its soft piped music.
They were worlds apart—he and Mrs Elsa Murdoch.
But now their lives needed to overlap, enough to keep the island safe. The islanders safe.
Zoe safe.
Until today he’d seen Zoe as a problem—a shock, to be muted before the islanders found out.
Now, suddenly that obstacle was human—a little girl with scars, attached to a woman who loved her.
They were waiting for him to get out of the car. If he left it any longer a media vehicle might come this way. One cameraman and Zoe would run, he thought, and it’d be Elsa who ran with her.
Elsa wasn’t family. It wasn’t her role to care for Zoe.
Forget the roles, he told himself sharply. Now he must protect the pair of them. He climbed from the car and tried to dust himself off. He had ginger cat fur on black trousers.
Suddenly Elsa was out of the car as well, watching as he shrugged on his jacket.
‘Do your buttons up,’ she said, almost kindly. ‘You look much more princely with your buttons done up. And hold still. If a car comes I’ll stop, but let’s see what we can achieve before that happens.’
And, before he knew what she intended, she’d twisted him round so she could attack the backs of his legs and the seat of his trousers.
With a hairbrush?
‘It’s actually a brush Zoe uses for her dolls,’ she told him, sweeping the cat fur off in long efficient strokes. ‘But see—I’ve rolled sticky tape the wrong way round around its bristles. It’s very effective.’
He was so confounded he submitted. He was standing on a headland in the middle of nowhere while a woman called Mrs Elsa Murdoch attacked his trousers with a dolls’ hairbrush.
She brushed until she was satisfied. Then she straightened. ‘Turn round and let me look at you,’ she said.
He turned.
‘Very nice,’ she said. ‘Back to being a prince again. What do you think, Zoe? Is he ready for the cameras?’
‘His top button’s undone,’ Zoe said.
‘That’s because it’s hot,’ he retorted but Elsa shook her head.
‘No class at all,’ she said soulfully. ‘I don’t know what you modern day royals are coming to.’ She carefully fastened his top button while he felt…he felt…He didn’t know how he felt; he was only aware that when the button was fastened and she stepped back there was a sharp stab of something that might even be loss.
‘There you go, Your Highness,’ she said, like a valet who’d just done a good job making a recalcitrant prince respectable. ‘Off you go and face the world while Zoe and I get back to our cats and our lobster pots.’
And she was in the car, turned and driving away before he had a chance to reply.
His first task was to get his breath back. To face the media with some sort of dignity.
His second task was to talk to the hotel concierge.
‘I need some extensive shopping done on my behalf,’ he said. ‘Fast. Oh, and I need to hire a car. No, not a limousine. Anything not smelling of fish would be acceptable.’
Then he rang Prince Alexandros back in the Diamond Isles. As well as being a friend, Alexandros was Crown Prince of Sappheiros, and Alex more than anyone else knew what was at stake—why he was forced to be in Australia in royal uniform when he should be in theatre garb back in Manhattan.
‘Problem?’ his friend asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘What don’t you know?’
‘The child’s been burned. She’s dreadfully scarred.’
There was a sharp intake of breath. ‘Hell. Is she…’
‘She’s okay. It’s healing. But my idea of leaving her on the island…She’ll have special needs.’
‘You were never going to be able to leave her anyway.’
‘I don’t have a choice,’ he snapped. ‘You know I can’t leave my work yet—I can’t break promises. But there’s a nanny. A good one. A Mrs Elsa Murdoch. She’s not like any Mrs Elsa Murdoch I’ve ever met.’
There was a lengthy silence on the end of the phone. Then, ‘How many Mrs Elsa Murdochs have you met?’ Alexandros asked, with a certain amount of caution.
Uh-oh. Alex and Stefanos had known each other since they were kids. Maybe Alex had heard something in his voice that he didn’t necessarily want to share.
‘Just the one,’ he said.
Another silence. ‘She’s young?’ Alex ventured.
‘Yes.’
‘Aha.’
‘There’s no aha about it.’
‘There’s a Mr Elsa Murdoch?’
‘No.’
‘I rest my case,’ he said. ‘Hey, Stefanos, like me, you’ve spent so much of your life pushing your career…avoiding family. Maybe it’s time you did a heads up and noticed the Elsa Murdochs of this world.’
‘Alex…’ He couldn’t think what to add next.
‘You want something more?’ Alex asked. ‘Something specific? If not…my wife’s waiting for me. Not a bad thing for a prince to have, you know. A wife. Especially if that prince needs to care for a child with injuries.’
‘This isn’t a joke.’
‘I don’t believe I was joking,’ Alex threw back at him. ‘Okay, so this Mrs Elsa Murdoch…You want to tell me about her?’
How had he got himself into this conversation? He didn’t have a clue.
‘I’ll leave you to your wife,’ he said stiffly.
‘Excellent,’ Alex said. ‘I’ll leave you to your Mrs Elsa Murdoch. And your little Crown Princess. Steve…’
‘Yes?’
‘Take care. And keep an open mind. Speaking as a man who’s just married…it can make all the difference in the world.’
Elsa lay awake far into the night, staring at a life she’d never envisaged. A life without Zoe.
She’d never thought of it.
Four years ago she’d been happily married, full of plans for the future, working with Matty and her good friends and their little girl.
One stupid drunken driver—who’d walked away unscathed—and she was left with nothing but the care of Zoe.
Up until today she’d thought Zoe depended totally on her. Up until now she’d never really considered that the reverse was true as well.
Without Zoe…
