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‘No, he doesn’t,’ she said, so softly that no one but Alex could hear.
‘He does.’
‘Well, maybe a bit,’ she conceded. ‘But then Mia looks like me. And Giorgos… Giorgos had the Sappheiros royal family features. Who else do I know who might have those features? Work out the dates, Alex. Go figure.’
And, with a faint smile, the result of sheer willpower, she pushed past him.
And that was it. A moment later she was in the limousine. Her baggage was in the trunk and they were moving away.
Alex didn’t make a move to follow. He simply stood on the yacht in the warm sunshine and stared after her.
It was done, she thought, shaking with reaction. She’d reclaimed her son.
She could get on with her life.
For days Lily held her breath. She didn’t think there was a danger that Alex would try to take Michales forcibly—but she didn’t know for sure.
She’d half expected a media frenzy. By reclaiming Michales she was changing the succession of three royal families. The kingdom would dissolve, and the old principalities would take their place. From what she’d figured from reading a potted history of the Isles on the Internet, Alex would now be Crown Prince of Sappheiros. He’d be the real ruler of one island, rather than the caretaker of three.
But it seemed that whatever Alex planned, he wasn’t making it public. He hadn’t publicised Michales’s disappearance either, even though an international hunt might well have blown her cover.
His silence unnerved her, but at least it gave her time to get to know her son. To fall more deeply in love than she’d ever thought she could be.
‘It’s not the living arrangements you’re used to,’ she told her tiny son as she introduced him to his new home. Her window looked out over the boatyard. Her boss and his team were at work right under her window, stretching timbers over the frame of a skiff.
She’d soon be down there. The knowledge settled her. Spiros wanted her back and she wanted to be there. If she left her window open she could hear Michales cry, and Spiros’s wife would be only too delighted to help.
This could work.
Meanwhile she sat on her faded quilt on her saggy bed and cuddled her son.
She could make him smile, and she was well enough to enjoy him. Life stretched before her, full of endless possibilities. Surely there could be no greater happiness?
Her only cloud? Alex would come, she knew this wasn’t over.
Alex—oh, if things could only be different.
They couldn’t be different. She forced herself to relax. She forced herself to be optimistic, for there was no going back. This might be Alex’s baby, but first and foremost he was hers.
It had taken Alex almost a week to sort things out in his head. Even then they didn’t feel sorted. Where to go to from here? He couldn’t simply take what Lily told him at face value, tell the islanders they’d been conned and move forward.
But at last, finally, he was starting to accept what she’d told him as the truth.
For the test results Lily had given the immigration official were watertight. Alex had stood by the man’s side as he’d rung the French authorities, and he’d heard the outrage that their tests be questioned. Lily had gone to enormous trouble to ensure these were seen as legitimate. She’d organised independent witnesses as DNA samples had been taken. She’d even agreed to have witnesses as she’d been examined to prove she’d borne a child five months ago.
Michales was her baby.
And… his? Was she serious?
He remembered the little boy as he’d last seen him, sleeping in his mother’s arms. Dark lashes. Thick black curls. Smiling even in sleep.
He was beautiful.
He was his son.
It was too big to take in.
But, believe it or not, this baby was proven to be not the natural child of Mia and Giorgos. There’d been no official adoption—only deception.
The legal ramifications were mind-blowing.
He’d needed help. He’d needed the best constitutional lawyers money could buy, and the best political advisors. He’d consulted them—they’d pored over ancient documents, they’d scratched their heads and they’d outlined facts he didn’t want to know.
This was impossible. He needed a magic wand so the past few months could disappear and he could rule without the encumbrance of a baby.
His son.
The more he thought of the lie that had been perpetrated, the sicker he became. That Giorgos and Mia had deliberately deceived the islanders… That Lily had consented…
Had she deliberately seduced him? It had to be faced. Had it been a deliberate plan by the three of them, with Mia pulling out after Giorgos’s death only when she’d realised she had no financial independence?
Was Mia’s abandonment why Lily had changed her mind and taken her baby back? And what was this illness she’d talked about? She’d been fine six weeks ago at his coronation.
Enquiries to the doctors she’d cited had been stonewalled, citing privacy. Privacy with the succession at stake? Hell, he was almost up to bribing hospital officials to get the answers he wanted.
Not quite. Not yet. He’d ask her directly first.
He’d talked on, privately, to lawyer after lawyer, to advisor after advisor. He’d talked to Stefanos and to Nikos.
He’d thought of one disaster after another…
And when they’d told him the only path that was sure to save the islands he’d felt ill.
Finally, bleak and still unbelieving, he returned to the dockyards, to the address Lily had given the authorities as her permanent home. To the apartment over the boatyard he’d visited once before.
He went alone, slipping in the back way, not wanting to be noticed. Hoping like hell that Lily had rid herself of the bodyguards she’d had with her the week before.
He knocked at the door to her first-floor apartment and he thought this must be a mistake—she’d never live like this. Not Mia’s sister.
No one answered. He twisted the doorknob, expecting it to be locked.
It gave under his hand.
Her apartment was one room, simply furnished. There was a double bed, big and saggy, covered with a patchwork quilt that had seen better days. There was a tiny table with a single kitchen chair, a battered armchair, a tiny television, a rod and curtain in the corner constituting a wardrobe.
There was a cot beside the open window. With… With… Michales? Alone?
No. Ignore the cot. He didn’t have space in his head to look at the little person in the cot.
Would he ever?
What sort of a mother was she to leave him alone? Anyone could walk in here.
She was just like Mia.
Concentrate on other things, he thought fiercely. He needed some sort of handle on Lily. Some awareness of who she was.
The apartment was furnished as if the owner had no money to spare, but it didn’t scream poverty. Gingham curtains framed the windows. The windows were open, letting in sunlight and the sounds from the boatyard below. There were pots of petunias on the windowsills, and a seagull was balancing on one leg looking hopefully inside.
It looked… great.
It also looked about as far from a royal residence as it could get.
Where was Lily?
Michales… his son… was sound asleep.
His son.
He could just pick him up and take him, he thought. How easy would that be?
What did he want with a baby? With this baby?
With… his baby?
He walked over to the window—still carefully not looking at the cot—and glanced out. And there was Lily.
She was right below him, deep in the hull of an embryonic boat. The boat’s ribs stretched around her, bare, raw timber. The guy he’d met twelve months before—Lily’s boss?—was hauling a length of wood from a steaming vat.
To his amazement, it was Lily calling the shots. She was dressed in serviceable bib-and-brace overalls, workmanlike boots, a baseball cap and thick leather gloves to her elbows. She received the timber from Spiros and her orders flew, curt and incisive.
Her whole attention was on the plank. They had it in place and she was hauling it by hand, pushing, twisting… Two other men were helping, using their brute strength to help her, but Lily was doing the guiding.
He watched on, fascinated. Only when the wood was a fully formed rib, one of the vast timbers forming the skeleton of the new hull, did she stand back and look at it as a whole.
‘That’s fantastic,’ she called. ‘Ten down and a hundred and sixty to go? We’ll get them done by teatime.’
There was laughter and a communal groan.
She laughed with them. She was… one of the boys? The men were deferring to her with respect.
‘I need to check on Michales,’ she was saying. ‘He’s due for a feed. You think you can do the next one without me?’ She glanced up at the window.
She saw him.
He’d expected shock. Maybe even fear. Instead, her eyebrows rose, just a fraction. She gave him a curt nod, as if acknowledging past acquaintance, or maybe that she’d attend to him shortly, then deliberately turned her back on him. She strolled over to talk to Spiros.
Spiros was about to lower another plank, but he was looking at it doubtfully. Now he swore and thrust it aside.
‘It’s not worth it. There’s a flaw in the middle and the rest are the same. They’ll break before they ever bend. Enough. You go and feed your little one, and I’ll send the boys to get more.’ He smiled at Her with real affection. ‘Don’t you keep my godson waiting.’ Then he, too, glanced up at the window. His smile died.
Spiros stared at Alex for a long minute. What had Lily told him?
Nothing favourable, clearly.
‘Hey, look who the cat brought home,’ he said, his tone softly threatening. ‘It seems we have company.’
His big body was pure aggression. If Spiros had been Lily’s father the message couldn’t have been clearer. ‘You mess with Lily, you mess with me.’
With us. The entire team was gazing at him now. This was hostile territory.
There was a slight noise behind him. He turned and a middle-aged woman was standing in the doorway. Her arms were crossed across her ample breasts. She looked immovable and as aggressive as the men on the docks.
Maybe he couldn’t just pick up Michales and take him.
‘What do you want?’ Spiros demanded from below. ‘What the hell are you doing in Lily’s apartment?’
‘It’s okay, Spiros,’ Lily said. ‘I’ve been expecting him. Though I shouldn’t have left it unlocked.’
‘It’s okay,’ the woman called to Lily. ‘I’m here.’ She stalked over to the cot and put her body between him and his… the baby.
He couldn’t look at… the baby.
Unnerved, he looked down at the docks again. Lily was only ten feet under him, giving him a bird’s-eye view. She was too thin, he thought. Her bib-and-brace overalls were loose and baggy. Her glorious curls were caught up under a boy’s baseball cap, worn back to front. She had a smudge of grease down one cheek.
She looked about fifteen.
But then, ‘I’m hoping he’s here to organise paternity payments,’ she told Spiros, and he stopped thinking of what she looked like.
‘He’s your baby’s father?’ Spiros demanded.
‘He is. This is Alexandros, Prince Regent of Sappheiros.’
If he’d expected a bit of deference he would have been disappointed. Spiros’s aggression simply doubled. Tripled. And the gasp from the woman at the cot was one of indignation and affront.
‘So where the hell have you been?’ Spiros demanded from below. ‘Alexandros of Sappheiros. A prince of the blood, leaving Lily alone with a child… What were you thinking?’
This was crazy. He didn’t need these accusations.
He should go down.
Not with the amount of aggression directed at him, he decided. He could talk a lot more reasonably from up here. Especially if he kept his back turned to Madam Fury.
‘I searched for her,’ he told the boat-builder, trying to keep his voice moderate. Reasonable. ‘You know I did.’
‘Once,’ Spiros said, and spat his disgust. ‘You came here once. If she’d been my woman I would have hunted her to the ends of the earth.’
‘I’m not his woman,’ Lily retorted.
