Conveniently Wed To The Prince

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He raised an eyebrow. ‘Humour me. It’s a hypothetical question.’

‘I don’t know... I would have to see what my father wished to do—whether he wanted to stay on at Il Boschetto di Sole, what your plans for the grove would be.’

‘OK. So let’s say your father decides to retire, live out the rest of his life peacefully in his home or elsewhere in Lycander.’ A memory of her utter focus on her work earlier came to him. ‘What about marketing? Would you like to give that a go? Build a career?’

There was a flash in her blue eyes; he blinked and it was gone.

‘My career is on Il Boschetto di Sole.’

‘What is your job there?’

‘I’ve helped out with most things, but I was working in admin before...before I came to London.’

‘Tell me about what you were working on earlier today. In the suite.’

A hesitation and then a shrug. A pause as the waiter arrived with their starters. She thanked him, speared a king prawn and then started to speak.

‘Lamberts have a pretty major client in the publishing field and they’re looking to rebrand their crime line. I’ve been working on that.’

Her voice started out matter-of-fact, but as she talked her features lit up and her gestures were expressive of the sheer enthusiasm the project had ignited in her.

‘I’ve helped put a survey together—you know, a sort of list of twenty questions about what makes a reader choose a new book or author, what sort of cover would inspire them to give something a try... Blood and gore versus a good-looking protagonist. Also, do people prefer series or stand-alones? We’ll need to analyse all the data and come up with some options and then get reader opinion across a broad spectrum. Because we also want to attract readers who don’t usually read that genre. Then we need some social media, some—’

She broke off.

‘Oh, God. How long have I been talking for? You should have stopped me before you went comatose with boredom.’

‘Impossible.’

‘To stop me?’

Her stricken look made him smile. ‘No! I meant it would have been impossible for me to have been bored. When you speak of this project you light up with sheer passion.’

The word caused him to pause, conjuring up other types of passion, and he wondered if her thoughts had gone the same way.

Unable to stop himself, he reached out, gently stroked her cheek. ‘You are flushed with enthusiasm...your eyes are alight, your whole body is engaged.’

Stop right there. Move your hand away.

Yet that was nigh on impossible. The softness of her skin, her small gasp, the way her teeth had caught her under lip as her eyes widened... All he wanted to do was kiss her.

Cool it, Petrelli.

Failing finding a handy waiter with an ice bucket, he was going to have to find some inner ice.

Leaning back, he forced his voice into objective mode. ‘Sounds to me as though what you want to do is pursue a career in marketing. Not take up a job on Il Boschetto di Sole.’

She blinked, as if his words had broken a spell, and her lips pressed together and her eyes narrowed as she shook her head. Shook it hard enough that tendrils of hair fell loose from her strategically messy bun.

‘That is not for me. I couldn’t do what you did. Walk away from my duty to pursue a career.’

Her words served as effectively as an ice bucket could have and he couldn’t hold back an instinctive sound of denial. ‘That’s not exactly how it went down.’

‘So how did it go down? As I remember it, you decided to renounce Lycander and your royal duties to live your own life—away from a country you felt you had no allegiance to. But you were happy to accept a severance hand-out from Alphonse to help set you up in the property business.’

Gall twisted his insides that she should believe that.

‘Alphonse gave me nothing.’

And Stefan wouldn’t have taken it if he had tried.

‘I ended up in property because it was the only job I could find.’

He could still taste the bitter tang of grief, fear and desperation. He’d arrived in London buoyed up by a sense of freedom and relief that he’d finally escaped his father, determined to find out what had happened to his mother. His discoveries had caused a cold anger to burn inside him alongside a raging inferno of guilt.

His mother had suffered a serious mental breakdown. The staff at the hostel that had taken her in had had no idea of her identity, but to Stefan’s eternal gratitude they had looked after her. Though Eloise had never really recovered, relapsing and lurching from periods of depression to episodes of relative calm until illness had overtaken her.

In his anger and grief he had started his search for a job under an assumed name, changed his surname by deed poll and got himself new documentation, determined to prove himself without any reference to his royal status.

It hadn’t been easy. And he would be grateful for ever to the small independent estate agent who’d taken pity on him. His need for commission had honed his hitherto non-existent sales skills and negotiating had come naturally to him.

‘Luckily I was a natural and it piqued my interest.’

Holly tipped her head to one side. ‘But how did you go from that job to a multibillion-pound business?’

Was that suspicion in her voice? The idea that she still believed Alphonse had funded him shouldn’t matter but it did.

‘I worked hard and I saved hard. I worked multiple jobs, I persuaded a bank to take a chance on me, I studied the market and invested in properties until I had a diverse portfolio. Some properties I bought, did up and sold, others I rented out. Once my portfolio became big enough I set up a company. It all spiralled from there.’

And when it had he had resumed his own identity, wanting the world to know what he had made of himself.