style="font-size:15px;"> Swallowing, she put one of the plastic toys upright on the board with a click, pushing away the unruly X-rated images in her head. ‘Soldiers, huh?’
‘It’s the closest I’m allowed to get to any battlefront,’ he muttered, faux mournfully.
‘You know you can play with this soldier any time?’ she murmured, still enjoying the way she’d made the colour in his cheeks deepen with her lap-dance request.
‘I intend to—once I’ve conquered her every last defence.’ The truly relaxed, flirtatious Eduardo had returned. ‘I’m thinking lap-dancing and whisky...’
But they played the board game for the duration of the flight. It didn’t take long for him to run through the rules and for her to grasp the idea. He was a good tactician, but so was she. Both advanced quickly to secure large tracts of the board. Both claimed territory the other had held. Both took prisoners. Both held the board steady on the table through the descent. And once the plane had landed and slowed to a stop Eduardo met her gaze with a belligerent edge to his jaw.
‘I’m not leaving until you have capitulated control of the south-west quarter,’ he said.
‘Well, I’m not leaving until I have your ultimate surrender,’ she answered smugly.
‘You do not do things by halves, do you?’ He shook the dice furiously. ‘And you never give in.’
‘As if you do!’
Their eyes met again, the frisson of tension building. She liked it that he was as determined, as competitive, as dominant as she. She liked so damn much about him. And the more she got to know him, the more she liked. Which made her even more determined to beat him—to have something over him, just the once.
She had no idea how much time passed before his phone buzzed. He ignored it the first time. And the second. It wasn’t until the seventh consecutive buzz of the device that he finally reacted.
With an irritated sigh he read the messages and then looked up, his expression grim. ‘We have to go to the palace—now.’
He sent a quick text reply and less than a minute later the aircraft door was opened.
The back of her neck prickled as she saw the uniformed attendants. ‘How long have we been sitting here?’
‘Too long,’ he admitted wryly.
She stood and realised he was right. ‘I’m stiff.’ She considered herself to be fitter than most, but the sailing had used muscles she didn’t know existed.
‘If you’re lucky—’ Eduardo paused at the top of the stairs and turned back to send her a heated look ‘—I’ll give you a massage when we get home.’
‘Don’t forget the lap dance.’
She stepped out after him. He took her hand and walked her into the terminal. More uniformed staff whisked them along a private corridor and out to a waiting limousine before she could believe it. Her smile faded when she saw Matteo sitting in the car waiting for them, an iPad in his hand.
‘Problem?’ Eduardo asked as he opted to sit beside his lawyer.
‘I’m sorry, Eduardo.’ Matteo glanced back at the screen. ‘I tried, but there was no way to hold back the flood.’
Stella’s blood iced.
STELLA SAID NOTHING Eduardo grabbed the iPad and stared at the screen. He swiped it a few times, scrolling down. Then he looked at her. Without saying anything he tilted the tablet so she could see what he’d been reading.
Eduardo’s Secret Soldier Bride!
The headline was emblazoned across the top and there was a picture beneath... Shock rolled through Stella.
‘How did they get that photo?’ All the amusement of the past few hours disappeared. ‘Someone leaked it?’
Eduardo was like granite. Expressionless. Unmoved.
‘Not Giulia?’
‘No.’ Eduardo shook his head. ‘She has been in service with my family for decades.’
‘All her life?’
‘All mine,’ he replied shortly. ‘She was my nanny.’
‘Really?’ She was momentarily diverted, touched that he’d wanted his old carer present at his marriage. And now she understood why Giulia had worked so quietly and endlessly to help her get ready. The woman had a soft spot for the spoilt second son. ‘Then who?’
He frowned and turned away. ‘I will find out. But it does not matter—it was going to become public anyway.’
Stella looked at the photograph, scarcely recognising herself. She was standing just outside the chapel, at the moment when Giulia had gone to check all was ready. They must have Photoshopped it because she looked soft and pretty, and so happy, holding that bouquet of roses up with a small smile curving her lips.
She scrolled down and read the text. Her name. Her history. Her entire service record, there for everyone to read. Horrified, she scanned the words.
‘How did they find all this out?’ she asked. ‘How did this happen?’ She squinted at the screen. ‘Do they know about—?’
‘It is not mentioned.’ Eduardo guessed her concern and answered, flicking a glance at Matteo, who was busy scrolling through another iPad. ‘I’ve checked the other papers—they’ve picked up on the story but there is nothing.’
It was all suddenly very real. And yet it wasn’t real.
‘It says we’ve been in love for ages.’ She could hardly speak for the shock. ‘That we fell in love in the palace. That you met me there because of my father...’ The Prince and the General’s daughter. Star-crossed lovers whose relationship was forbidden by the Crown Prince...
‘You might want to hit Refresh,’ Matteo said apologetically.
Stella stared as new pictures were loaded onto the screen. There were the ones from the café. And then pictures of them walking across the tarmac from the ‘baby jet’. Pictures taken only five minutes ago. They looked dishevelled, in their water-stained shorts and tee shirts, her hair in a loose, wild ponytail.
The headline made a meal of them having spent an hour on the tarmac before disembarking. They’d speculated that it had been so that the new Princess could make herself pretty before being snapped by the paparazzi... But then she and Eduardo had stepped out and she’d looked like that. Apparently it was ‘obvious’ that they’d spent the time engaged in ‘other pursuits’. But she knew the flush she’d worn wasn’t from orgasmic pleasure but board-game victory.
Before her eyes crude joke after crude joke filled the ‘comments’ section.
‘I
