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
