child.
She hugged her stomach where the tiny life inside her was at that very moment growing and developing.
That little life was the most precious thing in the world.
A black briefcase on the desk caught Catalina’s attention. The room was so impeccably tidy, with everything filed away, not a stray pen or sheet of paper to be seen, that the case stuck out like a beacon to her eyes.
She put a thumb on each clasp and pressed. Expecting it to be locked, she nearly jumped when the clasps sprang apart.
Feeling guilty for being nosy, she nonetheless carefully prised the briefcase open. The very last thing she expected to see in it were the stacks of twenty-euro notes.
* * *
Nathaniel and his architect sat in his hotel suite poring over the brief notes James had made on their earlier trip to plot of land Nathaniel was in the process of buying. He’d employed James as architect on his last handful of developments and liked the way he never tried to impose his own vision on the projects. Nathaniel would sketch his thoughts onto paper then sit back and wait for James to produce the blueprints.
The past week had been extremely fruitful. His house-hunting team had found a handful of prospective homes for him to check out too. All in all, everything was proceeding exactly as he had...
His phone buzzed, Alma’s name flashing up on the screen.
‘Excuse me,’ he apologised to James. Accepting the call, he put the phone to his ear.
‘Nathaniel?’ There was stark panic in his PA’s voice.
‘What’s the matter?’
He heard her swallow. ‘She’s gone.’
‘Who?’
‘The Princess. She’s gone.’
‘How can she be gone?’
‘Clotilde went to her room at the usual time and she wasn’t there. The concierge says she appeared from the apartment’s elevator at five in the morning and asked him to book a taxi for her.’
‘Did he say where she went?’
‘No, but we’ve traced the driver. She went to the airport.’
Somehow he managed to keep his tone tempered. ‘Alma, tell me how the Princess was able to bypass the security guards.’ He had guards permanently stationed at the three exits of the apartment block.
‘The taxi collected her in the underground car park, which she entered using the staff elevator. She had a headscarf on—the guards had no way of knowing it was her.’ Alma’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘That’s not all. Most of the money from your French club has gone too. The Princess must have taken it.’
Nathaniel’s first reaction was to laugh. Catalina had stolen his money and scarpered? The idea was beyond ridiculous. Catalina was the most dutiful and conscientious person he had ever met.
But then something snaked up his stomach and clenched around his chest, a sudden coldness freezing his blood in an instant. Had she gone willingly? Or had she been coerced? Was she at that moment someone’s hostage?
Had her brother taken her? There was something about their sibling relationship that sent sirens blaring in him. Catalina had warned him that Dominic meant him harm. Did that harm extend to Catalina herself?
‘Where did she fly to?’ he asked harshly.
‘We can’t get that information from the authorities at the airport.’
‘I’m coming back.’ He disconnected the call and immediately called his pilot, ordering his private jet and crew to prepare for departure within the hour.
Fighting to keep the dread at bay, he made a string of calls, throwing clothes in his suitcase as he spoke, not wanting to waste precious seconds by calling staff to pack for him. By the time he was done and hurrying through the hotel’s lobby to his driver waiting outside, he’d hit enough brick walls to know he had to call in outside help.
He had to call the King of Monte Cleure and tell him his eldest daughter, pregnant and newly married, had disappeared.
* * *
Catalina carried her small bag of groceries back to the cabin house she’d rented in Spain’s Benasque Valley, the cold breeze stinging her face. Arctic snow boots kept her feet dry as she safely crunched through the settled snow, her faux-fur-lined gloves keeping her hands warm.
The stone cabin, one of a cluster of similar-looking dwellings, overlooked the frozen Esera River. Her tourist neighbours spent their days skiing, leaving Catalina to the blissful silence.
Inside, the warmth of the log fire greeted her and she shrugged off her thick coat, removed her hat, scarf, gloves and boots, and filled up the kettle.
It had taken her five days to psych herself up to leave the cabin. Necessity had forced her hand when the cupboards had run bare. Now she awoke each morning looking forward to a walk into the town of Benasque. Until the morning she’d walked out of Nathaniel’s apartment she had never left a building on her own. She had never gone anywhere on her own before.
When she’d left, she hadn’t had a destination in mind, just a stone-cold determination to get out of the country. The compulsion had been so sudden and so strong that she’d obeyed; not thinking, acting solely on instinct. She had changed into a pair of ordinary-looking jeans and an ordinary-looking black sweater, covered her hair in a silk scarf, grabbed her passport—only Monte Cleure’s ruling monarch was allowed to travel without one—and selected her roomiest handbag. She’d then treaded carefully back to Nathaniel’s office and transferred as much of the cash in the briefcase to her handbag that could physically fit.
Escaping the building and getting to the airport had been problem free. On arrival, she’d searched the departing flights and Andorra La Vella had immediately jumped out at her. She’d known even as she’d queued for her ticket that she wouldn’t stay there but seeing the name Andorra had brought to mind the town of Benasque, which she knew was over the border on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees Mountains.
She’d paid for her ticket with the stolen money. It had been the first time she’d physically handed money over for anything. The palace had always paid for everything. Other than the raised brow she’d received from the woman serving her when she’d checked Catalina’s passport, no one had batted an eyelid at her, although she had heard one child saying to her mother as they passed that she looked like Princess Catalina.
There had been a moment of panic when the enormity of what she was doing finally set in but she’d smothered it with thoughts of her growing baby. Those idle weeks in Nathaniel’s apartment had brought her whole life into focus. And it wasn’t a life she wanted for her child. If she didn’t leave Monte Cleure now she knew she might never have the chance again.
It was the moment she hadn’t known she’d been waiting for all her life. It was an opportunity that would never come again. If she couldn’t take the freedom beckoning to her for her own sake, she needed to grab it for her baby.
But what had started almost like a great adventure had quickly turned into something far more
