mother…’
‘Don’t get me wrong. My mother hates the royal bit as much as I do. We’re not doing this for personal gain, Kelly.’ He hesitated. ‘Look, it’s too much. I hoped I’d given the press the slip, which would have given you a few days to sort things out. But tomorrow morning the press will be camped outside my accommodation…’
‘You’re not staying here?’
‘How can I?’
‘You’ve gone back to the Prince Edward?’
‘I’m being put up in the mayoral residence,’ he said ruefully. ‘They think I’m home in bed now, getting over jet lag, instead of here, trying to convince you to come with me back to Alp de Ciel.’
‘I don’t want to.’ She sounded like a child—petulant—and she winced but he looked at her with understanding.
‘Of course you don’t. But this way you’ll have your son.’
‘There must be another way.’
‘There is,’ he said reluctantly. ‘We could set you up somewhere else, some gated community where you’d be safe. You have all the royal allowance you’ve never touched, and if it’s used to care for Matty even you might swallow your principles and use it. But you’d be even more isolated than you are here.’
‘I’m not isolated.’
‘I think you are,’ he said softly. ‘You’ve been so badly hurt that you’ve run, not just back to Australia but back in time. Kelly, you’re the mother of the Crown Prince of Alp de Ciel. You knew that when you bore Matty. The crown is his birthright, and it’s your duty to be his mother.’
‘But your mother loves him. His Aunt Laura…’
‘Are you saying you don’t want to be his mother?’
‘No, I…’
‘He doesn’t know you yet,’ Rafael said. ‘He will. He’s already proud of what you do—fascinated. He already thinks you’re beautiful. Trust takes time, and so does love. Kelly, can you give that to him?’
‘But to go back…’
To where she’d been stripped of everything that was important to her—her heart, her pride, her son. How could she go back?
‘You won’t be alone. My mother will be there.’
The grip on her hands grew stronger. ‘You didn’t meet her last time. She comes across to Manhattan in the worst of Alp de Ciel’s winter and spends time with me. You were at the castle for only six weeks after the old prince died, in the last stages of your pregnancy and after Mathieu’s birth. The fuss was such that my mother stayed longer with me and when she returned your son was there but you were gone. You’ll love her.’
‘I don’t do love,’ she snapped and he stilled.
‘Are you saying you don’t love Matty?’
‘Of…of course…’
‘Of course you do,’ he agreed softly. ‘Love isn’t something you can turn on and off again at will.’
‘And you know this how?’
He winced. A shadow of pain crossed his face and she thought, I know nothing about him. Nothing. A toy-maker from Manhattan. The Prince Regent of Alp de Ciel.
Rafael.
‘You need to come,’ he said softly but she was replaying the conversation over in her head, trying to sort it out. There was something not right.
You won’t be alone. My mother will be there.
‘Will you be there?’ she asked. She’d hit a nerve. A muscle moved at the side of his mouth. Infinitesimal—but there was something.
‘I’ll be there when I need to be.’
‘You’ll be there when you need to be.’ She almost gasped. ‘Prince Regent of Alp de Ciel…a country that’s desperate for reorganization… There when you need to be?’
‘Yes.’
‘So…once a week? A week a year?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Then I’m not going,’ she said flatly, suddenly sure that she was right. ‘The minute I step into the goldfish bowl there’ll be no going back. I know how hard it was to shake the press off last time. I had to change my name, change my country, change my whole way of life. I can’t do it twice. And you… You’ll be there when you can. What sort of commitment is that?’
‘Do you want me to be there?’
‘No. No!’ She should pull away from his hands but she didn’t. What she was trying to say was too important. She almost needed personal contact to get it through.
‘You’re asking me to trust,’ she said softly, thinking it as she spoke. ‘You’re asking me to take my place in a role I hate. Yet you want to be a part-time prince. There’s no such thing.’
‘Kelly…’
‘Your toy workshops could be relocated to Alp de Ciel, couldn’t they?’
‘Yes, but…’
‘And that way the pressure’s off Matty,’ she said, suddenly more certain of her ground. ‘You’re Prince Regent. You’ll be swanning round the country doing Prince Regent things. Going to movie premières with gorgeous women in tow.’
‘Hey!’
‘You’re not married already, are you?’ she demanded and looked down at his ring finger. ‘Tell me you’re not married.’
‘I’m not married.’
‘Engaged?’
‘No.’
‘There you are, then,’ she said. ‘No celebrity magazine in its right mind will focus on Matty when one of the world’s most eligible bachelors is doing his thing in the country.’
‘So let me get this straight,’ he said faintly. ‘You want me to stay permanently in the country and provide fodder for the gossipmongers for the next twenty years to keep the limelight off you and Matty.’
‘Yes.’
He blinked. ‘I don’t…’
But she wasn’t to be interrupted. ‘If neither of us return,’ she said, thinking it through, ‘if I don’t take Matty back and you return to Manhattan, there’ll be no royal permanently in the palace. Which is, I gather, unthinkable. That’s why contracts stipulating Matty belonged to the palace were meant to be watertight. Even in my short time with Kass I learned the alternative was chaos. Kass said his father was stuck with him. If he didn’t go home the government
