style="font-size:15px;"> ‘You and me. I…don’t think this is a good idea.’
She stared at him. ‘But…only a few days ago you asked me to marry you.’
‘I asked our local vet to marry me,’ he corrected her. ‘But you’re Princess Melinda. A stranger. I don’t even know what I should be calling you. Your Majesty? Ma’am? Your Royal Highness?’
‘Ma’am and Majesty are for queens. And don’t you dare start on that “Highness” rubbish. It’s an accident of birth that my parents are who they are. I’m just Melinda. The same as you’ve always called me.’ She dragged in a breath. ‘I haven’t changed, Dragan.’
‘Yes, you have,’ he corrected quietly. ‘Because I don’t know you at all. The woman I asked to marry me—I thought I knew her. But I was wrong. You’re a princess.’
‘I’m sorry. I know I should have told you the truth about me, a long time ago. I should have prepared you properly for what it would be like, not left you to the mercy of the paparazzi. I just didn’t think they’d be here so soon. Stupid of me.’ She shook her head. ‘I just want to be like any other woman. I want to marry the man I love. Work among people I care about. Be myself.’
‘But you have duties, Melinda. Responsibilities.’
Now, this she’d expected. She’d prepared her arguments. ‘I’ve talked to my parents about this. I’m not going to be queen. This stuff with the paparazzi—it’ll last a few more days, maybe, and then it will all go away and we can get on with our lives as normal.’
‘But what’s normal?’ he asked.
‘You and me. Penhally. Seeing patients. Matching up our call lists so we can grab half an hour to ourselves at lunchtime.’ She shook her head. ‘Dragan—look, I know I hurt you and I’m sorry for that. I know I was wrong not to trust you with everything—but it isn’t you. It’s my own stupid fault, for being too scared that you’d walk away if you knew who I was, for letting my fears blind me to the kind of man you are. I didn’t want to lose you—I don’t want to lose you.’ She gritted her teeth. ‘I hate this royal stuff. I always have. When I was younger, it was like growing up in a fishbowl. I couldn’t open my mouth or do anything without people analysing what I did or said—and most of the time they put completely the wrong interpretation on it. Every mistake I made, the press blew it way out of proportion. I couldn’t do anything like a normal person, and the paparazzi were there every minute of every day, telephoto lenses poking into my life.’
Dragan could understand that. He’d had a taste of that the past few days.
‘Everything I did was in the public eye,’ Melinda continued. ‘And my days were one long round of protocol, protocol, protocol. Even when I knew someone was a devious, lying snake and I wouldn’t trust them a millimetre, I had to be gracious to them at official receptions or it would turn into a diplomatic incident and undo years and years of work.’ She shook her head. ‘No, it’s not a fishbowl, it’s a straitjacket. I loathe politics and all the politeness and the lies and the spin and the protocols. That’s not the world where I want to be.’
But it was the world she’d been born into.
‘I can’t live in your world, Melinda.’
‘My world is your world,’ she said softly.
‘How? I’m the village doctor here in Penhally and you’re a princess—the heir to the throne of a Mediterranean island.’
‘I haven’t called myself “princess” in years.’
‘That doesn’t stop you being one.’
‘I’ve never felt like a princess, Dragan.’ She took a deep breath. ‘You told me about your family…now let me tell you about mine. You want to know the truth, why I don’t talk about my past? Because I was unhappy, and I don’t want to dwell on all that misery.’
Her eyes were sparkling with anger and pain, and he could tell just how strongly she felt because her accent had deepened. ‘My parents were always distant, too busy with affairs of state to see what was happening with their children. My brother Raffi was left to grow up like a wild child. When he was just fifteen, he was photographed by the paparazzi in a bar, drinking alcohol, despite being way under the legal age limit. It snowballed from there. He followed our Uncle Benito—my father’s younger brother—in being a playboy, except Benito at least worked hard to balance it out. Raffi…well, he just laughed and said it didn’t matter, because he was the heir to the throne and the favourite and he’d do whatever he liked.’ She spread her hands. ‘He had no self-discipline, no thought for others. Which was why he ended up wrapping his car round a tree last week. Thank God he was the only one involved and didn’t hurt anyone else.’ She shuddered. ‘I think that’s why my father didn’t suggest abdicating before—because he knew Raffi was too young and irresponsible to make a good king.’
Dragan looked at her. ‘You’re the heir to the throne now. And you have the self-discipline your brother lacked.’ Studying for a degree in veterinary sciences wasn’t an easy option, and doing it in her second language would have made it even harder.
‘But I don’t have the rest of the princessy accomplishments. I was never the elegant young debutante who was happy with her ballet lessons and piano lessons and deportment and whatever else a princess is supposed to learn—the only thing I enjoyed out of that lot was riding, and that was only because I could escape to the stables and could learn how to look after the horses. The number of times my mother dragged me out and told me that I shouldn’t be playing around in all the mess—how I should act like a princess instead of having straw in my hair like a stablehand. And I couldn’t do it. I never fitted in.’ She sighed. ‘You know, most girls spend their time dreaming they’re princesses in disguise—like the princess and the pauper. For me it was the other way round. I wanted to be the ordinary girl, not the princess.’
That was what she’d been when she’d met him. An ordinary girl. The newcomer to the village—a stranger in a strange land, like himself.
But all the time she’d been playing a part. Pretending to be someone she wasn’t.
Was she playing a part now? He couldn’t help wondering.
‘You’re not an ordinary girl. You’re Princess Melinda of Contarini.’
‘I’m Melinda Fortesque, MRCVS. Soon to be Melinda Lovak.’ She paused. ‘Unless you’ve changed your mind.’
It was breaking his heart to do this, but he had to do the right thing. Families were important, and he couldn’t let her cut herself off from hers. ‘It can’t happen. I don’t fit into your world—and you know it, or you would have asked me to go with you.’
‘You think I asked you to stay because I was ashamed of you?’ She shook her head. ‘Far from it. I’m proud of you. But you have to understand, my mother is a cross between Queen Victoria and Attila the Hun. She’s a terrible snob. I didn’t want her being rude to you and hurting you.’
‘Your parents are never going to accept me,’ he pointed out softly. Just as Georgina’s parents would never accept Luka. Different class, different culture.
‘They will.’
Typical Melinda. Stubborn. But for her own sake
