I’ve decided not to wait for my period to see if I’m pregnant. The whole charade is ridiculous. I’ll arrange for our family physician to give me a pregnancy test as soon as feasible, which will be negative, and then Jack can go home—back to Jezebel and his fish.
I’m going to bed. They say things always look better in the morning.
Lara closed her diary. She was a little better after pouring out her most private thoughts. It always made her feel better. Locking the diary away in her personal safe, she reached up and pulled the clasps from her chignon, allowing her hair to fall around her shoulders. With her fingertips, she massaged her temples where a thumping headache was threatening to take hold. Stress. Stress and tiredness. It was eight o’clock here, but her body clock told a different story.
A tap on the apartment door made her jump. She had dismissed her maid hours ago after Greta insisted her mistress have a light dinner and set it in place on the dining table. Lara had eaten two of the sandwiches and some fruit and then left the rest of the simple meal, her appetite deserting her.
Opening the door, she came face-to-face with Jack. Her beautiful Jack dressed casually in a deep blue sweatshirt and jeans—the jeans with a tear in the knee, she thought absently.
“What do you want?” She couldn’t help the icy tone in her voice, after all, hadn’t he left her earlier with her heart breaking from his searing and cruel words.
“I won’t keep you long. I wanted to let you know about my meeting with your parents.” His voice was deep and gentle and once again, her insides turned over. She held the door open and he entered and stood by the sofa.
Swallowing hard to bring her emotions under control, she motioned for him to be seated and she sat in the armchair opposite. He rubbed his jaw with his hand and she recognized this gesture of uncertainty. But she wasn’t going to help him out, blast him.
“The king and I had a few games of billiards then the queen joined us.”
She made no comment but it didn’t surprise her. Her mother probably thought Jack should be chastised for seducing her daughter. What a laugh. She had been more than a willing participant. She watched Jack’s fingers nervously gripping his knees. What was going on?
“I’m sorry if my mother upset you. She’s very protective of me,” she said, automatically trying to ease his discomfort.
“Look, there is no easy way to say this, Lara. You believe I’m a poor fisherman with a junket for a boat and a lopsided cottage on an island.
“Well, I
am
a fisherman and Jezebel is an old boat but I actually own a very large fleet of ocean-going fishing boats. I have the largest aqua-culture industry in Australia, possibly the world, and I hold major government contracts for coastal surveillance in several pacific countries. All of this makes me a wealthy man.” He stopped for breath, wiping a hand across his forehead.
“Oh.” To say she was stunned would be the understatement of the year. She madly tried to absorb this information.
“How wealthy?” She winced at her crass question.
“A billionaire…several times over.”
“Oh my.”
“This was the main reason why kidnapping charges weren’t brought against me when the police and Challoner security found out who I was. I’m surprised you haven’t seen it in the press.”
“I don’t read the papers or watch television.”
He raised his eyebrows. “That’s not very smart for a political science graduate. How do you know what’s going on in the world?”
She bit down on her bottom lip. It probably did sound strange to a man of the world like Jack, but in the past she had read such rubbish about herself, often demeaning and hurtful and rarely true, that she had decided the best way to cope was to avoid it.
“I have a press secretary who tells me what he thinks I should know,” she said crisply.
“He’s not doing his job very well. He should have told you about me.”
“No.
You
should have told me, Jack. Just as I should have explained who I was, if I’d any sense,” she acknowledged. The color rose in her cheeks as the realization of the last five days hit her. “You should have told me on that first day on the island. You can’t deny you gave me the impression that you were a poor fisherman.”
“My finances weren’t really any of your business.”
She leapt to her feet and stood over him where he sat on the sofa visibly more relaxed now. She clenched her fists, afraid she might slap his handsome face.
“If it was no business of mine, why did you bring up the fact of being a ‘poor fisherman’ at every opportunity? How could you attack me this afternoon saying I was turned on by making love to a common man when all the time you were laughing as you counted up your billions of dollars in the bank?”
She was unable to go on as tears welled in her eyes. She hadn’t meant to expose her hurt to him—her raw and bleeding wounds. She had wanted to give the impression she couldn’t care less about his damning remarks.
Jack stood, a look of concern and compassion on his face. He touched her arm but she furiously shook his hand away and turned her back on him. She folded her arms across her chest in a defiant gesture as she blinked away the tears.
“You’re right. You’re absolutely right, Lara. I shouldn’t have treated you that way and I apologize. It was only that you seemed so high and mighty looking down your nose at the common folk. I was very poor when I started and had to work my way up for years through sheer grit and determination. I didn’t have everything handed to me on a silver platter.”
Lara whirled around. “Like me, you mean. Do you think I asked to be born into this…this prison? Do you think I don’t wish every day that I could live like a normal person and not be bound by protocols and royal duties and tracked by detectives and companions every moment from when I wake in the morning until I go to sleep at night?”
She put up a hand to try and hide her trembling mouth as she continued, “The only freedom I ever had was when I was allowed to share an apartment with my friends, Jade and Kate. And guess what? My security people took over the whole floor and still tracked my every move.” To her horror, a huge sob escaped her as she tried to control the emotions overtaking her.
“Sweetheart, don’t cry.” Jack’s arms were around her and she was drawn into him. His hand stroked her hair and his gentleness was the last straw. She burrowed her face into his chest and wept.
She wasn’t quite sure what made her give in to her feelings. She knew he smelled so good and his arms around her made her feel protected and very feminine. As if she needed protection. She had just explained she was surrounded with it everywhere she went. But somehow, here in his arms, his cheek resting against her hair, it was different and she liked it.
“Here.” He pushed a handkerchief into her hand. She stepped back and wiped her eyes. How long had he held her? Thirty seconds? Thirty minutes?
“I’m so sorry. I’m over tired,” she said, trying to find excuses for her tears. She wondered if her eyes looked puffy and whether her nose was red.
“It’s okay. We’re both tired and we both have short fuses.” He drew her again into the circle of his arms. “I didn’t realize how unhappy you were,” he said softly.
She studied his mouth and the little cleft in his chin. She wanted to touch that cleft and run her caressing fingers along his strong jaw and over those magnificent cheekbones.
“Lara, if you don’t want me to throw you on the sofa and make love to you, then you had better stop looking at me like that.”
“Is that a challenge?” she asked, her heart lifting at the intensity in his brilliant eyes.
He smiled and then bending his head, kissed her gently on the mouth. “For all our nasty words to each other, you have to admit we have great difficulty in controlling this lustful attraction. For me it’s been there from the moment I first saw you on that quayside, looking so proud.”
She colored delicately under his scrutiny. Had he really wanted her then? She responded to his teasing. “Well, I was smitten with you when you were steering Jezebel away from the dock and I couldn’t put on my life jacket. You looked like a dangerous pirate on the high seas and I fancied you like crazy.”
“Hmm. I would never have guessed. You were a pain in the butt.” He grinned and then kissed her again, his tongue pushing her lips apart. It was a kiss for her tired body to melt into and she responded to his tantalizing persuasion with demands of her own, her arms curving around his neck as she pressed against his hard body.
“Whoa. Whoa.” Jack was the first to break away. “We need to cool it, sweetheart. I guess it would be smart to wait until we’re married.”
“Married?” Her mouth opened in shock as she looked up into his face. “Who said anything about getting married?”
“Your parents, actually. At the meeting we had earlier they were happy for us to be married.”
Her heart pounded as if to suffocate her. “And you accepted?” Her throat tightened around the words making her voice sound odd and raspy.
“They offered me a deal and I said obviously you would have to agree first. In fact, I wasn’t going to ask you tonight but thinking about it, I believe we could make a go of being married, don’t you? You want me physically, I know you do Lara, and in time, you could learn to care for me.”
Jack groaned inwardly. Damn it. He was making a mess of this. He had only meant to tell her about the possibility of investing money into Challoner and that he was considering it. And what did he do? Blurt out a marriage proposal.
But, he wanted her—how he wanted her. She had become an obsession. His magnificent obsession. Holding her in his arms a moment ago, so wanton, so passionate, had sealed his fate and he’d made his decision.
Yeah, he would give their majesties the money but he didn’t want any title and as part of the deal, he would lay down some rules of his own to protect Lara. He would take her to Australia to live with him in Port Margaret away from all this royal hype. She was unhappy here, as she had tearfully explained. As for producing an heir, that wouldn’t be a problem. He could hardly wait to make Lara his wife in every sense.
“What sort of deal?”
He should have been quicker at hearing the suspicion in her voice and seeing the doubt in her eyes. He could see she was lining up for a major rejection of him. What an assumption he had made in thinking she would leap at the chance of being his wife. What arrogance on his part. He had misread her completely and was treading on very dangerous ground.
“You know Challoner’s economy is suffering at the present time,” he began.
“I’m aware we could do better but we aren’t a poor country by any means.”
“If you would let me finish, Lara. Your parents asked me to invest some funds into Challoner’s treasury.”
“How much?”
“Half a billion dollars.”
“What?” Lara looked thunderstruck. “Well, well,” she gasped. “What was the rest of the deal, Jack? That for your money you would get a royal bride thrown in for good measure? To make it a little more attractive?” Her green eyes sparked with fire as she glared at him.
“That’s about right. Lara, I’m so sorry if this is a shock to you but they want to hold a royal wedding here in Challoner, which they say will lift the tourism markets. Believe me I’m just as surprised as you.” Jack hesitated then continued, “They even mentioned they hoped we would eventually have a baby who will be heir to the throne, if Carl doesn’t get married and have children.”
“What was your reply?”
He hesitated. He could see she was holding on to her temper with difficulty. He gave a shrug of his shoulders. He was in the thick of it now, he might as well finish it. “I asked what would happen if you refused to marry me and your parents said it was your duty to obey their wishes.”