Lorenzo’s eyes were very dark. Beautiful.

He reached over and wound one of her curls round the end of his finger.

Oh, help. That sensual awareness of him over dinner had just gone up several notches. It would be so easy to tip her head back and invite him to kiss her … but that would be such a stupid thing to do.

Indigo was about to take a step backwards. Just to be safe. But then Lorenzo leaned closer and brushed his mouth against hers.

His kiss was sweet and almost shy at first, a gentle brush of his mouth against hers that made every single one of her nerve-ends tingle. And then he did it again. And again, teasing her and coaxing her into sliding her hands into his hair and letting him deepen the kiss.

Indigo had had her fair share of kisses in the past, but nothing like this.

Crown Prince,

Pregnant Bride

Kate Hardy

www.millsandboon.co.uk

KATE HARDY lives in Norwich, in the east of England, with her husband, two young children, one bouncy spaniel, and too many books to count! When she’s not busy writing romance or researching local history she helps out at her children’s schools. She also loves cooking—spot the recipes sneaked into her books! (They’re also on her website, along with extracts and stories behind the books.) Writing for Mills & Boon has been a dream come true for Kate—something she wanted to do ever since she was twelve. She also writes for Medical™ romance.

Kate’s always delighted to hear from readers, so do drop in to her website at www.katehardy.com.

With special thanks to Mike Scogings for sharing his expertise on stained glass, and to C.C. Coburn for the lightbulb about the mermaid.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

EPILOGUE

EXTRACT

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

SHE WASN’T SUPPOSED to be there.

OK, Lorenzo knew that tourists were important. Without the income they brought when they visited the house and gardens of Edensfield Hall, his old school friend Gus would never have been able to keep his family’s ancient estate going. Even keeping the roof of the house in good repair ate up huge chunks of the annual budget, let alone anything else.

But there were set times when the estate was open to the public. Right now wasn’t one of them; the house and gardens were supposed to be completely private. Yet the woman in the shapeless black trousers and tunic top was brazenly walking through the grounds with a camera slung round her neck, stopping every so often to take a picture of something that had caught her eye. At that precise moment she was photographing the lake.

Strictly speaking, this was none of his business and he should just let it go.

But then the woman turned round, saw him staring at her, and snapped his photograph.

Enough was enough. He’d insist that she delete the file—or, if the camera was an old-fashioned one, hand over the film. He was damned if he was going to let a complete stranger make money out of photographing him in the grounds of Edensfield, on what was supposed to be private time. A couple of weeks to get his head together and prepare himself for the coronation.

Lorenzo walked straight over to her. ‘Excuse me. You just took my photograph,’ he said, not smiling.

‘Yes.’

At least she wasn’t denying it. That would make things easier. ‘Would you mind deleting the file from your camera?’

She looked surprised. ‘What’s the problem?’

As if she didn’t know. Lorenzo Torelli—strictly speaking, His Royal Highness Prince Lorenzo Torelli of the principality of Melvante, on the border between Italy and France—was about to inherit the throne and start governing the kingdom next month, when his grandfather planned to abdicate. There had been plenty of stories about it in all the big European papers, all illustrated with his photograph, so no way could she claim she didn’t know who he was. ‘Your camera, please,’ he said, holding his hand out.

‘Afraid not,’ she said coolly. ‘I don’t let people touch the tools of my trade.’

That surprised him. ‘You’re actually admitting you’re a paparazzo?’

She scoffed. ‘Of course I’m not. Why would the paparazzi want to take pictures of you?’

She had to be kidding. Did she really not know who he was? Did she live in some kind of bubble and avoid the news?

‘I don’t like my photograph being taken,’ he said carefully. ‘Besides, the estate isn’t open to the public until this afternoon. If you’ll kindly delete the file—and show me that you’ve deleted it—then I’ll be happy to help you find your way safely out of the grounds until the staff are ready to welcome visitors.’

She looked at him and rolled her eyes. ‘I’m not doing any harm.’

Lorenzo was used to people doing what he asked. The fact that she was being so stubborn about this when she was so clearly in the wrong annoyed him, and it was an effort for him to remain polite. Though he let his tone cool by twenty degrees. ‘Madam, I’m afraid the house and grounds simply aren’t open to visitors until this afternoon. Which means that right now you’re trespassing.’

‘Am I, now?’ Those sharp blue eyes were filled with insolence.

‘The file, please?’ he prompted.

She rolled her eyes, took the camera strap from round her neck, changed the camera settings and showed the screen to him so that he could first of all see the photograph she’d taken, and then see her press the button to delete the file from her camera’s storage card. ‘OK. One deleted picture. Happy, now?’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

‘Right.’ She inclined her head. ‘Little tip from me: try smiling in future, sweetie. Because you catch an awful lot more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.’

And then she simply walked away.

Leaving Lorenzo feeling as if he was the one in the wrong.

* * *

The man was probably one of Gus’s friends; he looked as if he was about the same age as Lottie’s elder brother. And maybe he’d meant to be helpful; he’d clearly been trying to protect the family’s privacy. Indigo knew she should probably have explained to him that she was a family friend who happened to be working on the house’s restoration, not a trespassing tourist. Then again, it was none of his business what she was doing there, and his stick-in-the-mud attitude had annoyed her—especially when he’d accused her of being a paparazzo.

She’d only taken his photograph because she’d seen him striding around the grounds, scowling, and he’d looked like a dark angel. Something she could’ve used for work. It had been a moment’s impulse. An expression on his face that had interested her. Attracted her. Made her wonder what he’d look like if he smiled.

But the way he’d reacted to her taking that photograph, snarling about people taking his photo without permission... Anyone would think he was an A-list celeb on vacation instead of some dull City banker.

What an idiot.

Indigo rolled her eyes again and headed for the house. Right now, work was more important. They were taking the window out of the library today and setting it in the workroom Gus had put aside for her in Edensfield Hall. Indigo had already made a short video for the hall’s website to explain what was happening with the window, and she’d promised to write a daily blog with shots of the work in progress so the tourists could feel that they were part of the restoration process. And she didn’t mind people coming over and asking her questions while she was working. She loved sharing her passion for stained glass.

And the stranger with the face of a fallen angel—well, he could do whatever he liked.

* * *

Lorenzo was still slightly out of sorts from his encounter with the paparazzo-who-claimed-she-wasn’t by the time he went downstairs for dinner. When he walked into the drawing room, he was shocked to see her there among the guests. Except this time she wasn’t wearing a shapeless black top and trousers: she was wearing a bright scarlet shift dress, shorter than anyone else’s in the room. And they were teamed with red shoes that were glossier, strappier and had a higher heel than anyone else’s in the room.

Look at me, her outfit screamed.

As if anyone would be able to draw their eyes away from her.

Especially as her hair was no longer pulled back in the severe hairdo of this afternoon; now, it was loose and cascaded over her shoulders in a mass of ebony ringlets. All she needed was a floor-length green velvet and silk dress, and she would’ve been the perfect model for a Rossetti painting.

Lorenzo was cross with himself for being so shallow; but at the same time the photographer was also one of the most beautiful women he’d ever met. He couldn’t help acting on the need to know who she was and what she was doing here.

He just about managed a few polite words with Gus before drawling, ‘So who’s the girl in the red dress?’ and inclining his head over towards the trespasser, as if he wasn’t really that interested in the answer.

‘Who?’ Gus followed his glance and smiled. ‘Oh, that’s Indigo.’

How could Gus be so cool and calm around her? Lorenzo wondered. The woman made him feel hot under the collar, and he hadn’t even spoken to her yet this evening.

‘A friend of the family?’ Lorenzo guessed.

‘She’s one of Lottie’s best friends from school.’

Which was surprising; Indigo didn’t look as if she came from the same kind of titled background that Gus and his sister did.

‘Actually, she’s here on business, too; she’s restoring the stained glass in the library for us,’ Gus explained. ‘My mother’s asked her to work up some ideas for a new stained-glass window, so she’s been taking photographs of bits of the estate.’

Which explained why she saw her camera as one of the tools of her trade. Lorenzo felt the colour wash into his face. ‘I see.’

‘What did you do, Lorenzo?’ Gus asked, looking amused.

‘I saw her taking photos this afternoon and I thought she was a trespasser. I, um, offered to help her find her way out of the grounds,’ Lorenzo admitted.

Gus laughed. ‘I bet she gave you a flea in your ear. Our Indi’s pretty much a free spirit. And she really doesn’t like being ordered about.’

He grimaced. ‘I think I’d better go and apologise.’

‘Good idea. Otherwise you might be in danger of getting an Indi Special.’

‘An Indi Special?’ Lorenzo asked, mystified.

‘Indi. Short for Indigo, not for independent. Though she’s that, too.’ Gus raised an eyebrow. ‘Let’s just say she’s an original. I’ll let Lottie introduce you.’ He caught his sister’s eye and beckoned her over. ‘Lottie, be a darling and introduce Lorenzo to Indi, will you?’

‘Sure. Have you two not met, yet?’ Lottie tucked her arm into Lorenzo’s and led him over to Indigo to introduce them. ‘Indi, this is Lorenzo Torelli, a very old friend of the family.’ She smiled. ‘Lorenzo, this is Indigo Moran, who’s just about the coolest person I know.’

Indigo laughed. ‘That’s only because you live in a world full of stuffed shirts, Lottie. I’m perfectly normal.’

Lorenzo looked at her and thought, no, you’re not in the slightest bit normal—there’s something different about you. Something special. ‘Gus said you were at school with Lottie,’ he said.

‘Until she escaped at fourteen, lucky thing.’ Lottie patted Indigo’s arm. ‘Indi was brilliant. She drew caricatures of the girls who bullied me and plastered them over the school. It’s a bit hard to be mean when everyone’s pointing at you and laughing at your picture.’

Indigo shrugged. ‘Well, they say the pen is mightier than the sword.’

‘Your pen was sharper as well as mightier,’ Lottie said feelingly.

Now Lorenzo understood what an ‘Indi Special’ was. A personal, public and very pointed cartoon. And he had a nasty feeling what she’d make of him, given what she’d said to Lottie about coming from a world full of stuffed shirts.

‘Can I be terribly rude and leave you two to introduce yourselves to each other properly?’ Lottie asked.

‘Of course,’ Indigo said.

Her smile took his breath away. And Lorenzo was surprised to find himself feeling like a nervous schoolboy. ‘I, um, need to apologise,’ he said.

She raised an eyebrow. ‘For what?’

‘The way I behaved towards you earlier today.’

She shrugged. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

But he did worry about it. Good manners had been instilled into him virtually from when he was in the pram. He was always polite. And he’d been rude to her. ‘I didn’t realise you were a friend of the family, too.’ He looked at her. ‘Though you could have explained.’

‘Why? For all I knew, you could’ve been a trespasser, too.’

‘Touché.’ He enjoyed the fact that she was back-chatting him. After all the people who agreed with everything he said and metaphorically tugged their forelocks at him, he found her free-spirited attitude refreshing. ‘Gus says you’re restoring the glass in the library.’

‘Yes.’

‘Forgive me for saying so, but you don’t look like...’ He stopped. ‘Actually, no. Just ignore me. I’m digging myself a huge hole here.’

She grinned, and the sparkle in her eyes made his pulse speed up a notch. ‘I don’t look like a glass restorer, you mean? Or I don’t look the type to have been at school with Lottie?’

Both. Ouch. He grimaced. ‘Um. Do I have to answer that?’

She looked delighted. ‘So, let me see. Which shall we do first? School, I think.’ Her voice dropped into the same kind of posh drawl as Lottie’s. ‘I met her when we were eleven. We were in the same dorm. And unfortunately we shared it with Lolly and Livvy. I suppose we could’ve been the four musketeers—except obviously I don’t have an L in my name.’

‘And it sounds as if you wouldn’t have wanted to fight on the same side as Lolly and Livvy.’

‘Absolutely not.’ Her eyes glittered and her accent reverted back to what he guessed was normal for her. ‘I don’t have any time for spitefulness and bullying.’

‘Good.’ He paused. ‘And I hope you didn’t think I was bullying you, this morning.’

‘If you’ll kindly delete the file,’ she mimicked.

He grimaced. How prissy she’d made him sound. ‘I did apologise for that.’

‘So are you a film star, or something?’

‘No.’

‘Well, you were acting pretty much like a D-list celeb, trying to be important,’ she pointed out.

Should he tell her?

No. Because he didn’t want her to lose that irreverence when she talked to him. He didn’t think that Indigo Moran would bow and scrape to him; but he didn’t want to take that risk. ‘Guilty, m’lady,’ he said lightly. ‘Are you quite sure you’re a glass restorer and not a barrister?’

She laughed. And, oh, her mouth was beautiful. He had the maddest urge to pull her into his arms and find out for himself whether her mouth tasted as good as it looked. Which was so not how he usually reacted to women. Lorenzo Torelli was always cool, calm and measured. He acted with his head rather than his heart, as he’d always been brought up to do. If you stuck to rigid formality, you always knew exactly where you were.

What was it about Indigo Moran that made him itch to break all his rules? And it was even crazier, because now absolutely wasn’t the time to rebel against his upbringing. Not when he was about to become King of Melvante.

‘I’m quite sure I’m a glass restorer. So were you expecting me to be about forty years older than I am, with a beard, John Lennon glasses, a bad haircut and sandals?’

Lorenzo couldn’t help laughing. And then he realised that everyone in the room was staring at them.

‘Sorry. I’m in the middle of making a fool of myself,’ he said. ‘Not to mention insulting Ms Moran here at least twice.’

‘Call me Indigo,’ she corrected quietly, and patted his shoulder. ‘And he’s making a great job of it,’ she cooed.

‘I, for one,’ Gus’s mother said with a chuckle, ‘will look forward to seeing the drawing pinned up in the breakfast room.’

Indigo grinned. ‘He hasn’t earned one. Yet.’

‘I’m working on it,’ he said, enjoying the banter. How long had it been since he’d been treated with such irreverence?

Though a nasty thought whispered in his head: once he’d been crowned, would anyone ever treat him like this again, as if he was just an ordinary man? Would this be the last time?

‘Indigo, may I sit with you at dinner?’ he asked.

She spread her hands. ‘Do what you like.’

Ironic. That was precisely what he couldn’t do, from next month. He had expectations to fulfil. Schedules to meet. A country to run. Doing what he liked simply wasn’t on the agenda. He would do what was expected of him. His duty.

CHAPTER TWO

WHEN THEY WERE called to dinner, Lorenzo switched the place settings so he was seated next to Indigo.

‘Nicely finessed, Mr Torelli,’ she said as he held her chair out for her.

Actually, he wasn’t a Mr, but he had no intention of correcting her. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Your name’s very appropriate for a stained-glass restorer.’ Not to mention pretty. And memorable.

‘Thank you.’ She accepted the compliment gracefully.

‘So how long have you been working with glass?’

‘Since I was sixteen. I took some evening classes along with my A levels, and then I went to art college,’ she explained.

Very focused for someone in her mid-teens. And hadn’t Lottie said something about Indigo leaving their school at the age of fourteen? ‘So you always knew what you wanted to do?’

She wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s a dreadfully pathetic story.’

‘Tell me anyway,’ he invited. ‘It’ll make me feel better when you savage me in one of your cartoons.’

‘I was sent away to boarding school at the age of six.’

Lorenzo had been five years older than that when he’d been sent away, but he remembered the feeling. Leaving home, the place where you’d grown up and every centimetre was familiar, to live among strangers. In his case, it had been in a different country, too. With a child’s perception, at the time he’d thought maybe he was being sent away as a punishment—that somehow he’d been to blame for his parents’ fatal accident. Now he knew the whole truth, and realised it had been his grandparents’ way of giving him some stability and protecting him from the potential fallout if the press had found out what had really happened. But it had still hurt back then to be torn away from his home.

‘I hated it,’ she said softly.

So had he.

‘I cried myself to sleep every night.’

He would’ve done that, except boys weren’t allowed to cry. They were supposed to keep a stiff upper lip. Even if they weren’t English.

‘The only thing that made school bearable was the chapel,’ she said. ‘It had these amazing stained-glass windows, and I loved the patterns that the light made on the floor when it shone through. I could just lose myself in that.’

For him, it had been music. The piano in one of the practice rooms in the music department. Where he could close his eyes and pretend he was playing Bach at home in the library. ‘It helps if you can find something to get you through the hard times,’ he said softly.

‘I, um, tended to disappear a bit. One of my teachers found me in the chapel—they’d been looking for me for almost an hour. I thought she’d be angry with me, but she seemed to understand. She bought me some colouring pencils and a pad, and I found that I liked drawing. It made things better.’

He found himself wanting to give Indigo a hug. Not out of pity, but out of empathy. He’d been there, too. ‘Why did you decide to work with glass instead of being a satirical cartoonist?’ he asked.

‘Drawings are flat.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘But glass... It’s the way the colour works with the light. The way it can make you feel.’

Passion sparkled in her dark blue eyes; and Lorenzo suddenly wanted to see her eyes sparkle with passion for something else.

Which was crazy.

He wasn’t in the market for a relationship. He had more than enough going on in his life, right now. And, even if he had been thinking about starting a relationship, a glass artist with a penchant for skewering people in satirical cartoons would be very far from the most sensible person he could choose to date.

Besides, for all he knew, she could already be involved with someone. A woman as beautiful as Indigo Moran would have men queuing up to date her.

‘You really love your job, don’t you?’ he asked.

‘Of course. Don’t you?’

‘I guess so,’ he prevaricated. He’d never known anything else. He’d always grown up knowing that one day he’d become king. There wasn’t an option not to love it. It was his duty. His destiny. No arguments.

‘So what do you do?’ she asked.

She really wasn’t teasing him, then; she actually didn’t know who he was. And he wasn’t going to make things awkward or embarrass her by telling her. ‘Family business,’ he said. ‘My grandfather’s retiring, next month, so I’m taking over running things.’ It was true. Just not the whole truth.

‘Workaholic, hmm?’

He would be. But that was fine. He’d accepted that a long time ago. ‘Yes.’ Not wanting her to get too close to the subject, he switched the topic back to her work with glass.

* * *

When he smiled, Lorenzo Torelli was completely different. He wasn’t the pompous idiot he’d been in the garden; he was beautiful, Indigo thought.

And she was seriously tempted to ask him to sit for her. He would be the perfect model for the window she was planning.

‘If you’re really interested in the glass,’ she said, ‘come and have a look at my temporary workshop after dinner.’

‘I’d like that,’ he said.

They continued chatting over dinner, and Indigo found her awareness of Lorenzo growing by the second. It wasn’t just that she wanted to sketch him and paint him into glass; she also wanted to touch him.

Which was crazy.

Lorenzo Torelli was a total stranger. Although he seemed to be here on his own, for all she knew he could be married. And her radar to warn her that a man was married or totally wrong for her hadn’t exactly worked in the past, had it? She’d made the biggest mistake of her life where Nigel was concerned.

Though at the same time she knew it wasn’t fair to think that all men were liars and cheats who just abandoned people, like her ex and her father. Her grandfather hadn’t been. Gus wasn’t. And, from what Lottie had told her, their father had been a total sweetheart and had never even as much as looked at another woman. Though Indigo still found it hard to trust. Which was why she hadn’t even flirted since Nigel, much less dated.

‘Penny for them?’ Lorenzo asked.

No way. She fell back on an old standby. ‘When I’m about to start work on a new piece, I tend to be pretty much in another world.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with being focused on your work.’

Good. She was glad he understood that.

After coffee, he asked, ‘Did you mean it about showing me your work?’

‘Sure.’ She took him through to the library. ‘I guess it starts here. We took the window out this afternoon.’

‘There’s a facsimile of the window on the boards,’ he said, sounding surprised.

‘People come especially to Edensfield to see the mermaid window. I don’t want to disappoint them by hiding everything behind scaffolding,’ she explained. ‘I went to Venice when they were doing some work on the Bridge of Sighs, and they’d put a facsimile of the bridge on the advertising hoardings. I thought that was a brilliant idea and I’ve tried to do something like that with my own work, ever since.’

‘Good idea,’ he said.

‘Come and see the mermaid up close. She’s gorgeous. Victorian—very much in the style of Burne-Jones, though she isn’t actually one of his.’

* * *

He smiled. ‘I was thinking earlier, if you’d been wearing a green velvet dress, you would look like a PRB model.’

‘Thank you for the compliment.’ She blushed, looking pleased. ‘That’s my favourite art movement.’

‘Mine, too.’ He almost told her that his family had a collection and that Burne-Jones had sketched his great-great-grandmother. But then he’d have to explain who he was, and he wasn’t ready to do that yet.

‘I’d love the chance to work on some PRB glass.’ She gave a wistful smile. ‘Maybe one day.’ She led him into a room further down the corridor. ‘Gus set up this room as my workshop. Obviously we’ve had to rope off my table for health and safety purposes—I work with dangerous substances—but people can still talk to me and see what I’m doing. I have a camera on my desk and the picture feeds through to that screen over there, so they can see the close-up work in total safety.’

She was so matter-of-fact about it. ‘Don’t you mind working with an audience?’ he asked. ‘Doesn’t it get in your way?’

‘The house is only open for a few hours, four days a week,’ she said with a shrug. ‘The visitors won’t be that much of a distraction.’

The window from the library had already been dismantled into frames; the one containing the mermaid was in the centre of her table.

‘I took close-ups of the panel this afternoon so I have a complete photographic record,’ she said. ‘Next I’m going to take it apart, clean it all and start the repairs.’

‘Which is why the camera’s one of the tools of your trade.’ He understood that now. ‘I’m sorry I accused you of being a pap.’

‘You’ve apologised—and nicely—so consider it forgotten.’ She looked at him. ‘Though if you really want to make it up to me, there is something you could do.’

Quid pro quo. It was a standard part of diplomacy. Though part of Lorenzo was disappointed that she’d asked. He’d thought that Indigo might be different. But maybe everyone had their price, after all. ‘Which is?’

‘Would you sit for me?’

He blinked. ‘Sit for you?’

‘So I can draw you.’

He’d already worked that out. ‘Why?’

She spread her hands. ‘Because you look like an angel.’

Heat spread through him. Was this her way of telling him that she was attracted to him? Did she feel the same weird pull that he did? ‘An angel?’ He knew he was parroting what she said, but he didn’t care if he sounded dim. He needed to find out where this was going.

‘Or a medieval prince.’

That was rather closer to home. Though he thought her ignorance about his identity was totally genuine. ‘And what would sitting for you involve?’ he asked.

‘Literally just sitting still while I sketch you. Though modelling is a bit hard on the muscles—having to sit perfectly still and keep the same expression for a minimum of ten minutes is a lot more difficult than most people think. So I’d be happy to compromise with taking photographs and working from them, if that makes it easier for you.’

Which was where this had all started. ‘Is that why you took my photograph?’

She nodded. ‘You were scowling like a dark angel. You were going to be perfect for Lucifer.’

‘Why, thank you, Ms Moran,’ he said dryly.

She grinned. ‘It’s meant as a compliment. Or you could be Gabriel, if you’d rather.’

‘Didn’t Gabriel have blond hair?’

‘In the carol,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘his wings were drifts of snow, his eyes of flame.’

On impulse, he sang a snatch of the carol.

Her eyes widened. ‘I wasn’t expecting that. You have a lovely voice, Mr Torelli.’

‘Thank you.’ He bowed slightly in acknowledgement of the compliment.

‘So will you sit for me?’

He was tempted. Seriously tempted. But it was all too complicated. ‘Ask me another time,’ he said softly. When he’d worked out how to say no while letting her down gently. ‘Tell me about your work here. The mermaid’s face is damaged, so are you going to replace that bit of the glass with a copy?’

‘I could do, but that would be a last resort. I want to keep as much of the original glass as possible.’ She grimaced. ‘I’d better shut up. I can bore for England on this subject.’

‘No, I’m interested. Really.’

‘Trust me, you don’t want to hear me drone on about the merits of epoxy, silicon and copper foil,’ she said dryly.

He smiled. ‘OK. Tell me something else. What’s the story behind the mermaid?’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Gus hasn’t told you?’

‘It’s not exactly the kind of thing that comes up when you’re a schoolboy,’ he said, ‘and since we left school I guess we’ve had other things to talk about.’

‘Rebuke acknowledged,’ she said.

He wrinkled his nose. ‘That wasn’t a rebuke.’

* * *

Maybe not. It hadn’t been quite like the way he’d spoken to her in the garden, when he’d been all stuffy and pompous.

‘Tell me about the mermaid,’ he invited.

He really meant it, she realised in wonder. He actually wanted to hear what she had to say. ‘So the story goes, many years ago the Earl was a keen card-player. He won against almost everyone—except one night, when he played against a tall, dark stranger. It turned out that the stranger was the devil, and his price for letting the earl keep the house and the money he’d wagered and lost was marriage to the earl’s daughter. The earl agreed, but his daughter wasn’t too happy about it and threw herself into the lake. She was transformed into a mermaid and lived happily ever after.’

‘I thought mermaids were supposed to live in the sea,’ Lorenzo said.

She grinned. ‘Tut, Mr Torelli. Hasn’t anyone told you that mermaids don’t actually exist? Lottie says there’s a version of the story that has the mermaid rescued by a handsome prince, but that might be a bit of a mix-up with the Hans Christian Andersen story.’

‘I hope not, because if I remember rightly that doesn’t have a very happy ending.’

Lorenzo’s eyes were very dark. Beautiful. She itched to paint him, to capture that expression. If only he hadn’t said no. Or maybe she could paint him from memory.

He reached over and wound one of her curls round the end of his finger. ‘I can see you as a mermaid, with this amazing hair floating out behind you,’ he said softly.

Oh, help. That sensual awareness of him over dinner had just gone up several notches. It would be so easy to tip her head back and invite him to kiss her...but that would be such a stupid thing to do.

Indigo was about to take a step backwards. Just to be safe. But then Lorenzo leaned closer and brushed his mouth against hers.

His kiss was sweet and almost shy at first, a gentle brush of his mouth against hers that made every single one of her nerve-ends tingle. And then he did it again. And again, teasing her and coaxing her into sliding her hands into his hair and letting him deepen the kiss.

Indigo had had her fair share of kisses in the past, but nothing like this. Even Nigel, the man she’d once believed was the love of her life, hadn’t been able to make her feel like this—drowsy and sensual, and as if her knees were going to give way at any second.

When Lorenzo stopped kissing her, she held on to him, not trusting her knees to hold her up. The last thing she wanted to do was fall at his feet and make an idiot of herself.

Though she had a nasty feeling that she’d already done that.

‘We really ought to get back to the others,’ she said.

‘Are you worried that they’ll think you lured me here for other reasons than to talk about glass?’

‘No.’ She could feel the colour seeping into her face. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. They all know how I am about my work. They probably think I’m boring the pants off you right now.’

He gave her a slow and very insolent smile. ‘Interesting choice of phrase, Ms Moran.’

Her face heated even more. Because now she could see herself taking his clothes off. Very, very slowly. And not because she wanted to paint him naked: because she wanted to touch him. Skin to skin. Very, very slowly. Until he was begging her for more.

Oh, for pity’s sake. She’d only just been introduced to him. Insta-lust wasn’t the way she did things. Why was she reacting to him like this? ‘Let’s go back,’ she said, hoping she didn’t sound as flustered as she felt.

‘Has Indi been showing you what she’s doing with the mermaid?’ Gus asked Lorenzo when they rejoined the others in the drawing room.

‘Yes.’

‘She’s brilliant. Maybe you ought to commission her to do you a portrait for the coronation. Glass instead of oils,’ Gus suggested.

Indigo frowned. ‘Coronation? Whose coronation?’

Gus looked embarrassed. ‘Whoops. I think I might have just put my foot in it.’

‘It’s fine,’ Lorenzo said.

Oh, no, it wasn’t, Indigo thought. There was a lot more to this than met the eye. Especially as Lorenzo looked shifty, all of a sudden.

They chatted for a few moments more; when they were alone again, Indigo narrowed her eyes at him. ‘What’s this about a coronation?’

‘The King of Melvante is abdicating next month and handing over to his grandson,’ Lorenzo said.

She still didn’t get it. Why had Gus suggested that Indigo should do Lorenzo’s portrait in glass? ‘And?’ she prompted.

He wrinkled his nose. ‘That would be, um, me.’

‘You’re going to be the King of Melvante?’

He nodded. ‘Nonno’s already passed on a lot of his duties to me. And he’s going to be eighty, next month. I want him to enjoy his old age, not have the burden of the crown.’

‘So that’s what you meant about the family business. Being king.’

He shrugged. ‘Running a country isn’t so different from running a business.’

Even so, she was hurt that nobody had told her. Lottie was her closest friend, and she’d known the family for years. Lorenzo obviously thought that she’d tell tales to the media, but surely Lottie’s family knew otherwise?

A king-to-be.

No wonder he’d been sensitive about having his photo taken, and no wonder he hadn’t wanted to sit for her.

This changed everything.

When he’d kissed her, only minutes before, she’d thought this just might be the start of something. How stupid of her. No way could a king-to-be have a fling with someone like her. OK, so strictly speaking Indigo’s father was an earl, so it wasn’t so much the noble and commoner thing; but he’d been married to his countess when Indigo was born and not to Indigo’s mother. The press would drag that up if they found out she was even vaguely involved with Lorenzo. Plus there was the whole mess of her relationship with Nigel and the way he’d let her down. That would look bad, too. A king couldn’t afford to be touched by scandal.

So her common sense needed to kick back in, and fast. Absolutely nothing was going to happen between them now.

It couldn’t.

‘I’ll make sure I address you properly in future, Your Highness,’ she said coolly. ‘It’s a pity you didn’t bother to tell me before.’

‘It wasn’t relevant. You’re a friend of the family and so am I. Who we are outside Edensfield isn’t important.’

‘You still could’ve told me.’

‘How? Was I supposed to correct you and tell you that, actually, no I’m not Mr Torelli, and it should be “Your Royal Highness Prince Lorenzo” to you?’ He grimaced. ‘Talk about an arrogant show-off.’

She blew out a breath. ‘I guess you have a point. I understand now why you were annoyed with me for taking your photograph.’

‘Because I try to protect my privacy—not because I think I’m a celeb or a special snowflake who deserves red carpet treatment,’ he said.

Her frown deepened. ‘What about your bodyguards? I assume you have them, and they’re so discreet that I haven’t noticed them yet.’

‘I get a little bit more liberty than usual from my security team because I’m staying in the house of a family friend,’ he said.

‘But you still can’t do anything spontaneous or even go for a walk without telling half a dozen people where you’re going. Your life must be scheduled out down to the millisecond.’

‘Most of the time, yes,’ he admitted. ‘But I’m officially on leave at the moment. Taking a bit of time to get my head in the right place, so to speak.’

‘Before you’re crowned king.’

‘Yes. Obviously I’m not entirely neglecting my duties while I’m here—I can do a lot of things through the internet and the phone—but Nonno thought I needed a bit of time out to prepare myself.’

‘Your grandfather,’ she said, ‘sounds very sensible.’ Like hers had been. ‘But forgive me for being dim. I don’t tend to read the society pages, so I really had absolutely no idea who you were.’

‘You,’ he said, ‘are the last person I’d accuse of being dim.’

‘You only met me today. I could be an airhead.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Give me some credit for being able to judge someone’s character quickly and accurately.’

‘I guess in your position you have to do that all the time.’ She paused. ‘So how come you’re taking over, and not your father?’

‘He died in a car crash when I was ten,’ Lorenzo said. ‘Along with my mother.’

She could see the pain in his eyes, and then he was all urbane and charming again. Behind a mask. Clearly it hurt too much to talk about. She could understand that; there were certain bits of her own past that she didn’t talk about.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said softly. ‘That must’ve been hard for you. And for your grandparents.’

‘It was a long time ago, now,’ he said. ‘You get used to it.’

‘Yes, you do.’

‘That sounds like experience talking,’ he said.

She nodded. ‘My grandparents brought me up.’ She couldn’t quite bring herself to tell him of the circumstances, not wanting him to pity her.

‘Something we have in common,’ he said.

Not quite. She didn’t think that Lorenzo’s parents were like hers, choosing to abandon their child. In his case, his parents had been taken from him in an accident. In hers, her father had chosen to distance himself before she was born—his only contribution to her life had been to pay for part of her education—and her mother had been more focused on her own love-life than family life. ‘Just about the only thing.’

He smiled. ‘Sometimes that makes life more interesting.’

And more complicated, she thought. Lorenzo Torelli was gorgeous. The way he’d kissed her earlier had made her bones melt. Which meant she needed to keep a safe distance between them until he left Edensfield for his kingdom. ‘I guess I ought to stop monopolising you and let you chat to everyone else. And I have a few things I need to do for work, so I’d better get a move on. Nice to have met you. Good evening,’ she said.

He gave her a tiny little smile that very clearly called her a chicken. Guilty as charged, she thought—because he scared her as much as he drew her. She couldn’t afford to let him matter to her.

Besides, a man destined to be king would’ve been taught how to be charming from when he was in the cradle. The attention he’d paid her had been flattery. And she already knew the dark side of flattery—the last time she’d let herself fall for a spiel, it had ended in tears. She’d learned the hard way that relationships let her down, but her work never did.

‘Good evening, Indigo,’ he said softly, and she fled.

CHAPTER THREE

INDIGO WASN’T IN the breakfast room when Lorenzo came downstairs, the next morning. And when he casually mentioned her name, Gus just smiled. ‘She’s even more of a workaholic than you are. She’ll have been in her workroom since the crack of dawn.’

Lorenzo knew that he ought to be sensible and avoid Indigo. But the attraction from last night hadn’t gone away. So he couldn’t resist taking a detour to the kitchen, making her a mug of coffee and wandering casually into her workroom. Just to say hello, he told himself. There couldn’t be any harm in that. Could there?

Today Indigo was back to wearing shapeless clothes and having her hair pinned back, and she was also wearing a pair of safety goggles. This had to be the most unsexy outfit in the world. And yet Lorenzo was aware of every drop of blood thrumming through his veins when she glanced up from her work and saw him.

‘I thought you might like this,’ he said, and handed her the mug. ‘Milk, no sugar.’

‘Thank you.’ She pushed the goggles up on top of her head. ‘How do you know how I like my coffee?’

‘I noticed yesterday at dinner,’ he said. He’d been taught from an early age to notice the details. ‘Do you need a hand with anything?’ It was a stupid question, and he knew it even as the words came out.

‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘but, apart from the fact that my work needs specialist training, I work with acids, flux, a hot soldering iron, sharp blades and glass—all things that could do serious damage to you.’

‘I guess so.’

‘Even if I didn’t have bad intentions towards you—and, just for the record if you happen to be wired and your security team’s listening, I don’t—there’s still the risk of an accident. My insurance company would have a hissy fit at the idea.’

He liked the fact that she’d clearly thought this through. Though it also surprised him that Indigo Moran had such a deeply conventional side, given the dress she’d worn last night. ‘And that bothers you? I thought you had a reputation for being a free spirit.’

‘Which isn’t the same as being reckless and stupid,’ she said. ‘What do you expect me to do—jump into a lake and pull you in with me?’

He laughed. ‘Point taken. No, I don’t think you’re stupid.’ He paused. ‘So can I watch you work, today?’ he asked.

She looked surprised. ‘Are you really interested in glass, are you being polite, or are you just bored and at a bit of a loose end?’

He liked her plain speaking. But either they could spend all day fencing, or he could come clean. Given how little time he had left here, he chose the latter option. ‘It’s an excuse to spend time with you. And I have a feeling it might be the same for you, too.’

She looked wary. ‘I’m not so sure that it’s a good idea.’

At least she hadn’t denied that she wanted to spend time with him. So he could be just as honest with her. ‘I know it isn’t a good idea,’ he said softly.

She said nothing, just looked even warier.

‘If I wasn’t who I am, would your answer be different?’

‘Probably,’ she admitted.

‘Do you have any idea how refreshing it was yesterday,’ he said, ‘to have someone backchat me and treat me like a normal person, for once?’

‘Poor little rich boy,’ she said, folding her arms and giving him a pointed look.

He grinned. ‘And you’re still doing it. I like you, Indigo. I think you like me. What’s the harm in two people getting to know each other?’

‘As you pointed out yesterday, you’re used to the paparazzi following you. You have a security team looking after you. You’re not just a normal person. If anyone wants to get to know you, or you want to get to know someone, then the whole world will know about it.’

‘This is a private house,’ he said.

‘Which is open to the public,’ she reminded him.

‘Who won’t be expecting to see me—they might think, oh, that man sitting by the table over there looks a bit like that Prince Lorenzo guy, but they’ll think no more than that.’

‘What if they do recognise you?’

‘They won’t,’ he said confidently. ‘It’s like when that famous violin player busked on the metro in Washington DC a few years ago, playing a Stradivarius. People weren’t expecting a famous musician to be busking on the metro with one of the most expensive instruments in the world, so they didn’t recognise him and hardly anyone stopped to listen to what he was playing. It’s all about context.’

‘You,’ she said, ‘are just used to getting your own way all the time.’

‘Not all the time.’

‘Did you get an A star in persistence lessons at prince school?’ she asked.

He laughed. ‘There isn’t such a thing as prince school. Besides, you know very well I went to the same school as Gus.’

‘In a different country, and when you were still very young,’ she said thoughtfully.

‘Not as young as you were when you went to boarding school—I was eleven.’ And how he’d missed his family. Thought it had been good practice for his stiff upper lip. ‘I know this is crazy,’ he said. ‘I just want to spend a bit of time with you. I have a free day, but I know you’re working, so maybe I could make myself useful. Kind of multi-tasking.’

She scoffed. ‘You’re telling me that a man can multi-task?’

‘Don’t be sexist.’ He grinned at her. ‘I learned how to multi-task at prince school.’

She laughed, then. ‘Says the man who claims that prince school doesn’t exist.’

‘They’re not formal lessons, exactly, but over the years I’ve been taught about the importance of diplomacy and how to...’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘I was going to say, how to handle people, but I think you might take that the wrong way.’

Her blush was gratifying. ‘Yes. I would.’

‘I don’t mean manhandle,’ he said softly. ‘That’s not who I am. I’m not expecting you to fall into my arms because I’m about to become the King of Melvante. But I can’t stop thinking about you. And I think it’s the same for you, too. That kiss, last night...’ He paused. ‘I don’t behave like that. I don’t usually act on impulse and I definitely don’t do insta-lust. I’m pretty sure you don’t, either.’

‘No.’ Again, she blushed. Telling him that maybe, just maybe, it was different with him.

‘It would be sensible if we just stayed out of each other’s way. But I can’t do that. Something about you...’ He blew out a breath. ‘OK. I’ll shut up and stop distracting you now.’

‘Maybe,’ she said quietly, ‘if you wear goggles, that’ll be enough to disguise you. And you need to wear goggles anyway if you’re going to be on this side of the rope. I don’t want you to get a glass splinter or dust in your eye. And you need gloves, too, if you’re going to work with me.’ She reached under her table and rummaged around in a box. ‘Try these.’

They fitted perfectly. Which was a sign, of sorts, he thought. ‘They’re fine.’

‘OK.’ She handed him a pair of protective glasses, and he put them on.

‘What do you need me to do?’ he asked.

‘Help me clean the lead cames. That’d be easy to teach you.’

‘I’d like that,’ he said. It was so far away from his normal life that it really was like having a rest.

He watched her work, fascinated by how neatly and quickly she worked to remove the stained glass from the leads without damaging the fragile glass or the soft metal. And he noticed how she labelled everything before putting it in a specific place and then photographing it.

‘I assume that’s to be sure everything goes back in the right place?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘Plus I’m documenting everything that I do, so the next time the glass needs work the restorer will know exactly what I’ve done and how.’

Her work was methodical, neat and efficient. She was good at giving instructions, too; when she showed him how to clean the leads, she gave him an old piece of lead from her box of tricks under her desk so he could practise first, and corrected his technique without making him feel stupid. Lorenzo liked the fact that she was so direct and clear.

And when the house opened to the public, he discovered that Indigo was far from being the socially inept nerd she’d claimed to be. She was seriously good with people; she was patient, charming, and he noticed that she assessed them swiftly so she could work out whether they wanted a quick and simple answer, or if they’d prefer a longer and more detailed explanation.

Lorenzo noticed how patient Indigo was, never once making her questioners feel stupid or a nuisance. If anything, she went out of her way to make them feel appreciated.

Funny, all the formal training he’d had in diplomacy didn’t even begin to approach this. Indigo was a natural with people, warm and open, and the rigidity of boarding school clearly hadn’t left its mark on her. Lorenzo knew that she could teach him a lot, just by letting him shadow her. And maybe if he could focus on that, on the way that Indigo could help him prepare for his new role, it would stop him thinking of her in a different context. One that would cause too many problems for both of them.

* * *

Once the crowds had left, Lorenzo fetched them both some more coffee.

She looked up at him and smiled. ‘Thank you—that’s really kind of you. Sorry, I’m afraid I’ve rather ignored you this afternoon.’

‘You were busy working and talking to visitors,’ he said. ‘And I have to say, I’m impressed by how at ease you are with people.’

She looked surprised. ‘But you’re a prince. You have to talk to people all the time. Aren’t you at ease with them?’

‘Not in the same way that you are,’ he admitted. ‘You have this natural empathy.’ And, because he was so used to formality, he had to work at being at ease with people. Which pretty much negated the point.

‘I’m surprised they didn’t teach you that sort of thing at prince school.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘Very funny.’

‘I still think you’d make an awesome model for a stained-glass angel,’ she said. ‘Though I can understand why you don’t want to sit for me.’

‘It’s not that I don’t want to. I can’t. In another life,’ he said softly, ‘I’d sit for you with pleasure.’ And he’d enjoy watching her sketch him, seeing the way she caught the tip of her tongue between her teeth when she was concentrating. And then maybe afterwards...

‘But in this life it’d be a PR nightmare,’ she said, going straight to the root of the matter. ‘The new King of Melvante has to be squeaky clean.’

‘Yes.’ Until he’d met Indigo, that hadn’t been a problem. But Indigo Moran made him want to break every single one of his rules and then some. To stop himself thinking about it, and to distract her from probing his thoughts too deeply, he made an exaggerated squeaking noise. ‘Like this.’

She laughed. And, to his relief, everything felt smooth and light and sparkly again.

‘I’d better let you get on. You’ve had enough distractions for today.’

She smiled at him again. ‘You can stay if you want to.’

Tempting. So very, very tempting. And he wanted to spend more time with Indigo. He liked this side of her, the fun and the carefree feeling he didn’t normally have time for.

But he really needed to let his common sense get back in charge. Preferably right now. He was supposed to be preparing for his new role, not acting on impulse and indulging himself. ‘Thanks, but I’ll see you later, OK?’ And then, hopefully, the next time he saw her he’d be back in sensible mode and he’d be able to treat her as just another acquaintance. He could be charming and witty, but he could keep his emotions totally in check.

And what he needed more than anything else, right now, was a little time at the ancient grand piano in the library.

Now the visitors had gone and the house was back to being fully private, the family dogs had the free run of the place again, so a couple of minutes after Lorenzo had settled at the piano he discovered that Toto, an elderly golden Labrador he’d known since puppyhood, was leaning against his leg. Just like home, except with a bigger dog, he thought with a smile, and reached down to ruffle the dog’s fur. And then he lost himself in the music.

* * *

Indigo could hear piano music. Which was odd, because she had a very quiet cello concerto playing on her iPod. She reached over and paused the track, and listened again. Definitely a piano, but not something she recognised.

The piece stopped, and there was silence for a moment, before a snatch of something, and then a pause and a few bars of something else, as if someone was trying to decide what to play next.

Curious, Indigo made sure that all her electrical equipment was turned off and her pots of acid all had lids on, and went in search of the music. As she neared the library, the music got louder. She paused in the doorway of the library. Lorenzo was sitting at the piano; from her vantage point, she could see that his eyes were closed as he was playing.

In another life, she thought, this could’ve been his career. Though he didn’t have the luxury of choice.

When he’d finished, she clapped softly, and Lorenzo opened his eyes and stared at her in surprise.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

‘I heard the music,’ she said simply.

He grimaced. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you.’

‘I was going to have a break anyway.’ She paused. ‘You’re very good.’

‘Thank you.’

Lorenzo accepted the compliment gracefully, even a little bit shyly. Indigo had the strongest feeling that this was a part of himself that he normally kept hidden. She couldn’t resist asking, ‘Would you play some more for me?’

‘I...’ He gave her another of those shy smiles that made her heart contract. ‘Sure, if you want. Take a seat.’

She heeled off her shoes and curled up on a corner of the battered leather chesterfield sofa. The Labrador came over and put a paw on one of the cushions, clearly intending to lever himself up next to her.

‘Toto, you bad hound, you know you’re not allowed on the furniture,’ she scolded him.

The dog gave her a mournful look and she sighed and slid off the chesterfield onto the floor. ‘All right, then, I’ll come down and sit with you.’

He wagged his tail, licked her face and then sprawled over her.

‘And you’re much too big to be a lapdog,’ she said, but she rubbed the dog’s tummy anyway and he gave her a look of absolute bliss.

‘You like dogs?’ Lorenzo asked. Then he rolled his eyes. ‘That was a stupid question, because the answer’s obvious.’

‘I love them. But my work takes me all over the place and not everyone’s comfortable with dogs, so I can’t have one of my own. I come and borrow Lottie and Gus’s every so often.’ She paused. ‘I see you didn’t mind Toto leaning against your leg while you were playing. I take it you like dogs, too?’

He nodded. ‘I have dogs at home, but mine are a little smaller than Toto.’

She grinned. ‘Prince Lorenzo, please don’t tell me you have a Chihuahua.’

‘And carry it around with me in a basket?’ He laughed. ‘No. We have various spaniels. And although they’re nearly as old as Toto, they’re not quite as well behaved. They sneak up onto the furniture as soon as you’ve looked away. Especially Caesar. He’s my shadow when I’m at home.’

And she could tell that he didn’t really mind. Which made him seem so much more human. A king who didn’t necessarily expect all his subjects to obey him and would indulge an elderly and much-loved dog.

‘What do you want me to play?’ he asked.

‘Anything you like,’ she said, and listened intently as he ran through several pieces.

‘That was fabulous,’ she said when he’d finished. ‘When you said last night that it helped to get through tough times if you had something... It was music for you, wasn’t it?’

He nodded, and she had to stop herself from walking over to the piano and hugging him. She didn’t want him to think she was pitying him; but she could understand how a lonely little boy, far from his home and his family, needed to take refuge in something. She’d been there herself. ‘Did you ever think about being a musician?’

He shrugged. ‘It wasn’t exactly an option. My job’s been mapped out for me pretty much since I was born.’

She frowned. ‘Doesn’t that make you feel trapped?’

‘It’s my duty and I’m not going to let anyone down.’

She noticed that he hadn’t actually answered the question. Which told her far more than if he’d tried to bluff his way out of it. She knew she’d feel trapped, in his shoes. Stuck in a formal, rigid culture where you were expected to know every single rule off by heart and abide by them all. Stifling. She’d hate it even more than she’d hated the rigidity of boarding school.

‘If you could do whatever you wanted, what would you do?’ she asked softly.

‘Anything I wanted?’ His eyes were very, very dark.

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Right here and right now?’

She nodded.

‘I’d do this.’ He got up from the piano stool, walked over to her, drew her to her feet, wrapped her in his arms and kissed her.

Just like last night. Except it was more intense because, this time, she knew how perfectly his mouth fitted against hers. How his touch made her pulse beat faster. How right it felt.

Oh, help.

She really didn’t want Lorenzo to know how much he affected her. After the way Nigel had betrayed her trust and abandoned her, she didn’t want to be that vulnerable ever again. Hopefully being a little sarcastic with him would defuse the situation and make her feel more in control again.

She fanned herself with one hand. ‘You’re not too shabby at this, Your Royal Highness,’ she drawled. ‘Did they teach you this at prince school, too?’

He narrowed his eyes at her. ‘Indigo, will you please shut up about prince school?’

But her idea of a defence mechanism turned out to be a total failure, because then he kissed her again, tiny nibbling kisses that inflamed her senses and left her breathless. And she ended up kissing him right back.

This had to stop. Now. ‘Had a lot of practice, have we?’

It didn’t seem to faze him in the slightest. ‘That’d be telling, and a prince should never kiss and tell,’ he shot back. ‘You talk way too much, Indigo Moran.’ He caught her lower lip between his, sending her pulse skyrocketing again. ‘But, since you clearly want to talk—let’s talk about last night,’ he said. ‘At dinner. That dress.’

She frowned. ‘What was wrong with my dress?’

‘Nothing.’ He sighed. ‘Apart from the fact that it made me want to pick you up, haul you over my shoulder in a fireman’s lift, and carry you to my bed.’

Which put another set of pictures in her head.

If he carried on like this, she was going to do something seriously stupid.

‘Droit de seigneur?’ she asked.

‘No.’ He kissed her again. ‘For the record, I don’t believe in forcing anyone to do anything they don’t want to do. Being a troglodyte and carrying you off to my bed is—’ he licked his lower lip ‘—well, a fantasy. Which I would only do if you liked the idea, too.’

Now he’d said it like that, she could really picture it. And what would come after, too...

She shivered.

‘What’s the matter, Indigo?’ he asked softly.

‘You’ve just made it hard for me to breathe,’ she admitted.

‘Good. Now you know how that dress made me feel last night. And your shoes. I noticed just how long your legs are. And if you’d had any idea how much I wanted to touch you...’ He traced the outline of her mouth with the tip of his forefinger. It made her tingle all over and she couldn’t help parting her lips in response.

And then he actually grinned.

Oh, really? she thought. He honestly believed he had more self-control than she did? Well, two could play at that. She held his gaze, then sucked the tip of his finger into her mouth.

Instantly his pupils dilated and there was a slash of colour in his cheeks.

‘Touché,’ he whispered. ‘Indigo, we need to stop this. Now.’ He dragged in a breath. ‘It wouldn’t be fair or honourable of me to lead you on. I’m going back to Melvante soon. My life’s going to change out of all recognition.’

Of course it was.

He looked tortured. ‘I can’t offer you a future.’

‘I know. And even if you could, I’d be the worst person you could ask,’ she said. What with the scandal surrounding her birth, and the fact that she’d been naive enough to trust Nigel and not work out for herself that he was already married, she was totally unsuitable even to be a king’s mistress. ‘I take it you need to find yourself a princess.’ Which would put her totally out of the running. Not that she wanted the formal, rigid life of a royal family.

He rolled his eyes. ‘I probably do have to choose a bride within the next six months, yes. And she probably has to be from a noble family. Though, just for the record, I don’t care if your parents aren’t aristocrats. It’s how you treat other people that matters to me, not how many coronets are in your family tree.’

‘Actually, my father’s an earl.’ He looked surprised, and honesty made Indigo add, ‘The problem is, though, he was still married to his countess when he had a fling with my mother and she fell pregnant with me.’

‘So that’s why you ended up at the same school as Lottie?’ he asked.

‘It was my father’s idea of providing for me,’ she said dryly.

‘Money instead of attention?’

He’d hit the nail right on the head. ‘My father and I are never quite sure if we ought to acknowledge each other or not,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to hurt his family by claiming him as kin—I mean, I’m the child of an affair, and it’d be horrible to rub their noses in that. It wasn’t their fault that he behaved badly. So it’s easier...’ She sighed. ‘Well, for me not to acknowledge him and for him to pretend that I don’t really exist.’

‘But that hurts you.’

Did it still show? Or was Lorenzo just particularly perceptive? She shrugged. ‘I’m lucky: my grandparents loved me. I was never deprived of love, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘But your grandparents let you go to boarding school at such a young age?’

‘They didn’t exactly have a lot of choice. My grandmother wasn’t very well at the time—they had enough on their plates without having to look after a small child.’

He frowned. ‘What about your mother? Why didn’t she look after you?’

She blew out a breath. ‘You might as well know the worst. When it was obvious that the earl wasn’t going to leave his wife for my mother, she left me with her parents and bolted.’ She looked away. ‘With someone else’s husband.’

* * *

Lorenzo knew first-hand what kind of damage affairs could cause. Collateral damage, too. His own mother’s affair had blown his whole world apart. If she’d been able to cope with life in the royal family, then she wouldn’t have had the affair—and his father wouldn’t have reacted by driving their car into a wall. And just maybe he would’ve grown up with both his parents, in a happy family, and it would’ve been another thirty years before he’d had to think about becoming king.

Or maybe it would’ve been a different kind of unhappy childhood, with his parents always arguing in private and pretending everything was just fine and dandy where the public was concerned.

Not that he was going to tell Indigo about that. He didn’t talk about the scars on his heart to anyone. Ever. ‘That’s tough on you.’

She shrugged. ‘As I said, my grandparents loved me.’

The implication was clear: her mother hadn’t. ‘Do you see your mother now?’

Indigo shook her head. ‘She ended up in a yachting accident with Married Man Number Four. She drowned. All I have of my mother are photographs and some very fleeting memories.’

It was the same for Lorenzo. Photographs and fleeting memories. Except nobody knew the true circumstances of his parents’ accident. Nobody except his grandfather and their legal adviser. They wouldn’t have told him the truth, except some papers had been misfiled and he’d come across them when he was eighteen and discovered the truth for himself. He’d gone off the rails for a week, shocked to the core that his father could’ve done something so terrible. The paparazzi had taken a picture of him looking haggard and with the worst hangover in the history of the universe; and then his grandfather had hauled him back to the palace, had a very honest and frank discussion with him, and Lorenzo had reassumed his stiff upper lip.

‘That’s tough on you,’ he said again.

‘It was tougher,’ she said, ‘proving to everyone that I wasn’t like my mother.’

Yeah. He knew all about that, too—having to convince his grandfather that he wasn’t like his father.

‘Especially when I wanted to leave boarding school. But I hated the rigidity of the place, and the sense of entitlement that so many of the girls had.’

‘What did you do?’ he asked.

‘Gave my father a business plan,’ she said. ‘If I went to a normal state school at the age of fourteen, he’d save four years of fees—which would be enough to buy my grandparents’ cottage. If he let them live there rent-free for the rest of their lives, then he’d get his investment back when he sold the cottage. Win-win. He got money, and I got freedom.’

Lorenzo’s heart bled for her. How could her father have been so cold-blooded that she had to offer him a business plan as a way out of a school that she hated? ‘And he agreed to it?’

‘Yes.’

For a second, he saw pain in her eyes.

And then she grinned. ‘I told him the alternative was that I’d behave so badly, I’d get thrown out of every boarding school in England. But he knew I was right. And I proved to my grandparents that I wasn’t like my mother. I wasn’t running away, I was making the right choice. I got a weekend job in the local supermarket as soon as I was old enough, and a bar job to keep me going through art college until I graduated.’

‘And you got a First?’ he asked.

She inclined her head. ‘I made my grandparents proud of me before they died.’

Though her father had obviously not acknowledged her achievements. ‘Indi. I’m not pitying you, but right now I want to hug you,’ he said.

‘It’s OK. I’m a big girl. I learned to deal with it years ago.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s the earl’s loss, not mine.’

And what an idiot the man was, not realising what a treasure he had in Indigo.

Lorenzo stole another kiss. ‘Indigo. Will you please tell me to stop this?’

She kissed him back. ‘Colour me bad, Your Royal Highness, but what’s the alternative to stopping?’

His breath hitched. ‘I think you’ve just spiked my blood pressure. Are you suggesting...?’

‘We both know where we stand. You’re about to take over from your grandfather and become king. You don’t have time for a relationship. I have an empire to build with my business—I don’t have time for a relationship, either.’ She paused. This was crazy. But, at the same time, it was safe, because what she was proposing involved a time limit. Which meant she wouldn’t get involved with him. ‘I’m here until the end of the month. You said you don’t have to go back to Melvante for a little while. Are you staying here until you go back?’

‘Yes.’

‘So we’re in a private house. Among friends who would never rat us out to the press. Lottie’s my oldest friend, and I’m guessing that Gus is one of your oldest friends, too.’

‘He is. And I trust him totally.’ He lifted her hand to his face and pressed his lips against her wrist, feeling the way her pulse beat hard against his mouth. Indigo Moran was everything he couldn’t have. A breath of fresh air. Vibrant and lively. Totally unsuitable. And he knew without having to ask that she’d hate his world just as much as his mother had. This was never going to work.

Yet, at the same time, neither of them could deny the attraction between them.

‘So you’re suggesting we have a fling,’ he said slowly.

‘A mad fling,’ she corrected. ‘Because we both know that, although we’re attracted to each other, in the real world we’re not remotely suitable for each other. So we go into this with our eyes open. And we both walk away at the end of it. Intact.’

Which told him someone had walked away from her before, and left her very far from intact. ‘It feels a bit—well, dishonourable. To offer you just a fling.’ Especially now he knew about her background. She was the child of a fling, and she’d paid the price by losing a whole generation of her family.

‘Lorenzo, I’m not suitable marriage material for you, so you’re not in a position to offer me anything else,’ she pointed out. ‘Which means either we have to spend the next couple of weeks having a lot of cold showers and trying to avoid each other, or...’ Her breath caught. ‘Just for the record, I don’t normally proposition men.’

He stole another kiss. ‘I already know that. Despite that dress you were wearing last night, you’re not the type. And I’m very flattered that you should proposition me.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘But you’re going to say no.’

‘My head’s telling me that this is a bad idea,’ he said. ‘But...’ He blew out a breath. ‘I don’t do this sort of thing, either. I’m just a boring businessman.’

‘You’re a king in waiting,’ she corrected.

‘Same difference. Running a country’s the same as running a business. It’s just a slightly different scale.’ He shrugged. ‘Indigo, I always act with my head. I think things through and I look at all the options. I never do anything on impulse.’ Not since that week of getting seriously drunk—and he hadn’t touched brandy ever again after that. ‘Yet I can’t stop thinking about you. And kissing you just now was more impulsive than I’ve been in years.’ He leaned his forehead against hers. ‘Have you ever wanted something so much, you feel as if you’re going to implode?’

She didn’t answer; and he was pretty sure it had something to do with the man who’d walked away from her.

Which was precisely what he was going to have to do.

And he didn’t want to hurt her. Though he had a feeling that it might already be too late for that. She’d been rejected by her father, dumped at boarding school, and left in pieces when someone she loved had walked away from her. The fact that she’d been brave enough to suggest a fling also meant she’d made herself vulnerable.

He pulled back just enough to drop a kiss on her forehead. ‘Cold showers and avoidance it is.’

‘I’m not so sure that’s going to work. I have pictures in my head. And I think you do, too.’ She moistened her lower lip with the tip of her tongue, and he was near to hyperventilating. He really wanted to kiss her again.

‘Indigo, I’m trying really hard to maintain control, here.’

‘What if you didn’t have to?’ She stroked his face, and he turned his head to press a kiss into her palm. ‘What if you could be whoever you wanted to be, just for, say, one night?’

‘What scares me,’ he admitted, ‘is that I don’t think one night with you would be enough.’

‘A week, then. A fortnight. Maybe until you go back to Melvante. Look, you can still do whatever it is you planned to do here—spending time with Gus, thinking things through, sorting out kingly strategies. And I have work to do on the window. I’m not going to back out of my business commitments.’ She paused. ‘But, in between the business stuff, there are spaces.’

He could see what she meant. ‘Spaces where we can just be.’

‘Together,’ she confirmed softly.

He sat down on the chesterfield and pulled her onto his lap. ‘Your arguments are very persuasive, Ms Moran.’

She inclined her head. ‘Why, thank you, Your Royal Highness.’

‘Though I still feel dishonourable, offering you nothing but a fling.’

‘They’re the only kind of terms that either of us is in a position to offer,’ she pointed out. ‘So it’s your choice, Lorenzo. Cold showers—or this.’ She cupped his face in her hands and skimmed her mouth against his.

His lips tingled where her skin touched his, and he couldn’t help tightening his arms round her and responding to her kiss in kind.

‘This,’ he said when he could finally drag his mouth away from hers. ‘This.’

CHAPTER FOUR

ALTHOUGH INDIGO WENT back to her work when she left the library, she found herself stopping often to think about Lorenzo. She still couldn’t quite believe what they’d agreed to. Since when did she do anything crazy like this? After Nigel’s betrayal and the way her life had collapsed, two years ago, she’d kept all her relationships strictly platonic.

And now she was about to have a mad fling with a man who was about to become king.

Mad being the operative word, she thought wryly.

It took her ages to choose what to wear for dinner. At home, Indigo didn’t bother changing for dinner—there wasn’t much point when her meal was a hastily grabbed snack and she was going straight back to work for the rest of the evening. But she knew that Lottie’s family always dressed for dinner, and when she stayed at Edensfield she always tried to fit in, so as not to embarrass her friend.

Last night’s dress had made Lorenzo want to be a troglodyte and carry her off to his room.

Tonight, then, she’d wear something more demure. Something that would give him the chance to change his mind, maybe. Because she was pretty sure that one of them needed a dose of common sense, and right at that moment she didn’t think she was the one who’d get it. So she picked a dress that one of her friends from art college had made as a prototype Edwardian costume and then presented to her because it practically had her name written over it: a midnight-blue velvet creation with a high scooped neck and cap sleeves, which came down to her ankles and was teamed with a silk sash in the same colour, a chunky faux-pearl necklace and a matching bracelet.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.