She wanted someone who would be by her side—she wanted to succeed where her father had failed. She wasn’t asking for a love match; she was happy to keep some emotional distance, but she wanted loyalty and fidelity. A better father for her children than she’d had.
And after what she’d just experienced, she knew that repeatingthatfor the sake of procreating and nothing more was far too disturbing to her to investigate and that terrified her.
She shook her head. ‘Sorry, but I have to go.’
She turned the lock on the door and opened it and slipped out. Caius’s security was standing outside and she didn’t make eye contact. She figured that he had seen this scenario a hundred times before.
A couple of days later, Poppy had Stephen send word to King Caius’s people that she was no longer interested in pursuing discussions about a royal union. Stephen remonstrated with her but Poppy remained adamant. The fact that it had more to do with her reaction to him personally and physically than her lofty dreams to have an engaged partner and committed loving father for her children was a shameful secret she would never reveal.
Then, a couple of days after that, Stephen came into her office and put down the daily papers, saying grimly, ‘Looks like your instincts were right all along.’
The papers were full of King Caius’s latest scandal. It had been discovered that he wasn’t in fact the biological son of the late king of Sadat Sur Mer. He was the product of an affair his mother, the late queen, had had.
King Caius announced his abdication not long afterwards. His younger sister would now be crowned as queen. Poppy felt a measure of sympathy for the young woman.
Poppy would never admit it, but instead of relief that the question of Caius’s suitability had now been shut down completely, what she did feel was infinitely more disturbing to name.
Chapter Three
Wedding Day
‘I’M NO ONE SPECIAL.’Caius looked out of the small aeroplane window taking in the view of the verdant mountainous region below, with its picturesque main city spread along the shores of a sparkling lake.
He couldn’t deny that Valdere was a stunningly beautiful country.Like its crown princess.His jaw got tight. The woman who had exposed his attraction to her, while keeping her identity a secret, before walking away and saying those words,I’m no one special.How she must have laughed at his cluelessness. At the way he’d begged her for more. To see her again. For her name.
She had been special enough to haunt his every waking moment and dreams, even as his life had imploded around him upon the revelations that he was not his father’s son. That he was not in fact the rightful heir to the throne of Sadat Sur Mer.
And it hadn’t just been because she’d been the first woman to walk away from him. She’d been the first woman to ignite his libido in a way that had felled him with its force.
He’d actually begun to doubt that night had even happened, wondered if he’d conjured her up, until she’d appeared in his offices in Manhattan a month ago and had dropped the bombshell that she was far fromno one special. She was in fact a crown princess and she was pregnant with his child.
The same crown princess who he’d been in talks with to consider marriage. The same crown princess who in the days after that night in Paris had sent a message telling him she wasn’t going to pursue discussions of a marriage.
This wasaftersleeping with him. Andbeforehe’d lost his crown. When he’d still been one of the most sought-after bachelors in the world.
The fact that she’d only then sought him out because she was pregnant had added salt to the wound of his sense of exposure and humiliation. Something he would never reveal.
Nor would he ever reveal that just before she’d reappeared in his life, when he’d been coming out of the other end of those tumultuous months, he’d been feeling rudderless and untethered, not sure how to navigate his new existence as a disgraced ex-king.
Not even the fact that he now had a reason for why his father had always looked at him with some level of suspicion had helped all that much. Or that it had gone some way to explaining the very toxic nature of his parents’ fraught marriage.
No, all he could see in his mind’s eye washer, in his office, in slim-fitting dark trousers, with a silk shirt buttoned up to her neck with a provocative pussy-bow tie, hair sleek and pulled back, looking every inch the European princess. Looking nothing like the woman he’d slept with in Paris. Because this woman had red hair. Not brown. And green eyes. Not dark.
But before he’d recognised who she really was, and before her bombshell announcement, Caius had been confused as to why she’d wanted to see him. After all, she’d called a halt to marriage negotiations before he’d had to abdicate.
‘Why are you here, Princess Poppy? You made it pretty clear we had little to discuss even before I had to abdicate. Unless you’re here on other business? Looking for financial advice?’
She’d blurted out, ‘Did you know?’
Caius had known instantly her meaning and his insides had clenched hard. ‘Did I know what? That I was a bastard?’
She’d winced but he’d felt no remorse.
‘I don’t think that word is really necessary,’ she’d said primly.
He’d raised a brow. ‘It’s the word people are attaching to me, with not a little relish. Everyone enjoys a spectacular downfall.’
She’d gestured around her at Caius’s penthouse office. ‘You’re not doing too badly considering.’
