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He dropped a lump of sugar into his coffee and stirred it. ‘That won’t be possible, I’m afraid. It’s much too short notice—and it’s not really a suitable trip for a baby.’
‘It isn’t?’
‘Not really, no.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘Anyway, it would be wasted on someone of Ben’s age.’
‘I suppose so.’ She tried to keep the frustration from her voice but it wasn’t easy. He was missing the point completely and she found herself wanting to slam her cup down onto the table. To tell him to stop being so calm and so polite and so damn reasonable and to really open up and talk to her!
Casimiro saw the way her lips were pursing up and the memory of how they had whispered over certain parts of his anatomy during the night made him adopt a more conciliatory tone. ‘Anyway, you have your own diary, bella—certainly enough to keep you occupied. And your own programme of visits.’
Aware that she was being fobbed off, Melissa nodded. ‘Yes, I know.’
‘How are you getting along with your lady-in-waiting?’
‘She’s lovely.’
‘And the nanny? She meets with your approval?’
Melissa sipped her coffee. She had baulked against the idea of having child-care—jealously wanting to have Ben all to herself. And wondering guiltily if she could justify having help when she wasn’t going out to work. But she had quickly worked out that she was being unrealistic and that she couldn’t really manage without help. ‘Sandy’s lovely, too—in fact, all the staff are.’
‘So what’s your problem?’
Was that how he saw her simple request to accompany him, then—as some kind of problem—when all she wanted was to show him how the quality of their lives could be improved? That if they did more stuff together then perhaps they might start getting closer. Well, he was never going to know unless she told him and time was very precious—especially when you had a baby who was fast becoming a toddler. If they weren’t careful, then Ben would be halfway to being grown-up, with two parents who barely knew one another.
‘You haven’t taken Ben swimming for ages.’ This time her smile was wide. ‘And he’d so love to splash around in the big palace pool with his papa.’
A pulse began to flicker at Casimiro’s temple. ‘I think I told you,’ he said evenly, ‘that I have employed the best swimming teacher on the island to do that—all you have to do is pick up the phone and they’ll be ready to start.’
Melissa stood her ground. ‘But it isn’t the same, Casimiro.’
‘No, you’re right—it isn’t.’ He smiled. ‘Good though I am, mia cara, I’ve never actually won a gold medal at the sport.’
Her lips curved into an answering smile, but it didn’t dint her determination. ‘Ben needs to see you.’
‘And he does see me.’
Something in his implacable face made her growing frustration begin to splinter and the words flew out before she could stop them. ‘Yes, he sees you—but it’s always on your terms and only on your terms, isn’t it? For a few minutes in the morning and a few more snatched minutes in the evening. The occasional lunch at the weekend—if he’s lucky. A bit of a tickle and a bit of a play but it’s all so…so snatched. He’s…’
She willed her thudding heart to slow and looked at Casimiro with appeal in her eyes. ‘He’s at a wonderful and impressionable stage of his life, darling—and he just adores it when he’s with you. But if it doesn’t happen often enough, then I’m afraid that you’re never going to…well, to bond with him.’
Casimiro put down his coffee cup. ‘Bond?’ he repeated scornfully, but he could feel a cold kind of dread begin to wrap itself around his heart. As if she had pushed him to the edge of a cliff and were forcing him to look down, into the unknown. Starkly it reminded him of those raw feelings he’d first experienced when his mother had died—the ones he’d blotted out. And again when he’d awoken from his coma and everything familiar seemed to have been turned upside down. How dared she? How dared she try to tell him how to run his life when she was a novice to all this?
‘I’d prefer it if you kept all your psycho-babble out of this,’ he iced out repressively. ‘Perhaps when you’ve been around a little longer, you will understand that this is not the way we do things around here. This is not the way of Kings.’
Something in his imperious attitude made Melissa’s fingers stop pleating the crisp napkin—and suddenly she realised that this needed to be said. Had to be said. Maybe it would clear the air or maybe it would make things worse but she had to try. For Ben’s sake—and maybe for their sake, too.
‘A way of life you obviously hated so much that you were about to reject it by abdicating,’ she said quietly.
He looked around the vaulted breakfast chamber—the huge windows open to the fragrant drift of blooms just outside. ‘Keep your voice down.’
‘But nobody’s here,’ she said softly. ‘Nobody to hear but you and me.’
‘I don’t care,’ he snapped.
‘But I do. And we’ve never really talked about it before, have we?’ she continued, as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘The subject was never open for debate.’
‘The subject is closed. Finished.’
‘But you can’t do that. You can’t veto something just because it makes you uncomfortable, Casimiro! Otherwise things just build up and up inside you. And then they explode.’
