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CHAPTER SIX

‘WHENDOYOUR parents get back?’ Clara asked as she shared breakfast with Marcelo two days later on the garden terrace under the rising sun. Having lived in a flat above the animal shelter for six years, it was lovely to have a garden. Enclosed for complete privacy and beautifully maintained by the castle gardeners, she thought it wonderful.

She’d joined Marcelo ten minutes earlier and other than a quick glance at her appearance, a swift, ‘Good morning,’ and a pat on the head for Bob, he’d sipped at his caffè latte and picked at his pastry in silence whilst reading the news on his phone.

Her question didn’t drag his gaze from his phone. ‘A week on Friday.’

They’d flown to Australia on an official visit the day after Clara’s arrival on Ceres. Seeing as she hadn’t yet met them, she assumed the timing wasn’t anything personal. ‘When do you think I’ll get to meet them?’

‘I imagine a dinner will be arranged on their return. I know they’re keen to meet you.’

She reached for a second chocolate brioche. She wondered how big her bum would get if she ate two chocolate brioches for breakfast every day for the next year. Marcelo, she’d noticed in her short time here, limited himself to only one. Marcelo, she also noticed, had so far conducted their conversation without looking at her. She didn’t think he could be properly reading his phone as he was definitely listening to her with both ears. ‘You’ll have to teach me table etiquette.’

‘Didn’t they teach you that at school?’

‘I skipped those lessons.’

That made him look from his phone to her.

She grinned mischievously. Clara liked it when she had Marcelo’s full attention. It meant she could look at his gorgeous face. ‘Those lessons were boring. What kind of conversation will they expect from me?’

His sensuous lips stretched into a smile. It amazed her how often she found her gaze drifting to them. When he’d taken her to the British embassy the day before to sort her passport out, there had been a moment when she’d been so caught up watching his mouth move as he spoke to the official that had speedily taken it upon himself to deal with her case—having a prince of the island at her side had certainly helped on that score—that she’d completed zoned out.

‘Just normal, everyday conversation,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about it. In private they’re pretty informal.’

‘Only pretty informal?’

‘They’re from a generation where being royal meant formality. My mother was raised knowing she would be queen and was trained from birth for her role. She is modern in her outlook but that modernity sometimes clashes with the values and sensibilities she was raised with.’

‘I hope I don’t say or do anything to offend her. She’s going to be my mother-in-law for a year so I imagine it would be a bit awkward if she decides she hates me. I mean, what if she’s wearing a really horrible dress and asks me if I like it? Would she do something like that? Some people do and then when you tell them the truth, they get all huffy. I don’t get it. Why ask for an opinion if you don’t want a truthful answer? Isn’t that dishonest? To ask the question in the first place, I mean.’

Marcelo smothered an inward sigh and put his phone down. He’d had a terrible night’s sleep. It had taken him longer than normal to get off and then he’d pulled himself awake from a dream involving Clara and the red lace underwear he’d caught a glimpse of in her dressing room. Every time he’d closed his eyes after that, the dream had remained vivid, the knowledge she lay in a bed only a wall away feeding it. Lord knew when he’d drifted back off but the end result was he felt decidedly unrefreshed and then, within minutes of sitting down for some sustenance, the woman who’d prevented his sleep had appeared on the garden terrace all sleepy-eyed and tousle-haired and dressed in a pair of perfectly modest silk pyjamas that showed perfectly well her lack of underwear. He couldn’t see anything he shouldn’t but the way the silk caressed her curves meant it didn’t need to be transparent. It had taken approximately one second for his loins to react.

However, ignoring Clara, even to get a grip on his increasing hunger for her, was not an option. He had a year of this to look forward to. He had to get used to it.

But damn, it was hard not to look at her and react, not when she was so damn sexy. Look at her now, her chair pushed back from the table, one knee pulled up to her chest, unashamedly devouring her brioche. What man’s blood wouldn’t burn at such a sight?

Pushing his plate to one side, he said, ‘Do you ever tell white lies?’

She ripped off a piece of her brioche. ‘No. A lie’s a lie.’ The brioche disappeared between the plump lips that had also featured heavily in his dream.

‘Not even to spare someone’s feelings? To make them feel good about themselves or better in themselves?’

She swallowed her bite with a shrug. ‘I don’t like to hurt people’s feelings. I try very hard and not always successfully to live by the maxim of If you’ve nothing good to say then don’t say anything at all, but I can’t tell a lie. The consequences can be very bad.’

‘The voice of experience?’ he queried idly, taken with the tiny crumb lodged in the corner of that amazingly kissable mouth.

She nodded. ‘My mother died of a brain tumour. Did you know that?’

Taken aback at her words, he blinked sharply to pull his focus away from her mouth. ‘No.’

‘She was ill for a long time. Everyone knew. But no one told me.’ Clara compressed the pointless churn in her belly. There was no point getting upset about something that happened so long ago.

She rarely spoke about her mother’s death, not because she didn’t want to but because people so rarely asked. Of course, Marcelo hadn’t asked but she figured this was a story he needed to know. She wanted him to know.

‘She would spend days in bed with terrible headaches and I thought it was normal, and I thought it was normal for mummies to sometimes go to hospital for long spells for their headaches. I thought it was normal because that’s what I was told. But I knew what death was because I remember visiting her once with my father and asking him if she was going to die and he said no. I distinctly remember him telling me that she’d be better soon, and I believed him. When she was home, I would get into bed with her every morning and cuddle her and, if her head wasn’t hurting too much, we would watch cartoons together, and I had no idea that she would soon be taken from me because I believed my father’s lies and all the other people who lied too. Right until the end they kept the lie going, even when she weighed little more than I did and was too weak to raise her head. I lived in a house with death hovering over us and I was the only one who couldn’t see it because I believed their lies. I was the only one who didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to her.’

To that day, Clara couldn’t say why she’d never asked her mother but was glad she hadn’t. She didn’t think she’d be able to endure knowing her mother had lied too.

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