The Prince's Captive Wife. Marion Lennox

there had been women. Christina had been a faithless wife, finally leaving him for a shipping tycoon. And Andreas…well, the last few years hadn’t been without their comforts.

      They were being dredged up now, one after another, he thought bleakly, as the press scrambled to make the royal princes look a bunch of pleasure-seeking womanizers. Culminating in this. An accusation that had the capacity to bring down a throne.

      The urgency of the current situation slammed back. Holly was assuming he could put her on a plane and send her calmly back to where she’d come from.

      Maybe he could. If she could swear…

      ‘Holly, is there anyone who could prove the baby…Adam…’ he corrected himself hastily as he saw her face. ‘Is there any way it can be proved that Adam was mine?’

      Until now he’d thought she was so angry she could scarcely be angrier.

      He was wrong.

      She’d dropped her towel at some point and had simply left it. She stood now, facing him, bare of everything but her skimpy bikini. She was only five feet four or so, but she looked much taller. She was all heaving bosom and flashing eyes—and temper to the point of explosion.

      ‘I beg your pardon?’ she said at last, dripping ice with every word.

      But it had to be asked.

      ‘I have to know,’ he said. He was feeling sick at what he’d just learned but this couldn’t be the end of it. What was at stake was too important.

      ‘You want to know if I can prove you were Adam’s father?’ she demanded, incredulous.

      ‘I know I fathered your child,’ he said flatly. ‘I accept your word, the dates fit and I know you were a virgin.’

      ‘Thank you so much,’ she said, scorn dripping as well as ice.

      ‘But…’

      ‘But what?’ They were too close. She was glaring up at him, tugged so close he could feel her breasts beneath the fine linen of his shirt. Her anger was a palpable force, holding them together with fire.

      ‘Holly, I’m in trouble,’ he said simply. ‘We’re all in trouble. If anyone else can prove the baby was mine, then I’m going to have to marry you.’

      As a conversation stopper it was magnificent. It set up a boundary over which Holly would not step. She stared at him for one long, incredulous moment and then she closed her eyes.

      ‘You’re mad and I’ll have nothing to do with you,’ she spat, and that was all she’d say. She wrenched herself away with a viciousness he could scarcely credit for a woman so small. She slapped his hands away and, unless he was prepared to hold her back with force, he had no option but to let her go.

      She marched back to the pavilion with her head held high. Sophia met them at the main entrance as if she’d been on the lookout for them, her shrewd eyes filled with unasked questions.

      ‘His Highness has had too much sun,’ Holly said to her. ‘I think he needs a doctor. I’m going to take a shower and cool off.’

      She marched across the tiled courtyard to the apartment Sophia had obviously allocated her. She hauled the oak doors wide, marched in and slammed the doors so hard behind her that the ceiling fans in the vast entrance hall wobbled on their bearings.

      Sophia and Andreas were left staring after her. And staring at each other.

      ‘Do you want dinner?’ Sophia said at last, though Andreas knew there were a dozen other questions her eyes were asking.

      ‘In an hour.’

      ‘I’d imagine Holly will have it in her room,’ she said cautiously, staring at the very shut doors.

      Enough. He was a prince of the blood. He was here with a mission. ‘Holly will have her dinner out by the pool with me,’ he snapped, a score or more of his exceedingly autocratic ancestors snapping to attention behind him, stiffening his spine. ‘Tell her that.’

      ‘You might want to tell her yourself,’ Sophia said, still cautious.

      ‘It’s your place to tell her.’

      ‘My Andreas is being a coward?’ Sophia said and she smiled.

      ‘Yes, he is,’ he admitted, raking his hair and giving her a rueful smile. Autocratic ancestors might come at will, but they never hung round long enough to be really useful. ‘Please, Sophia, would you tell her?’

      ‘I’ll tell her,’ Sophia said and smiled up at him some more, and then reached up and raked his black curls back into place as she’d done when he was six years old. ‘I’ll tell her you’re distressed and need to talk.’

      ‘No…’

      ‘You are distressed. You tell that one the truth,’ Sophia said sternly. ‘I’ve seen her long enough now to know that nothing but the truth will serve.’

      He swam.

      It was an hour until dinner, there was nothing to do but pace and he’d wear a hole in the magnificent tiles in his bedchamber if he paced as he felt like doing. So he abandoned himself to the pleasure of his internal lagoon. The pool was a perfect circle, with an island in the centre, set up with lounges, umbrellas, a bar with every drink a man—or woman—would want.

      He wanted none of them now. He simply swam, circling the pool over and over, his long, lean body cutting through the water with the ease and grace that had come from years of hard physical training.

      Swimming was to Andreas a time of something akin to meditation. A time when he could block out everything: the demands of royalty; the problems with a disastrous marriage; even the impending crisis of the missing diamond.

      But he couldn’t block out Holly. Not here. Not now. She was in his thoughts every moment as he circled the pool, and no matter how fast he swam there was no escape.

      He’d thought he’d forgotten her. Ten years ago he’d walked away from her because there was no choice. Now…now it seemed there was a choice again.

      He had to be disinterested. He had to explain things calmly, setting the future before her in terms she must understand.

      But she had a choice. He couldn’t marry her out of hand. Could he?

      No, he conceded as he swam. The days of dragging an unwilling bride to the altar were long gone, and shame could no longer be used as an incentive.

      She’d been shamed before, when he’d left. The thought of what she’d faced alone…

      It couldn’t matter. He had to put the gut-wrenching emotion he’d felt as she’d described her baby’s death aside. For now, for his country’s sake, he needed to be level-headed, sharp and persuasive.

      But he didn’t know how to be, when the moment he looked at her he felt like a kid again; a young prince with the world at his feet. With Holly at his feet…

      Holly.

      He had to get his mind clear. He had to get his arguments in order.

      All he could think of was how beautiful she was. And that she’d borne his son.

      He’d had a son and he’d never known him. The thought was enough to shift his foundations. To make him unsure of who he was in the world.

      He’d let this woman down. She had to agree to his proposal. Somehow he had to make amends, but that had to fit with Sebastian’s demands.

      The demands of his king.

      He’d know she could see him.

      Every apartment in the pavilion looked over the pool. Andreas swam with the ease of a shark circling his prey, she thought uneasily, watching him rounding the island with lazy ease and a speed that looked deceptively easy to obtain.

      Holly conceded