Royal Christmas: Royal Love-Child, Forbidden Marriage. Кейт Хьюит

that didn’t look quite right.

      ‘She does,’ Anders agreed, putting an arm around Phoebe’s shoulder. She leaned against him, grateful for his strength, yet still conscious of Leo’s dark, unwavering gaze. ‘I don’t know why you were talking to her, Leo, but we’re both determined to be together—’

      ‘And such determination is so very admirable,’ Leo cut across him softly. ‘I will tell the king so.’

      Anders’s expression hardened, his lower lip jutting out in an expression more appropriate to a six-year-old before he shrugged and nodded. ‘You may do so. If he wanted you to convince me otherwise …’

      Leo smiled and that simple gesture made Phoebe want to shiver. There was nothing kind or good or loving about it. ‘Obviously, I cannot.’ He lifted one shoulder. ‘What more is there to say?’

      ‘Nothing,’ Anders finished. He turned to Phoebe. ‘It’s time for us to leave, Phoebe. There’s nothing for us here. We can take the ferry to Oslo and then catch the afternoon train to Paris.’

      Phoebe nodded, relieved, knowing she should be excited. Ecstatic.

      Yet as she walked from the room, Anders’s arm still around her shoulders, she was conscious only of Leo’s unrelenting gaze, and that dark emotion emanating from him which seemed strangely—impossibly—like sorrow.

      CHAPTER TWO

       Six years later

      IT WAS raining in Paris, a needling grey drizzle that blanketed the royal mourners in grey, and made the images on the television screen blurry and virtually unrecognisable.

      Not, Phoebe acknowledged, that she’d met any of Anders’s family besides his cousin. Leo. Even now his name made her skin prickle, made her recall that terrible, cold look he’d given Anders as they’d left the Amarnesian palace. That was the last time either she or Anders had seen any of his family, or even stepped foot in his native country.

      Six years ago … a lifetime, or two. Certainly more than one life had been affected—formed, changed—in the last half-decade.

      ‘Mommy?’ Christian stood behind the sofa where Phoebe had curled up, watching the funeral on one of those obscure cable channels. Now she turned to smile at her five-year-old son, who was gazing at the television with a faint frown. ‘What are you watching?’

      ‘Just …’ Phoebe shrugged, reaching to turn off the television. How to explain to Christian that his father—the father he hadn’t ever even seen—had died? It would be meaningless to Christian, who had long ago accepted the fact that he didn’t have a daddy. He didn’t need one, had been happy with the life Phoebe had provided, with friends and relatives and school here in New York.

      ‘Just what?’ Christian put his hands on his hips, his expression halfway between a pout and a mischievous grin. He was all boy, curious about everything, always asking what, why, who.

      ‘Watching something,’ Phoebe murmured. She rose from the sofa, giving her son a quick one-armed hug. ‘Isn’t it time for dinner?’ Smiling, she pulled him along, tousling his hair, into the kitchen of their Greenwich Village apartment. Outside the sunlight slanted across Washington Square, filling the space with golden light.

      Yet as she pulled pots and pans from the cupboards, mindlessly listening to Christian talk about his latest craze—some kind of superhero, or were they super-robots? Pheobe could never keep them straight—her mind slipped back to the blurry image of the funeral on television.

      Anders, her husband of exactly one month, was dead. She shook her head, unable to summon more than a sense of sorrowful pity for a man who had swept into her life and out again with equal abruptness. It hadn’t taken very long for Anders to realise Phoebe had been nothing more than a passing fancy, and Phoebe had understood with equal speed how shallow and spoiled Anders really was. Yet at least that brief period of folly had given her something wonderful … Christian.

      ‘I like the green ones best …’ Christian tugged on her sleeve. ‘Mom, are you listening?’

      ‘Sorry, honey.’ Phoebe smiled down at Christian in apology even as she noticed that she’d let the water for the pasta boil dry. She had to get her mind out of the past. She hadn’t thought about Anders for years, and sometimes it felt as though that short, regrettable episode had never occurred. Yet his death had brought old memories to the surface—namely, that horrible interview at the palace. Even now Pheobe remembered the look in Leo Christensen’s eyes, the way he’d touched her … and the way she’d responded.

      With a jolt Phoebe realised she was remembering Leo, not Anders. Anders had receded into her memory as nothing more than a faded, blurry image, like an old photograph, yet Leo … Leo she remembered as sharply and clearly as if he were standing right in front of her.

      She glanced around the sunny kitchenette of her modest but comfortable apartment, almost as if she would see Leo standing darkly in the shadows. She gave a little laugh at her own ridiculous behaviour. Leo Christensen—all the Christensens, that entire life—was thousands of miles away. She and Anders had quietly separated just months after Leo had offered her fifty thousand dollars to leave him, and she’d never seen any of them again. She’d moved to New York with Christian, started over with the support of friends and family, and relegated the incident to a dark, unswept corner of her mind … that now felt the bright, glaring light of day.

      Abruptly Phoebe turned off the stove. ‘How about pizza?’ she asked Christian brightly, who responded with a delighted smile.

      ‘Angelo’s?’ he asked hopefully, naming their favourite neighbourhood pizza joint, and Phoebe nodded.

      ‘Absolutely.’

      Phoebe went to get their coats, only to stop in uneasy surprise at the sight of Christian in front of the television once more. He’d turned it back on and was watching the funeral procession, tracking the coffin’s progression down one of Paris’s main thoroughfares, the flag’s twin eagles with their austere, noble profiles visible even in the gloom. ‘Is that man dead?’

      Phoebe swallowed, a pang of sorrow for Anders’s wasted life piercing her. ‘Yes, it’s a funeral.’

      ‘Why is it on television?’ Christian asked with his usual wide-eyed curiosity.

      ‘Because he was a prince.’

      ‘A prince?’ Christian sounded moderately impressed. As a New Yorker, he encountered people of all walks of life every day. ‘A real one?’ he asked with a faint note of scepticism.

      Phoebe almost smiled. ‘Yes, a real one.’ She wasn’t about to explain to Christian about Anders’s abdication or exile, or the fact that he was his father. She’d always intended for Christian to know the truth of his birth, but not like this, with a grainy image of a funeral on TV. Besides, Christian knew what was important: that Phoebe had wanted him and loved him. Nothing else needed matter.

      With decisive determination she turned the TV off, the words of the French commentator fading away into silence.

      ‘Crown Prince of Amarnes … inebriated … reckless driving … his companion, a French model, died instantly along with him …’

      ‘Come on, scout,’ she said lightly. ‘Pizza time.’

      They’d almost reached the door, almost missed them completely, Phoebe thought later, when she heard the knock.

      Christian’s eyes widened and they stared at each other, the only sound the awful, silent reverberation of the knock. Strange, Phoebe thought, how they both knew that knock was different. Three short, hard raps on the door, so unlike the flurry of light taps their neighbour, old Mrs Simpson, would give, along with a cheery hello.

      Those short, sharp knocks which felt like a warning, a herald of nothing good, and somehow they both knew it. Phoebe felt that knowledge settle coldly in her bones, even as she wondered who—what—why. Just like Christian, she was filled