Best Friend To Royal Bride / Surprise Baby For The Billionaire. Annie Claydon

you argue about?’ Marie had clearly been waiting for him to go on, and finally she asked the question.

      ‘My father was an embittered man. He had everything money could buy, but he considered that our family had been deprived of its birthright. He insisted that we live as if we were royal, but I wanted more from life than that. I wanted to make my own choices. I wanted to be a doctor. He told me that if I went to medical school he’d disinherit me, and I told him to go ahead and do it.’

      A faint smile hovered at Marie’s lips. ‘I wouldn’t have expected you to do anything else. Didn’t he ever see what you’d achieved and come around?’

      ‘No, he never accepted what I wanted to do. The money that took me through medical school was from a trust that my grandfather had set up for me. He knew what my father was like, and he locked the trust in an ironclad agreement so my father couldn’t get his hands on it.’

      ‘Would he have tried? It sounds as if he had enough already.’ Marie’s eyebrows shot up.

      ‘My father didn’t care about the money; he thought it a paltry amount. He wanted control over me. I got to do what I wanted when I was eighteen because of that trust.’

      ‘So being disinherited…that was a good thing in a way. Your father couldn’t force you into his mould.’

      ‘I felt as if I was free.’

      She chuckled, picking up another seed tray. ‘Free was how you seemed then. I used to envy you for it, but I didn’t know what you’d had to go through to get your freedom. Did you never reconcile with your father?’

      ‘I didn’t want to. He was never a good husband; he hurt my mother very badly. I couldn’t forgive him for that.’

      There was nothing like telling a story to find out which parts of it really hurt. Alex could feel his chest tightening from the pain.

      ‘Alex…?’

      Marie was leaning forward now, concern registering on her face. Maybe she knew that this was what he really needed to say.

      ‘He had mistresses. Lots of them. He used to spend a couple of nights a week in London, and my mother always seemed so sad. When I was little I thought she must miss him, but by the time I was fifteen I knew what was going on. He didn’t go to much trouble to hide it.’

      Marie’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Your poor mother…’

      ‘She just accepted it. That was the thing that hurt the most. She grew thinner and sadder every year, until finally she just seemed to fade away. She died five years ago.’

      ‘And you never got to see her?’

      ‘I used to visit her all the time. I’d call her, and she’d tell me when my father would be out of the house and I could come. It was the only thing she ever defied him over and she used to love hearing about what I was doing as a doctor. She knew that she always had a home with me, but she’d never leave him.’

      ‘People…they make their own decisions. Parents included.’ Marie shot him a wry smile.

      ‘Yeah.’

      Alex had made his decision too. However much the idea of a wife and a family might appeal to him in theory, his parents’ unhappy marriage had always made him balk at the prospect of commitment. His father’s money and title were new reasons to make him wary. Alex didn’t know how he was going to cope with that yet, and the last thing he wanted to do was inflict his own struggle on anyone else.

      ‘I did try to speak to my father once—at my mother’s funeral. It was a very lavish affair, and after the way he’d treated her it made me feel sick. But I decided that it was what she would have wanted, and so I went up to him to shake his hand. He turned his back on me. I’ll never know why he changed his mind about leaving me his money and I wish he hadn’t.’

      Marie frowned at him suddenly. ‘It sounds as if he did the right thing, for once.’

      ‘What? You think I’m better as a billionaire king in exile?’

      ‘No, I think you’re pretty rubbish at it, actually.’

      The tension in his shoulders began to dissolve and Alex grinned at her. ‘That’s one of the things I like about you. That you don’t think it’s a good thing.’

      ‘I didn’t say it wasn’t a good thing. I said you were rubbish at it. Look around you and tell me it’s not a good thing.’

      ‘Point taken. So the clinic’s a good thing and I’m a rubbish king. Is that right?’

      She nodded. ‘You can write your own script, Alex. If you let the money and the title define you then maybe that’s what your father wanted. But if you define it, then you can do anything. Things ordinary people only dream of.’

      As usual, Marie was right. He’d been letting the money and the title define him a little too much recently, and the idea that he could become anything he wanted lifted a weight from his shoulders. And right now he wanted to be a gardener.

      Marie had finished planting three seed trays and they were lined up on one side of her. He hadn’t completed any yet. Alex picked up his tray.

      ‘I was wondering if you’d cover for me in the office. Today and tomorrow.’ He finished planting the tray and laid it down next to hers.

      ‘Yes, of course. You’re going out?’

      ‘No, I spoke with Jim Armitage and he’s given me the go-ahead to lay the pavers. I’ve never done anything like that before, but…’ He shrugged.

      ‘You can learn. I don’t think it’s that difficult.’ Marie’s sudden smile told him what she thought of the idea.

      ‘You don’t mind, then?’

      It had been Marie’s idea for him to get involved with the garden, and now he was going one better.

      ‘Mind?’ Marie laughed, a clear happy sound that echoed slightly against the walls that surrounded them. ‘Do I mind you getting covered in brick dust and sand while I sit in a nice comfortable office? Nah, I don’t mind that at all.’

      Marie had spent most of the morning in her office, trying to find things to do. When three-thirty came around and the stream of mothers walking past the clinic from the school began to start she fetched the printed leaflets which detailed the services the clinic had to offer from the stockroom, along with one of the chairs from the café, and went to sit out in the sun by the main gates.

      It would be one thing if Alex had changed over a few years—everyone changed. But he’d always carried this burden. The pressure of inheriting the money after his father’s death had just made him less adept at hiding it.

      And she’d never noticed. Caught up in her own work and looking after her family, she’d seen Alex as someone she wished she could be. A golden dream that she’d held on to, wanting to believe that work and responsibility weren’t the only things in life. But now she’d seen a new Alex, challenging and complicated, and she couldn’t help loving him better for it.

      The stream of parents and kids had lessened now, and she’d given away almost all her leaflets. She’d catch the two young mums who were dawdling down the road towards her, plastic bags hanging from the arms of their pushchairs, and then she’d call it a day.

      ‘Hi. May I give you a leaflet, please? About what we’re doing here…’

      One of them nodded, taking the leaflet and stuffing it into one of her shopping bags. The other took hers, and started to read it.

      ‘I was wondering what was happening with this place. I used to go to school here…’

      ‘Me too.’ Marie grinned. ‘Looks a lot better now.’

      ‘Tell