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

as if that might be a problem. ‘It’s rather a long story… Why don’t you come to my office and we’ll have some coffee?’

      Marie followed him to a small suite of offices situated at the front of the building, off the main reception area. From here it would be possible to see all the comings and goings, and Marie guessed that Alex would have had a hand in the location of his office. He always liked to be in the thick of things.

      His office was one of the few rooms in the building that was finished, but it didn’t seem much like the kind of place the Alex she remembered would like. The cream walls and tall windows lent themselves to minimalism, but Alex didn’t.

      ‘How long have you been here, Alex?’

      ‘A couple of months.’ He looked around at the sleek wooden desk that stood at one end of the room and the comfortable easy chairs grouped around a coffee table at the other end. ‘Why?’

      Alex had been here for two months? And he hadn’t yet covered the walls with pictures and stamped his own personality on the space? That wasn’t like him at all. Perhaps the clinic had some kind of rule about that.

      ‘It just seems a bit…unlived-in.’ Marie looked around for something, anything, to comment on, instead of asking whether all that light and clear space hurt his eyes. She nodded towards the stylish chair behind his desk. ‘I like your chair.’

      ‘I reckoned I’d be sitting in it for enough hours, so I wanted something that was comfortable. Give it a try.’

      He walked over to the wood-framed cupboards that lined one wall, opening one of the doors to reveal a coffee machine and a small sink unit.

      The chair was great—comfortable and supportive—and when Marie leaned back the backrest tipped gently with her movement. She started to work her way around all the levers and knobs under the seat.

      ‘I love this. It’s got more controls than my first car.’

      She got to her feet as Alex brought the coffee and he motioned her to sit again, smiling as if it hurt his face to do so.

      ‘You’ve missed a few of the adjustments. The knob on the left lets you tip the seat forward.’ He sat down in one of the chairs on the other side of the desk.

      ‘Oh!’ Marie tried it, almost skinning her knuckles on the stiff lever. ‘Nice one. I’m glad to see the clinic practises what it preaches and looks after its staff.’

      She was just talking. Saying things that might fill the space between them and hoping to provoke a reaction. She’d never seen Alex look so worried before.

      Not worried…

      Burdened.

      It was time to grasp the nettle and find out what was going on. She leaned forward, putting her elbows on the desk as if she were about to interview him. ‘So what’s the story then, Alex? I’m intrigued, so start right at the beginning.’

      He paused, staring into his mug, as if that would tell him exactly where the beginning was.

      ‘A hundred and ten years ago…’

      ‘What? Really?’

      He gave her a strained smile and Marie regretted the interruption. Whatever had happened a hundred and ten years ago must be more important than it sounded.

      ‘You said start at the beginning.’

      ‘I did. Sorry…’ She waved him on and there was silence for a moment. Then he spoke again.

      ‘A hundred and ten years ago the King of Belkraine was deposed and his family fled to London. They brought with them a lot of very valuable jewels, the title deeds to property in this country, and what was literally a king’s ransom in investments. His eldest son was my grandfather.’

      Marie stared at him.

      She’d thought that she and Alex had shared most of their secrets over the years but he’d obviously been holding back. Marie wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about that.

      ‘So you’re…a prince?’

      He gave her a pained look. ‘Belkraine no longer exists as a separate country. I’m not sure how you can be a prince of something that doesn’t exist.’

      He was missing the point. The role of many monarchies had changed in the last hundred years, but privilege and money was something that didn’t change.

      ‘A prince in exile, then?’

      ‘Strictly speaking a king…in exile. My father died in June last year.’

      ‘Alex, I’m so sorry.’

      ‘Thank you. But it’s… We’d been estranged for some years. Ever since I first went to medical school.’

      ‘But—’

      Marie bit her tongue. He’d never spoken much about his family, but she knew that he was an only child and that his parents lived in a big house in the country somewhere. There hadn’t ever been any mention of an estrangement, and Marie had always assumed he came from a normal happy family.

      Now wasn’t the time to mention that this was what Alex had allowed everyone to believe. He had no chance to make things right with his father now.

      ‘That must have hurt you a great deal.’

      He shrugged. ‘That door closed a long time ago. I came to terms with it.’

      There were too many questions, piling up on top of each other like grains of sand in an hourglass. What was Alex doing here? Why had he never said anything about this before?

      Maybe she should just stay silent and listen.

      Alex glanced at her uncertainly and Marie motioned for him to keep talking.

      ‘I didn’t expect that my father would leave me anything, let alone his whole estate. But he did. I find that I have more money than I know what to do with.’

      ‘How much…?’

      It wasn’t good manners to ask, but money had never bothered Alex all that much. If this was a life-changing amount, then that was both good news and bad. Good, because he could do the things he’d always wanted to. Bad, because he seemed so burdened by it.

      ‘If you include all the assets and property then it runs into something more than two billion. Less than three.’

      She stared at him. That was the kind of number that Marie would never get her head around, so it was probably better not to even try.

      ‘And this… You’ve done all this?’ She waved her finger in a wild circle.

      ‘My ancestors viewed wealth as a way to gain power and more wealth. I want to spend the money a little more wisely than that.’

      It was worthy. Altruistic. Right now it was about all she recognised of the Alex that she knew. The smiling, carefree soul who was in the habit of taking one day at a time had gone.

      ‘Wait a minute…’ A thought struck her. Had Alex been hiding all this in plain sight? ‘Alex King?’

      ‘Dr Alex King is who I really am. But my birth certificate says Rudolf Aloysius Alexander König.’

      Suddenly she couldn’t bear it. She hadn’t even known his name? The man she’d thought of as her friend, whom she’d dared to kiss and had loved every minute of it…

      Marie sprang from her seat, marching over to the window and staring out at the street. Maybe that would anchor her down, keep her feet firmly on the ground, and then she could begin to address the question of whether this really was Alex any more, or just a stranger who looked like him.

      Marie wasn’t taking this well. It was almost a relief. The small number of other people he’d