by Leah Ashton
‘Really?’ Rhys asked. ‘You’ve never been skiing in the Dolomites?’
Rhys had discovered Castelrotto when Marko had taken him skiing at nearby Cortina d’Ampezzo, in a misguided attempt to cheer him up shortly after the abrupt end of his military career. Marko had grown up skiing at glamorous Cortina—surely Ana had too?
Ana’s lips quirked upwards. ‘Remember I’m only a very recent princess? I’ve never actually been skiing. The last time it snowed in Vela Ada was before I was born, so I haven’t even seen snow.’
Rhys raised his gaze in the direction of the nearby snow-capped mountains.
‘You know what I mean,’ she said, grinning. ‘Close enough to touch. To make a snowman or a snow angel.’
‘Or have a snowball fight?’ Rhys suggested.
Ana’s eyes lit up at the idea. ‘Oh, yes! Exactly. I want to try out all things snow-related.’
They started walking again.
‘I had forgotten you weren’t always a princess,’ Rhys said.
Ana slanted a gaze at him. ‘I haven’t,’ she said. ‘I keep expecting to wake up one day and feel like one, but it hasn’t happened yet.’
The ground had started to slope upwards, and they headed along a path Rhys took often enough to have worn a dirt track amongst the lush grass.
‘What should a princess feel like?’ Rhys asked.
Ana shrugged. ‘I wish I knew,’ she said. ‘Not like me.’
‘Why not you?’
She stopped in her tracks, only a few steps before the forest began in earnest, listening to the needles of the tall Norwegian Spruce trees rustling in the breeze.
‘Why anyone?’ Ana said. ‘Isn’t it just crazy that one random person gets all this prestige, and fancy houses and money, purely because of who their parents are, and another random person gets nothing?’
‘You don’t feel you deserve it,’ Rhys said. It was a statement, not a question.
Ana just nodded and continued along the path. It got rockier in the forest, and they both needed to concentrate on where they placed their feet.
‘How about all the good that the Vela Ada royal family do?’ Rhys asked. ‘With the island’s political unrest over the past few years, its royal family has played an important role in unifying the country, don’t you think?’
It had been government corruption that had finally dragged his friend Marko back to Vela Ada and an active role as Prince. Although there was no doubt that his wife, Princess Jasmine, had also played a part, the royal family was now more popular than ever—because they had been there at a time of turmoil. Stable and solid, as they had been for hundreds of years.
Ana looked as if she was going to argue, but he pressed on before she could.
‘You know Marko feels very similarly to you, right? I’ve heard all this before—about how uncomfortably privilege sits on his shoulders, how stupid it is that he gets so much for the act of simply being born.’
The path had started to climb upwards, winding between larger rocks and boulders.
‘But the fact is, he is a prince. You are a princess. Rather than whining about being so unbelievably fortunate, you should do something with all that privilege.’
He knew all too well that there were far worse burdens than a royal title.
Ana stopped walking abruptly and turned to face him. Too late, Rhys realised that this wasn’t like arguing with Marko—his friend whom he had told to pull his head in more than once. He was supposed to be working for Princess Ana. Serving her, really. She wasn’t an old friend. She was a woman he’d just met—who also happened to be a princess he’d been hired to protect.
‘For your information, Mr North,’ she said coldly, ‘I have been doing quite a lot with my privilege. It’s the reason I ultimately accepted my royal title—so I could draw attention to charities I feel passionate about—mostly related to literacy. I’ve also started my own project that aims to bring library services to older Vela Adians—initiatives like library services for nursing homes and funding for more talking books and...’
Her strident words petered out and she shoved her hands into the pockets of her coat.
She sighed. ‘But you are right. I should just get on with being a princess rather than debating my worthiness for the role. Embrace my good fortune rather than question it. It’s just that...’
She paused for long moments.
‘Just that...?’ Rhys prompted.
Her expression shifted from defiant to defeated. ‘Well, it’s kind of difficult not to question whether I deserve any of this—if I deserve to be whisked across Europe in order to escape my own wedding—when my own father determined that I wasn’t worthy of being a princess for the first twenty-nine years of my life.’
Ana turned on her heel and continued up the path at a brisk pace.
Rhys followed equally briskly. ‘Ana, wait.’ He’d never intended to cause such pain in her eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—’
‘No,’ Ana said, interrupting, her gaze still on the path ahead of her. Her breathing was heavier now as she negotiated the slope. ‘You’re right. I do need to stop overthinking this. I’m a princess now. That’s not changing. I need to deal with it and move on. Focus on all the good stuff—the charity work I can dedicate myself to, the fact that my mum will never need to worry about money for the rest of her life. The fact that there’s a royal hairdresser and my hair has literally never looked so good.’
Her lips twitched in the briefest smile.
‘I should ignore the rest. The scrutiny by the public and the media. The fact that I had to give up a career I loved and an apartment I scrimped and saved for that symbolised years of hard work and then suddenly became cheap and disposable. And the fact that I gave up the chance to live a normal, private life...’
Rhys was keeping up easily, used to these trails and fitter than her. But his concentration was focused on her, not on where he was going, so it was probably unsurprising that he stepped on a loose rock, turned his ankle and suddenly found himself crashing towards the ground.
He hit it hard, and with a loud grunt, landing only a few feet from Ana’s boots.
‘Rhys!’ Ana exclaimed, retracing her steps to crouch beside him.
It was the first time she’d said his name. He liked the way it sounded on her lips—her accent making the single syllable rich and husky.
She immediately realised her mistake. ‘Mr North,’ she corrected herself. ‘Are you okay?’
He assessed the damage: none, apart from the bruise that would eventually develop on the hip that had taken the brunt of his fall. And, of course, the bruise to his pride.
He shifted his weight until he was sitting up. ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Totally fine.’
Ana rearranged her own legs until she sat beside him.
‘I’m sorry,’ Rhys said. ‘I know the royalty are under a lot of pressure—I’ve been Marko’s friend for almost a decade. I know it’s real, and I know it’s hard. Especially for you, given your unusual circumstances. I shouldn’t have called you a whiner—that was unfair.’
Ana shook her head. ‘You were speaking the truth. I am a princess now. So, however I feel, that is how a princess feels.’ She grinned. ‘If I keep reminding myself, eventually it will stick.’
Rhys smiled at Ana.
‘If it helps, I’ve never doubted that you’re a princess, Your Highness.’
Ana smiled back.
‘Why, thank you, Mr North.’
CHAPTER SIX
THEY DIDN’T TALK much for the rest of their hike, which suited Ana fine.
It was a comfortable silence, and often a necessary silence—for Ana, at least, who was not particularly fit—as they traversed the more challenging inclines of their hike.
When they eventually arrived back at Rhys’s house, and Ana had showered, she curled up
on Rhys’s couch to read one of the dozens of books she had on her e-reader. It was a Sunday, but Rhys spent the rest of the day working in his study, except for frequent trips to the kitchen to brew a never-ending succession of cups of coffee.
Halfway through a book she was barely paying attention to, Ana finally convinced herself that she could, in fact, manage a call to her mother. After all, what was the worst that could happen?
As it turned out, the worst was pretty bad.
‘How could you?’ was the dominant theme. How could she humiliate the man she loved like that?
Her mother didn’t want to hear Ana challenge the whole ‘love’ situation.
How could she throw away the opportunity to marry Petar Kovacic?
As if Petar was the most perfect of men.
And—most tellingly—how could she do something like that in front of literally everyone in Vela Ada?
Her phone call with Petar had been uncomfortable and frustrating. But this call... This call exposed her mother’s hurt and left Ana’s shoulders heavy with guilt and regret. Not for running away from Petar, but for the pain she’d caused the woman she loved most in the world.
‘Are you okay, Ana?’
Rhys’s voice made Ana startle. She realised she’d been staring at the black screen of her phone ever since she’d ended the call to her mother. She hadn’t noticed Rhys re-enter the room.
She was still sitting cross-legged on the plush couch, and she untangled her legs and stood. ‘Of course,’ she said brightly.
She walked over to the kitchen. Earlier Dino had gone into Castelrotto for supplies, and Ana had made up a cheese platter that she and Rhys had been grazing on throughout the afternoon. She stood at the granite counter and calmly sliced off a chunk of taleggio cheese and placed it on a cracker.
Rhys walked over so he stood on the opposite side of the bench. ‘Are you sure?’
Ana looked up to meet his gaze. She forced a grin. ‘Yes,’ she said firmly.
As Ana watched, Rhys sliced his own piece of cheese. He’d chosen one of the hard cheeses—pecorino, Ana thought—and he ate it just like that: no cracker, no crusty Italian bread.
Ana only realised she was watching him chew and swallow when her gaze met his eyes—and his raised eyebrows.
‘Really, really sure?’
How did he do that? He was teasing her, making her lips curve in a genuine grin even as her brain was lecturing her on the million mistakes she’d made that had led to what had happened yesterday.
When he was like this—when he had that thoughtful sparkle in his gaze—he was impossible to ignore. And it was so tempting to talk to him, but—
‘I thought we’d established that you don’t need to be my counsellor,’ Ana said. ‘I don’t expect you to listen to all my woes.’
He shrugged. ‘Yeah, well, I didn’t expect to have a princess living with me—and I’m sure you didn’t expect to be living with a widower who doesn’t like Christmas—so I think we can both agree this is an unusual situation.’
Ana was still unconvinced. ‘You don’t want to hear my problems.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘How about I decide that?’ he said.
He skirted around the bench and grabbed a bottle of wine from one of the overhead cupboards.
‘Would you like a glass of Chianti to accompany that cheese you’re not eating?’
Ana found herself nodding, but rather than eating her forgotten cheese she placed it on the edge of the wooden platter. She’d lost her appetite.
He poured her a glass and pushed it across the granite towards her. He propped his hip against the counter, his own glass held loosely in his fingers. In getting the wine he’d had to move closer to her, and now he wasn’t much more than a metre away.
It was a reasonable distance—he certainly wasn’t crowding her—but Ana felt his proximity with every bone in her body.
They still hadn’t touched. Even when he’d fallen in the woods he’d ignored her proffered hand and stood unassisted.
Ana’s attention dropped to Rhys’s fingers, which absently twisted his wine glass to and fro.
How would it feel to have those fingers against her skin...?
As that was not where Ana wanted her thoughts to be heading, she grabbed hard onto a topic guaranteed to distract her from Rhys’s size, and strength, and general gorgeousness.
Her mother.
‘My mum went through a lot when I was born,’ she blurted out.
Rhys nodded. ‘I’ve heard part of the story from Marko.’
‘I don’t know much of the detail of her relationship with Prince Goran, but I know she loved him. He was older, he was married and she knew she shouldn’t—but she loved him anyway. When he refused to acknowledge my paternity, it broke her.’
Ana took a sip of her wine, closing her eyes to gather her thoughts.
‘He told her the baby couldn’t possibly be his, but as there was no one else my mother always knew the truth. At first she kept things private, but when Prince Goran began to ignore her calls he made it impossible for her. So she went to the press.’
Ana took another long drink of wine. She hadn’t even been born yet, but the injustice of what had happened to her mother still made fury and disappointment war inside her. How could her father have been so cold?
‘It was a huge scandal at the time—splashed all over magazines and newspapers. My mother even did a few television interviews. All she wanted was a paternity test, but with no concrete proof of their relationship—no photos, nothing—the Prince got away with dismissing my mother as a liar. It must have been beyond awful for her.’
Ana looked down and realised she’d finished her wine. She placed her glass on the counter.
‘A lot of people did believe my mother. It could have been resolved by a paternity test, and because the Prince refused it raised suspicion. But Goran’s unblemished history—both before and after—made him seem a man unlikely to have an affair. In the end the palace’s refusal to engage with someone they saw as a delusional woman was the narrative that won out. And eventually she gave up.’
She met Rhys’s gaze. He’d barely drunk any of his wine. She was tempted to ask for some more. She wasn’t usually a big drinker, but the wine was delicious—warm and comforting.
But she decided being in any way less inhibited around Rhys was probably a terrible idea. Despite talking exclusively about her mother, he had become no less deliciously handsome to her recalcitrant libido.
Instead she refocused on the cheese platter and sliced off another chunk of cheese she had no plans to actually consume.
‘For Prince Goran to finally acknowledge me, for me to become a princess...that was everything to my mother. For her, it was redemption. People had never forgotten what she’d claimed all those years ago, and Prince Goran’s denial followed her everywhere. For me to become Princess Ana—that was her victory.’
‘That’s why you accepted the title?’ Rhys said.
‘Yes,’ Ana said simply.
‘You didn’t want it for yourself?’
‘No,’ she said, even more quietly. ‘I didn’t.’
She swallowed. She’d picked up a cracker at some point and was turning it over and over in her fingers.
‘I think that’s what went wrong this past year. My decision to become Princess Ana wasn’t my own, and it was as if all my subsequent decisions haven’t been entirely mine either.’
Ana stilled her hands and straightened her shoulders.
‘But I own that now. I was trying to be the perfect princess—for my mother, mostly, but also for my grandparents and for myself. I’ve not had a father all my life. I wanted to show Vela Ada what he missed out on. And to do that I had to be perfect. But perfect isn’t me.’
The cracker snapped into two in her hand. Ana stared at the pile of crumbs in her palm.<
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‘And now I’ve shamed my mother again by running away,’ she said quietly. ‘She had no idea how I really felt about Petar. No idea how I felt about being a princess. I’ve blindsided her and I’ve embarrassed her—in public, no less. She didn’t deserve for this to happen. For something like this to happen to her again.’
‘You couldn’t marry a man you didn’t love,’ Rhys said, his voice low.
He’d moved closer, but Ana kept her attention trained on her hands.
‘Why not?’ she said. ‘I dated a man I didn’t love. I accepted his proposal. I had a million opportunities to walk away and I took none. What does that say about me?’
‘It says you’ve had a very confusing year,’ Rhys said.
Ana shook her head. ‘That’s just an excuse.’
‘No, it’s an explanation,’ Rhys said. ‘Your life has been turned upside down. You’ve been under a lot of pressure.’
Ana dumped the pile of crumbs on the bench, then brushed her hands against her jeans. ‘I’m just so angry with myself for letting this happen. What was I even thinking? It’s like I got so caught up in the idea of being the perfect Princess that when the perfect Prince turned up it was impossible to say no.’
She rubbed at the place where her engagement ring had sat for the four months leading up to her wedding day. Now it was in a safe somewhere in the palace.
‘But that’s not me,’ Ana said firmly. ‘It’s not me to get swept up in something and ignore all my own internal warning systems. Usually I’m super-cynical in a new relationship. I used to think it was because of what happened to my mother, which would make sense, but then how do you explain me almost marrying a guy I didn’t love and who clearly didn’t love me?’
Ana looked up from her hands to discover Rhys had moved closer. After their hike he’d showered and changed into a deep green T-shirt that clung to his shoulders and biceps and made his eyes seem impossibly blue.
‘I don’t think everything needs an explanation, Ana,’ he said. ‘But, for what it’s worth, it sounds like you were trying so hard to do the right thing by everyone—even yourself, in a misguided way—that you lost sight of what you actually wanted.’