by Abby Green
‘Have you as in...?’
‘Lover, friend, life partner... Husband. And maybe...when we figure out how we feel about it after our own experiences...children?’
Ashling’s head was spinning. She took a breath. ‘Zachary Temple, are you telling me that you love me and that you want to marry me and have a family?’
‘I actually told you I loved you a couple of minutes ago, but maybe that got lost in—’
Ashling hit him on the arm. She felt suddenly shy. ‘I heard you. I just don’t think I believed what I was hearing.’
‘You heard me right. So now there’s only one more thing to ascertain...’
She looked at Zach’s mouth, wondering what it would take to get him to stop talking and kiss her.
‘Eyes up, Ash.’
She looked at him.
‘Do you love me?’
She looked at him in disbelief. Was he completely blind? ‘Of course I do. I love you so much but I didn’t say it because I thought you just wanted a relationship until things fizzled out, and I knew I couldn’t cope with that ultimate rejection and then watch you go on to marry some perfect corporate wife. Because that’s what my father did and I just...’ She stopped. Sucked in a breath. Then she put her arms around Zach’s neck. ‘Yes, I love you, Zach Temple. And yes to everything. For ever. Yes.’
And then, finally, he kissed her, and didn’t stop for a very long time.
EPILOGUE
Five years later, Somerset
‘THIS PLACE IS so idyllic, Ash. How can you ever bear to go back to London?’
Ashling grinned at her best friend Cassie, who was sitting on the other side of the table on the terrace. They’d just finished a long, leisurely lunch.
She threw a napkin at her friend, ‘Says the woman who has a freaking island!’
Cassie smiled smugly. ‘Well, yes, there is that...’
Cassie and her husband Luke Broussard, tech zillionaire, lived mostly on an island off the coast of Oregon in the United States. The place where they’d first fallen in love. They also had a townhouse in San Francisco, for when they needed to attend to their extremely successful corporate lives, not to mention homes in pretty much every other major city in the world, so their family could always have a settled base when they needed to travel.
Just then a mewling sound came from Ashling’s breast. She looked down and stroked the downy cheek of her baby girl, Georgie, and helped her to latch on again.
Opposite, her friend was similarly engaged. Except her baby girl—Celestine—was a month older. Ashling was already having visions of them being best friends, living together and having adventures...
‘You know that Zach thinks we deliberately contrived to have babies at the same time?’ Ashling commented wryly.
Cassie laughed. ‘Luke may have said something similar.’
‘It’s not still weird for you, is it? Me and Zach?’
It had taken Cassie a little while to get used to seeing her best friend with her old boss. But she rolled her eyes now. ‘Ash, I think I got over it as soon as I saw you together. If ever there was a case of opposites attracting... The thing that freaked me out most was him turning into a man who had actual feelings! Although hearing you call him by his first name for the first time was also a bit of a shock...’
Ashling laughed. She missed her life with her best friend, especially as they lived so far apart now, but they saw each other as much as possible. Each summer here at the country house, for Zach’s annual party, and many more times during the year.
Cassie asked now, ‘How’s the newest studio going?’
Pride filled Ashling. She’d just opened another yoga studio, here in the local village. Elena Stephanides had championed and invested in Ashling’s pipedream to open her own business, and her first studio had opened on the ground floor of the Temple Corp headquarters, along with a crèche for its employees.
She had other studios in London now, and one in Athens too. The Stephanides were close, valued friends and godparents to Georgie.
‘It’s amazing,’ she said. ‘The locals have really embraced it—’ She broke off when she heard shouts from the other end of the garden.
‘There goes our peace,’ Cassie observed dryly.
Ashling took in the scene. Zach and Luke were walking back from the lake with two small boys on their shoulders—Devin and Louis, their respective sons. The men were dripping wet after their swim in the lake, wearing nothing but board shorts. A view that both women took in with a sigh of very feminine appreciation.
Orla, Devin’s non-identical twin sister, ran ahead, holding something small and furry and distinctly wet, that was wriggling in her arms. ‘Mum!’ she shouted, ‘Ziggy had his first swim and he didn’t drown!’
Ashling smiled. There went their peace, indeed. But what was coming in its place was so much more satisfying.
Just before the chaos reached her and Cassie they shared a private look. They might relish their moments of peace, but they both relished this so much more. It was a life and existence beyond anything either of them could ever have imagined, filled with infinite love.
* * *
If you were head over heels for The Flaw in His Red-Hot Revenge make sure to check out the first instalment in the Hot Summer Nights with a Billionaire duet, One Wild Night with Her Enemy by Heidi Rice.
Also, don’t miss these other stories by Abby Green!
Redeemed by His Stolen Bride
The Greek’s Unknown Bride
The Maid’s Best Kept Secret
The Innocent Behind the Scandal
Bride Behind the Desert Veil
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Off-Limits to the Crown Prince
by Kali Anthony
CHAPTER ONE
HANNAH STOOD IN a shaft of bright sunlight at the rear of her studio. A sickening pulse beat in her chest. The dizzying smell of paint and solvent, usually a reminder of everything she loved, threatened to overpower her. She hurried to the window and threw it wide open onto the rambling tangle of a cottage garden. Gulped in the warm, summer’s air.
The hollyhocks were in bloom.
Her mother had loved the hollyhocks best of all the flowers growing here.
‘Miss Barrington?’ A bodyguard. One of three mountains of men who’d arrived minutes before. Two of whom were now stalking through the place, assessing her home for any risk. The one staying with her frowned, no doubt concerned she might be letting in an assailant to harm their employer, whose arrival was imminent. As if she could organise anything like that with the half-hour’s warning of his impending visit her agent had given.
‘The smell of paint.’ She waved her hand about like she was shooing away any offending scents. ‘It might irritate His Highness.’
The man nodded, likely satisfied she was thinking of his employer’s comfort. They probably wouldn’t care about hers, or that in this moment it was like a hand had grabbed round her throat and squeezed. She took another deep breath. The bodyguard stationed himself at the doorway separating her studio from the rest of the house and crossed his arms as though he were guarding her. Did she look as if she were about to run?
Tempting, but there was nowhere else to go.
Her country cottage, the family home. Her safe place and haven was all she had left of her parents. She looked around the bright room she’d made her studio when she’d been old enough to move out on her own. People said she was crazy to come bac
k here, away from the city, to a place tired from nine years of tenants. But people didn’t understand. Even though there’d been a fresh lick of paint, no one had covered over the marks on the wall in the laundry where her parents had notched her height over the years. The low-ceilinged kitchen remained unrenovated, a place where they’d sat to eat their meals and laughed. The whole place sang with those memories. The happy and the devastating.
The burn of tears pricked her eyes. Now all this was at risk. Her aunt and uncle had been her guardians. Looked after her inheritance when her parents had died. Taken in the broken teenager she’d become. Sure, they’d been distant rather than cruel, never having wanted children of their own and not knowing how to deal with her. But she’d trusted them, and her uncle’s betrayal still cut deep and jagged. An investment she hadn’t wanted gone terribly wrong. Almost everything, lost. Her father would be trying to claw his way out of the grave over the way his brother had behaved towards his only niece.
Everything seemed tenuous in this moment. Nothing else had broken her. Not her parents’ death in the accident, not the loss of her horse and everything she loved. She’d clambered out of the well of grief on her own. Sure, her fingertips might have been bloody, nails torn, the scars carved into the soul of her waiting to open at any given moment. But to have to sell this, the little farm where she’d lived some of the best days of her life? That would crack her open and no king’s horses or men would ever be able to put those pieces back together again.
Perspiration pricked at the back of her head, a droplet sliding beyond the neck of her shirt, itching her skin. She moved closer to the window. Fished a hair tie from her jeans pocket, scraped her hair back and tied it up in a rough topknot.
The bodyguard looked down at her. Crossed his arms. ‘You seem nervous.’
How could she tell him that his employer’s past and her own were inextricably bound? That his employer was the last person she wanted to see, because he was a reminder of the worst day of her life? Of teenage dreams destroyed?
‘I’ve never met a prince before.’ It wasn’t exactly a lie. ‘And I haven’t had time to tidy up.’
The bodyguard’s gaze roved over her in a disapproving kind of way. She looked down at her hands. Nails short and blunt. Cuticles ingrained with paint. She grabbed an old rag and wet it with solvent, rubbing at her fingers in a vain effort to clean them. Perfect princes probably wouldn’t admire commoners with filthy hands. Not that she was seeking admiration, but still. She supposed she had to keep up some kind of an appearance. After a short effort she dropped the now dirty rag on the tabletop and sniffed at her fingers, which smelled like pine.
She held them up. ‘Better?’
The bodyguard grunted.
Hannah checked her phone. Still some time. She picked out a slender paintbrush and stood back from her easel. Her art usually calmed her, a way to lose herself in colour and light. Nothing could touch her when she was in the flow of a portrait. She tried to loosen the death grip of her fingers. Dipped her brush into some paint. A swipe of Tasman blue, a touch of titanium white. She frowned. The eyes in this portrait gave her trouble. Too much sadness, not enough twinkle. She reached out her brush to add a dash of colour near the pupil, trying to ignore the tremor in her hand.
The cheery tinkle of a doorbell rang through the room. Hannah’s paintbrush slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor, leaving smudges of blue paint on the old boards.
The burn of bile rose to her throat. He was early. She left the portrait and wiped her damp palms on her jeans.
‘Remember to curtsey,’ the bodyguard said.
The teeth of anger bit her then, at this man’s disdain when she was the one being imposed upon today. She’d said no to this commission when it had first been proposed months ago, before she had had any idea how bad her finances were. His employer had ignored her refusal. It was just like saying no to her uncle when presented with a speculative investment. He’d ignored her too. She gritted her teeth, hating that these people hadn’t listened to her, as if her opinion were meaningless. But even though things were bad it didn’t mean she had to grin and bear it.
Hannah stalked up to the man guarding the doorway and glared. He towered over her but she didn’t care. She wasn’t going to be pushed around, by anyone. Looming bodyguard or prince.
‘I do have a concept of manners. And I understand how to behave around royalty.’
The man didn’t move, but his eyes widened a fraction as if in surprise. Good.
A murmur of voices drifted down the hall. The tap of fine leather on floorboards grew louder. She backed further into the room, tried to swallow the knot rising in her throat but her mouth was dry.
A shadow appeared in the hall behind more security. Grew and grew till it took human shape, striding through the doorway.
‘His Royal Highness, Crown Prince of Lasserno,’ the bodyguard announced.
Alessio Arcuri.
More beautiful than she’d remembered, though the recollection was coloured by her youth at the time. Then, she’d only caught thrilling glimpses of the handsome, fairy-tale prince, a rider on the showjumping circuit. The young man her teenage heart had crushed over with a terrifying ferocity. Now, she could fully appreciate the height and breadth of him. His severe yet tantalising and lush mouth. The perfection of his aquiline nose. The caramel of his sun-bronzed skin. The shock of his thick, dark hair. She could pretend her admiration was one of an artist surveying his commanding masculine shape. But who was she kidding? This was a distinctly female attraction to a male in his absolute prime.
After nine years, she still felt like that giddy teenager.
It made her prickly all over. Too big for her skin. She wanted to shed parts of herself like a husk, and come out more sparkling, more polished. Just more. Because she didn’t need a mirror to realise she looked like some ruffian and he looked as if he’d walked straight from a red carpet.
She resented his perfection, when his snap visit with little warning meant she’d had no time to tidy her own appearance. His exquisitely cut suit in the deepest of navy, a pristine white shirt. Red and blue tie in the finest of glowing silk. She was sure she stared before remembering her manners, dipping into a curtsey. ‘Your Highness.’
‘Signorina Barrington.’ He canted his head in a way that suggested she was adequate, then motioned to the man standing behind him. ‘This is my private secretary, Stefano Moretti. He’s been communicating with your agent.’
The other man was almost as perfectly attired and presented as his employer. Attractive, but without the indefinable presence of the Prince. She nodded to him. He smiled back.
‘Welcome to my home and studio. It’s a surprise and I’m underprepared. I didn’t expect royalty to drop by today. Would you like a tea?’ She motioned to a battered table in the corner of her studio, the ancient electric kettle, some chipped cups.
Alessio looked to where she’d indicated, gaze sliding over the table as though viewing a sad still life. No one came here—this was her private space—so there was no one to bother about damaged crockery. Personal sittings took place in her public studio on the outskirts of London. The one she’d only recently given up, her uncle’s actions meaning it was an extravagance she couldn’t afford. Yet seeing the room with Alessio in it reminded her how tattered and worn it seemed. She’d never worried before. This was her home. But all it took was a perfectly pressed prince to bring into screamingly sharp relief how threadbare her life had become.
‘Tea? No. I was in the area purchasing some horses, and, since you’ve been ignoring my secretary’s requests...’ His voice had the musical lilt of Italian spoken in a glorious baritone. Honeyed tones she could listen to for hours. The voice of a leader that would echo on castle walls. One whose dictates would invariably be followed by most.
Not by her. She wasn’t this prince’s subject.
‘I haven’
t been ignoring them. My answer was clear.’
He hesitated for a second, cocked his head as if he were thinking. She had the curious sensation of being a specimen under glass.
‘Have we met before?’
The high slash of his cheekbones, the strong brows. The sharply etched curve of his tempting lips. Eyes of burnt umber framed by the elegant curl of lamp black lashes. Hannah had never formally met him, but she’d never forgotten him from the showjumping circuit. Alessio Arcuri was the kind of man to leave you breathless. The fearlessness as he rode. The sheer arrogance that he would make every jump successfully. And he did. Horse and rider the embodiment of perfection.
It was why she and her friend had been chattering away in the back of the car on that terrible day. Gossiping about why he’d retired from competition at the age of twenty-two, much to their teenage devastation. Now, it seemed so young. Back then, he’d been the epitome of an adult and everything a clueless sixteen-year-old craved to be. How he appeared to know, in a way that was absolute, his place in the world. The utter confidence of him, when Hannah was still trying to find her bearings. Then she dropped out of riding too, the deaths of her parents and her horse too much to bear. And she’d tried not to think about Prince Alessio Arcuri since.
At least, until her agent’s call a little over half an hour ago, when all the memories she’d bottled up had come flooding back.
‘No. We haven’t met.’ Not exactly. He’d been handing out the first prize at a showjumping event she’d competed in after his retirement had been announced. Her friend had won that day, Hannah a close second. Unusual for her but Beau had been off, as if her horse were foreshadowing the devastating events of only hours later. She’d been so envious of that first-prize ribbon. How she’d coveted the handshake Alessio had given to her friend. Craved for him to acknowledge her. Then their eyes had met. Held. And for one perfect, blinding second her world had stopped turning.