by Leah Ashton
Ainslie, Canberra
Jas’s mum hadn’t actually organised anything for her birthday. On her birthday, Jas had simply arrived, unannounced, on her mother’s doorstep—managing to avoid the Australian media thanks to a private plane and the excellent organisation of the palace and Australian diplomatic staff.
She’d now been here two days and although she hadn’t left the house—and poor Simon and Scott were absolutely bored out of their brains—it still seemed the media were clueless. And for as long as that lasted, Jas was eternally grateful.
Because all she felt capable of doing right now was sleeping and watching romantic comedies in her teenage room.
She’d also cried for some time on her mother’s shoulder—and promptly broken her confidentiality contract by telling her everything.
But it had helped to do so. So much.
It was Friday night, and her mum was hosting her book club in her blue weatherboard cottage. Jas was hiding in her room, as she absolutely knew that her mum’s friends wouldn’t be able to keep her presence a secret. They wouldn’t go to the media, obviously, but they’d definitely tell one of their kids, and then...
Anyway, the upshot was she was stuck in her room. Her mum had brought her a platter of cheese and biscuits, and she’d curled herself up on her bed in her oldest, comfiest jeans and a T-shirt from a gig she went to when she was seventeen. Simon and Scott were sharing the tiny spare room, and the whole situation was ridiculous if Jas thought too much about it.
About halfway through her movie, there was a sharp knock at the front door. Her mum’s house was small, and every sound travelled from one end of it to the other.
Consequently, Jas also heard the sound of the book club ladies’ voices rising, and then—a deep male voice.
Jas slid off her bed and was brushing the crumbs from her clothes as her mum knocked on her bedroom door.
‘Jas?’ her mum said. ‘You have a visitor.’
Jas smiled a tight smile as she followed her mum down the hallway. Immediately behind her were her bodyguards—both probably relieved to be able to leave their room.
Her mum only had a single, small living area—an open-plan kitchen, dining area and lounge.
Currently, it was full.
The book-club ladies were spread between the kitchen and lounge, each with a champagne glass and an inquisitive expression. With her and her bodyguards adding to the space, it was definitely crowded, and that was before Jas included the person that everyone was staring at—Prince Marko of Vela Ada. Who currently stood beside her mother’s overcrowded hat stand, and in front of a framed piece of Jas’s primary school artwork.
She’d missed him.
That was her first thought when his gaze locked on hers.
He was dressed as if he’d come straight from a plane, in jeans, T-shirt and sneakers and with tired smudges under his eyes.
He still looked gorgeous.
Behind him, beyond the still-open front door, were the rest of her team.
‘Jas,’ he said—and to hear his voice again made her shiver. ‘I’m sorry.’
Jas took a long, deep breath. Then walked over to him, and grabbed his hand. She tugged him past the book club, past her mother—and her mother’s concerned expression—and straight past Simon and Scott.
‘No one is to follow us,’ she said firmly.
Then she led Marko down the hallway, and outside.
Outside there was a simple patio, paved with recycled bricks that Jas and her mum had laid a decade earlier. A liquid amber provided shade during the day—but now, at night, its canopy of branches simply acted like a veil between them and the star-sparkled sky.
Jas dropped Marko’s hand.
‘Why are you here?’ she asked.
‘I needed to see you,’ he said. ‘And I needed to tell you something.’
Jas waited.
‘I told you once that I hated the palace. Do you remember?’
She nodded. Yes, back when they’d first had breakfast together.
‘But, of course, it was never about the palace itself, but who I was when I was there. At the palace, I’m Prince Marko. I’m not a senior military officer, I’m not a man with his own hopes and dreams and I’m certainly not a man with his own private life. I’m a prince, and that role is one I’ve never felt comfortable playing.’
Jas’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness—not that she needed to be able to see to feel the intensity of his gaze.
‘I’ve spent most of my life rebelling against the expectations of my family and Vela Ada, and hating the scrutiny I’ve been under my whole entire life. I’ve been judged, and found wanting, for as long as I can remember.’
‘Marko—’ Jas began, but he shook his head, silencing her.
‘I may now complain about it, but I’ve been complicit in the lie of the Playboy Prince, hiding behind that façade rather than working out who I actually am. Not just who I am perceived to be. With you, Jasmine Gallagher, there’s never been a façade. You’ve never treated me as anything but the man you see in front of you. You see me, you saw me...with you I’m just Marko, and what I had with you is about as real as anything I’ve ever experienced in my life. Even though we were only together because of a lie.’
Jas wanted to reach for him, but she kept her hands still, twisting her fingers in the fabric of her jeans instead.
‘I’ve never had a serious relationship, Jas, because I’ve told myself I would never bring someone into a life I hated—a life of scrutiny and judgment. The past few weeks, this belief has been seemingly vindicated—after all, what sort of monster would I be to drag a woman into a life where her privacy is violated, and her life is under threat?’ He swallowed. ‘That’s what I was telling myself that day on the jetty, Jas. I held onto it—onto what you quite rightly called an excuse—and held onto it tightly, right up until you flew back home to Australia.’
‘What changed?’ Jas asked, trying her best to tamp down the butterflies beginning to flutter in her belly. What was Marko saying?
‘I found out Lukas knew from the start that our engagement was a lie.’
Jas gasped, but Marko just grinned.
‘No, it’s fine. No one else knows, except Petra. And probably my mum.’
Oh, God. But now was not the time to worry about all her lies to royalty.
‘But it got me thinking, Jas, about what else I’ve been lying about. Like, for example, the lie I was telling myself that my decision to let you walk away was about protecting you. When it was never about that. It was about protecting myself. All these years I’ve told myself that I’d never drag someone I loved into a world I hated, but really—I think maybe I was just scared that no one would genuinely love me enough to look past all that. To put up with the paparazzi, and having their lives turned upside down—for me. For Marko, not Prince Marko.
‘Or,’ he continued, ‘maybe I just hadn’t met the right person.’
He stepped closer to her, but now he looked unsure. For the first time, ever, Jas saw uncertainty in Marko’s gaze.
‘Jasmine Gallagher,’ he said, in his delicious, deep accent, ‘I love you. I still don’t know for sure if you’ll want to run away from life as a princess in a few more weeks, or months or years...but I love you. So I need to trust that you might love me enough to stay.’
Jas reached out, lacing each of her hands with his, in an echo of the first time they’d touched as they’d walked into the Knight’s Hall that very first night together.
Still, his touch made her shiver.
‘I love you, Marko,’ she said. ‘I love the man you are: a man of strength, and loyalty and integrity. I don’t care about the prince stuff, I just know I love you, and that’s all that matters to me. You’ve taught me to believe in love again, to trust in love again. And I promise you, I’m not going anywhere.’
She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him, and instantly he was dragging her close, and kissing her until she was incapable of thinking, and certainly incapable of remembering she was in her mum’s backyard. For long minutes her world was Marko, and the incredible, extraordinary way he made her feel.
When they finally broke apart, breathing heavily, they just stood there smiling at each other.
‘It probably wouldn’t be very polite of me to whisk you back to my hotel without properly introducing myself to your mother and her friends.’
‘No,’ Jas said, grinning. ‘Not very kingly at all. Definitely not the behaviour of a prince.’
She reached up to pull him down for another kiss, then whispered against his lips, ‘Luckily, we’re just Jas and Marko tonight.’
Marko kissed his way up to her ear. ‘And Jas and Marko are in love.’
‘Yes,’ Jas said as she kissed him again. ‘We most definitely are.’
Epilogue
Twelve months later, Kirribilli House, Sydney
‘YOU’RE DOING IT AGAIN,’ Marko murmured against Jas’s ear.
Even now, after all this time, his proximity made her shiver.
Jas shrugged, and relaxed her bodyguard stance. She’d been scanning the crowd scattered across the perfect, sloping grass outside the Australian Prime Minister’s Sydney residence: faces and hands, faces and hands. ‘I can’t help it,’ she said. ‘It’s still part of me.’
Especially when she was so close to the Prime Minister—and, in the background, a few familiar faces from her old workplace. Four years ago, she’d worked here, at this spectacular one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old home with sweeping views across the water to the Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
She’d been the one in the shadows, or on the shoulders of members of Australian parliament or visiting dignitaries. Today, as wait staff in starched white shirts circulated with silver platters of canapés, she was one of those visiting dignitaries. As was Marko, of course, plus King Lukas, and Queen Petra—stunning, as always, in a raw silk dress and a tiara that caught every ray of the sun.
And Prince Filip. Aged nine months, on his first royal tour of Australia.
Fast asleep on the Dowager Queen’s shoulder—Marko’s mother was unable to face even a few weeks without her only grandchild—and with hair as golden as Petra’s, Filip had no idea of the life ahead of him. The heir to the Vela Ada throne, born three months after King Lukas had returned to his rightful place in the palace—his treatment successful, his long-term prognosis excellent.
Unsurprisingly, Marko had not been upset that Filip had bumped him one place down the line of succession. Although he did worry for his tiny nephew. What if, like Marko, Filip was less than kingly?
Because, even now, Marko didn’t exactly revel in his royal duties. The difference was that now he didn’t pretend they didn’t exist. Since Lukas has returned, Marko had still continued to attend the occasional royal engagement—in between his military commitments—to lessen the load on his still-recovering brother. The time Marko was spending at Vela Ada had also strengthened the relationship between the brothers, as Marko had finally torn down the playboy façade he’d been hiding behind for so long.
Jas had attended some of those royal engagements, too. In between her Gallagher Personal Protection Services commitments, of course. Although now she was—reluctantly—unable to work out in the field. A bodyguard who needed bodyguards of her own wasn’t particularly useful.
Marko tugged on her hand, dragging Jas’s attention away from a sleeping Filip.
‘Want to go for a walk?’ he asked.
‘Can we do that?’ Jas asked wistfully. The entire garden party mingled on the house side of a hedge that bordered the lawn. Beyond that the ground slid abruptly away to the harbour.
Marko shrugged. ‘Speeches are done, why not?’ Then he grinned. ‘Besides, I’m a prince. Who’s going to stop me?’
Well, potentially the Prime Minister’s security detail—although, as they walked hand in hand beyond the hedges and to a stone-paved path that snaked between lush green gardens, no one halted their progress.
Eyes were trained on them, though. Strategically positioned amongst the gardens, at the perimeter, and even in bobbing boats on the harbour. Kirribilli House would be one of the most secure places in Australia, so this was hardly a private stroll.
The path eventually became steps, and those steps eventually made it to a jetty.
‘Alone at last,’ Jas said, with a grin, as they stood on the wide, wooden boards of the jetty.
‘Not exactly,’ Marko said, nodding towards the most visible guards out on the water.
Jas shrugged. ‘Close enough.’
There were guaranteed to be some paparazzi out on the water too. Outside the exclusion zone, but close enough with a telephoto lens.
But it didn’t matter.
Well, not enough for Jas to want to be anywhere else right now. Since they’d landed in Australia it had been a whirlwind. Here on this jetty, with Marko, it felt as if they finally had some space to breathe. If someone wanted to take a photo of that, then so be it.
It would only be a photo, after all.
A photo of Jasmine standing beside the man she loved.
Oh, she knew that a tabloid might splash a lurid headline on it—maybe Prince Marko and his Aussie Fiancée in Harbourside Tiff! Or Aussie Jasmine’s Shock Feclaration: Set the Date or It’s Over!
It was ludicrous, the stories that could be written from the most benign photographs, but that was her life now. And, despite many, many shouty headlines, she and Marko were still very much in love. What the glossy magazines wrote had no bearing on their relationship. It didn’t matter.
A photo couldn’t hurt them. Heck, a naked selfie hadn’t even been able to.
Because what they had was real and authentic—regardless of a photographer’s lens, or a tabloid journalist’s interpretation.
A breeze ruffled Jas’s hair and pressed the silky fabric of her dress against her legs. Jas had been staring out towards the skyscrapers of the Sydney CBD, but she realised now that Marko was instead staring at her. She turned to face him.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Marko said, very casually. But his grip on her hand was suddenly much firmer. ‘About our engagement.’
Jas’s smile was slow. ‘Our fake engagement?’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that one.’ He paused. ‘I wondered,’ he continued, ‘if you’d like to make it real.’
‘Right now?’ Jas said, grinning like an idiot, but also a bit surprised. ‘Surrounded by security and photographers?’
‘I’d planned to ask you back home, at our beach,’ he said, but then he grinned wickedly. ‘But then I kind of liked the idea of some paparazzo finally actually photographing something significant and real, and having no idea.’
‘Plus we’ll get photos of the moment,’ Jas pointed out. ‘About time we got something useful out of them.’
Marko took her other hand in his, so their fingers were perfectly laced together.
‘Exactly,’ he agreed. ‘Although I’d really rather they were photographing a yes.’
Jas met Marko’s gaze as he looked at her, losing herself, for the millionth time, in the silvery blue of his eyes.
‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘It’s definitely a yes.’
Then Marko leant towards her, and whispered against her lips.
‘Dragi moj, let’s give them something worth photographing?’
Jas sighed against his mouth. ‘Yes, please.’
Then they kissed.
And when they did, they weren’t the playboy and the bodyguard, or even the Prince and his princess-to-be.
They were just Jas and Marko.
In love.
* * * * *
If you enjoyed this story, check out these other great r
eads from Leah Ashton
BEHIND THE BILLIONAIRE’S GUARDED HEART
THE BILLIONAIRE FROM HER PAST
NINE MONTH COUNTDOWN
WHY RESIST A REBEL?
All available now!
Keep reading for an excerpt from TEMPTED BY HER GREEK TYCOON by Katrina Cudmore.
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Tempted by Her Greek Tycoon
by Katrina Cudmore
Chapter One
THE LOCAL FISHERMEN were unloading the day’s catch from their caïques when Loukas Christou motored his boat into the old harbour of Talos Town. Once moored, he’d nodded distractedly to the calls of, ‘Kalispera, Loukas!’ from the restaurant and boutique owners whose businesses lined the sun-soaked seafront promenade before hurrying up the narrow whitewashed laneway that was a pedestrian shortcut to the entrance gates of The Korinna Hotel.