by Kate Hewitt
‘Where are you putting those?’ he’d demanded hoarsely, and someone had told him Queen Rachel was intending to reside in the south wing, about as far from him as possible. He felt both angry and lost, and yet he couldn’t blame her.
So he’d left her rooms and gone to the south wing, but she wasn’t there either, and when Francesca had told him, a look of naked pity on her face, that Rachel had wanted some fresh air, he’d come out here, and now he’d found her, in a small octagonal-shaped rose garden, the branches now pruned back and bare.
‘Rachel.’ His voice sounded hoarse and he cleared his throat. ‘Rachel,’ he said again, and she looked up.
‘Mateo.’
‘You’re having your things moved.’ It wasn’t what he wanted to say, but he couldn’t manage anything else right then.
‘I told you I would.’
‘I know.’ He took a step towards her. She was sitting on a stone bench by a fountain that had filled with autumn leaves. Her hair was back in a plait and she was wearing a forest-green turtleneck in soft, snug cashmere and a grey skirt. She looked every inch the Queen, every bit his wife, and so wonderfully beautiful. His. She had to be his.
‘I don’t want you to,’ he said and she started to shake her head. ‘Please. Hear me out. I heard everything you said last night, and I’ve been thinking about nothing else since. But now...now I want a turn to tell you about what I’ve been thinking.’
A guarded expression came over her face, and she nodded. ‘All right.’
Mateo moved to sit down next to her on the bench. ‘You told me how your parents shaped how you felt about yourself. Well, in a fashion, mine did as well. I knew I was loved—I never doubted that. But I didn’t feel important.’
‘Because you weren’t the heir?’
‘My parents thought they were doing me a kindness, and I suppose in a way they were. They shielded me from all the intensity and pressure of the royal life. They gave me the freedom to pursue my own dreams—which led me to chemistry, and Cambridge, and you.’ He swallowed hard. ‘But I suppose I struggled with feeling a bit less than. I rebelled as a child, and then I turned away from all things royal. And then I met Cressida.’
Rachel’s eyes widened as she gazed at him. ‘You’re going to tell me about her?’
‘Yes, I’m going to tell you about her.’ He took a deep breath, willing himself to begin, to open the old wounds and let them bleed out. ‘Cressida was...fragile. She’d had a difficult if privileged upbringing and she liked—she needed—people to take care of her. I liked that at first. When I was with her, I felt important. I was eighteen, young and foolish, and Cressida made me feel like I was essential to her well-being. I craved that feeling of someone needing me absolutely. It stroked my ego, I’m ashamed to say.’
‘That’s understandable,’ Rachel murmured. Her gaze was still guarded.
‘But then she became unstable.’ He shook his head, impatient with himself. ‘Or, more to the point, I realised she was unstable. I should have seen it earlier. The warning signs were all there, but I thought that was just Cressida. How she was.’
‘What happened?’ Rachel asked softly.
‘Her moods swung wildly. Something I said, something seemingly insignificant, could send her into a depression for days. She wouldn’t even tell me what it was—I had to guess, and I usually got it wrong.’ He paused, the memories of so desperately trying to make Cressida feel better, and never being able to, reverberating through him. ‘I tried so hard, but it was never enough. She spiralled into severe depression on several occasions. I’ll spare you some of the more harrowing details, but she started hurting herself, or going days without speaking or even getting up from bed. Her grades started to suffer—she was studying English—and she was close to being sent down from university.’
‘That sounds so difficult,’ Rachel murmured. Mateo couldn’t tell from her tone whether she truly empathised with him or not. She looked cautious, as if she didn’t know what was coming.
‘It was incredibly complicated. I wanted to break up with her, but I was afraid to—both for her sake and mine. We’d become so caught up in one another, so dependent. It wasn’t healthy, and it didn’t make either of us happy, and I don’t think it was really love at all.’ Even though it had felt like it at the time, and made him never want to experience it again. ‘But it consumed us, in its way, and then...’ A pause while he gathered his courage. ‘In our third year, Cressida killed herself.’
Rachel let out a soft gasp. ‘Oh, Mateo...’
‘She left a note,’ he continued in a hard voice he didn’t recognise as his own. Hard and bleak. ‘I found it. I found her. She’d overdosed on antidepressants and alcohol—I rushed her to the hospital, but it was too late. That’s why, I think, I acted so crazily when you were at the hospital. I was right back there, fearing Cressida was dead, and then knowing she was.’
‘I’m so sorry...’
‘But you know what the note said? It said she was killing herself because of me. Because I made her so unhappy.’ His throat had thickened but he forced himself to go on. ‘And you know what? She was right. I did make her unhappy. I must have done, because when she was gone, for a second I felt relieved.’ His voice choked as he gasped out the words, ‘How could I have felt that? What kind of man feels that?’ He’d never told anyone that before. Never dared to reveal the shameful secret at the very heart of himself, but Rachel didn’t recoil or even blink.
‘Oh, Mateo.’ Her face softened in sympathy as her arms came around him and he rested his face against her shoulder, the hot press of tears against his lids.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered, one hand resting on his hair. ‘So, so sorry.’
‘I’m the one who’s sorry,’ Mateo said raggedly, swallowing down the threat of tears. He eased back, determined to look at her as he said these words. ‘You’re right, Rachel, I have been fighting you. I’m scared to love you, scared for you. I don’t want to make you unhappy, and I don’t want to feel the guilt and grief of knowing that I did.’
‘Love is a two-way street, Mateo,’ Rachel said gently. ‘You don’t bear the sole responsibility for my happiness. What you had with Cressida...’
‘I know it wasn’t really love. It was toxic and childish and incredibly dysfunctional. I know that. I’ve known that for a long time. But you can know one thing and feel something else entirely.’
‘Yes,’ Rachel agreed quietly. ‘You can.’
‘But when you left me last night—left me emotionally if not physically—I felt as if you’d died. I felt even more bereft than when I lost Cressida, and without that treacherous little flicker of relief. I was just...grief-stricken.’
Rachel stared at him, searching his face. ‘What...what are you saying?’ she finally asked.
‘That I love you. That I’ve been falling in love with you for ten years without realising it, and then fighting it for the last few weeks when I started to understand how hard I’d fallen. But I don’t want to fight any more. I know I’ll get things wrong, and I’m terrified of hurting you, but I want to love you, Rachel. I want to live a life of loving you. If...if...you do love me.’
Rachel let out a sound, half laugh, half sob. ‘Of course I love you. I think I fell in love with you a long time ago, but I tried to stop myself. Maybe we’re not so different in that respect.’ She gave a trembling laugh as she wiped the tears from her eyes.
‘Maybe we’re not.’ Mateo took her hands in his. ‘Can you forgive me, Rachel? For fighting you for so long, and hurting you in the process? I was trying not to hurt you, but I knew I was. I’m a fool.’
‘As long as you’re a love-struck fool, I don’t mind,’ she promised him as she squeezed his hands.
‘I am,’ Mateo assured her solemnly. ‘Utterly and overwhelmingly in love with you. Now and for always. I know it doesn’t mean everything will be perfect, or that we’ll
never hurt each other, but I really do love you.’
‘And I love you,’ Rachel told him. ‘More than I ever thought possible. Getting to know you these last weeks...it’s made me realise how much I love you. And if you love me back...’
‘I do.’
‘Then that’s all that matters. That’s what will get us through the ups and downs. That’s what will last.’
‘Yes, it will,’ Mateo agreed, and then leaned forward to kiss her. He settled his mouth softly on hers, and it felt as if he was finally coming home, the two of them together, now and for ever.
EPILOGUE
Three years later
‘MAMA, MAMA, LOOK at me!’
Rachel laughed and clapped her hands as her daughter, Daphne, ran towards her, her dark hair tumbling over her shoulders, her blue-green eyes alight with happiness and mischief.
It was a bright, sunny day, the sky picture-postcard-blue, the white sand of Kallyria’s famous beaches stretching out before them. They were holidaying at the royal summer palace on the western coast of Kallyria. In the three years since Mateo had taken the crown, he’d dealt with the insurgents, stabilised the country’s economy, and been a leader in bringing Kallyria into a modern and progressive world. It hadn’t always been easy, but Rachel had been with him every step of the way.
She’d expanded into the role of Queen with energy and grace, not in small part down to Mateo’s unwavering support and love. She’d also taken a six-week research position at the university in Athens last year, which he’d wholeheartedly supported.
But her heart was in Kallyria with her King and her family, and she knew there was nowhere else she’d rather be.
A year ago her mother had died, and Rachel had had the privilege of being with her at the end. To her surprise, although her mother hadn’t remembered who she was in months, she’d turned to her suddenly, grasping her hand with surprising vigour, and said, ‘I’m sorry. Do you know that, Rachel? That I’m sorry?’
And Rachel, with tears in her eyes, had said she had.
Now she scooped up her daughter and pressed her lips to her sun-warmed cheek, revelling in the simple joy of the moment. From behind her she heard Mateo coming through the French windows of the palace that led directly onto the beach.
‘This one’s up and ready for his mama.’
With a smile Rachel exchanged armfuls with her husband—he took Daphne and she took her three-month-old son, Kosmos, who nuzzled into her neck.
‘Come on, moraki mou,’ he said cheerfully as he tossed Daphne over his shoulder and tickled her tummy. ‘Time for lunch.’
‘And this one is ready for lunch too,’ Rachel said as she followed him inside.
Sunlight streamed across the floor and Mateo caught her eye as he settled Daphne at the table, and Rachel curled up on the sofa to feed Kosmos.
The look he gave her was lingering, full of love as well as promise. Was it possible to be this happy? This thankful? This amazed?
Meeting her husband’s loving gaze, feeling the warmth of it right down to her toes, Rachel knew it was, and with her heart full to bursting she smiled back.
* * *
If you fell in love with Vows to Save His Crown, you’re sure to adore these other stories by Kate Hewitt!
The Secret Kept from the Italian
Greek’s Baby of Redemption
Claiming My Bride of Convenience
The Italian’s Unexpected Baby
Available now!
Keep reading for an excerpt from Hired by the Impossible Greek by Clare Connelly.
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Hired by the Impossible Greek
by Clare Connelly
PROLOGUE
IT WAS THE fourth time he’d been called upon to act in this capacity at one of these events, but undoubtedly not the last. For each of the previous four weddings, Santos Anastakos had been required to stand dutifully at his father Nico’s side—best man, oldest son, quietly watchful—as his father had promised yet another woman to love her for as long as they both should live.
Santos’s expression as he surveyed the guests was unknowingly cynical. Despite the alleged joy of the occasion, Santos couldn’t summon much more than a vague degree of tolerance for his father’s proclivities. Proclivities that had seen him marry eight—nine, counting today—women over the span of his lifetime.
It’s different this time, Santos. This time, she’s ‘the one’.
Santos had long since given up arguing with his father about the foolishness of his marriage addiction. Similarly he’d abandoned firm suggestions that Nico get counselling for what had become an embarrassing and ridiculous tendency to fall in love faster than most people changed jobs.
All Santos could do was watch from the side lines and quarantine the Anastakos fortune from any fallout from the inevitable divorce. It was ungenerous to entertain such thoughts whilst standing at the front of a crowded, ancient church, listening to Nico and his latest bride proclaim their ‘love’ for one another.
How could that concept fail to earn his derision when he’d seen, over and over and over again, how quickly and completely love turned to hate and hurt? His own mother had been overthrown for the next Mrs Anastakos when Santos had been only three years old, and Santos had been shuttled between father and mother for the next few years before—at his father’s insistence—being sent off to boarding school.
As the chaplain joyously proclaimed the happy—for now, at least—couple man and wife, Santos grimaced. He had made himself a promise after his father’s third marriage had dissolved in a particularly bitter and public fashion: he would never be foolish enough to get married, nor to fall ‘in love’, whatever the hell that meant—and nothing in his thirty-four years had tempted Santos to question that resolve. Marriage was for fools and hopeless romantics—of which, he was proud to say, he was neither.
CHAPTER ONE
Three months later
‘YES?’ THE SINGLE word was infused with derision, impatience and a Greek accent that, while she’d known to expect it, still caught Amelia a little off-guard. She stared at the man—Santos Anastakos—for several seconds, the purpose for coming to this grand estate in the English countryside momentarily forgotten as she computed several things at lightning speed.
There was something so vibrant and charismatic about the man—so larger than life, so glowering and intimidating—that she could only stare at him, blinking for several seconds, as she scrambled her brain back into working order. He was dressed in a tuxedo, styled for an evening somewhere considerably grander than even this beautiful, ancient country home.
‘Mr Anastakos?’ she confirmed, though of course it was him—she’d seen his photograph in the papers around the time of Cameron’s mother’s death, when news had broken that the billionaire magnate had fathered a love child over six years earlier.
‘Yes?’ The word was again impatient. A light breeze rustled past, giving a hint of relief on this summer’s evening, and her long, dark hair shifted a little, an errant clutch pushing across her face so she had to lift a hand to contain it, instinctively brushing it away and tucking it behind her ear.
‘Darling, we’re going to have to get a move on if we’re to make it on time.’ A woman’s voice came from within the house, echoing across the marbled tiles which glittered and shone beneath Santos’s hand-crafted shoes.
‘I don’t have all night,’ he expelled, his lips flattening into a frown. ‘Are you lost? Did your car break down?’ His eyes were wide-set and almond-shaped and lined by thick, dark lashes. Where his complexion was swarthy
and dark, his eyes were the most magnificent blue, almost silver, with flecks of black close to the iris. They shifted beyond her now, as if searching for a car or some other physical clue as to why she was here.
‘Not at all. I came here to speak with you.’
His eyes narrowed, returning to her face, and she wished quite illogically that they’d turn away once more. There was something in the strength of his gaze that caused her usually unflappable pulse to flutter in a way that was incredibly unsettling. It increased when his gaze travelled downward, over the plain pink blouse she wore, towards the cream trousers that were shaped over her slender hips and legs. It was little more than a cursory inspection, as though her outfit might give away some hint of who she was and what she was doing on his doorstep.
‘Have we met before?’ There was a hint of wariness in his question, an emotion she couldn’t fathom.
‘No, sir. Not at all.’
Relief. She frowned, wondering how many people he must meet to think he’d forgotten her. ‘Then what can I do for you?’
‘I’m Amelia Ashford...’
‘Ashford.’ She could see the moment comprehension dawned. ‘The famous Miss Ashford?’
‘I don’t know about that.’ She smiled even when the idea of fame had her wanting to curl up in a ball and hide. Fame was the reason she’d opted to use her grandmother’s surname when taking up this teaching position—a desire to be known only for her teaching work and nothing else.
‘You are Cameron’s teacher?’
‘Yes.’ She smiled at him, a crisp smile that flashed on her face like lightning then disappeared again. ‘I wanted to speak to you about your son.’
His shoulders squared at that, as though he resented her description of their relationship. But that wasn’t Amelia’s concern, whatever the rumours said—and there were plenty, about this man’s parental neglect of Cameron, his refusal to support Cameron’s mother... It wasn’t for Amelia to speculate. Her only care was the little boy of whom she’d always been fond and whom she now considered to be quite dear to her. Perhaps her estrangement from her own parents made her feel more invested in Cameron than she otherwise would have been...but, no. The little boy was special and the grief he was suffering through demanded advocacy and support.