Waking Up In His Royal Bed

by Kim Lawrence

His long fingers curled around his coffee cup as he raised it. ‘You make it sound as though you were forced,’ he said, looking at her over the rim.

  ‘Forced? Maybe not,’ she conceded. ‘But I was definitely not consulted. Nobody asked if I wanted to have lessons.’ It was only after she’d left and she’d found herself in an Italian restaurant that she had realised how much of what she had learnt had stuck. It was actually a shock to realise that she had learnt anything at all!

  ‘And Maya has joined me, so we practise our conversational skills on each other…though Maya is much better than me. She’s so much quicker than I am at picking up languages.’

  He made a non-committal grunt that had her hackles rising. ‘So now you don’t believe me?’ she challenged.

  ‘Your sister has a gift for languages, fine, if you say so.’ He put down his coffee and leaned back, planting his interlaced fingers on the tabletop.

  ‘I do say so.’ She fixed him with a dangerous, narrow-eyed stare. ‘Just what is your problem with my sister?’

  ‘I don’t have a problem…’ he began and then stopped. ‘All right, do you realise how much you sing her praises? It’s constant. Maya is brilliant, Maya is beautiful, Maya says, Maya thinks,’ he bit out. ‘From what I understand Maya had all the same advantages as you but left school with virtually no qualifications, squeezed onto a degree course and then dropped out, worked for a charity, was it…? And yes…walked away…’ He could feel his antagonism building. It was always Maya’s birthday that deserved the special celebration, her crossing a road seemed to rate a hashtag, but it was Beatrice who was the powerhouse, the real talent!

  ‘That was because…’ Beatrice flared, then bit her lip. Maya was a private person and she respected that, even though she wanted to throw his assumptions in his face.

  ‘Maya quits—you are the one with the exams, the degree, the successful career. Why do you defer to her?’

  She reeled back, her hands gripping the armrests, shocked by the sheer vehemence of his attack. ‘I don’t…’ She stopped, her fluttering lashes framing the realisation that dawned in her deep blue eyes as she saw how her relationship with her sister might appear to him. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Try me.’

  Her desire to defend her sister outweighed her reluctance to confide details. ‘I say those things…’ She cleared the constriction in her throat. Her fists clenched, but so was everything inside too. ‘I say those things, because for a long time nobody else did.’

  His dark brows flattened into a line of confusion above his deep-set eyes as he shook his head. ‘You’re talking as if your sister is some sort of victim.’ The petite brunette he knew had a core of steel under the delicate exterior. She was quiet, yes, but no shrinking violet. He judged it would take a very brave man to cross her or for that matter pierce the shell under the deceptively placid exterior.

  ‘Not a victim, a survivor,’ she bit back fiercely. Self-pity was not one of her sister’s traits. ‘You know our father died?’ Beatrice had known then that their lives had changed, that nothing would be the same as it had been without his big warm presence, but she hadn’t known how much it would change.

  He nodded, wondering where this was going.

  ‘And Mum made a second marriage.’

  He nodded again. Rachel Monk had been divorced for some time when he had met her; it had been hard to tell what she would have been like under normal circumstances because the day they had met had not been normal. How did a mother respond when her daughter announced she had married a man the week before in Las Vegas and—cue drum roll—here he is?

  He hadn’t anticipated being welcomed into the bosom of the family, and he’d been prepared for worse than he’d got, but his own parents had more than made up for it. Luckily he’d been about ten when he’d last cared about their disapproval…or maybe that was when he’d started enjoying it.

  After the initial shock, his new mother-in-law had been polite but not warm and on the handful of subsequent occasions they had met she had never relaxed in his company, continuing to view him as a threat to her daughter’s happiness. She’d been proved right.

  He remembered Beatrice mentioning the second marriage in passing, but she had not dwelt on the circumstances and he hadn’t thought it warranted much curiosity in a world where very few marriages lasted long term, and those that did last, much as his parents’, did not because they were happy, but because ending it would be too costly.

  ‘They divorced years ago?’

  ‘Yes, thank God!’ There was nothing at all in passing about this emotional declaration.

  ‘You didn’t like him?’

  ‘He was vile.’ Beatrice aimed for statement of fact but it came out more hissing vehemence, which made it pointless to claim that time had done anything to lessen her feelings when it came to her stepfather.

  Dante froze… His eyes went black; a chill slid down his spine. Suddenly it was hard to breathe. ‘He hurt you?’

  ‘Not me, no.’

  The bunched aggression in his pumped muscles lowered fractionally, but the nerve beside his mouth continued to beat an erratic rhythm.

  ‘He wasn’t violent, he never raised a hand.’ People always assumed that abuse was physical, but torture came in many forms. ‘He didn’t need to,’ she said with quiet emphasis. ‘And he never really bothered much about me. I was not his target. It turned out there are some inbuilt advantages in being too tall and gawky, which I was at that age.’

  Dante’s eyes swept across her face, taking in at once the soft, moulded contours of her smooth cheeks, the sensual curve of her full lips and her expressive cobalt blue eyes beneath the sweep of dark brows. It was hard to fit that face, those glorious supple curves, into an ugly duckling analogy. Impossible to imagine her anything other than jaw-droppingly beautiful.

  But it might explain why she put so little store by her own beauty. Beatrice was the least vain woman he had ever met, with the most cause to be vain.

  ‘He always liked to be the centre of attention, certainly Mum’s attention, and he didn’t like competition for it. He didn’t consider me pretty or clever—people didn’t smile when I walked into a room, unless I fell over my own feet.

  ‘But he took against Maya from the start. She was so pretty, “like a doll” people would say—she actually hated that, she was a bit of a tomboy. And she was gifted—a precocious talent, they called it—and, you know, I think he sensed her bond with Mum… It was special.’

  She paused, her blue eyes clouding with memories before she made a visible effort to compose herself.

  ‘Mum and Dad always told her she was special because they didn’t want her to feel second best when I came along. They wanted her to know that she was as much their real daughter as I was.’

  ‘I had forgotten she was adopted.’

  The description of the family dynamics brought his protective instincts to the surface. It seemed to him that it was inevitable the well-meaning parents had favoured their adopted daughter.

  ‘What about you?’

  She looked at him, startled, and shook her head.

  ‘While Maya was being told she was special and enjoying her bond…?’

  She gave a laugh and shook her head. ‘No, I’m not explaining this very well.’ Frustrated by her inability to describe the dynamics when they were growing up, she paused a moment before trying to explain. ‘Mum and Dad wanted us to know we were both special, and the Maya and Mum thing…you can be loved by both parents but closer to one. I was a daddy’s girl,’ she admitted with sadness in her eyes. ‘I was always closer to Dad than Mum.’ He watched a shadow cross her face before she turned her head in a sharp negative gesture as though she was dislodging memories. ‘We were just a happy family, even after Dad died. We had each other and then—’

  He watched as she swallowed. She seemed unaware of her actions as s
he pressed a hand to the base of her throat.

  ‘Everything changed almost overnight, but we clung together, and it was getting better. At first it was lovely to see Mum happier and getting dressed up. Maya and I would help her with her make-up before a date, and Edward was a charming man.

  ‘Until they were married—he changed then. It was insidious, the way he cut Mum off from everything, everyone, including us. You didn’t see it at the time and we were just kids. And he was careful to appear caring in front of Mum, but when she wasn’t there, one of his weapons of choice against Maya was finding fault.’ It sounded innocuous when she said it, but the cumulative effect had been devastating. ‘He just chipped away at her on a daily basis. Nothing she did was good enough. He ridiculed her, laughed at anything she did and told her she was hopeless.’

  In the end her sister had believed it.

  Bea’s eyes lifted from her determined contemplation of her clenched fingers in response to the harsh curses that Dante spat. They were not Italian words she was familiar with but she got the gist without a dictionary.

  ‘He had a sadistic streak. He wanted to see her cry.’

  Dante swore again, feeling the rage that a strong man felt for a bully. They called it coercive control; he called it being a pathetic coward. Lost in her memories, Beatrice didn’t register it.

  ‘And she tried so hard not to.’ Beatrice brushed away the tears that had spilled from her eyes with an angry hand, recognising that there was an odd sense of relief that she was sharing things she had held close for years.

  ‘She always had artistic talent. Early on, her teachers noticed it, encouraged it, and she is a brilliant artist. But Edward destroyed her confidence. He’d hold up her drawings and mock…’ Her voice cracked at the painful memories that flooded her head. ‘He made her feel useless. From a bright, bubbly girl she became withdrawn, but worse than all that was that Mum, when I told her, didn’t believe me—not for a long time.’ She sighed and looked at him, sadness behind her forced smile. ‘So, you see, I do say Maya is brilliant a lot, because she is.’

  ‘Yes, I see that.’ It seemed to Dante that Maya was not the only brilliant Monk female.

  Beatrice had been her sister’s champion; there was no trace of envy in her and when he compared it with the resentment he had felt as a child, when he was pushed to the background with all the attention focused on his brother, the heir, he felt ashamed.

  He felt a fresh kick of shame when he recalled how irritated he had felt about Beatrice’s closeness to Maya, and his attitude when she became unreasonable, as he had seen it, at any hint of criticism of her sister.

  Clearly the events of their childhood had created an unbreakable bond. If he had known, he wouldn’t have wanted to break it, but he hadn’t known, maybe because he had never asked. In fact, he had switched off when she’d spoken of her sister and not bothered to hide his lack of interest.

  ‘I think the hardest part was feeling so helpless, but then I suppose I was meant to—it’s all about power for creeps like Edward.’

  As she stared out of the window it was almost as if she had forgotten he was there. She was saying things he wondered if she had ever said before. It was clear to Dante that Beatrice had not escaped as unscathed as she liked to think.

  ‘Seeing what he did to Maya and then Mum, with the blasted IVF—he made her feel a failure too. Mum couldn’t give him the family he wanted, his own family, and even though it was affecting her health he kept pushing her to try again and again. Telling her if she was a real wife, a proper wife, she wouldn’t be sabotaging the attempts.’

  His deep voice cursing jolted her free of the dark memories.

  ‘Your mother had IVF?’

  She nodded, and he swore. ‘That is why you reacted to the consultation so…extremely. If I had known—’

  ‘I don’t think my reaction was extreme,’ she rebutted, turning in her seat to face him. ‘And, irrespective of my family history, I don’t think something that personal, that intimate, should be delegated. It is something that is discussed.’

  ‘I thought your reaction meant that you didn’t really want children. That after the miscarriage, I assumed…’

  Her hand went to her stomach, the gesture unconscious. ‘I knew you didn’t want children. You wanted an heir.’

  He felt a flash of shame as he found himself thinking about the events in her life that had moulded Beatrice into the woman she was today.

  He found this new experience unsettling, as he considered this woman who didn’t carry resentment. Her recount had focused on how her mother’s ill-fated marriage had affected her sister, but the childhood trauma had to have impacted her too.

  Men who hurt those in no position to hit back were one of the things in life that made Dante see red. He’d met them; they came in all guises, and he did everything within his power to make sure they did not flourish.

  What he saw, and Beatrice did not, was that she had been a victim too, watching her sister and mother suffer and feeling helpless, going to a person who was meant to protect her and being disbelieved.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me any of this?’

  ‘It’s not really my story, it’s Maya’s and…’ She paused, her clear blue eyes meeting his with a directness that made him think she could read his shame. ‘We never reached that point, did we? We were married, but really we were still two people dating.’

  He looked about to say something, but he closed his mouth when she added quietly, ‘And in the end, we skipped the bit of getting to know one another and went straight to divorce. We were on fast forward, all intense and…’ She shook her head, suddenly overcome by emotion. He was there, a few feet away; all she had to do was reach out. The sheer craving inside her to seek the physical comfort of his strength was, for a split second, so overwhelming that she began to move towards him.

  Then at the critical moment, the pilot’s voice made her snap back.

  ‘He’s inviting me to…’ Dante paused. ‘You already know?’

  ‘Go join him,’ she said with encouraging brightness.

  He half rose and subsided. ‘No, it’s fine.’

  ‘I can cope for a few minutes without you.’

  ‘I know you can—you have been for the last six months—but now you don’t have to.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  BEATRICE TOOK SOME time freshening up. She reapplied some lipstick, smudged some more soft grey shadow on her eyelids and that was it—the recent exposure to the winter Alpine sun had given her skin a deep glow that made her look deceptively healthy, even though she felt tired and washed out.

  Her freshly washed hair resisted her efforts to pull it back from her forehead and into a sleek ponytail on the nape of her neck, but she persevered and got a result that made her nod faint approval at her reflection.

  A quick spritz of perfume before she shrugged on a long-line oversized blazer in a swirly print. She thought she might pass muster. Her lips curved into a small, reflective smile as she remembered the first time she’d stepped off one of the royal fleet of jets onto home tarmac. Except it hadn’t felt like home as she knew it.

  When Dante had said private she had assumed that this covered both the flight and the arrival—she’d been wrong! Stepping into the sun, she had found herself faced with a military guard of honour, several dignitaries and half the royal family, complete with hats and heels. She’d stepped out wearing jeans and a tee shirt emblazoned with a cartoon of a smiling monkey, and trainers that had seen better days. Her hair, waist-length, loose and wild.

  Given the way she made her living, she was used to being the focus of attention, but that was playing a part. That day she hadn’t had any fake sexy persona to hide behind—she had worn less in public but she had never felt more exposed.

  She had been furious with Dante for not warning her, and he had added insult to injury by suggesting that she wa
s overreacting.

  She hadn’t asked about today, but she was pretty sure that, given the circumstances, this would be low-key and not a hat-and-heels-and-handshakes occasion. But even if it had been, she no longer had anything to prove.

  It was quite liberating to have already flunked the exams, and actually the intervening months had made her grow in confidence. Something that hadn’t really hit home until now.

  With a toss of her head that set her ponytail bobbing, she pushed up the sleeves on the oversized tailored blazer and went to join Dante. She tilted a smile up at him.

  ‘So, let’s do this.’

  Dante had been scrolling through his phone as he’d waited. At the sound of her voice he slid it back into his pocket and turned his head. She sounded like a sports coach giving a confidence-boosting pep talk, but she looked like a goddess. He felt the heat flash down his front and settle painfully in his groin. Beatrice could make a sack look sexy; along with a perfect supple body, she had an innate sense of style.

  He remembered the first time she’d arrived; the image would stay with him forever—Beatrice dressed in jeans that showed off her incredible bottom and endless legs, carrying off the military escort reception with a queenly confidence that had filled him with pride. She’d been mad as hell, he recalled, a reminiscent smile turning the corners of his mobile mouth upwards.

  Beatrice felt the heat inside her rise as his dark gaze settled on her. She stood her ground and fought not to react.

  ‘You look good.’

  She tipped her head in acknowledgement; it hid the rush of blood that warmed her cheeks.

  Their arrival was indeed low-key and, like the Italian lessons, it seemed she had learnt more than she’d thought. She nodded through the handshakes and smiles in a way she would once have thought unimaginable… Maybe it was because she had not had to impress anyone.

  There was something quietly liberating about it. Was this the way Dante, who never tried to impress people, felt? She slid a glance at him as she stepped through the open door of the limousine. He was conversing with someone who had a serious expression and wore a holstered gun. She gave a little shiver. That was something she could never feel nostalgia for, along with bulletproof glass.