Revealed: A Prince and A Pregnancy

Never show fear, especially when your hands were slick with it.

Never let on how much something means to you lest someone take it away.

Never back down. Never give in.

Never look back.

Simone hadn’t had to learn that last lesson, only Rafael, but he’d never forgotten it. Indeed, he’d got royally drunk on one of his first nights in Australia and had those exact three words cut into his back. Not that he’d ever seen the tattoo, mind, although more than one woman had professed herself captivated by its beauty. Not once, in all the years it had graced his skin, had he ever sought its image.

He never looked back.

What the hell was taking her so long?

He had a million things to do today. Laying down the law on exactly how Simone Duvalier would conduct herself during her stay here hadn’t been one of them. That task had been on his list of things to do tomorrow.

Not that that bothered him. Rafael was an opportunist in the purest sense of the word. Today would do just as well. ‘Here’s how it’s going to be,’ he would say. ‘You’re going to stay out of my way. I’m going to stay out of yours. And you will not set foot in my house or on my land during your time here because I don’t want you there. Ever. Clear?’ And she would say, ‘Yes, crystal clear,’ with her eyes downcast, at which point he would get the hell out of there before he changed his mind.

Rafe paced the courtyard—he figured this took all of three seconds. He considered he might just probably be climbing the courtyard walls by the time Simone deigned to put in an appearance. How could it possibly take her ten minutes to throw on some clothes and run a comb through her hair?

Exactly ten minutes later Simone emerged from the bathroom, a vision of elegant sophistication and poise. She didn’t look towards the still open door, no, she turned her head towards the courtyard and looked straight at him, as if she’d known all along that he would be waiting for her there. He felt the impact of that quiet assessing gaze hit him like a silken fist.

She stepped out into the courtyard, one elegantly sandal-clad and perfectly pedicured foot in front of the other. ‘I thought we might perhaps manage a greeting this time round, but I can see you’re not in the mood,’ she said quietly.

He wasn’t. And it rankled him mightily that she knew it.

‘Would you care for a drink?’ she said next. ‘I was about to call for some coffee.’

‘No.’

‘Or, there’s probably juice or cola in the fridge if you’d prefer something cold. Come to think of it, I’d prefer something cold. Are you sure I can’t get you something?’

She disappeared back inside, leaving Rafe to either follow her, which he would never do, or stay where he was and seethe in silence, which he accomplished effortlessly.

She returned a minute or so later with a tall glass of clear liquid. ‘They only had water,’ she said. ‘I guess you order what you want from room service. That or Sarah will restock the fridge when she does the flowers.’

‘We need to set some ground rules,’ he told her curtly.

‘Not a social visit, then? Who would have guessed?’

Rafael watched in silence as Simone sipped her drink, soft, lush lips to cool, smooth glass. Rafe hadn’t been thirsty a moment ago. Now he was parched.

‘Am I going to like these ground rules?’ she asked next.

‘You might,’ he offered, dragging his gaze from her lips. Not that he gave a damn whether she liked them or not. ‘You might find that they make your stay here easier for all concerned.’

‘Ah, yes. The easy road.’ She looked around the courtyard, her gaze following the trail of jasmine up and over the wall. ‘Why is it, do you think, that the easy road so rarely takes a person where they want to go?’

‘It can,’ he said. ‘It depends where you want to go.’

‘Call it a wild hunch, but I don’t think we’re heading for the same place.’ She slanted him a glance, heavy on the doe-eyed innocence. Warning klaxons rang in his brain. Childhood memories surfaced. The ingénue look had usually signalled Simone at her devious best. And Simone at her devious best had been very wily indeed.

‘So…about these rules…’ she said. ‘Am I to stay out of your way as much as possible? Refuse all invitations from Gabrielle to show me the vineyard you restored and made your own? Am I to pretend that our shared history does not exist?’

She knew him too well. He glared at her, but he didn’t contradict her. ‘It’s a start.’

‘It’s a mistake,’ she countered lightly. ‘Funny things, boundaries. All they ever seem to do is make a person want to push against them.’ Her gaze turned dark and knowing. ‘But then…you already know that.’

Just like that, effortlessly and with surgical precision, she cut the ground from beneath him.

‘I will not cower in the shadows during my stay here, Rafael.’ She stepped closer, too close. ‘I will not pretend polite indifference towards you. I reject your rules of engagement. Mine is a different road.’

He could smell the scent on her skin, something delicate and floral and quintessentially French. He was close enough to touch her if he wanted to. And he did want to. Not lovingly or gently but in desperation and in need. Slowly, deliberately, he jammed his hands in his pockets and stepped back. ‘Yours is a dangerous road.’

‘We played together as children,’ she said quietly. ‘I knew you then. I knew your soul and it wasn’t a simple one, but I knew it nonetheless. We loved together in our youth and I felt your dreams and breathed your fears, but duty prevented me from following where you led. Sometimes, when I look back, I regret the choices I’ve made. And sometimes I don’t.’

She looked away then, as if the sight of him hurt her eyes. ‘I cannot change our past, Rafael. It happened. It’s done. But I can influence the present and I would have us leave the past behind if we could. I want new memories to replace the old. Even bittersweet ones would be better than the ones I carry now.’

She took a shuddering breath. There was fear here; he felt it as if it were his own. Maybe it was. Run, he pleaded silently. Dear God, Simone, don’t do this. Don’t even try.

‘Do you know what I would take from you this visit?’ she said quietly. ‘Friendship.’

‘Don’t,’ he muttered. ‘Simone, don’t.’

‘Guarded if you like. Conditional if need be. But I would very much like to get to know the man you’ve become.’

‘No.’ She asked too much of him. She always had. He headed for the door, knowing it for retreat. Knowing that whatever ground he’d thought to protect, he’d somehow just lost. ‘I can’t walk that road with you,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Not now, not ever.’ He let his anger surface, he let it fan his pain and she flinched away from what she saw in his eyes and well she should have. He headed for the door, fast, before he hauled her in his arms and showed her exactly why he could never be her friend. ‘I just can’t.’

Simone stood her ground as he strode from the court-yard and then from the room without a backward glance. She knew he wouldn’t look back, he never had, even as a boy. Forward was the only way for Rafael and she had hoped to appeal to that need in him. Confront the past head on in order to move on.

So much for that particular notion.

Simone closed her eyes and let the twin blades of weariness and abandonment overtake her.

She’d come here for a wedding because she had to. She’d come here, out of her element and out of her league, to try and broker some sort of peace with her past and with Rafael.

She was trying, dammit!

Coffee would be good. Coffee, and then she and Sarah would fit the bridal gown to the dressmaker’s dummy and then she would make that call to Gabrielle. There were jobs to do. Steps to take. She would take pleasure in helping to make Luc and Gabrielle’s wedding day a perfect one. She would find joy in the little things. She would not give way to despair.

As for Rafael, with his smouldering gaze and his barely concealed anger…

Courage.

Chapter Two

‘IT’S exquisite,’ said Gabrielle in a hushed and reverent whisper as she fingered the pearl edging of the neckline. ‘I knew when they took my measurements and we agreed on a basic design that it’d be lovely, but never in a million years did I imagine a gown as beautiful as this. It’s like something from a fairy tale. A very sophisticated French fairy tale,’ she added with a grin. ‘Wait ‘til Lucien sees it!’

‘Exactly,’ said Simone. ‘I trust you’ve organised hair and make-up assistance for Sunday?’