The Forbidden Prince

She wouldn’t meet his gaze. There was something important that she didn’t want to say. Something about her body language reminded him of the hedgehog again. She was poised to curl into a ball to protect herself. With a flash, he realised what it could be and the thought was horrific. Had she been hurt by a man? Did that explain the way she’d reacted when he’d touched her? How hesitant she’d been to take his hand even when she’d been desperate?

‘Mika...’ He waited until she looked up and, yes, he could see uncertainty. It wasn’t fear, exactly, because there was a fierceness that told him she was well practised in defending herself. But she was clearly offering him something that was well out of her comfort zone.

He resisted the urge to touch her hand. Eye contact was more than enough, and even that he kept as gentle as he could. ‘We’re friends now, yes?’

Mika nodded but she wasn’t quite meeting his gaze.

‘You’re safe with me. I give you my word.’

She looked straight at him, then, and for a heartbeat, and then another, she held his gaze, as if she was searching for confirmation that his word was trustworthy.

That she found what she was looking for was revealed by no more than a softening of her face but Raoul could feel the gift of her trust as if it was solid enough to hold in his hands.

His vow was equally silent.

He would not drop that gift and break it.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_86030845-abd7-5e41-a5fb-61db4464a7c8)

WHO KNEW THAT military training would end up being so useful in the daily life of an ordinary person?

It meant that Raoul de Poitier was conditioned well enough that yesterday’s strenuous exercise had been no more than a good workout. It also meant that he’d been able to sleep on a lumpy old couch that was actually a lot more comfortable than sleeping on the ground.

He’d tapped into a bit of initiative in making the best use of available resources, too. Mika had a laptop computer and he’d borrowed it for long enough to send an email to his grandmother to let her know he was safe but not to expect to hear from him for a little while.

Mika had been busy with her technology for a while after that, downloading photographs she had taken that day, her busy tapping suggesting she was adding notes to the images. Her frequent glances away from the screen told him that she wasn’t entirely comfortable having him share this small space; the idea to turn the couch around so that the back of it faced into the small room came to him in a flash of inspiration. The effect of the change had been to create the illusion of a wall and, once he was lying down—with his legs bent and his knees propped on the wall—he couldn’t see Mika in the single bed that was only a few feet away. Any tension ebbed as it became apparent that the arrangement would give her more privacy as she worked and then slept.

The bathroom facilities were shared with all the other occupants of the rooms on that floor of the old boarding house. That had been more of a shock than Raoul had expected after a lifetime of a sparkling clean, private en suite bathroom always having been available but, on the plus side, there was no queue at this early hour of the morning.

Mika wasn’t due to start her shift in the café until eight a.m. but it opened at six a.m. and she was taking him in to meet the owner, Marco, in the hope that there might be some work available for a new dish-washer. She’d used the bathroom first and came out in her uniform of a short black skirt and a fitted short-sleeved black shirt. It was an outfit designed to cloak a member of the army of invisible people and, when Mika tied on a pretty white apron with a frill around its edge, he realised the uniform was probably also intended to make her look demure.

The shirt certainly covered the tattoo on her arm but Raoul doubted that anything would make Mika look demure—not with that aura of feistiness, combined with the impression of intelligence that one glance at her face was enough to discern.

‘It’s a horrible job,’ she warned Raoul. ‘A dishie has to be a food-hand as well and help with the food prep to start the day, with jobs like chopping onions and making sauce, and then he has to keep up with all the dishes as soon as service starts, and that’s not easy.’

‘I’m sure I could get up to speed.’ How hard could it be to do such menial work? This was the twenty-first century. Even a small establishment would have commercial dishwashing machines, surely?

Mika turned a corner as they headed downhill towards the beach. They walked past a series of shops still shuttered and sleeping in the soft light of a new day.

‘Dishies get yelled at by the chefs if they get behind,’ Mika continued. ‘The waitresses hate finding they’ve suddenly run out of cutlery or something and the barista will have a tantrum if he runs out of coffee cups.’

‘Who’s in charge?’

Mika looked up to grin at him. ‘Marco thinks he is but everybody has to keep the head chef happy. A dishie is right at the bottom of the pecking order, though. He has to keep everybody happy.’

Raoul wondered where the waitresses fitted into the pecking order. He would do his best to keep Mika happy if he got this job.

It was a surprise to realise how much he wanted to get this job. It wasn’t simply the opportunity of gaining a different perspective on life—the idea of it was beginning to tap into a yearning that went way back.

Didn’t every kid dream of being invisible at some time? And maybe that fantasy had more meaning to those who grew up under a very public spotlight. He would be visible to the people he worked with here, of course, but it felt like he would be stepping into an alternative reality. Nobody who knew him would expect to see him in this kind of work and that would be enough to make him blend into the background, even if they took notice of the people who spent their lives in service of some kind.

‘Here it is.’ Mika began to cross the cobbled street to a shop front that had canvas awnings over the footpath. The name of the café was printed on the dark terracotta canvas in big, white, cursive letters—Pane Quotidiano—the ‘Daily Bread’.

A short, middle-aged man with a long, white apron tied around an ample waist was lifting wrought-iron chairs from a stack to position around small tables. ‘Buongiorno, Marco.’

‘Buongiorno, Mika. Why are you so early?’

‘I’ve brought a friend—Rafe. He needs a job. Is Pierre still here?’

Marco threw his hands in the air and his huff of breath was exasperated. ‘He walked out yesterday, would you believe? Demanded his money and that was that.’ Raoul was receiving a shrewd glance. ‘You got any experience?’

‘I learn fast,’ Raoul replied in Italian—the language Mika was speaking with impressive fluency. ‘Try me.’

Marco had his hands on his hips now as he assessed Raoul.

‘He speaks English,’ Mika put in.

‘And French,’ Raoul added. And Dauphinesque, but that was hardly likely to be useful to the majority of tourists this café served, and he had no intention of giving anybody such a clue to his nationality.

‘Makes no difference.’ Marco shrugged. ‘All he needs to know is how to follow orders and work hard.’

‘Try me,’ Raoul said again. He should probably have added ‘please’ but, curiously, it rankled that he was being assessed and possibly found wanting. Not something he was used to, that was for sure.

‘One day,’ Marco said grudgingly. ‘You do a good job, I will hire you. Mess up and you won’t get paid for today.’

A glance at Mika gave him another one of those lightning-fast, telepathic messages. This was a good deal and, if he wanted the job, he’d better grab the opportunity.

Marco was clearly confident he had an extra set of hands for the day, at least.

‘Finish putting these chairs out,’ he told Raoul. ‘And then come back into the kitchen. Mika? Seeing as you’re here so early, make me a coffee.’

‘One macchiato coming right up.’ Mika didn’t seem bothered by the crisp order. She was looking delighted, in fact, by the way this job interview had panned out. She gave Raoul a quick thumbs-up sign as she disappeared into the café behind her boss.

His boss, too, if he could prove himself today. Raoul lifted a couple of the heavy chairs and carried them to the table on the far side of the outdoor area. As he went back for more, he caught sight of himself in the windows that hadn’t yet been folded back to open up the café to catch the breeze and what he saw made him catch his breath and look again.

He’d had to comb his hair with his fingers this morning so it was more tousled than he’d ever seen before. He’d rinsed out his only set of clothes and hung them over the tiny line outside the window of Mika’s room, so they were clean enough, but so wrinkled it looked as if he’d slept in them for a week. He’d noticed that the stubble on his jaw had felt a lot smoother yesterday but now he could see that it was beginning to look like a proper beard.

Nobody was going to recognise him. He barely recognised himself.

He wasn’t a prince here. Nobody had even asked him for a surname. He was just an ordinary guy called Rafe. And Rafe was on the way to finding his first paid employment.

Maybe he was delighted as well.

* * *

The trickle of breakfast customers had grown into a steady stream of holiday makers who preferred a relaxed brunch. Mika’s section today covered all the street tables so she had the added hazard of stepping around dogs lying by their owners’ chairs as she delivered plates of hot food or trays laden with coffee orders. Tables were being taken as soon as people stood up to leave so they had to be wiped down fast, and a new carafe of chilled water along with glasses provided.

She was almost too busy to wonder how Rafe was coping out the back but he entered her thoughts every time she cleared a table, being careful to scrape the plates and put all the cutlery on the top. Carrying the piles to the kitchen, she found herself scanning shelves to see where they were running low on supplies.