Crown Prince, Pregnant Bride

He frowned. ‘What about your mother? Why didn’t she look after you?’

She blew out a breath. ‘You might as well know the worst. When it was obvious that the earl wasn’t going to leave his wife for my mother, she left me with her parents and bolted.’ She looked away. ‘With someone else’s husband.’

* * *

Lorenzo knew first-hand what kind of damage affairs could cause. Collateral damage, too. His own mother’s affair had blown his whole world apart. If she’d been able to cope with life in the royal family, then she wouldn’t have had the affair—and his father wouldn’t have reacted by driving their car into a wall. And just maybe he would’ve grown up with both his parents, in a happy family, and it would’ve been another thirty years before he’d had to think about becoming king.

Or maybe it would’ve been a different kind of unhappy childhood, with his parents always arguing in private and pretending everything was just fine and dandy where the public was concerned.

Not that he was going to tell Indigo about that. He didn’t talk about the scars on his heart to anyone. Ever. ‘That’s tough on you.’

She shrugged. ‘As I said, my grandparents loved me.’

The implication was clear: her mother hadn’t. ‘Do you see your mother now?’

Indigo shook her head. ‘She ended up in a yachting accident with Married Man Number Four. She drowned. All I have of my mother are photographs and some very fleeting memories.’

It was the same for Lorenzo. Photographs and fleeting memories. Except nobody knew the true circumstances of his parents’ accident. Nobody except his grandfather and their legal adviser. They wouldn’t have told him the truth, except some papers had been misfiled and he’d come across them when he was eighteen and discovered the truth for himself. He’d gone off the rails for a week, shocked to the core that his father could’ve done something so terrible. The paparazzi had taken a picture of him looking haggard and with the worst hangover in the history of the universe; and then his grandfather had hauled him back to the palace, had a very honest and frank discussion with him, and Lorenzo had reassumed his stiff upper lip.

‘That’s tough on you,’ he said again.

‘It was tougher,’ she said, ‘proving to everyone that I wasn’t like my mother.’

Yeah. He knew all about that, too—having to convince his grandfather that he wasn’t like his father.

‘Especially when I wanted to leave boarding school. But I hated the rigidity of the place, and the sense of entitlement that so many of the girls had.’

‘What did you do?’ he asked.

‘Gave my father a business plan,’ she said. ‘If I went to a normal state school at the age of fourteen, he’d save four years of fees—which would be enough to buy my grandparents’ cottage. If he let them live there rent-free for the rest of their lives, then he’d get his investment back when he sold the cottage. Win-win. He got money, and I got freedom.’

Lorenzo’s heart bled for her. How could her father have been so cold-blooded that she had to offer him a business plan as a way out of a school that she hated? ‘And he agreed to it?’

‘Yes.’

For a second, he saw pain in her eyes.

And then she grinned. ‘I told him the alternative was that I’d behave so badly, I’d get thrown out of every boarding school in England. But he knew I was right. And I proved to my grandparents that I wasn’t like my mother. I wasn’t running away, I was making the right choice. I got a weekend job in the local supermarket as soon as I was old enough, and a bar job to keep me going through art college until I graduated.’

‘And you got a First?’ he asked.

She inclined her head. ‘I made my grandparents proud of me before they died.’

Though her father had obviously not acknowledged her achievements. ‘Indi. I’m not pitying you, but right now I want to hug you,’ he said.

‘It’s OK. I’m a big girl. I learned to deal with it years ago.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s the earl’s loss, not mine.’

And what an idiot the man was, not realising what a treasure he had in Indigo.

Lorenzo stole another kiss. ‘Indigo. Will you please tell me to stop this?’

She kissed him back. ‘Colour me bad, Your Royal Highness, but what’s the alternative to stopping?’

His breath hitched. ‘I think you’ve just spiked my blood pressure. Are you suggesting...?’

‘We both know where we stand. You’re about to take over from your grandfather and become king. You don’t have time for a relationship. I have an empire to build with my business—I don’t have time for a relationship, either.’ She paused. This was crazy. But, at the same time, it was safe, because what she was proposing involved a time limit. Which meant she wouldn’t get involved with him. ‘I’m here until the end of the month. You said you don’t have to go back to Melvante for a little while. Are you staying here until you go back?’

‘Yes.’

‘So we’re in a private house. Among friends who would never rat us out to the press. Lottie’s my oldest friend, and I’m guessing that Gus is one of your oldest friends, too.’

‘He is. And I trust him totally.’ He lifted her hand to his face and pressed his lips against her wrist, feeling the way her pulse beat hard against his mouth. Indigo Moran was everything he couldn’t have. A breath of fresh air. Vibrant and lively. Totally unsuitable. And he knew without having to ask that she’d hate his world just as much as his mother had. This was never going to work.

Yet, at the same time, neither of them could deny the attraction between them.

‘So you’re suggesting we have a fling,’ he said slowly.

‘A mad fling,’ she corrected. ‘Because we both know that, although we’re attracted to each other, in the real world we’re not remotely suitable for each other. So we go into this with our eyes open. And we both walk away at the end of it. Intact.’

Which told him someone had walked away from her before, and left her very far from intact. ‘It feels a bit—well, dishonourable. To offer you just a fling.’ Especially now he knew about her background. She was the child of a fling, and she’d paid the price by losing a whole generation of her family.

‘Lorenzo, I’m not suitable marriage material for you, so you’re not in a position to offer me anything else,’ she pointed out. ‘Which means either we have to spend the next couple of weeks having a lot of cold showers and trying to avoid each other, or...’ Her breath caught. ‘Just for the record, I don’t normally proposition men.’

He stole another kiss. ‘I already know that. Despite that dress you were wearing last night, you’re not the type. And I’m very flattered that you should proposition me.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘But you’re going to say no.’

‘My head’s telling me that this is a bad idea,’ he said. ‘But...’ He blew out a breath. ‘I don’t do this sort of thing, either. I’m just a boring businessman.’

‘You’re a king in waiting,’ she corrected.

‘Same difference. Running a country’s the same as running a business. It’s just a slightly different scale.’ He shrugged. ‘Indigo, I always act with my head. I think things through and I look at all the options. I never do anything on impulse.’ Not since that week of getting seriously drunk—and he hadn’t touched brandy ever again after that. ‘Yet I can’t stop thinking about you. And kissing you just now was more impulsive than I’ve been in years.’ He leaned his forehead against hers. ‘Have you ever wanted something so much, you feel as if you’re going to implode?’

She didn’t answer; and he was pretty sure it had something to do with the man who’d walked away from her.

Which was precisely what he was going to have to do.

And he didn’t want to hurt her. Though he had a feeling that it might already be too late for that. She’d been rejected by her father, dumped at boarding school, and left in pieces when someone she loved had walked away from her. The fact that she’d been brave enough to suggest a fling also meant she’d made herself vulnerable.

He pulled back just enough to drop a kiss on her forehead. ‘Cold showers and avoidance it is.’

‘I’m not so sure that’s going to work. I have pictures in my head. And I think you do, too.’ She moistened her lower lip with the tip of her tongue, and he was near to hyperventilating. He really wanted to kiss her again.

‘Indigo, I’m trying really hard to maintain control, here.’

‘What if you didn’t have to?’ She stroked his face, and he turned his head to press a kiss into her palm. ‘What if you could be whoever you wanted to be, just for, say, one night?’

‘What scares me,’ he admitted, ‘is that I don’t think one night with you would be enough.’