Claimed: Secret Royal Son

Not quite. Not yet. He’d ask her directly first.

He’d talked on, privately, to lawyer after lawyer, to advisor after advisor. He’d talked to Stefanos and to Nikos. He’d thought of one disaster after another…

And when they’d told him the only path that was sure to save the islands he’d felt ill.

Finally, bleak and still unbelieving, he returned to the dockyards, to the address Lily had given the authorities as her permanent home. To the apartment over the boatyard he’d visited once before.

He went alone, slipping in the back way, not wanting to be noticed. Hoping like hell that Lily had rid herself of the bodyguards she’d had with her the week before.

He knocked at the door to her first-floor apartment and he thought this must be a mistake—she’d never live like this. Not Mia’s sister.

No one answered. He twisted the doorknob, expecting it to be locked.

It gave under his hand.

Her apartment was one room, simply furnished. There was a double bed, big and saggy, covered with a patchwork quilt that had seen better days. There was a tiny table with a single kitchen chair, a battered armchair, a tiny television, a rod and curtain in the corner constituting a wardrobe.

There was a cot beside the open window. With…With…

Michales? Alone?

No. Ignore the cot. He didn’t have space in his head to look at the little person in the cot.

Would he ever?

What sort of a mother was she to leave him alone? Anyone could walk in here.

She was just like Mia.

Concentrate on other things, he thought fiercely. He needed some sort of handle on Lily. Some awareness of who she was.

The apartment was furnished as if the owner had no money to spare, but it didn’t scream poverty. Gingham curtains framed the windows. The windows were open, letting in sunlight and the sounds from the boatyard below. There were pots of petunias on the windowsills, and a seagull was balancing on one leg looking hopefully inside.

It looked…great.

It also looked about as far from a royal residence as it could get.

Where was Lily?

Michales…his son…was sound asleep.

His son.

He could just pick him up and take him, he thought. How easy would that be?

What did he want with a baby? With this baby?

With…his baby?

He walked over to the window—still carefully not looking at the cot—and glanced out. And there was Lily.

She was right below him, deep in the hull of an embryonic boat. The boat’s ribs stretched around her, bare, raw timber. The guy he’d met twelve months before—Lily’s boss?—was hauling a length of wood from a steaming vat.

To his amazement, it was Lily calling the shots. She was dressed in serviceable bib-and-brace overalls, workmanlike boots, a baseball cap and thick leather gloves to her elbows. She received the timber from Spiros and her orders flew, curt and incisive.

Her whole attention was on the plank. They had it in place and she was hauling it by hand, pushing, twisting…Two other men were helping, using their brute strength to help her, but Lily was doing the guiding.

He watched on, fascinated. Only when the wood was a fully formed rib, one of the vast timbers forming the skeleton of the new hull, did she stand back and look at it as a whole.

‘That’s fantastic,’ she called. ‘Ten down and a hundred and sixty to go? We’ll get them done by teatime.’

There was laughter and a communal groan.

She laughed with them. She was…one of the boys? The men were deferring to her with respect.

‘I need to check on Michales,’ she was saying. ‘He’s due for a feed. You think you can do the next one without me?’ She glanced up at the window.

She saw him.

He’d expected shock. Maybe even fear. Instead, her eyebrows rose, just a fraction. She gave him a curt nod, as if acknowledging past acquaintance, or maybe that she’d attend to him shortly, then deliberately turned her back on him. She strolled over to talk to Spiros.

Spiros was about to lower another plank, but he was looking at it doubtfully. Now he swore and thrust it aside.

‘It’s not worth it. There’s a flaw in the middle and the rest are the same. They’ll break before they ever bend. Enough. You go and feed your little one, and I’ll send the boys to get more.’ He smiled at her with real affection. ‘Don’t you keep my godson waiting.’ Then he, too, glanced up at the window. His smile died.

Spiros stared at Alex for a long minute. What had Lily told him?

Nothing favourable, clearly.

‘Hey, look who the cat brought home,’ he said, his tone softly threatening. ‘It seems we have company.’

His big body was pure aggression. If Spiros had been Lily’s father the message couldn’t have been clearer. ‘You mess with Lily, you mess with me.’

With us. The entire team was gazing at him now. This was hostile territory.

There was a slight noise behind him. He turned and a middle-aged woman was standing in the doorway. Her arms were crossed across her ample breasts. She looked immovable and as aggressive as the men on the docks.

Maybe he couldn’t just pick up Michales and take him.

‘What do you want?’ Spiros demanded from below. ‘What the hell are you doing in Lily’s apartment?’

‘It’s okay, Spiros,’ Lily said. ‘I’ve been expecting him. Though I shouldn’t have left it unlocked.’

‘It’s okay,’ the woman called to Lily. ‘I’m here.’ She stalked over to the cot and put her body between him and his…the baby.

He couldn’t look at…the baby.

Unnerved, he looked down at the docks again. Lily was only ten feet under him, giving him a bird’s-eye view. She was too thin, he thought. Her bib-and-brace overalls were loose and baggy. Her glorious curls were caught up under a boy’s baseball cap, worn back to front. She had a smudge of grease down one cheek.