Читать книгу Claimed: Secret Royal Son - Marion Lennox - Страница 8

IT WAS six long weeks before he found her.

Alex told the islanders he’d given permission for Lily to care for her nephew while Mia decided what to do, but it was a lie. In reality he had a sworn-tosecrecy team working round the clock, making discreet enquiries, searching across the globe.

Finally his enquiries brought up a birth, registered in the United States:

Michales McLachlan, aged five months, son of Lily McLachlan. Reason for not immediately registering the birth: abroad at time of birth and illness after confinement. Father not listed.

She was registering Michales as hers—as a US citizen. Did she think she could get away with it? He was astounded—furious—and, above all, confused.

Was this a ruse so Mia could get her baby back? It didn’t make sense. If Mia wanted him she could have taken him. Yes, Michales was the future King of the Diamond Isles, but that wouldn’t have prevented him from being raised overseas.

He had to stop it. The one hope the people of the Diamond Isles held was that this baby was a new start. As Prince Regent, Alex could ensure this child was raised with a social conscience. Things could get better.

But things couldn’t get better if the baby wasn’t on the island where he could influence his upbring.

What the hell was Lily doing? Where was she? And where was the baby?

Mia and her new consort were in Dubai, living the high life.

Lily and Michales were nowhere.

And then he had a call from one of his…researchers.

‘Don’t ask me how I know, but she’s returning to the States by boat,’ the man told him. ‘The Nahid belongs to a corporation owned by Ben Merhdad, the guy Queen Mia’s living with. It’s due to dock in Maine on Saturday.’

So here he was, in Maine, on the dock, with two of his men plus an immigration official he’d briefed. It’d solve everything if this baby was never permitted legal entry to the United States.

Two minutes before its designated arrival, a magnificent yacht nosed its way into the harbour.

To his astonishment, Lily was making no attempt to hide. She was standing on deck, wearing faded jeans and a plain white T-shirt. Her hair was wrapped in another crazy scarf—a silk confection. Gorgeous.

She was holding a baby.

There was an audible gasp from the guys around him. ‘She’s not even hiding him,’ someone said.

‘She’s registered the baby as hers,’ the immigration official said uneasily. ‘She must think she can get away with it.’

‘What the hell’s she playing at?’ Alex growled.

She’d seen him now. Incredibly, she gave him a cheery smile and a wave. She looked like a woman who’d just returned from a pleasure cruise.

She looked…lovely.

Or not. He gave himself a sharp mental swipe to the side of the head. Remember this woman’s like her sister. Lovely is surface deep, he told himself. What’s inside is selfish, greedy and shallow.

Testosterone was not what was needed.

What was needed was a swift end to this farce.

But she didn’t look concerned. She seemed to be the only passenger, standing calmly on the deck as lines were secured…as a crewman carried a couple of bags from below…as Alex gave up waiting and stepped over onto the deck.

‘Hi,’ she said, and she smiled brightly again, as if he was a friend she was pleased to meet after a casual morning’s cruise. ‘I thought you might be here. Good detective work.’

‘Are you out of your mind?’

‘No,’ she said, and kept right on smiling. ‘Why would you think that?’

‘You’ve taken the baby…’

‘No,’ she said, and her smile slipped a little. ‘Not the baby. My baby.’

‘Yours.’ The word sucked air from his lungs.

‘Michales is mine,’ she said. She turned to the crew and her smile returned. ‘Thanks, guys. You’ve been fabulous. Please thank Ben for me. I can manage from here.’

‘We’ve organised transport. And security.’ One of the crew—by his demeanour, Alex assumed he was captain—motioned to the dock, and for the first time Alex was aware of a limousine. A uniformed chauffeur was standing at attention, and two dark-suited men stood behind.

‘Will I need security?’ Lily asked, seemingly of the world at large. ‘I’m sure I won’t.’ She turned back to Alex and gave him another of her bright smiles. ‘It’s up to you, Your Highness. Will I need muscle to protect what’s mine?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

She motioned to the men beside him. ‘I think you do. You thought you might take my baby away from me.’

‘He’s not your baby.’

‘He is.’

‘Miss.’ It was the immigration official. Alex had laid the situation before the US immigration authorities, asking for discretion. This man was senior enough to know what to do, and he had the authority to do it. He was wearing a look of determination and gravitas—an official about to lay down the law. ‘According to His Highness, this baby is the Crown Prince of the Diamond Isles. He’s the son of King Giorgos and Queen Mia.’

‘That was a mistake,’ Lily said. ‘Michales is mine. His birth is registered under my name. He’s a citizen of the United States.’

‘That’s not been proven,’ the man said, clearly unimpressed. ‘You can’t arrive in the States with a baby and claim he’s yours.’

‘Without proof,’ Lily finished for him.

‘Registering the baby’s birth isn’t proof.’

‘No,’ she said softly. ‘But this is.’ She handed over a wallet she’d had tucked under Michales’s shawl. ‘This is confirmation by legitimate medical authorities that I had a baby less than six months ago. You’ll see it’s indisputable—the French authorities were very thorough when I told them what I needed. Also attached is the report of DNA samples from my son and from me. I’m happy to have the tests repeated here if you wish, but you’ll get the same answers. This baby was passed off by my brother-in-law, the King of the Diamond Isles, as his own, in order to prevent Prince Alexandros ascending to the throne. But this baby is mine, and I intend to keep him.’

She wanted this to be over. She was desperate for it to be over. She needed to sound brave, but inside she felt ill. And the way Alex was looking at her…

No. Concentrate on the official. He was the man she had to convince.

She met the immigration official’s gaze directly, trying desperately to ignore Alex. The effect he had on her had to be ignored. Everything about him had to be ignored. ‘Is there anything more you need from me?’ she managed. ‘Michales is due for a feed in less than an hour. I want my son settled in his new home by then. If you gentlemen will excuse us, we need to get on.’

The immigration official was leafing swiftly through the papers, his brow creasing in confused recognition.

‘These are highly reputable authorities,’ he said at last.

‘I told you. I’ve used the best. But of course, as I said, I’m happy for the tests to be repeated.’

‘We’ll contact you,’ the immigration official said, but his tone had changed. ‘In view of this gentleman’s allegations…’ He motioned to Alex, but there was no way Lily was looking there. ‘We may well need to have these verified. But on the surface everything appears in order. Welcome home, miss, to you and your son.’

‘Thank you.’ It was over. Thank God. She took a step towards the gangplank.

Alex was suddenly in front of her.

On the dock, the two men were out from behind the car almost before he blocked her passage, moving purposely towards them. Good old Ben, Lily thought appreciatively. She’d never met her sister’s lover, but in the first flush of romance anything was possible. Especially if you had billions and your girlfriend was being threatened with being landed with an unwanted baby if he didn’t agree.

She hadn’t meant her threats but she’d used them anyway. ‘He’s your baby until proven otherwise,’ she’d told Mia. ‘I’ll bring him to you and I’ll keep on bringing him to you until you help me.’

So Ben’s money was at her disposal. She might need it still, she thought. Alex surely couldn’t carry her baby off by force but…who knew? He looked angry enough to try.

‘Let me pass, Alex,’ she said, but his hands fell onto her shoulders and held.

‘What the hell are you playing at?’

‘I’m taking what’s mine,’ she said, jutting out her chin. Trying to sound braver than she was. ‘Michales is mine.’

‘Are you kidding? He belongs to Mia and Giorgos.’

‘I just explained that was a lie.’ She took a deep breath. Okay. This had to be said some time. What better time than right now? ‘Think about why they might have lied, Alex,’ she said gently. ‘You’ll see for yourself what’s happened.’

His anger was building. ‘The three of you lied? You agreed to it?’

‘I was…ill.’

‘You mean you were paid,’ he snapped, staring around at the luxury yacht as if it had a bad smell. ‘I know your family. You don’t have a penny to bless yourself with.’

‘Let’s not get personal.’

‘This is nonsense.’ He stared down at the baby in her arms. Cocooned in a soft cream alpaca shawl, Michales slept on, oblivious to the drama being played out around him. ‘Of course the baby’s Mia’s,’ he snapped. ‘He looks like Mia, and he looks like Giorgos.’

‘No, he doesn’t,’ she said, so softly that no one but Alex could hear.

‘He does.’

‘Well, maybe a bit,’ she conceded. ‘But then Mia looks like me. And Giorgos…Giorgos had the Sappheiros royal family features. Who else do I know who might have those features? Work out the dates, Alex. Go figure.’

And, with a faint smile, the result of sheer willpower, she pushed past him.

And that was it. A moment later she was in the limousine. Her baggage was in the trunk and they were moving away.

Alex didn’t make a move to follow. He simply stood on the yacht in the warm sunshine and stared after her.

It was done, she thought, shaking with reaction. She’d reclaimed her son.

She could get on with her life.

For days Lily held her breath. She didn’t think there was a danger that Alex would try to take Michales forcibly—but she didn’t know for sure.

She’d half expected a media frenzy. By reclaiming Michales she was changing the succession of three royal families. The kingdom would dissolve, and the old principalities would take their place. From what she’d figured from reading a potted history of the Isles on the Internet, Alex would now be Crown Prince of Sappheiros. He’d be the real ruler of one island, rather than the caretaker of three.

But it seemed that whatever Alex planned, he wasn’t making it public. He hadn’t publicised Michales’s disappearance either, even though an international hunt might well have blown her cover.

His silence unnerved her, but at least it gave her time to get to know her son. To fall more deeply in love than she’d ever thought she could be.

‘It’s not the living arrangements you’re used to,’ she told her tiny son as she introduced him to his new home. Her window looked out over the boatyard. Her boss and his team were at work right under her window, stretching timbers over the frame of a skiff.

She’d soon be down there. The knowledge settled her. Spiros wanted her back and she wanted to be there. If she left her window open she could hear Michales cry, and Spiros’s wife would be only too delighted to help.

This could work.

Meanwhile she sat on her faded quilt on her saggy bed and cuddled her son.

She could make him smile, and she was well enough to enjoy him. Life stretched before her, full of endless possibilities. Surely there could be no greater happiness?

Her only cloud? Alex would come, she knew this wasn’t over.

Alex—oh, if things could only be different.

They couldn’t be different. She forced herself to relax. She forced herself to be optimistic, for there was no going back. This might be Alex’s baby, but first and foremost he was hers.

It had taken Alex almost a week to sort things out in his head. Even then they didn’t feel sorted. Where to go to from here? He couldn’t simply take what Lily told him at face value, tell the islanders they’d been conned and move forward.

But at last, finally, he was starting to accept what she’d told him as the truth.

For the test results Lily had given the immigration official were watertight. Alex had stood by the man’s side as he’d rung the French authorities, and he’d heard the outrage that their tests be questioned. Lily had gone to enormous trouble to ensure these were seen as legitimate. She’d organised independent witnesses as DNA samples had been taken. She’d even agreed to have witnesses as she’d been examined to prove she’d borne a child five months ago.

Michales was her baby.

And…his? Was she serious?

He remembered the little boy as he’d last seen him, sleeping in his mother’s arms. Dark lashes. Thick black curls. Smiling even in sleep.

He was beautiful.

He was his son.

It was too big to take in.

But, believe it or not, this baby was proven to be not the natural child of Mia and Giorgos. There’d been no official adoption—only deception.

The legal ramifications were mind-blowing.

He’d needed help. He’d needed the best constitutional lawyers money could buy, and the best political advisors. He’d consulted them—they’d pored over ancient documents, they’d scratched their heads and they’d outlined facts he didn’t want to know.

This was impossible. He needed a magic wand so the past few months could disappear and he could rule without the encumbrance of a baby.

His son.

The more he thought of the lie that had been perpetrated, the sicker he became. That Giorgos and Mia had deliberately deceived the islanders…That Lily had consented…

Had she deliberately seduced him? It had to be faced. Had it been a deliberate plan by the three of them, with Mia pulling out after Giorgos’s death only when she’d realised she had no financial independence?

Was Mia’s abandonment why Lily had changed her mind and taken her baby back? And what was this illness she’d talked about? She’d been fine six weeks ago at his coronation.

Enquiries to the doctors she’d cited had been stonewalled, citing privacy. Privacy with the succession at stake? Hell, he was almost up to bribing hospital officials to get the answers he wanted.

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.

She looked about fifteen.

But then, ‘I’m hoping he’s here to organise paternity payments,’ she told Spiros, and he stopped thinking of what she looked like.

‘He’s your baby’s father?’ Spiros demanded.

‘He is. This is Alexandros, Prince Regent of Sappheiros.’

If he’d expected a bit of deference he would have been disappointed. Spiros’s aggression simply doubled. Tripled. And the gasp from the woman at the cot was one of indignation and affront.

‘So where the hell have you been?’ Spiros demanded from below. ‘Alexandros of Sappheiros. A prince of the blood, leaving Lily alone with a child…What were you thinking?’

This was crazy. He didn’t need these accusations.

He should go down.

Not with the amount of aggression directed at him, he decided. He could talk a lot more reasonably from up here. Especially if he kept his back turned to Madam Fury.

‘I searched for her,’ he told the boat-builder, trying to keep his voice moderate. Reasonable. ‘You know I did.’

‘Once,’ Spiros said, and spat his disgust. ‘You came here once. If she’d been my woman I would have hunted her to the ends of the earth.’

‘I’m not his woman,’ Lily retorted.

‘He’s the father of your baby,’ Spiros countered, pugnacious. ‘Of course you’re his woman.’

‘Times change,’ she said softly. ‘You know they do. Spiros, I need to talk to him.’

‘Then talk,’ he said, glowering. ‘Go on. But, prince or no prince, remember he has no rights here. Leave your window open and call us if you need us.’ And with a humph of indignation—and a meaningful and warning stare at Alex—he turned his back on him.