to the impact on Lucas should they ever be found out? No. She’d just wanted him. So desperately. Unseeing of the consequences.
Swarms of black locusts poured onto the patio—one brawny security man for every ravenous tabloid fiend.
‘Tell me now,’ he said, his eyes swirling with a turbulent storm. ‘What do you want, Claudia?’
She wanted to fix it. Put everything right. Make good on the destruction she’d caused. The alternative didn’t bear thinking about. But she did think about it. Because her brain wouldn’t switch off. Would Lucas the Honourable propose? Be trapped by her for eternity? Or, worse still, would her father discharge him? Strip him of his honour?
Never.
Claudia could fix this. Make sure he kept his job. His life. Everything that made him the man he was. The man she loved. And she knew exactly how to do it.
‘I will fight for you,’ he avowed. ‘Tell me what you want.’
Her throat stung. Still he would fight for her. Her brave knight. But even knights answered to their king.
‘To be free. To go home. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.’ Until you. Only you. God, her heart was breaking.
His jaw hard, the shutters slammed down over his face. ‘Very well.’
He took a step back and beckoned to Armande with a flick of his fingers, told him to corral all the reporters out front for Lucas to deal with.
Claudia inhaled his scent one last time as she snuck around him, raised her chin and strode towards her father.
She ignored the disappointment weighing heavy in his eyes. She’d make him happy soon enough.
‘Can I speak with you, Father?’
‘My office. Twenty minutes.’
* * *
Claudia spent the longest, most agonising twenty minutes of her life pacing the living room in the private quarters of the Palace. The silvery moon cast eerie shadows over the oppressive grandeur, making her shiver. But this way, sans artificial light, she could keep one eye on the grandfather clock and sneak a peek at Lucas out front, his huge body looming over a member of the paparazzi.
Thankfully they’d only had a small audience on the terrace but...God, the look on his face as they’d parted ways. She would never forget it. Fierce, yet strangely bleak. He must hate her for placing him in this position.
A loud gong echoed off the oak-panelled walls like a death-knell and she stiffened her backbone, swept through the room, down the cavernous hallway to her father’s office. Palm flat, she pushed through the door, turned, closed it with a soft click and spun around to face him—sitting behind his wide desk in a high-backed brown leather chair, focusing his flinty gaze on her face.
‘Claudine.’
‘Father.’ She strode towards his desk to stand opposite him and lifted her chin. ‘I have a proposition for you.’ Even as she hoped to reach a compromise—something she should have considered well before now—she realised that on the back of ruining the Anniversary Ball her timing sucked.
‘Let’s hear it,’ he said, barely suppressed temper firing his cheeks.
She kept her cool. Reached for her mask. Because she’d never needed it more.
‘I apologise for any embarrassment I’ve caused you tonight. Truly. But the fault is mine and I’m quite willing to make it up to you.’ Her voice almost cracked on the last, and she bit her inner cheek to stop from crying out, pleading with him.
‘Unless you are willing to come home for good, I do not want to hear it.’
She tried to swallow but it was impossible. So much for compromise.
How right Lucas had been. You cannot change who you are, Princesa. And hadn’t she suspected all along that the moment she stepped foot on Arunthian soil her freedom would be lost?
Brittle was surely the only word to describe her smile. ‘All right, Father. I’ll come home.’
His clipped grey brows hiked just a touch. ‘You will give up your work?’ he said, still disbelieving.
The lump in her chest caught fire and tore up her throat. Years of research...the children she’d left behind...Bailey. Forgive me. I’ll make it up to you. I swear it. ‘Yes.’
She would never have believed it possible of her autocratic father, but his head actually jerked. Strange how that small reaction pleased her—until she beheld the gleam in his eyes.
‘Will you marry Carone?’
Whack—the first crack in her armour ripped through her stomach and she stiffened to prevent the flinch. She should have known there was some reason he’d been throwing Carone at her. She couldn’t contemplate what such an allegiance would involve or she’d throw up on her