THE SNOW WAS coming down thick and fast and Nathaniel had to use all his concentration to navigate roads that were fast becoming treacherous.
All he needed was to get to the airport. His jet was waiting there and the airport staff were used to keeping the runway perfectly gritted and usable.
Catalina must have sensed his need to concentrate for she fell silent again.
If only he weren’t so aware of her...
This was why he’d avoided spending time alone with her. Every time it was just the two of them he had to fight with his own fingers not to reach out and touch the creamy skin, to gather the long, thick raven hair in his hands and inhale the sultry scent that had driven his senses wild from the very start. He knew he shouldn’t desire someone he no longer trusted, even if a part of him parroted her excuses, trying to justify her actions and pass the blame onto him.
Yet their conversation earlier had changed the whole complexion of their relationship. As much as he loathed what she had done, an understanding had grown between them. For want of a better term, they were now partners in crime, both prepared to put on a face to get what they wanted.
What he couldn’t trust was that she wouldn’t take her desired freedom if another opportunity presented itself.
‘We’re going to have to find somewhere to stop for the night,’ he muttered as they approached another small town. The snow was now so thick he couldn’t clear it quick enough to see through the windscreen before it was covered again.
‘I told you we should have stayed in the cabin,’ she said, smothering a yawn with the back of her hand.
‘You’re tired?’
‘A little.’
Wiping away the thought of rousing her in more senses than one, he crawled the car through the town’s entrance.
Unable to see more than a couple of feet in front of him, he brought the car to a halt. ‘Wait here a moment.’
The moment he stepped out of the car, the chill, along with what felt like a foot of snow, enveloped him.
Shielding his eyes with a rapidly freezing hand, he saw he’d parked safely enough. A neon sign with ‘Hotel’ on it glowed in the distance like some commercialised North Star guiding them.
He opened the car. ‘There’s a hotel up there. I’m going to see if they’ve got any rooms available.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘There’s no point in us both making a wasted journey.’
She rolled her eyes and unbuckled her seat belt. ‘Can you get my bag for me, please?’
‘Catalina...’
‘I don’t want to wait in here on my own. They’ll have room for us. Have faith.’
Faith was something he’d lost too many years ago to count, on the morning after a snowstorm much like this one.
Of all his memories of his family, that one, of the night before he’d lost them, was the clearest. They’d been in their log cabin, his and Melanie’s noses pressed against the window, watching the snow fall in delight and amazement. It had been evening and they should have been in bed but their parents had taken them outside to build a moonlit snowman.
Was the memory so clear because it was his last with them? Or was it just because it had been such a happy moment? If he closed his eyes he could still see his mother’s mischievous smile, his father’s twinkling eyes and his sister’s cute dimples. If he closed his eyes hard enough he could still hear the laughter that had carried through the windless cold air.
This was why he avoided the snow. There was no escaping the memories of all he missed.
He slammed the door shut and treaded carefully to the boot, grabbing Catalina’s small case and the rucksack filled with what was left of the stolen money.
Why had he felt like a tyrant taking the cash-crammed rucksack from her? It was his money. Catalina should never have taken it.
He opened the passenger door. She took his hand with her own gloved one and allowed him to help her out.
‘You must be freezing,’ she said, her teeth chattering. The temperature had dropped substantially since they’d started their drive. ‘Take my hat. I’ve more hair than you.’
‘I’ll be fine.’ He dismissed his offer. His coat was warm. The main thing was that Catalina was bundled up well under her thick snow coat and boots, her hair hidden under a black woolly hat, a thick scarf covering half of her face.
Keeping a firm grip on her hand, Nathaniel led them up the steep deserted road to the hotel, which upon closer inspection was a very pleasant-looking two-storey wooden lodge. They made it there without any mishaps, and opened the front door to a blast of warmth and the blare of distant music.
First impressions were good. The reception was airy and spacious, a place that, while maybe not fit for a princess, was good enough for a woman who no longer wanted to be a princess.
Nathaniel rang the bell on the front desk, which was answered by a frazzled-looking teenage girl.
‘Can we have two rooms for the night?’ he asked carefully in Spanish. He spoke it well but not as fluently as some of his other languages.
The girl stared at him and held up a hand, then called something over her shoulder in a tongue he didn’t recognise.
Catalina pushed forward and said something in what he took to be the same language.
The girl’s eyes lit up, and suddenly there were nothing but smiles and sweetness as the two women chattered away. A middle-aged man appeared from a door behind the desk, saw everything was in hand, and closed the door once again.
After a couple of minutes, Catalina turned to Nathaniel looking concerned. ‘Do you have your passport? She says she needs it.’
He pulled it out of his inside pocket while Catalina opened her small case and removed hers.
‘I didn’t know it was a law to show passports in a hotel.’ She blinked in amazement.
He bit back a laugh. ‘It’s a law us mere mortals have been dealing with for a number of years now.’
He handed them over to the girl along with his credit card. She opened Catalina’s passport first and was inputting the details on a computer when her eyes suddenly widened and she looked back up at them.
Catalina leaned forward to speak quietly to her, the girl nodding vigorously in agreement to whatever was being said. A few minutes later she presented them with an old-fashioned key and got to her feet, and Catalina took her hands between both of her own. The girl pointed to a door to their left and sat back down.
‘We’re in room eighteen,’ Catalina said, waving goodbye to the awestruck teenager. ‘And we’ve a table booked in the restaurant for thirty minutes.’
He opened the door, which led into a long, wide corridor. ‘We have only one room?’
‘We were lucky to get that.’
As she replied he caught a trace of her scent.
He could laugh. Caught a trace of it? She’d disappeared for ten days and her scent had never left him. It had fuelled him.
Gritting his teeth together, Nathaniel said, ‘Why didn’t she understand me?’
‘She only speaks minimal Spanish—this town considers itself Catalan and mostly caters to fellow Catalan tourists. She’s only filling in because the blizzard has brought a swarm of guests in.’
‘I didn’t know you could speak Catalan.’
‘My mother was Spanish and was raised speaking Spanish and Catalan. She taught Isabella and I Catalan so we could be free with what we said to each other.’
‘Your mother was a member of the Spanish royal family, wasn’t she?’
‘She was a cousin to the King.’
‘Monte Cleure and Spain have strong links, don’t they?’
‘Yes. They’re as strong as our links to France, which is good seeing as we’re sandwiched between the pair of them.’
‘I can imagine. And I imagine your mother’s upbringing meant she adapted easily to life in the Royal Palace of Monte Cleure.’
Catalina grimaced in response and came to a stop by the door with a number eighteen on it.
What secrets would the Queen and her daughters have wanted to share that had necessitated them speaking a language no one else understood?
But it wouldn’t even have had to have been secrets. From what he knew of the palace, nothing was private.
He recalled what she’d said about catching a couple making love, and the image of the raven-haired Queen Claudette came to his mind. The way Catalina had spoken, it had sounded as if she’d known the lovers well. Nathaniel had seen the Queen a number of times at school concerts and open days in his younger years, and then at various functions he’d been invited to at the Agon palace, but they had never been introduced.
His money was good enough to be courted in the hope of investment but he was only just considered good enough to be introduced to a Monte Cleure princess, never mind the Queen. She’d resembled her younger daughter, Isabella, more than Catalina, but had had the same willowy figure, poise and serenity her elder daughter carried so effortlessly.
No, Queen Claudette was certainly not the kind of woman who would have demeaned herself by making love in a herb garden.
Queen Claudette hadn’t been a rampant teenager struggling to contain her hormones.
Not like him, who had once been a hormonal teenager who’d embarked on a tawdry, seedy affair.
‘It must have been difficult growing up knowing every wrong move or word would have consequences,’ he said quietly, trying to imagine what it must have been like to grow up as a princess in the House of Fernandez.
‘It’s my life,’ she said simply before correcting herself, ‘was my life. I was born into great privilege. My mother never let me forget how privileged it was and I never let myself forget either. And here’s our room.’
She stuck the key in the lock and turned it.
The door opened to reveal a surprisingly large room that was as clean and airy as the reception. A carved wooden king-size bed with an enormous fur throw dominated it. The other items of furniture blurred into insignificance.
He turned to face her.
Her eyes were already upon him.
‘There is only one bed,’ he said, studying her, remembering the way she had trembled when he’d trapped her against the kitchen counter earlier. His body still ached from the remnants of the need that had pulsed through him when he’d run his fingers over her soft cheeks and inhaled the fragrance that could have been designed for his senses alone.
‘Do you have a problem with that?’ Her gaze was steady and unflinching.
Did he have a problem with that? A problem with sleeping with the most beautiful, sexiest woman in the world who had run away from him, taking their unborn child with her? Yes, he would say he had a problem with that.
At that moment he wanted nothing more than to rip her clothes off, lay her down on the carved bed and plunge deep inside her; to possess her. To make her his.
All the reasons why he’d kept his distance and his hands to himself before no longer applied. Everything had changed. He didn’t need to protect her any more.
Hell, she didn’t deserve his protection any more.
Catalina wanted to make her own choices. If he pulled her into his arms she would respond in the same way she had the first time he’d taken her, with a passion that had caused him to lose control and throw caution to the wind for a few minutes of unprotected pleasure. That he’d kept the sense to withdraw and sheathe himself wasn’t a tick against his name. He’d known the dangers and he’d ignored them, something he had never been remotely tempted to do before that moment that had changed their worlds for ever.
If he made love to her again there would be no need to sheathe himself. He would be able to feel every minute of it.
Lust was supposed to be uncomplicated; a mutually satisfying physical exchange. All the loathing swirling in his blood along with his desire for her...
There was nothing to stop him from acting on all the desires he’d harboured for her for years but which had intensified since their night together... And it was that intensity and its potency that warned him to retreat. Because this felt like a damned sight more than mere lust.
‘Do you have a problem with us sharing a bed together?’ he asked in clipped tones, his body tightening painfully as he threw her question back at her.
Her sultry chocolate gaze didn’t leave his. Her pupils were wide, calling to him like a visible expression of the scent that drove him so wild. She answered with a slow shake of her head.
Every atom in his body felt charged, straining towards her, fighting his head for control. She was still bundled up in her winter attire, with only the hat removed, but she was sexier than if she’d presented herself to him in a black lace negligee.
He inhaled deeply through his nose, unable to tear his eyes away from the face he wanted to despise but in reality wanted nothing more than to cup in his hands and bring his lips down on hers.
Suddenly her hand reached out to rest against his chest. ‘I really am sorry that I stole your money and ran away.’ Something other than desire darkened her eyes.
The warmth of her skin penetrated his clothes and sank into his bloodstream.
A contorted smile played on her lips. ‘I know you think you can’t trust me any more but I promise I will never do that to you again. I’m putting my trust in you and I hope one day you can regain your trust in me.’ Now a genuine smile lit up her beautiful face. ‘It’ll be you and me against the Monte Cleure establishment. We’ll be like Bonnie and Clyde.’
‘You want to shoot your way to freedom?’ he asked, fighting his own smile as much as he was fighting the need to take the hand still pressed against his chest and lay kisses all over her wrist, up her arm...
She pulled a face, her lips twitching. ‘Wrong metaphor. Saying that, there’s been many a time I’ve thought about shooting Dominic.’
‘Then I guess we do have something in common.’ Feeling as if he were disconnecting a part of himself, he took her wrist and moved her hand away, then turned his back on her to open the bathroom door. ‘We should get ready for dinner.’
* * *
The hotel’s restaurant was a large but dark space with tables of assorted sizes crammed in it, all covered by dark maroon tablecloths.
Catalina gazed around in astonishment.
She had never been anywhere like this before. All her dining experiences had been in palaces, stately homes and ambassadorial residences. She’d dined out a few times with Helios but always at somewhere refined and becoming to both their positions; establishments with hallmarked cutlery, chandeliers, serving staff in immaculately pressed uniforms...
This was something from a different planet, from the world of movies. It was wonderful. And also rather terrifying. All these people... The receptionist hadn’t been exaggerating about how busy they were.
A young man came over to greet them. She would only have known he worked there by the black pinafore around his waist. When Nathaniel gave their room number, his eyes widened and immediately fell on Catalina’s face.
She supposed the young girl at the reception desk hadn’t been able to resist telling the other staff that the Princess was staying in their hotel.
At least the weather was too bad for the press to beetle up the mountain and camp outside. From what Nathaniel had said, they would be getting desperate for a picture of the married couple together.
They were led to a corner table, the only free one as far as she could see. There were a few glances in their direction but if anyone recognised her, she didn’t notice.
Anonymity had been easy in Benasque. She’d only ventured out bundled up and with dark sunglasses to protect her eyes from the glare of the sun and the curiosity of strangers. Tonight, she’d kept on her jeans from earlier but put on a clean cherry red cashmere sweater, brushing her hair back into a low loose ponytail. Having nothing to change into, Nathaniel still wore his jeans, shirt and thick navy sweater. His earlier stubble had thickened, giving his handsome features an added touch of danger that sent her pulse soaring.
Her blood thrummed; tonight she would share a bed with him. She fought hard to temper the anticipation, remembering the nights in his apartment when she’d lain awake wondering if he would come to her, her heart aching with rejection as night after night the door had remained resolutely closed.
If he were to reject her while she laid beside him...
She didn’t know if anything would happen between them but she would not lie to herself and pretend she didn’t want it to.
Menus were placed before them and they ordered their drinks.
Catalina read through her menu, then looked at Nathaniel. ‘This looks expensive.’ The value of money had become something of an obsession to her over the past ten days.
‘Order whatever you like.’
‘Are you sure?’
He met her eye and lowered his menu. ‘Once we’ve got everything sorted in Monte Cleure, I will buy you and the baby a house and give you an allowance. Until then, I will take care of everything for you so, I insist, choose whatever you like and never feel that you have to ask.’
A lump formed in her throat and she swallowed hard to dislodge it.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered, before adding in a brighter tone, ‘I’ve been thinking that after the baby is born, I could get a job.’
His brown eyebrows shot up.
‘I was thinking it anyway. I’m not used to being idle,’ she said with a shrug. ‘And I need to find a way to support our baby when my father cuts me off.’
Nathaniel’s eyes narrowed.
‘He will.’ She braced herself to say it aloud. ‘When we finally leave Monte Cleure I’ll be cut off for good. It’s the only thing he and Dominic will have left to punish me with.’
‘I’ll support you.’ There wasn’t any hesitation.
‘It’s not fair for me to be reliant on you.’
‘You’ve always been reliant on your father.’
‘That was different. With my father it was quid pro quo. The palace paid all my expenses and in return I was a princess who brought honour to the House of Fernandez.’
‘You’ll be the mother of my child. I’ll take care of you financially.’
‘I do appreciate it, really, but I would like to contribute too. I don’t know how to be idle.’
‘What would you like to do?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know what I can do. I’ll think of something.’
He nodded slowly, before perusing his menu again. ‘You would be good in hospitality.’
His compliment, as off-hand as it had been, brought a flush of pleasure to her cheeks.
Their waiter appeared with their drinks and a notepad.
Nathaniel ordered a fillet steak with fries, salad and Portobello mushrooms. It sounded so good she ordered it for herself.
When they were alone again, she asked the question that had been going through her mind since their conversation in the car. ‘Why did you only live with your uncle for such a short time after your expulsion? You were very young to go out into the world on your own.’
The lines on his face deepened.
‘You were seventeen when you left?’ she probed.
‘Yes.’
‘How did you support yourself?’
‘With the remainder of my parents’ insurance money. It was supposed to pay for another year’s schooling but my uncle transferred it to me. I moved to Marseille and rented an apartment. Tiny thing, it was.’
Marseille had been where he’d started his business. The land opposite his rented apartment had been for sale. For years he’d known he would be master of his own destiny and, gazing out at the blank spot on the canvas, he’d suddenly known what he was going to do. He’d called Helios—who was still at school—and told him his idea. A month later the land had belonged to Nathaniel. Two years after that, his first development, a decent-sized hotel and restaurant with a nightclub attached, was complete. He sold it, paid Helios back his money and used the profit to purchase his next plot of land. By his third development he hadn’t owed a cent to anyone. He stopped selling his developments after his fifth and had kept all the income for himself.
Thirteen years after that phone call to Helios, Nathaniel had made the official world billionaire list.
‘Where did your uncle live?’ Catalina asked.
‘Paris.’
Her face scrunched up in concentration. He could see her calculating the distance.
‘That’s the other side of France, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why did you go so far away?’ She shook her head in confusion. ‘It seems strange to me that you would move so far from your only support network unless you had to.’
‘I did have to,’ he snapped, lifting his beer and drinking half the glass in one swallow.
Then, taking a deep breath, he put the glass back on the table and forced a smile.
She didn’t look the slightest bit convinced by it, her eyes piercing his with concern.
‘What happened?’
He opened his mouth to tell her that it was none of her concern when instead he found himself saying, ‘I had an affair with Angelique.’