The Queen's Nine-Month Scandal

Stealthily she got out of the bed without disturbing him. Tiptoeing around she picked up the detritus of her clothes and put them on as best she could, struggling with the zip on her dress.

It was only as she was about to leave the room, her heart feeling heavy in her chest, that she noticed her lace mask had fallen off and lay on the bed. She went back to get it and spotted something out of the corner of her eye. His passport. Her heart thumping, she stopped in her tracks. It sat enticingly on the gleaming walnut chest of drawers. She looked from it to the sleeping man on the bed.

She had an overwhelming urge to see who he really was. Silently she moved and picked it up. Flipping it to the page of identification she almost dropped it when she saw a very recognizable, clean-shaven face staring back at her with implacable arrogance. She read his name with growing dread: Daniel Sasha Petrovsky. No wonder he’d looked faintly familiar, he was one of the most photographed men in the world.

Cold fingers touched her spine when she realized the ramifications of being found with such a man. He might be one of the world’s most dashing and generous philanthropists but he’d never quite shed his playboy persona. Myths surrounded him about his Irish-Russian lineage; his youth spent in an orphanage. How his life had been transformed when he’d received one of the largest inheritances in years at the age of twenty-three from an estranged Russian relative. By then he’d already become famous as a prodigious, fearless photojournalist covering the worst war zones in the world. It was only now that Analia recalled feeling the raised skin of a scar on his back last night and she shivered to think of what might have caused it.

The passport dropped to the floor from her suddenly nerveless fingers and Analia looked to the bed where Sasha—Daniel—moved slightly. Panic filled her. She fled before he could wake and find her, leaving the mask behind.

As she made her way back to her hotel through the narrow and atmospheric streets, she told herself that he would probably wake and hardly notice her absence. Her heart clenched so hard that she had to stop for a moment.

The thought of last night meaning nothing to him hurt more than she could fathom. The fact that it had affected her so deeply scared her to death. How on earth was she going to be able to relegate him to a secret part of her heart and head and get on with her life while knowing he was somewhere in the world?

Analia’s mouth firmed. She had no choice. She would just have to. She had a life most people would never understand. She served her country, not herself. Last night had been her one chance to taste that delicious freedom and she would have to leave it behind. She was no longer the Virgin Queen of Azoria and that would be her secret...forever.

* * *

‘Daniel, you’re going to have to decide where to base the Petrovsky Philanthropic Foundation sooner or later. I can’t field the calls forever.’

‘I know, Philip,’ Daniel absently answered his chief advisor in London absently. His hand closed around something and he looked down to see the familiar—and by now very crumpled—piece of black lace. He curtly ended the phone conversation and stuffed the material back into his pocket.

He looked out the window of the plane and saw nothing but clouds. He sighed deeply. Eight weeks had passed since that night in Venice. Each day was etched like a brand onto his brain since he’d woken up to find the bed empty with not a trace of her left behind except the mask which had hidden her from him. Alexandra. A made-up name. A beautiful ghost.

He’d called his friend the next day to quiz him about his guest list but Andreas had been uncustomarily unhelpful.

‘Look, I’d like to help you track down your latest conquest Daniel but I have no recollection of any guest by that name...’

More irritated than he’d like to admit he’d asked tersely, ‘Maybe you’re caught up with a conquest of your own?’

To his surprise his Greek friend had taken a deep breath and admitted heavily, ‘Something like that. Siena DePiero has turned up in London...’

Daniel had whistled softly, ‘You’re going to go after her then?’

Andreas’s voice had been tight. ‘We have unfinished business.’

Daniel had felt some sympathy for his friend’s single-minded intent to find the woman he couldn’t forgive, even after five years. He could empathize with that single—mindedness now.

The knowledge burned in his gut though—she’d looked at his passport before she’d left because he’d found it on the floor. So she knew who he was. And yet she hadn’t been in touch. Maybe it was karma for a man like him who had loved and left women in his wake all his life.

A cynical smile touched his mouth. What had he expected? That she’d have declared undying love just because she’d been innocent? His mouth tightened. And since when had he ever had such notions?

The feeling of peace he’d experienced that night with her in his arms mocked him now. It had shattered the moment he’d woken and found her gone. And truth be told, as much as he wanted to find her again, a part of him was also wary. She’d touched something deep inside him that had been locked away ever since he was a tiny boy.

For the first time in his adult life, he felt exposed. The last time that had happened had been when he was five, at the orphanage, when a couple had chosen another child over him. After that day, he’d greeted prospective parents with an angry, gray-eyed glare. Of course they hadn’t chosen the wild-looking child, and Daniel had never had to deal with the excoriating sense of rejection again.

But right now, his well-ingrained self-protection was fast coming second to finding his mystery lover. He told himself again that he had a valid reason: the protection had failed so she could even be pregnant. He told himself this was why he wanted to find her so badly. But he knew himself well enough by now to know it for such a falsehood. He wanted to find her because he wanted her. He could still taste her on his tongue. His heart beat fast just thinking about her.

‘Mr Petrovsky? You wanted the papers?’

Daniel looked at the steward stupidly for a moment, his head full of soft skin and a lush mouth. His body was reacting and this lack of control made him curt as he accepted the pile of papers. ‘See to it I’m not disturbed again.’

Daniel hated this evidence that a memory controlled him. He gritted his jaw as he flicked open the top paper, one of Europe’s main broadsheets. For a second he could only blink at the screaming headline and the huge colour picture underneath, even as he felt the shock register in his body.

Virgin Queen Analia of Azoria pregnant by a mystery lover!

Daniel looked at the picture. Half of her face was obscured by huge black glasses. Below was another picture and he saw the eyes that had been hidden from him under black lace. They were the deepest sapphire blue, with long dark lashes, exotically tilted at the corners. Stunning.

Recognition fell like a cold hard stone into his gut. He took in the delicate jaw, small straight nose, lush mouth, glossy dark hair. The shape of her cheek. The way her breast had felt in his palm. The way she’d splintered around him. Daniel’s hands curled to fists around the paper, crushing it. Rage engulfed him, eclipsing the feeling of exposure. To finally know who she was...to finally be able to confront her and know why she’d run.