Crown Prince's Bought Bride

A transaction. Nothing more. ‘I’m still grateful,’ she replied.

Something shifted in his gaze, but he looked away before she could decipher it. With a hand on the door, he paused. ‘I expect you back in the suite by six o’clock. Pack whatever you need from this place. You will not be returning.’

He was gone by the time the mild panic freezing her vocal cords had receded. She looked around the soulless hallway, wondering if the last ten minutes had truly happened. Had she really just agreed to marry the future King of Montegova? A man who’d warned her not to fall in love with him?

The vice that had wrapped around her chest at the warning tightened. Breathing through it, she hurried into the living room. Her father had fallen into a light sleep, his chest rasping with every breath.

She’d been more frightened than shocked when she’d received Mrs Jennings’s call. She had disposed of the painkillers she’d found after a frantic search, knowing full well it was already too late for her father’s operation.

But it wasn’t too late to save him. And if the answer was to marry Remi...

Even now she couldn’t complete the overwhelming thought. Was this price too high to pay?

She stared down at her father and firmed her lips.

No price was too high.

But as she tucked a blanket around him and hurried to her room she knew that wasn’t altogether true. There was a reason her instincts had warned her to stay away from Remi the first time she’d seen him in that nightclub. But, unlike her blind trust when she’d believed Greg, she was walking into this with her eyes wide open. Besides, Remi wasn’t plying her with false promises.

That reassurance firmly in place, she fished out her suitcase.

Maddie took her most valued possessions—pictures and mementoes of her and her parents in happier times, the necklace they’d given her on her sixteenth birthday...

She was still locked in a semi-haze when a team of six medical staff arrived on her doorstep two hours later.

Their firm, efficient manner reassured Maddie that her father was in good hands. Her anxiety abated further when Henry accepted his new situation with surprising alacrity. He even emerged from his stupor to return her grip when she held on to him for one last minute before he was loaded into the private ambulance.

Tears filled her eyes when he caressed her cheek. ‘Be all right, Dad. You’re all I have. Please be all right,’ she whispered fervently.

He gave her a sad smile. ‘I’ll do my best, sweetheart.’

‘Promise me,’ she insisted, even though she knew she shouldn’t.

He closed his eyes for a long second. Then he nodded. ‘I promise.’

The doctor stepped forward, shattering the moment. ‘We’ll prep your father at our Chelsea clinic in preparation for his flight to Geneva tomorrow.’

Maddie swiped at her eyes and swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘It’s happening that quickly?’

The doctor nodded. ‘We’ve been instructed to get your father on the road to recovery as soon as possible.’

Remi. All afternoon, despite being gone, his presence had lingered in the form of the gleaming SUV on the street and the two bodyguards within it.

They followed her to the clinic now, and one stood outside her father’s room—ready, as he’d informed her, to escort her back to the hotel.

With her father hooked up to IV fluids and falling asleep, Maddie knew she couldn’t linger. The moment she stepped into the hall the bodyguard fell in behind her, steering her out through a discreet entrance and into the SUV.

What felt like only minutes later they were back at the hotel. Her already shortened breath evaporated as Remi, tall and commanding, materialised before her when the lift doors parted. With an elegant hand, he gestured to his suite. She told herself it was no use baulking at the silent command. She was doing this with her eyes wide open.

‘I trust everything is all right with your father?’ he asked.

She nodded, her gaze flicking to him as she sensed his repressed impatience. ‘He was looking better even before I left.’ She mentally crossed her fingers that it would continue.

‘That’s good. Sit down, Maddie.’

She sat. The quicker they got this discussion over with, the quicker she could retreat to her own suite, deal with the shock that hadn’t quite abated.

Percy’s arrival with a tray of drinks only added to the surreal sensation. She watched in silence as he uncorked a bottle of champagne, poured out two glasses and then with a respectful bow made himself scarce.