Forced Wife, Royal Love-Child Read Online Free PDF Page A

been full of the news, digging into the once buried past, and uncovering the story of the young nanny who’d become the Prince’s lover, only to be exiled with a young son and another baby on the way. The coronation that had followed had kept the story alive for weeks.
    And his face had been everywhere she’d looked, so there was no hope of forgetting him during the day, no chance of escaping the face that haunted her in her dreams.
    He was a prince!
    No wonder he’d changed his mind about seeing her again. He would have known what that news report had meant—that he’d have even less reason to slum it with the likes of her.
    Why would he, when he clearly had his pick of society’s brightest and prettiest? There’d been a constant stream ofwomen being brought to the island in the past few days. Nothing had been said at the base—they knew that discretion was the better part of business success—but she knew from personal experience. Prince Raphael was a man of big appetites…
    Her stomach churned, the taste of bile bitter in her mouth as she completed the preflight checklist. The sooner she was away from this island and the sooner there was no risk she would run into the man who’d so unceremoniously thrown her out of his life, then the sooner this damned queasiness would settle down. Ever since she’d been told she’d been rostered on for this assignment she’d felt physically ill. Montvelatte was the last place on earth she wanted to be. Knowing she’d just delivered his latest love interest made it doubly so.
    Sienna yanked herself back from that thought with a mental slap to the head.
    What was she thinking? Genevieve, or whatever her name was, was welcome to him. She was out of here.
    There was the roar of another engine, the blast of horns and she turned to see a jeep screeching to a halt alongside the helipad in a spray of gravel and dust, and the churning in her gut took a turn for the worst. It didn’t get any better when four uniformed officers jumped out, gesturing to her to cut the rotors. This was supposed to be a simple drop-and-run. Surely there was no obscure paperwork she’d forgotten to complete?
    She was making a move to open the door when it was pulled open for her from the other side. The officer saluted so properly that even over her own thumping heartbeat, Sienna imagined she could hear the snap of his heels clicking together. She’d seen that uniform before—in the footage of the former Prince and his brother being carted away—and she wasn’t at all sure that was a comforting thought.
    ‘Signorina Wainwright?’

    Breath caught in Sienna’s lungs and gave birth to a new strain of fear. They knew her name?
    She shook her head, removing her headset once again. ‘Y-yes,’ she stammered. ‘Is there a problem?’
    ‘There is no problem, I assure you,’ the officer told her in his richly accented English. ‘Please, if you would just step outside the aircraft,’ he added, offering her his hand to alight the helicopter. His words and actions were accompanied with a smile so seemingly genuine that for a moment she thought everything must be fine after all, that her most recent panic attack was unwarranted and that this was merely some kind of quaint formality nobody had thought to warn her about.
    But once outside he made it clear that he expected her to keep moving. Towards the jeep.
    Sienna stopped, the men either side of her coming to a halt also. ‘What’s going on?’
    ‘It is but a short trip to the Castello,’ he said, neatly sidestepping her question and throwing her thoughts into turmoil.
    Her eyes swung up to the palace that sat atop the massive rock that made up this part of the island. It stared down at her with its thousand window eyes, and for the first time she didn’t notice the beauty of the ancient stone architecture with its arched windows and flag-topped turrets, but the thick walls and the fortifications all around that had protected it from invaders for