The Royal Baby Revelation Read Online Free PDF Page B

evening when she had been unable to stem the tide of tears any longer and in a cloakroom in a deserted part of the basement she had lost the battle, and given into quiet sobs of sorrow.
    Eventually, emerging red-eyed into the corridor which led back up to the main part of the house, she had almost cannoned into a tall man—quickly turning her face to one side, too embarrassed to be seen by anyone in such a fragile state as she had tried to avoid him.
    ‘Hey,’ came a silken voice whose marked accent should have alerted her but she was so busy dabbing at her eyes with a crumpled-up tissue that she failed to make the connection. ‘What’s the rush?’
    ‘Go away.’ Melissa gulped and the moment she’d said it she realised just who he was and stared up at him in horror.
    He looked as if he hadn’t quite decided to be irritated or bemused—as if he wasn’t used to people saying that to him. And then his eyes drifted over her and Melissa wondered how vile she must look with her shiny red nose and blotchy skin.
    ‘You’ve been crying,’ he observed, with the air of a man who was never cried in front of.
    Ten out of ten for observation, she thought miserably—hating feeling so vulnerable and so awful in front of someone like him. ‘Yes, I have,’ she said, in a small voice, wondering why he wasn’t upstairs drinking his champagne with the rest of the privileged gathering.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘It doesn’t matter.’
    ‘Oh, but it does—because I want to know. Don’t you realise that I am a king?’ His amber eyes glittered, his lips curving into a mocking smile. ‘And that everything I command is always granted?’
    For a moment she thought he was joking—and maybe he was, just a little. But she could also see that he expected an answer from her and so, with a sudden mulishness, Melissa decided to tell him. Then let him be sorry he had asked.
    ‘It’s the anniversary of my mother’s death.’
    There was a pause. ‘Oh.’
    She could see the sudden tightening of his face. Could hear the sudden chatter of conversation as a distant door was opened and the dull background patter of rain as it lashed against one of the basement doors. Perhaps he heard it too for she caught him looking down at her cheap shoes, and frowning—as if it had suddenly occurred to him that they might let in water.
    ‘You want a ride home?’ he questioned.
    ‘From you?’
    ‘Who else? You have a car waiting? A boyfriend perhaps?’
    Suspiciously, she screwed up her eyes as if to check that he wasn’t being sarcastic. ‘No. I don’t.’
    ‘Then how were you planning on getting home?’
    ‘On the underground.’
    ‘Well, don’t. I’ll be outside. Don’t keep me waiting.’
    He walked off, leaving Melissa staring at him as if she’d seen a ghost. A ghost that looked and sounded like a king and had offered her a ride home. As she gave the kitchen a last minute check and changed from her black working dress into a pair of jeans and a raincoat she kept wondering whether she’d imagined the whole thing.
    But she hadn’t. A dark-tinted limousine was sitting a little way down the road and as her steps slowed uncertainly a chauffeur suddenly got out and opened the door for her.
    Briefly, it occurred to her that this was the kind of action those real-life crime programmes you saw on TV always advised you against taking. She could see Casimiro sitting in the back seat and when Melissa hesitated, this seemed to amuse him.
    ‘So, are you getting in—or staying there and getting wet?’
    Still she hesitated.
    ‘Or perhaps you think I will leap on you? That you are completely irresistible to me?’
    Melissa swallowed. Now he was being sarcastic. And suddenly she didn’t care—not about whether it was right or wrong or the fact that he was a king. When compared to the bigger picture of mortality and the fact that she would never see her mother again—this was about as important as chicken-feed.
    ‘Why are you doing this?’ she