Amber And The Rogue Prince. Элли Блейк

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СКАЧАТЬ hope you understand that until anything is concrete I can’t discuss the details.”

      She looked up at him, beseeching. “Understand? I don’t understand any of this. Like why, if you are so offended by my home, you kept coming back. Was I reconnaissance? Were you hoping to create an ally in your devious plans?”

      “Of course not, Amber.” Hugo’s stomach dropped and he came around the bed, crouching before her. “Amber, you know why I came back. And back. And back. For the same reason you took me in.”

      He lifted a hand and closed it around hers. Her soft brown eyes begged him to stop. Heat sat high and pink on her cheeks. Her wild waves of hair caught on a breeze coming through one of the many cracks in the woebegone shack in which she lived.

      Then her fingers softened as she curled them into his.

      A moment later, she whipped her hand away and gave him a shove that had him rocking onto his backside with a thump that shook the foundations, raining dust over his head as she scrambled over him and into clear space.

      As he cleared the dust from his hair, his eyes, Hugo wondered how his life had come to this.

      The downward spiral had begun several months earlier when he’d agreed to his uncle’s sovereign command to enter into a marriage of convenience. His former fiancée—and long-time best friend—Sadie, had come to her senses and fled before they’d said I do, bringing about a PR nightmare for the royal family...and freedom for Hugo. The fact that he would likely have gone through with it had been a wake-up call. What had he been thinking? Where was his moral compass? Not that that should be much of a shock—he was his father’s son after all.

      Afterwards he’d needed to get away. Clear his head. Recalibrate. He’d never have imagined that would lead him away from a life of luxury to camping out in a small, lumpy bed in a country town in the middle of nowhere, Australia, tangled up with a woman he barely knew.

      He’d not hidden his position on purpose, she’d simply never asked. Their affair had been lived in the moment, fulfilling basic needs of hunger and sleep and sex while talking about everything from Game of Thrones to Eastern philosophy...but nothing truly personal. His family had not come up. Nor, for that matter, had hers. He’d been so grateful to avoid talking about his own that he had given no thought as to why she might also be glad of it. Perhaps he was not the only one for whom that question opened Pandora’s box. Either way, after a while, the privacy had felt like a true luxury.

      “I need you to leave, Hugo,” said Amber, yanking him back to the present, only this time she added, “Please.”

      It was enough for Hugo to push to standing. He looked around the small, dilapidated room, but he’d left nothing behind bar the impression of his head on the pillow. It didn’t seem like enough.

      Too late to rectify that now, he turned to walk out.

      “Wait,” she called, grabbing him by the arm. Before he even had the chance to feel relief she pressed past him and headed out onto her wonky porch, causing the area around her shack to tremble in response.

      Ned nuzzled against his hand. And Hugo lost his fingers in the dog’s soft fur, taking a moment to work out a burr.

      “All clear,” Amber called.

      “Wouldn’t want your friends to know you’ve been harbouring the enemy.”

      She glanced back at him, the morning sun turning her hair to gold, her eyes to fire. When she saw Ned at his side her mouth pursed. “Away,” she called. But Ned didn’t move, whether because of his deafness or his obstinacy. She clicked her fingers and with a harumph the dog jogged to her side.

      He joined them on the porch. The old wood creaked and groaned. A handmade wooden wind chime pealed prettily in the morning breeze.

      “Is that why you came to Serenity?”

      Now, there was a question. One she might have thought to ask at any point during the last few weeks if she’d had a care to know anything at all about the man she’d been sleeping with. “You really want to know what I came to Serenity hoping to find?”

      She only nodded mutely.

      “Absolution. How about you?”

      She snapped her mouth shut tight.

      He raised an eyebrow. Now, what do you have to say about that?

      Nothing, it seemed. He’d finally managed to render Amber speechless.

      With that, Hugo left her there in her bright yellow gumboots, her tank top clinging to her lovely body, her hair a wild, sexy mess. He jogged down the steps and headed down the hill, past the hammock, through the field of lavender to the small dead-end dirt road on which he’d parked his car.

      The urge to look back was acute but he kept his cool. Because he had the feeling that it wouldn’t be the last he saw of Amber.

      She might be done with him, but he wasn’t done with Serenity. For he did indeed have plans for his mother’s ancestral home—plans which had him excited for the first time since the debacle of the wedding that never was. He might even go so far as to say they excited him more than any other development he had ever actualised.

      For Hugo was renowned for taking underused or overlooked tracts of land that others would deem too remote or too challenging, and turning them into stunning holiday playgrounds for diplomats, royalty, the rich and famous, and families alike. His series of Vallemontian resorts—including a palatial masterpiece tucked into the side of Mont Enchante and an award-winning titan overlooking Lake Glace—had been a revelation for the local economy, making him invaluable to his uncle in terms of commerce if not in terms of the line of succession.

      But this one, this place...it would be all his.

      When he reached the bottom of the lavender field he did look back, Amber’s shack and the rest of the commune relegated to glimpses of purple and red and orange obscured by copses of gum trees.

      He’d keep the natural landscape as much as possible, but the caravans, tents and shanties would of course have to go to make way for the bungalows, tennis courts, lagoon-style pool and a peach grove where Amber’s shack now wobbled.

      Hugo wasn’t some monstrous land baron. With the council’s help, he would assist them in their relocation. Help them find safer places to live.

      And he would create something beautiful, something lasting, something personal to break the cycle of tragedy in his mother’s family.

      He would make his very personal mark on the world without trading on his family name, a constant reminder of the top job for which he and his heirs would only ever be back-ups.

      Amber would just have to lump it.

      * * *

      Serenity’s Town Hall was packed to the rafters, with people lining the walls and spilling out through the open doors. It was late enough that young ones would normally be home in bed, but nobody was missing this meeting, so they sat in messy rows on the floor at the front, making occasional mad dashes across the stage, followed by their harassed parents.

      There was only one reason for the big turnout: the news had spread. Nothing this momentous had СКАЧАТЬ