Best Friend To Royal Bride / Surprise Baby For The Billionaire. Annie Claydon

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      Alex was clearly struggling with his role at the clinic. If he’d worked for this then he would have seen it as the realisation of a lifetime’s ambition, but it had all fallen so easily into his lap. The inheritance had left him without anything to strive for and it was destroying him.

      Marie’s ambitions had always been small: helping her mother cope with the pressures of four young children and a job, then making a life for herself and keeping an eye on her younger brothers. But at least they were simple and relatively easily fulfilled.

      After they’d unloaded the van, carrying everything through to the courtyard and stacking it neatly, Alex seemed in no particular hurry to get back to his office. Marie asked him if he wanted to help and he nodded quietly.

      She set out the seed trays, filling them with compost, and Alex sorted through the packets. Then they got to work, sitting on a pair of upturned crates that Alex had fetched.

      ‘So…tell me again what country your great-grandfather was the king of?’

      They’d worked in near silence for over an hour, and now that everyone had gone home for the evening they were alone. Marie had been regretting her reaction to Alex’s disclosure about his family, and the subject had become a bit of a no-go area between them.

      Alex looked up at her questioningly. ‘It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t exist any more.’

      ‘I’m just curious. And… I feel sorry about giving you a hard time when you told me about it.’

      ‘It’s nothing.’ He puffed out breath and then relented. ‘Belkraine. My great-grandfather was Rudolf the Most Excellent and Magnificent, King of Belkraine. Modesty doesn’t run in the family.’

      ‘I guess if you’ve got a few squillion in cash and a palace then you don’t need to be modest…’ She paused. ‘Did he have a palace?’

      ‘Why stop at one when you can have several? The old Summer Palace still exists; it’s near the border between Austria and Italy.’

      ‘Have you ever been there?’

      His lip curled slightly. ‘It was my father’s idea of a summer holiday. We’d go there every year, for a tour of what was supposed to be our birthright. It was excruciating.’

      Alex sounded bitter. He wasn’t a man who held on to bad feelings, so this must be something that ran deep with him.

      ‘I’d be interested to see where my ancestors lived. Although I can say pretty definitely that it wasn’t in a palace.’

      ‘I guess it’s an interesting place. It’s been restored now, and it’s very much the way it was when my great-grandparents lived there. Unfortunately my father used to insist on pointing at everything and telling my mother and me in a very loud voice that all this was really ours and that we’d been exiled to a life of poverty.’

      ‘Ouch.’

      Marie pulled a face and his lips twitched into something that resembled a smile.

      ‘Yes, ouch. Even though my great-grandfather brought a fair bit of the family’s wealth with him—and we had more than enough—my father used to reckon that he was poor because he didn’t have everything he thought he should. He had no idea what real poverty is. It was just…embarrassing.’

      ‘Is that why you never said anything about it?’ Marie was beginning to understand that this hadn’t been a wish to deceive, but something that had hurt him very badly.

      ‘That and a few hundred other things. Like having to wear a version of the Crown Prince’s military uniform at the annual party he gave on the anniversary of our family ascending the throne in 1432. After a particularly bloody series of wars, I might add. My family took the kingdom from someone else, so I never could see how having it taken from us was any cause for complaint.’

      He ripped open a seed packet as if he was trying to chop its head off. Seeds scattered all over the concrete and Alex shook his head in frustration, cursing under his breath.

      Marie swallowed down the temptation to tell him that it was okay, that they could pick them up again. This wasn’t about the seeds, and he’d obviously not had much chance to get it out of his system. The idea that it had been nagging at him for so many years, concealed beneath the carefree face he’d shown to the world, was unbearably sad.

      She bent down, picking the seeds up one by one. ‘Good thing these aren’t begonias. We’d never be able to pick up those tiny seeds.’

      He laughed, his resentment seeming to disappear suddenly. Marie would rather he held on to it. His feelings were shut away now, under lock and key, and when he’d tipped the last of the seeds back into the packet, he stood.

      ‘I’ve a few things that I really need to do. Do you mind if we start again in the morning?’

      ‘Of course not. Anything I can give you a hand with?’

      ‘No, stay here. We really need a garden. It will give people hope.’

      Would it give him hope? Or just other people?

      Marie decided not to ask, because Alex was already opening the door that led back into the building, and she doubted whether he would have answered anyway.