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A turbulent mix of emotions—a stark, wholly irrational sense of betrayal, fury and dark desolation—razed every thought but one from her brain. She had been a complete and utter fool, wilfully ignoring anything that didn’t fit her first impression of him.
No wonder the Press had met her with such avid determination at the airport! This jet, with its luxurious seats and its atmosphere of privilege and power, its crested china and silver, was either his or his cousin’s—the reigning prince.
The distance between Lauren Porter and their world of birth and privilege loomed like a cliff face, dangerous and insurmountable.
How long would it be before someone started digging into her background? Her stomach tightened as fear kicked in. If they hadn’t already begun. She was already linked to Marc; would someone pursue that link and find out that she and her boss were half-siblings?
If anyone made the connections, she’d be revealed as the bastard daughter of Marc Corbett’s father, the cuckoo in her father’s nest. She could cope with that, but her parents would be exposed to sly, sniggering insinuations that would hurt them unbearably and strain her father’s precarious health.
All to sell a few more newspapers…
Trying to swallow the lump in her throat, Lauren stared down at the photograph of Guy. By the forbidding expression of his angular face he’d been furious at being snapped. Setting her jaw, she forced herself to read the rest of the blurb.
Prince Guy is probably the richest of the playboy princes; he inherited millions from his mother, a Russian heiress and great beauty, and he set up his own software firm after leaving university. It now earns him millions each year. Fiercely protective of his privacy, he’s also a humanitarian who is interested in ecology.
Lauren closed the magazine and fought back despair. If she’d known who he was, she’d have taken her chances on Sant’Rosa.
As for making love with him—never!
Somewhere deep inside her, a mocking voice laughed. Oh, yes, you would, it mocked. You wanted him desperately. You still do. And you’re angry with him because not telling you means he didn’t trust you.
Which was ridiculous, because she hadn’t trusted him with the entire truth about herself.
Her ears popped as the plane banked and turned. Lauren stared stonily ahead, trying to convince herself that no one would be able to find out that Marc was her half-brother.
It was extremely unlikely that they’d discover that he had donated his bone marrow to her. And why should they search twenty-nine years in the past to discover that her mother and Marc’s father had been on the same cruise through the Caribbean?
No, her parents were safe from media prying—and even if they weren’t, Guy had pulled them out of the vortex and into temporary safety.
When the seat-belt sign flashed on with a melodious chime, she relaxed her hands from their death grip on each other in her lap and began to breathe deeply, and out, in and out, until the wild turbulence of her emotions abated. If it killed her she’d be calm, because she didn’t dare be anything else.
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