The Wedding Party And Holiday Escapes Ultimate Collection. Кейт Хьюит

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ and a joy.

      And yet occasionally, when he glimpsed the shadows in her eyes, the way she’d suddenly turn away, he’d still feel as if she was keeping something from him. Hiding part of herself, but he didn’t want to press. Demand answers she might not be ready to give. They had time, after all. Their love was new, perhaps fragile. He wasn’t ready to test it in that way.

      They had time.

      ‘Your Highness?’

      With effort Sandro jerked his gaze back to his expectant cabinet and attempted to focus on the discussion of domestic policy that had been taking up the better part of the afternoon.

      ‘Yes?’

      The minister of economic policy cleared his throat. ‘We were just going to take a look at the budget Prince Leo proposed....’

      Sandro glanced down at the painstakingly and laboriously made list of figures he’d assumed his ministers had put together. Not just Leo.

      ‘Leo drafted this budget?’ he asked, heard how sharp his voice sounded. ‘When?’

      He saw several ministers glance at Leo sitting on the other end of the table and an unease that had been skirting the fringes of his mind for months now suddenly swooped down and grabbed him by the throat. He felt as if he couldn’t breathe.

      ‘A few years back, when—’ one of the ministers began, glancing uncertainly at Leo, whose face was expressionless, his body still.

      ‘Years,’ Sandro repeated, his mind spinning. Years ago, when Leo had thought he would be king.

      He turned to stare at his brother, who gazed evenly back. ‘I didn’t realise you had taken such an interest, Leo,’ he murmured. His father would have been alive, of course, and reigning as king. Leo would have been waiting, no more than a reluctant placeholder. Or so Sandro had thought.

      But perhaps his brother hadn’t been so reluctant, after all.

      ‘I took an interest in all government policy,’ Leo answered, and Sandro couldn’t tell a thing from his tone. ‘Naturally I wanted to be prepared.’

      ‘For when you would become king,’ Sandro clarified, and he felt a silent tension ripple its way around the room, felt it in Leo’s body as well as his own.

      ‘Yes.’

      The air felt charged, electric. Why hadn’t Leo told him this before? Why had he kept it from him, like some damn secret he was the only one who didn’t know?

      ‘Perhaps we ought to review your proposals,’ Sandro said after a moment. ‘I’d be interested in knowing just what they are.’

      Something flickered across Leo’s face, something sad, almost like grief. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’ll have my assistant put all the relevant paperwork in your study.’

      They held each other’s gaze for a moment longer, a moment that felt taut with tension, almost hostile. Then Sandro broke first, reaching for another sheaf of papers as the meeting went on.

      * * *

      Three hours later Sandro sat in his father’s study, dazed by what he had learned and read. What he had never known, even if he should have. Guessed, or at least wondered about.

      For fifteen years Leo had thought he would be king. Sandro had been utterly out of the picture, disinherited, as good as forgotten, and Leo would have been preparing for his own kingship, planning on it. And then Sandro had swept in and taken it away without so much as a passing thought for his brother.

      He sank onto a chair in his study, his head in his hands. He’d spent the past few hours reading all of Leo’s proposals, well-thought-out multi-year plans for industry, economic policy, energy efficiency. After his father’s outdated and uninterested reign, Leo had been poised to take Maldinia in a whole new and exciting direction.

      Until Sandro had returned and taken it all away from him.

      Sandro’s mind spun with realisations, with new understanding about the nature of the coolness between him and the brother he’d once loved more than any other person. The brother who had hero-worshipped him as a child. The brother who he had left because he’d been so angry and hurt by his father’s contempt and rejection.

      The brother, he thought hollowly, who would make an excellent king.

      Better than he would.

      Why had Leo never told him of his ambitions, his plans? When Sandro had returned, Leo had not made a single protest. He’d stepped aside so quickly Sandro had assumed he’d been relieved to be done of his duty. He’d projected his own feelings onto Leo without ever really considering how his brother might have changed over the past decade and a half.

      Yet the uncertainty had always been there, lingering. The fear that Leo would make a better king than he would—deserved to be king more than he did—had always taunted him from the dark corners of his heart and mind.

      And now?

      Now, Sandro thought numbly, he should step aside and let his brother rule as he’d been intending to for so long. As he deserved to. The cabinet would surely approve; their respect and admiration for Leo and his proposals had been evident in every word they’d spoken this afternoon.

      And if Leo were king...Sandro would be free, as he’d claimed he always wanted. He could return to California, take up the reins of his IT firm once more. Be his own man. Live his own life.

      Why did the thought make his stomach sour and his fists clench?

      He knew why; of course he did. Because of Liana. Liana had married him to become queen. No matter what feelings had since grown between them since then, he could not escape that truth. He couldn’t escape the hard reality that their marriage was that of a king and queen, based on convenience and duty. Not a man and woman deeply in love, as much as he might still wish for it. As much as it had felt like that, for the past few weeks.

      Weeks. They’d only had weeks together, little more than a handful of days. Put that against fifteen years of Leo working for the monarchy and there was no question. No contest.

      A knock sounded on the door and Sandro jerked his head up, blinking the room back into focus. ‘Come in.’

      ‘Sandro?’ Leo stood in the doorway.

      Sandro stared at his brother and felt a pressure build in his chest. Everything inside him felt so tight and aching he could barely force the words out. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

      Quietly Leo closed the door, leaned against it. ‘Tell you what, exactly?’

      ‘How hard you’ve been working these past fifteen years—’

      Leo raised an eyebrow. ‘Did you think I’d been slacking off?’

      ‘No, but—’ Sandro raked his hands through his hair, shook his head. ‘I thought— I thought— I don’t know what I thought.’

      ‘Exactly,’ Leo answered, and with a jolt Sandro realised that underneath his brother’s unruffled attitude was a deep, latent anger—an anger he was СКАЧАТЬ