The Royal House Of Karedes Collection Books 1-12. Кейт Хьюит

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       CHAPTER TWELVE

      THE day of the queen’s birthday celebration was an anomaly.

      It was winter, when cool winds and rain often lashed Aristo, but this day dawned bright and warm.

      Alex hardly noticed. He had not been home since he’d left Maria in the guesthouse. He’d returned the crown to the display case in the vault and, ever since, he’d been closeted with his brothers.

      They were trying to come up with answers. Where was the missing diamond? Who had stolen it? When? How could the switch have gone unnoticed? Where did they start searching for the real stone? Most pressing of all, how could they keep it all a secret?

      And it had to be a secret. They could not permit word to get out that the stone was gone.

      On the simplest level, news like that would be humiliating. Far more unsettling were the possible political consequences. What if a Calistan sheikh somehow gained control of the diamond? Could he then twist the true meaning of King Christos’s legacy, join the Aristan stone to the one in the Crown of Calista, and claim the right to rule both kingdoms?

      It was a real possibility, one that might well destroy Aristo.

      He missed Maria terribly. Her smile. Her quiet strength. The feel of her in his arms. He phoned her whenever he could: even the sound of her soft voice was an oasis of calm in the middle of a storm.

      “I miss you, glyka mou,” he told her softly.

      She missed him, too. Terribly. But she understood that he was needed at the palace. Sometimes, she could forget her lover was a prince. Now, she couldn’t escape it. So, rather than burden him with her own feelings, she did what she thought was right. She said she missed him, too, but she was busy.

      “Even if you were here, Alexandros, I couldn’t spend time with you. I have last-minute work to do on your mother’s necklace.”

      “Oh,” he said, just that one word, but he sounded disappointed. She almost told him she was lying, that she missed him so badly she ached, that if he came through the door she’d toss everything aside and run into his arms…

      But the last thing he needed now was a clinging female. Her Alex, along with Sebastian and Andreas, were like jugglers trying to keep a dozen balls in the air. Elissa had just arrived home. She and Kitty were busy helping their mother get ready for the party.

      The king had come home from the hospital against the advice of his doctors. The heart attack had not done any damage, true, but they wanted other tests. Nonsense, said Aegeus. There were affairs of state to deal with. Tia’s birthday. All the media attention the celebration had brought. Scores of foreign dignitaries.

      “I am fine,” he insisted.

      Was he? The brothers thought their father looked ill.

      “Actually,” Sebastian said, “he looks like hell.”

      It was an accurate assessment. The king was pale. He seemed to have shrunk in size and there was a constant sheen of sweat on his forehead. And why did he never mention the missing diamond? That seemed strangest of all.

      “If we can just get through the celebration tonight …” Alex said, and they all agreed. Get through tonight and then they could institute a real if subtle search for the missing stone.

      Alex was going home to shower and change. “We’ll have half an hour alone, sweetheart,” he said when he phoned Maria, “but we can make the most of that half hour.” He told her how they’d do that, in explicit detail, and she gave a sexy little sigh and said she’d be waiting.

      Smiling, he flipped his cell phone shut. He needed that thirty minutes, not just to make love to her but to tell her what he’d started to tell her three days ago. What he should have told her weeks ago.

      He didn’t want her to leave him.

      Once she gave the necklace to the king, once the king presented it to the queen, Maria would go back to New York.

      He could not imagine letting that happen.

      They were at the start of their relationship, not the end. In the last month, she had become part of him. She was—she was everything to him. Sometimes, when he held her close, he wanted to tell her—to tell her—

      “Alex?” Andreas was hurrying toward him. “Change in plans. Last-minute stuff. Sebastian’s meeting with that guy from the BBC, I’m going to talk to CNN. Kitty’s doing a piece with The New York Times. Lissa was going to deal with Newsweek СКАЧАТЬ