Page 30 of A Ring to Claim Her Crown
She watched as he spoke in a low voice. She could tell something was wrong as his eyes instantly darkened, his brows knitting together. He thanked whomever was on the other end of the line for telling him, his tone serious enough to have her sitting up straight in the bed.
‘Who was it?’
Liro’s eyes met hers, his expression starker than she’d ever seen it. ‘My publicity team. My identity has been discovered and made public.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MINERVA’SHEARTBEATTHRUMMEDin her ears as she opened her phone screen to see a newspaper article published one hour ago. It had been sent by Liro’s PR team, accompanied by no less than twenty-three missed calls in the past forty minutes since she had put her phone on silent mode. The article was headed:Mysterious Shipping Magnate is Long-Lost Banished Prince!
‘Oh, God...’ she whispered. ‘How did they find out?’
‘Someone was bound to eventually.’ Liro stared blankly at the photograph filling her screen with an image of his younger self. ‘I never intended to hide my past for ever. But I didn’t plan for it to happen like this, when your kingdom is at such a pivotal moment.’
Minerva thought of her mother, of her vow to do whatever it took to repair Minerva’s standing in public favour. She had been so close to fixing everything, so close to being ready to make her mother proud. To making her people proud.
Having this reminder of the past splashed all over every newspaper on the day her mother planned to announce her abdication wasn’t just inconvenient...it was a disaster.
She turned, looking around the bedroom floor for items of clothing that had been discarded the night before. The bed sheets lay in complete disarray, towels strewn on the floor after they’d finished making love in the hot tub after a lazy dinner.
Everywhere she looked, she was met with reminders of their time here together. Not that she needed them. The memory of Liro’s love-making wasn’t something she would ever forget. Nor did she want to. She didn’t regret it. She had planned to tell him that, before she left his yacht, but now everything was in chaos and she had no idea what to say.
She picked up her dress, throwing it over her body. There was no time to search for her bra, not when at this very moment her mother was likely hunting her down.
‘Min, calm down. You can’t just rush back to the palace like this.’
She shook off his grip, moving to step around him to find the rest of her things. ‘I need to go and help with the damage control.’
He blocked her path. ‘By damage control, do you mean rushing to announce your engagement to one of your mother’s more appropriate suitors?’
Minerva sucked in a breath, feeling her chest ache. ‘That’s what I should have been doing all week, instead of running away. It’s my fault that this is happening. I should have gone back yesterday.’
‘Who is going to be the lucky man?’ he asked harshly. ‘The prince?’
Minerva shrank under his cold demand. ‘Actually, Jean-Claude makes the most sense.’
Liro’s grey eyes darkened to obsidian. ‘All of this pageantry has been to bolster you in public opinion, to make the public view you as a suitable queen. What will people think now, Minerva, seeing their perfect princess walking offmyyacht?’
He walked over to the balcony doors, opening them up to reveal the sound of shouting and commotion. Sure enough, a small crowd had formed further down the marina, held back by a makeshift barricade of Liro’s security guards.
‘If you rush out of here dressed like this, there is not a single person with eyes who wouldn’t know what we have been doing all night.’ He moved closer, staring down at her with that same intensity. ‘Are you so eager to run off and select your new fiancé so quickly after leaving my bed?’
‘This is how it needs to be.’ She shook her head, ‘It’s my duty to my mother to fix this as soon as possible but I can’t calm the press with you here. An announcement of a royal engagement to Jean-Claude will distract them for a time.’
‘No.’ Liro growled, wrapping one arm around her waist and hauling her up against him. ‘I don’t want you near him. I wouldn’t let you off of this ship if I could manage it.’
‘You’ve done your deal; you’ve had your closure... There’s nothing else keeping you here.’ Her breath heaved with the effort not to sink into him, to run back into the physical pleasure she craved. But this was so much bigger than them now: this was fast on its way to becoming a royal scandal.
‘Your public image was already in question. You need to control this news to avoid disaster, Minerva. You needmehere to control it.’
‘You’ve admitted you had no public image at all for the past decade, not even with Magnabest. What good could you do?’
‘We have been through this once before. Surely you know the answer?’
‘No.’ She shook her head against his words, shaking off the painful mirroring of their past and present. She wouldn’t entertain history repeating itself this way—shecouldn’t.
‘You need another announcement, one that would overshadow this one.’ Liro met her eyes, cold and unemotional. ‘We will announce our engagement immediately.’
Liro would have been lying if he’d said that this wasn’t what some deep, dark part of him had wanted from the moment he’d set his course to return to this kingdom. He wanted her with every fibre of his being and the thought of having her by his side...in his bed, in his arms for ever...made some hungry part of him want to grab at this opportunity with both hands and make sure that neither of them could ever turn back.
