warm.’
‘I want Tanbarook to see us now,’ Pippa whispered and Max chuckled.
‘You want a family shot for the tabloids? Marc, hold Pippa’s hand and lean against me. Leave Dolores there- we’ll arrange ourselves around her.’ Max edged close to Pippa, and before she knew it he’d organised them into a tight shot.
‘Smile,’ he told Pippa.
‘Why?’ She was astounded.
‘We’re the closest thing this country has to a royal family. Tanbarook
She managed a weakish sort of smile but she was so confused her head was threatening to spin off. ‘I’m not family,’ she muttered, staring down at Dolores, who was licking Max’s boots. ‘Isn’t Dolores supposed to go into quarantine until she’s vet-checked?’
‘We had a vet check her before she left. She’s a royal dog now. And you’re as royal as I am. We’re royal by association. The royal family.’
He was smiling at her as photographers snapped around her and she felt her color rising by the minute. ‘I should be like the governess, standing ten steps back.’
‘Same with me. But you won’t let me leave, and if you leave the kids and Dolores will howl.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ Marc said, affronted. ‘But Dolores might,’ he conceded.
‘There you go. Smile,’ he ordered again. ‘Pippa, there’s only one thing worse than publicity, and that’s publicity when you’re glowering. It makes you look like you’re constipated.’
She choked. ‘Gee, thanks.’
‘I just thought I’d mention it. So smile.’
‘I’m smiling,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘And neither the kids or Dolores are scared of you. They think you’re the next best thing to Father Christmas.’
‘Little they know.’
‘There’s the ogre side of you as well?’
‘I’m not exactly a family man.’
‘Why not?’ It was out before she thought about it-a direct response to something she needed to know. To something that had to be sorted before she took one step further.
And Max’s smile faded.
Why not? he wondered, as the cameras clicked around them and he tried to resurrect his smile. Why had he never taken that last step? From lover to husband…
Marriages were fraught. His mother’s marriage had led to irretrievable disaster. ‘Don’t ever marry,’ she’d said to him over and over. ‘You can’t ever know how someone will turn out. Oh, Max, take lovers, do what you need to be happy, but be so careful…’
He’d hardly decided not to marry because of his mother’s experiences, but then, it had made him so careful that such a decision had almost been made for him.
‘You’re not gay, are you?’ Pippa asked thoughtfully and his thoughts hit a brick wall. He turned and stared at her. Stunned.
‘What did you say?’
‘Smile,’ she reminded him. The photographers were clicking from every angle. ‘I was asking whether you’re gay.’
‘Didn’t I just kiss you?’
‘That’s proof you’re not gay?’
‘Yes,’ he said, revolted. ‘It wasn’t a platonic kiss.’
‘No,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘but then I didn’t really inspect it for platonic. Maybe I wouldn’t recognise it if I saw it. I lead a very sheltered life.’
She was teasing him, he thought. She was trying to get him to react, here and now, in front of the country’s press.
‘Shut up,’ he said, carefully pasting on his smile and carefully no longer looking at her. ‘One more word, Phillippa Donohue, and I’ll set the twins down and teach you what a platonic kiss isn’t.’
‘In front of everyone? You wouldn’t dare.’
‘No,’ he said, sounding regretful. ‘You’re right. I wouldn’t. But only because it’d make our lives even more complicated than they already are. Which is very complicated indeed.’
Okay, so that little interlude made her flustered. The stilted welcome speech made by an official made her more flustered still. And the ride from airport to castle, in the back of the limousine with Max in the seat opposite, the children snoozing beside them and Dolores draped over their feet, made her even more flustered.
‘That was a dumb thing to do,’ she managed about ten minutes after they’d left the airport, which was the time it had taken to figure anything at all to say.
‘What was?’
‘You kissing me.’
‘I didn’t kiss you in front of the photographers,’ he said virtuously. ‘I wanted to but I had my arms full of twins.’
‘You kissed me on the plane.’
‘That was necessary. Because I suspected that you suspected I was gay. And I was right. Not that my kiss seemed to reassure you.’
‘It reassured me,’ she said hastily and went back to staring out the car window.
The scenery was amazing.
She’d read about these four tiny countries. There’d been a fuss in the Australian press when Pippa’s countrywoman had married the Crown Prince of Alp d’ Azuri. There’d also been a write-up and potted history of how these countries had come to be, and she’d found time to reread it on the internet before she’d come.
A king in a large neighbouring country, way back in the sixteenth century, had had five sons. The boys had grown up warring and the old king had foreseen ruin as the sons had vied for the Crown.
So he’d pre-empted trouble. He’d carved four separate countries from his southern border, and told his younger sons that the cost of their own principality was lifelong allegiance to their oldest brother.
His plan hadn’t worked, the article had told her. Granting whole counties to men with a lust for war was hardly a guarantee of wise rule. The four princes and their descendants had brought four wonderful countries to the brink of ruin.
Ruin? Pippa stared out of the car window and saw lush river valleys, towering mountains, quaint cottages, herds of cream and white cows, the odd goat, tiny settlements that might almost have come from a photograph from a hundred years before. It didn’t look…ruined.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she breathed.
‘If you like postcards,’ Max said shortly. ‘But the reality’s less than beautiful. You were cold and hungry this winter. These people are cold and hungry every winter.’
She glowered again, suspecting pressure. ‘Don’t you dare show me starving peasants. I won’t be responsible.’
‘I couldn’t anyway,’ he conceded. ‘It’s summer and the harvest this year will be a good one. Things are okay at the moment.’
‘But not for long?’
‘Yes, for long. If we can pull this off.’ He looked down at the sleeping Marc and his mouth quirked.
‘I won’t-’
‘No. You agree to nothing. Let’s just see how it goes. Meanwhile if you look to your right you’ll see the castle… now.’
‘Oh.’
As an exclamation it was totally inadequate, but it was all she could think of. Built into the side of one of the towering alps, the castle was a mass of gleaming white stone, set against the purple of the mountains behind. She stared out, stunned, as the castle grew larger against its magnificent backdrop. It was all turrets, battlements and towers, like something straight out of a fairy story.
She nudged Marc, but he’d settled back into sleep. They were now in the middle of the children’s night and the
