Page 12 of Awakened On Her Royal Wedding Night
She started through the next quadrant. He strolled behind her at his own pace, but she still felt pursued.
“There are easier ways to get money,” she muttered over her shoulder. “I could have slept with your brother for the pageant prize if that’s all I wanted!”
“That’s what I keep coming back to. You’ve made a small career of these things. What is it you want from them? Fame? Adulation? A modeling career? Then pursue modeling.”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m funding my mother’s medical treatment.”
“So it is about money.”
“Not the way you’re suggesting.” She stopped to turn and confront him again, supremely annoyed and more than a little distressed by the gravity of her situation. “You probably saw online that my mother has multiple sclerosis. It has begun affecting her ability to work. She’s managing some part-time hours from home, but she has to cover her insurance premiums herself. It’s not very good insurance regardless. It only pays for the basics. Any kind of stress, especially financial, worsens her symptoms.”
She paused to toe a loose rock in the otherwise trampled-flat gravel.
“If all she needed was someone to make meals and do her shopping, I’d move in with her and do that, but she’s not responding to her usual medications. She needs a full reassessment and a whole new treatment plan. It’ll cost the earth. Miss Pangea was only an eight-week commitment and I’ve had good luck with these things in the past, so I wanted to try. And yes—” she lifted her head “—I thought that if I could then move into modeling, that would be a better paying career than whatever entry-level job I’m barely qualified for, at least in the short term.”
She hadn’t been able to find her niche, career-wise. It was frustrating, but she kept trying things on, never quite sure what she hoped to find.
“Do you have other siblings? Does your mother have a partner?”
“No. I mean, she did. My moms were married and living in Sweden when they visited a fertility clinic to conceive me.” People always had questions about this part of her life, so she answered before he asked. “The donor was an anonymous student who only gave two samples. Most men donate dozens of times and most prospective parents look for someone who has lots of samples in stock, in case it doesn’t work right away. That way they don’t have to go through the screening process again and again. My moms liked the rarity of this donor’s sample so they each used one. One worked.” She waved at herself.
“Theoretically, it’s possible he had other children, though.”
“Theoretically, yes. And it’s a nice thought to imagine I have a half sibling out there and I might meet them through some divine intervention. Or my father.”
“You’ve never tried to find him?”
“Not really.” She wasn’t bothered by how she had been conceived, but she did wonder sometimes if the piece of herself she didn’t understand was the anonymous student. “The one time I looked up the clinic, I learned it was closed and the records destroyed. I’ve thought about doing one of those DNA tests, but my mother... It’s a touchy subject. She did try to conceive another child for our family, but it didn’t work. After Mamma died, I’ve always had the sense that if I went looking for my donor, Mom would take it as a criticism or a rejection. As though she wasn’t enough for me.”
“She’s not the one who carried you?” he asked.
“No. Mamma did. She died when I was eight. Mom brought me to New York after, but we don’t have family there, either, so it’s really up to me to look after her.”
She didn’t know why she was bothering to tell him her life story. She didn’t care what he thought of her. Did she?
“Those are all expenses I can cover,” he said mildly. “I’m a very rich man, Claudine.”
He didn’t have to sound so smug about it!
He was more than rich, though. He was enigmatic and intimidating, even though he only ambled along behind her, posing no immediate threat.
Which didn’t mean she could trust him, she reminded herself. He seemed to be treating her well enough, but it was definitely for his own purposes. She was essentially his hostage. As far as she could tell, he wanted her to explode her own life—and that of every Miss Pangea contestant ever—so he could score a point or two with his brother.
Not that Francois didn’t deserve to be knocked down.Hewas the one who was ruining her life. She knew that.
Felipe’s talk of a whisper campaign had sounded a little paranoid, but now that she knew Francois was more—or more accuratelyless—than the charming, doting figurehead of the pageant he presented himself as, she had to wonder if she had believed what she had been told to believe about Prince Felipe. Maybe he wasn’t as bad as advertised?
He was objectively good-looking, exactly like his brother, but Felipe had an edge. Not the scar. It was more than that. An aura. She was compelled to keep looking at him. Why? Was it the confidence bestowed by the power of his position? Something more intrinsic to him?
She didn’t know what it was, but he fascinated her the way a shark or a deadly snake might hold her attention. She wanted to watch him move and listen to him tell her more about himself. She wanted his attention for no sane reason at all and she didn’t want him to think badly of her. Why?
She paused, so close to the fountain she ought to be there by now, but she had to go through a final twist and turn, back and forth, to reach the opening to the inner garden.
“I don’t know if I can believe anything you’ve told me,” she said wearily as she came through the separation in the hedge. “Not when I’m just a means to an end for you.”
Before her, rose bushes bloomed in a multitude of colors around a tiered fountain. Water poured off five concentric layers into larger pools below. The thin curtains of water were nearly silent, only creating a steady shush of sound while the gentle movement of the water wafted the perfume of the roses, heady and sweet, into the air.
Four curved benches were placed to view the fountain. She sat on the nearest one, sighing with relief. The walk had been longer and more taxing than she had expected.
