Chapter One
Wren Weaver adjusted her sunglasses and glanced down at her phone. Her departure time had been moved yet again, by another ten minutes, which meant take-off was officially half an hour after the time her plane was supposed to have left.
Anxiety was a hard lump in her gut, making her feel cold and slightly sick. She just wanted to be gone, to be away from here as soon as possible, and these relentless delays were killing her.
The departure lounge was packed. Some people were sitting on the floor and scrolling through their phones, while others slept in the hard plastic seats.
Kids were unruly and babies cried. Someone was having an argument with the gate agent and a businessman was issuing loud orders via his hands-free microphone.
Typical airport departure lounge in other words.
Wren had managed to secure a seat in a less packed corner, facing the windows that looked out onto the runway.
Valdora—a tiny, mountainous country between France and Italy—didn’t need a big airport, so there was only the one runway.
She could see her plane parked at the airbridge, ready for the flight to Frankfurt, and she couldn’t fathom what the delay was.
Her anxiety tightened. The longer she sat here, the higher the risk that someone would recognise her, and she’d been hoping to leave the country unnoticed. Especially by His Royal Majesty, Isandro Zenón de Monteveras, the King of Valdora.
A sharp pain slid through her at the thought of him, but she pushed it away. No, she wasn’t going to think about Isandro. She couldn’t bear to, not until she was safely back home, in Auckland, where she could grieve in private.
If she actually got safely home, that was. Unfortunately, given that she was the head of PR for the Valdoran royal family, her disappearance would definitely not go unnoticed, and definitely not by him.
She’d sent her resignation in half an hour ago, confident that she’d be on the plane by then, on her way back to the country she’d left behind her years ago, New Zealand.
He wouldn’t follow her all the way there, she was sure of that.
Why would he? Their indiscretion had been months ago, and he didn’t know that there’d been consequences.
Only she did. And she was going to make sure it stayed that way.
No one could know that she was pregnant with the King’s child.
Not when at the time the baby was conceived, he’d still been married.
That he wasn’t married now didn’t matter.
His whole reign had been about distancing himself from Xavier, his father and previous king, who’d been a lecher and a spendthrift, with one scandal after another.
Sadly for Isandro, he’d been promised to Carlotta de Silva, a daughter of one of the ancient Valdoran nobles, who’d been fragile and ill-suited to be Queen.
Poor Carlotta had buckled under the pressure, and covering up her various affairs and indiscretions, to make sure the royal family stayed free of scandal, had turned out to be Wren’s full-time job.
She’d been good at it, too. The general public had no idea how many times Wren had had to haul the Queen of Valdora out of different bedrooms, nightclubs, and, once, a strip club in Berlin.
As far as the people knew, Carlotta was a perfect queen.
Kind. Patient. Elegant. And, most importantly, devoted to her husband.
In a seat nearby, a child was looking fixedly at her. Wren adjusted her sunglasses once again, pulled the hood of her oversized hoodie further down to cover her face a little more, and prayed to any god who would listen that the child wouldn’t recognise her.
That was the problem, though. As the royal family’s media representative and spokesperson, people were used to seeing her face.
Hopefully though, no one would see past the sunglasses, and she did have her signature silvery blonde hair covered.
To all intents and purposes, she was just another person travelling to Frankfurt. No one special.
As she turned herself slightly away from the child’s gaze, a man in a dark suit came into the lounge. He wasn’t carrying any hand luggage, and he went straight to the gate agent without looking around.
Wren’s heart dropped and ice prickled over her skin. It looked like one of Isandro’s bodyguards. Then again, she could be mistaken. There was only one of him and they tended to travel in pairs.
The man spoke to the gate agent for a minute or two, but he didn’t look in her direction. Then, much to her relief, the boarding announcement came on, and people all rushed to the gate in an effort to get to the head of the queue.
The boarding process went smoothly and eventually Wren found herself walking down the airbridge and onto the plane. A heavy weight felt as if it was dropping from her shoulders as she settled herself in her seat, even as an aching grief collected in her throat.
She would never see him again, never. But that was a good thing. That was the only way she could protect him and his throne from the mistake both of them had made.
The rest of the passengers boarded, and Wren picked up a magazine from the seat in front of her, idly flicking through it in an effort to distract herself. Soon they’d be shutting the door, and then she’d be in the air, and all of this would be behind her.
Except the door didn’t close and a ripple of whispers ran through the cabin. Wren was in a window seat and couldn’t see what was happening, though it surely couldn’t be anything to do with her. She was on the plane now, and so was her luggage, and—
‘Miss Weaver?’
Wren froze, feeling as if a bucket of ice water had just been emptied over her head. She didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see who was coming for her. She wanted to ignore them, whoever they were, and pretend they had nothing to do with her.
But she was in a plane full of people and everyone in her row was looking at her, no doubt thoroughly irritated by yet another delay. More than a few would be hauling out their phones to record whatever fuss was going to go down, and Wren knew better than to be the focus of that fuss.
So she looked up from her magazine to see an airport security guard standing in the aisle, a serious look on his face.
It would have been wonderful to pretend that she was someone else, that she wasn’t Wren Weaver, the King’s PR manager, but again, that was likely to cause a fuss and she couldn’t do that.
‘Yes?’ she forced herself to say.
‘If you would come with me, please?’ The man straightened, obviously waiting for her to obey.
She wanted to ask why, but something deep down inside her already knew.
You were so close. So very close to getting away.
And it had been such a very hard decision to make.
The hardest of her life. When she’d first realised she was pregnant, it had taken her at least a month to come to terms with it, and to realise that she couldn’t bring herself to undertake a termination.
Then, another month to figure out what she was going to do, and then still more time had elapsed as she’d gathered the courage to leave Valdora.
Because it wasn’t only about leaving Valdora.
It was about leaving him.
‘Miss Weaver?’ the security guard prompted with a little more insistence. ‘If you please.’
Does he know? And if so, how did he find out?
He couldn’t know. Because there was no way for him to find out. She’d gone to Spain once the test had come back positive, and found herself a doctor there and, as far as she’d been aware, he hadn’t even known she’d been away, let alone the reason for it.
It must be about the resignation letter, then. God, why had she sent that before the plane had left? She should have waited until she’d got to Frankfurt.
The thought of seeing him again made her feel panicky though, and for one wild, impossible moment, Wren wondered what would happen if she made a desperate break for freedom.
But there was nowhere for her to go, not trapped on the plane as she was, and again, that would probably lead to a viral moment that she really did not want to be a part of.
Which left her with only one option.
Grief slid a sharp knife through her, cutting deep into her heart, and a sob collected in her throat.
She didn’t know if she could actually bear seeing him again, not after what it had cost her to make the decision to leave, but it didn’t look as if she was going to have a choice.
The only mercy she had was that he didn’t know about her pregnancy, and she wasn’t going to tell him.
Berating herself wasn’t going to help the situation though, so she took a breath and steeled herself. Gave the security guard a cool, professional smile. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I’ll just collect my things.’
It was ignominious to have to get out of her seat, edging by the people sitting in the other two seats and knocking over someone’s bag.
Then came the performance with the overhead locker, and getting her small piece of hand luggage out of it.
Everyone on the plane was looking at her with curiosity and whispering.
Her cheeks burned, but she ignored the creeping embarrassment that filled her, holding her head high as she went down the aisle to the door of the plane, the guard following her.
There was no point asking the man what was happening, so she didn’t bother as he escorted her back through the airbridge and into the departure lounge.
They went through the duty-free area, before turning down a narrow corridor with a security door at the end.
He used a swipe card to open it and Wren found herself following him through yet more doors and corridors, until one swung open into an opulent and dimly lit private lounge.
The walls were dark, the furniture soft couches and armchairs upholstered in dark blue velvet. There was a full bar along one wall, glass bottles of spirits and liqueurs on the wall behind it glimmering in the dim light.