Page 36 of Impossible Heir for the King

‘I try to be, when I can.’ She too assumed an airiness that didn’t fool him in the least. ‘Are you honest?’

‘I try.’ He teased but then sobered. ‘You want to know how I feel around you?’

She stilled. Yeah, she did.

‘Hungry,’ he answered simply. ‘Constantly, achingly, ravenously hungry.’

‘Gosh, how challenging,’ she murmured. ‘Maybe it’s hormones for you too?’

He laughed softly and pulled her onto his lap. ‘Some kind of chemistry for sure.’

It was another hour before they dressed. ‘If we’re going to walk it needs to be now before that weather hits.’

He kept their pace leisurely, not moving too quickly because he suspected she was more tired than she was willing to admit. He kept his eyes on the sand, scooping up stones occasionally to inspect before either pocketing or tossing them back onto the beach.

‘It wasn’t to your standards?’ she teased. ‘You only keep the perfect shells?’

‘Not shells, pebbles.’ He shot her a smile. ‘Olivine. The glassy green ones.’

‘You collect them,’ she said slowly. ‘There’s that bowl on the table in the lounge.’

‘Yeah.’ He shook his head sheepishly. ‘Old habit. I used to take the best to my mother.’ But some days she’d been too washed out to look at them. ‘She would get headaches and we’d come here for a few days. Escape the palace!’

Look after your mother.

‘Maybe she just got migraines,’ Maia said. ‘People do, you know. It might not have had anything to do with the palace. She might have gotten them even if she lived a quiet life in a fishing village on one of the outer islands.’

He shot her a sceptical look. ‘Yeah, but I don’t think the palace helped.’

‘I don’t think yourgrandparentshelped. Sounds like they were disapproving taskmasters who put pressure on both your parents.’ She shot him a laughing look. ‘I don’t blame your mother for protecting you from some of that for as long as she could.’

‘Protecting me?’ He was startled.

‘You don’t think that’s what she was doing?’

‘No. She came here to convalesce.’

‘Sure, but she brought you too. Maybe she was using her migraines to advantage you both.’

He suddenly smiled. ‘You think?’

His grandparents had always disapproved of his time on the island but his mother had insisted that he needed to reconnect with the land and water. She’d been right.

‘What happened to your mother?’ he asked. It was only fair, right? He’d answered hard questions without wanting to. Without meaning to.

‘She walked out when I was very young,’ Maia answered. She glanced over at him and sighed. ‘She worked on the boat as a steward. They had an affair. I came along—unplanned and not particularly wanted. She would have left him sooner if it weren’t for me, I think. But she escaped with another man who abused her worse than my father ever had. He didn’t let her contact me for years.’ She scooped up a piece of driftwood and ran her fingers over it. ‘I guess sometimes it’s better the devil you know, right?’

‘She didn’t try to take you with her?’

‘My father wouldn’t have let me go. It’s not that he actually cared about me, it’s just that he’s very controlling. He regards people as possessions and he doesn’t like to lose any of his possessions. He only likes to accumulate them.’

‘And use them.’ He sighed.

‘I was probably safer being left with Stefan than if I’d gone with her.’

‘And she didn’t try to help you in all this time?’

‘I don’t think she can help herself let alone anyone else,’ she said quietly. She gazed out across the water. ‘I want to do better for this baby.’

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