Page 22 of Claimed By the Crown Prince

Laia was reluctant. This man made her feel so exposed. ‘I feel like a bit of a fraud. I’ve got a very limited repertoire because I’ve only been learning in the last year...a friend has been teaching me.’

Dax raised a brow. ‘Amalefriend?’

Laia blushed. ‘No. A female friend.’Her best friend. Maddi.Impulsively she revealed, ‘Apparently my mother was a good cook, so I always wanted to learn... But there never seemed to be the time and it wasn’t considered appropriate.’

‘Your mother died when you were born?’

She nodded, avoiding Dax’s eye. She took another sip of wine. ‘Just a few hours later.’

‘That’s tough...not to have known her.’

Laia felt ridiculously emotional. She forced it down and shrugged. ‘You can’t really miss what you never had.’

Except that was a lie, because she missed what she hadn’t had almost every day.

She said huskily, ‘My father was wonderful...at least I had him.’

Dax leaned over and topped up Laia’s wine. ‘My father was a serial philanderer. At least you didn’t have to see something like that.’

She looked at Dax. She’d heard rumours over the years. Castle gossip. ‘Did your mother know?’

He grimaced. ‘You could say that. My father seemed to do it primarily to humiliate her. You see, she fell in love with him, and expected a relationship that my father had no interest in. So he punished her by showing her how weak she was for falling in love.’

Laia’s mouth opened. She closed it. ‘That’s horrific. She must have been—’

‘He destroyed her.’ Dax cut her off. ‘It destroyed her. Falling in love made her bitter and disappointed.’

Laia thought of Dax’s tattoo. The caged bird.

‘It sounds like your father’s reaction to her loving him made her all those things.’

Laia remembered what people had whispered about Dax being responsible for his mother’s death. Was that why he’d been sent off to boarding school? To get him away from the press and speculation?

‘I’m sorry about your mother. You must have been young when she died.’

Dax took a healthy swallow of wine. ‘Fifteen.’

She wondered if that had been around the time she’d first spied him in the distance at the palace in Santanger. She would have been only nine or ten. She had a vague memory of someone tall and gangly in the shadows. Had he been off the rails then? Was that what had led to his mother’s death?

She didn’t remember meeting the Queen—something about her not being well enough to receive them. She must have died not long afterwards.

Dax sat back and interrupted the buzz of questions in her head. ‘So, why did you cultivate a very comprehensive fake persona of a party girl?’

Laia felt embarrassed now. As if she’d been caught playing dress-up. Reluctantly she admitted, ‘I thought it would put your brother off.’

Dax sat back and made a small whistling noise. He let out a sharp laugh and then shook his head. ‘You know what? I can see your logic... Ari is very straight. He has no time for frivolity.’

Laia made a face as if to say,Right?

But Dax shook his head again. ‘You underestimated his stubbornness. That man is like a mule, and if he’s set on a course of action then he won’t stop until he gets what he wants.’

Laia shivered slightly, thinking of Maddi.

Dax sat forward. ‘Are you cold?’

Laia shook her head. He was solicitous. She hadn’t expected that. He’d been solicitous that night in the club in Monte Carlo... He’d put out his hand and touched her, and his touch had burned so much she’d pulled away like a frightened maiden.

Nothing had changed in the interim. She was still an innocent.

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