Page 27 of Claimed By the Crown Prince

‘You weren’t drunk that night in Monte Carlo.’

‘I haven’t been drunk in years. I told you—it’s overrated.’

‘And yet you were there...on the scene. And I know how tedious it can be if you’re not on the same energetic level as everyone else. Which is why I could never last long.’

‘Maybe I was on drugs?’

Laia shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. You didn’t have that glazed, manic look. No, I think you were doing exactly the same thing as me. You were doing your work behind the scenes while faking a façade... Why, though?’

Dax’s jaw clenched. He wasn’t used to this much conversation in the mornings—generally because he wasn’t ever with women in the mornings. It wasn’t unpleasant...but he didn’t like being on the other end of scrutiny. Especially not Laia’s particular brand of very perspicacious scrutiny.

He shrugged. ‘Maybe, like you, I had my reasons. When people underestimate you, it gives you an edge over them.’

‘But that only lasts as long as the first time. Once people know they’ve underestimated you it won’t happen again.’

Dax arched a brow. ‘You’d be surprised.’

‘You run a business—Montero Holdings?’

He nodded. ‘It’s a software business.’

‘Is that something you were into at school? How did you cope with your dyslexia?’

Before Dax could answer, she blushed.

‘Sorry, I ask too many questions.’

The colour staining her cheeks made him want to touch her there, to see if her skin felt hot. He forced himself to focus.

‘School was...a challenge. Until they figured out what the problem was. There was an assumption that I just wasn’t that bright.’

Her green eyes were wide and filled with compassion. Dax put it down to an automatic reflex. Ari had that ability too—to be able to make people feel that he really cared.

She asked, ‘How did you cope until they realised what it was?’

Dax shook off the pricking of his conscience, mocking his cynicism for judging Laia’s compassion to be fake. Maybe he couldn’t handle real compassion.

Maybe he didn’t want to. Because that would be like allowing a chink of light into an area he liked to keep shut away. The place where he held his guilt and toxic memories of the past...where he didn’t feel he deserved compassion.

He forced that out of his head and said, ‘When I went to a conventional school for those final years they caught it almost immediately. They’re much better now at recognising the signs and accommodating students who are dyslexic. I had learnt to navigate around it. That’s how I realised I was good at computers. Not the coding so much, but an overall vision of system designs.’

Laia said nothing for a moment, and Dax realised that she often did that. She didn’t necessarily fill a gap in the conversation with chatter. He liked it.

She put her head on one side. ‘You’re global, aren’t you? Your company supplies software systems for us in Isla’Rosa.’

Dax nodded. ‘We most likely do. We’re one of the biggest software design companies in the world.’

‘And you’re on the board of that charity. There’s no way you’d be on the board if you weren’t pulling your weight.’

Dax felt a little exposed. ‘It’s a cause close to my heart.’

‘Why?’

‘I have empathy for kids whose lives are torn apart, who look around and find everything they knew is gone...everyone they knew.’

Dax thought back to the aftermath of the car crash, when his entire world had seemed to splinter into a thousand pieces. The crash had pulled back the curtain on the fallacy that they’d all been living a relatively functional existence.

Or it would have if he hadn’t decided to do something that would protect his mother and her secrets for ever from the vultures who’d been circling. A decision that had defined his existence for a long time.Still did. Guilt was a canny operator.

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