‘None at all?’
He shook his head.
‘He cheated on your mother.’ She still looked super awkward. ‘Kassie at the hospital...’
‘Is my unacknowledged half-sister. Yes.’
‘But you’re in touch with her.’
‘Yes.’ He sighed and put the tablet down on the low table. ‘My father isn’t. My mother pretends she doesn’t exist. Kassie is too proud to push for what she’s owed.’ He leaned back on the edge of the sofa, folding his arms across his chest. He’d had to find out what had happened. ‘I once saw him with her mother,’ Damon said. ‘Years ago when we lived here in Palisades.’
‘That must have been hard to see.’
Damon frowned at the floor. ‘I couldn’t understand why he didn’t leave us for them when it was so obvious...’
‘Did you ever ask him?’
About five minutes ago and his father had confirmed what Damon had learned in later years. ‘His career was too important. It was always too important to both my parents. The only reason they had me was to tick that box on their CV—happily married with one son...’
‘But they must be proud of you.’
He laughed bitterly. ‘Proud of a teenager who wasted his time making lame computer games?’ He shook his head.
‘But now you have a hugely successful company. More than one. How can they not be—?’ She broke off and her expression softened. ‘You shouldn’t have had to “achieve” to get the support any child deserves.’
‘I got more than my half-sister did,’ he muttered shortly. ‘He wouldn’t even support them financially. Her mother died a long, slow, painful death. Kassie has been struggling since.’
‘Is that why you got in touch with her?’
He nodded. ‘But she wouldn’t let me help her.’ He rolled his shoulders. It still knotted him that Kassie had refused almost everything he’d offered. ‘I can understand it.’
Sadness lent a sheen to Eleni’s eyes. ‘And your parents are still together.’
‘Still achieving. Still silently seething with bitterness and unhappiness. Still a successful marriage. Sure thing.’
‘He cheated more than once?’
‘I expect so,’ he sighed.
‘So.’ Eleni brushed her hair back from her face. ‘That’s why you made it clear our marriage is only to provide legitimacy for our baby. Why you think no relationship lasts.’
‘As I said, a child shouldn’t be raised in the household with unhappily married parents.’ Unloving parents. ‘We married for the birth certificate, then we do what’s right. I didn’t want this baby to be a tool for some political purpose. Not paraded as the future Prince or Princess or whatever. And I won’t abandon it either.’
‘I understand,’ she said softly. ‘I don’t want that either.’ She bit her lip and looked down at the table between them. ‘I’m sorry your parents...’
He held up a hand. ‘It’s okay. We all have our burdens, right?’ She’d lost both her parents. She had expectations on her that were far beyond the normal person’s. He shouldn’t have judged her as harshly as he had.
‘Damon?’
He glanced up at that roughened note in her voice.
Storms had gathered in her sea-green eyes. ‘This baby was unexpected, unplanned...’ she pressed a hand to her flat belly as she gazed across at him ‘...but I promise you I’ll love it. I already do. I’ll do whatever it takes to protect and care for it.’
‘I know.’ He believed her because she already was. He’d seen her stand up to her brother—knew that had been a first for her. And she was trying here, now, with him.
But somehow it made that discomfort within him worse. He wasn’t like her. He didn’t understand how she could love the child already. The truth was he didn’t know how to love. He had no idea how to be a husband. He sure as hell had no idea how to be a father. When he’d first suspected she might be pregnant his initial instinct had been not to abandon his child. He was not doing what his father had done to Kassie.
But he had no idea how even these next few months were going to work. The tightness in his chest didn’t ease. Disappointment flowed and then ebbed. Leaving him with that void. He ached for a real escape.
‘Is that the photo Giorgos approved for release?’ Eleni’s voice rose in surprise.
He glanced at the muted screen still showing the number one news item of the world.
‘Yes.’ He cleared his throat. ‘There’s another with him in it as well, but this is the one the media have run with.’
‘I can’t believe he chose that one. It’s...’
‘What?’
‘Informal.’
Damon knew why the King had chosen that particular picture. Eleni looked stunning with her skin glowing, her hair and dress beautiful...but it was that luminosity in her expression that was striking. While Damon was looking at her with undeniable desire, she was laughing up at him—sparkling, warm, delighted. This image, snapped in that moment in the garden, would sell the ‘truth’ of this fairy tale.
This image stole his breath.
But now another picture of him flashed on the screen—him at an event with another woman. Then another. Inwardly he winced. It seemed anyone who’d dated him in the past wanted their five minutes of fame now and had opened their photo albums to show off their one or two snaps.
‘Wow, lots of models, huh?’ Eleni muttered, her rasp more apparent. ‘That’s very billionaire tech entrepreneur of you.’
‘It wasn’t a deliberate strategy.’ He stepped nearer to her, needing to touch her skin. ‘They just happened to be at the parties.’
She subjected him to a long, silent scrutiny. ‘You know my history. I don’t know yours at all.’
‘You mean lovers?’ He grinned in an effort to shake off the prickling sensation her piercing greenish gaze caused. ‘I’ve had a few. No real girlfriends. There’s nothing and no one to trouble you.’
She didn’t look convinced.
He shrugged. ‘I’m busy with my work and I like to be good at it.’
The ugly fact was he was a hollow man—as success obsessed as his shallow parents. Just less visible about it. He liked to think he had a smidge more integrity than they did—by refusing to use other people to get to where he wanted to be. Utter independence was what he craved.
‘Do you know I’ve got at least twenty new work offers today purely because of my involvement with you?’ he said a little roughly.
She lifted her eyebrows. ‘And that isn’t good?’
‘I haven’t earned these opportunities, Eleni.’
‘Perhaps you could take advantage of them to enable other people to progress as well. To create jobs and other contracts—’
Her naive positivity hit a raw nerve. ‘I built my company from scratch.’
‘And you don’t want your association with me compromising your success story?’ Her cheeks pinked. ‘At least you had the choice to forge your own path. I’m one of the most privileged people on the planet and, while I am grateful for that, I’m also bound by the rules that come
with it. I couldn’t do what I want.’
And it seemed she still couldn’t. He grabbed his tablet again and showed her the endless list of invitations and formal appearances the palace official had sent him. ‘Is this amount normal?’ he asked. ‘Which would you usually decline?’
Her eyebrows shot up. ‘None.’
None? He paused. ‘There are too many requests here.’
Were they were trying to schedule her every waking moment? Damon wasn’t having it.
‘You don’t say no.’ The shock on her face said it all.
She really was a total pawn in the palace machine. Well, he wasn’t letting them take advantage of Eleni, or her child, or him. Not any more.
‘I’m okay with saying no,’ he said.
‘Well, I don’t like to be perceived as lazy.’ Her lips tightened. ‘Or spoilt.’
And that was why Princess Eleni had always done as she was told—wore what was expected, said what was polite, did what was her duty. She’d obediently played her princess role perfectly for years.
Except when it had come to him. That night with him she’d done what she wanted. She’d taken. And since then? She’d argued. She’d stood up for herself. She’d been everything but obedient when it came to him...
He didn’t want that changing because she felt some misguided sense of obligation now she was married to him. Hell, she was likely to want to play the part of the ‘perfect wife’ but he wasn’t letting it happen. For the first time in her life, he wanted Eleni Nicolaides to experience some true freedom.
‘Why did you want to stay in Palisades rather than go to Giorgos’s safe house in France?’ he asked roughly.
She looked down. ‘This probably sounds crazy, but it’s actually more private here.’
‘You’re happy to be trapped inside the palace walls?’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘It’s what I’m used to. I can show you how it works.’
He didn’t need to know how it worked. He had a headache from all the gilded decorations already. ‘I know somewhere even more private.’ He rubbed his shoulder. ‘I think we should go there.’
‘You don’t understand—’
‘Yeah, I do. I know about the paparazzi and the press and the cell phones in every member of the public’s hands. But my island is safe. It’s secure. It’s private.’