His mouth twisted. Had he proposed marriage, any of the women he’d bedded would have, in his brother’s cruel words, bitten his hand off to accept. The prospect of becoming the glittering Principessa Enrico Ceraldi would have been irresistible to them.
Yet the woman he’d actually married had been horrified at the prospect.
He knew it was because of the outward disparities between them, which she was so hung up about. Yet her attitude towards him had, he realised slowly, had another effect on him as well.
It had made him feel safe with her.
Because it made her like no other woman he knew.
It was a strange realisation, seeping through him.
All she wants from me is protection for Ben—that’s all. She wants nothing else—nothing from me.
A thought came to him—another strange, new realisation.
I don’t have to be on my guard with her. I don’t have to keep her at a distance. Because she doesn’t want anything from me—
A sense of release came over him, as if for the first time in his life, he felt—free.
Lizzy sat in the shade of the blue and white striped awning and watched Ben and his uncle play waterpolo in the pool. Ben was shrieking with pleasure. Her heart warmed. He was just so happy—every day had been a delight for him.
And for her?
It was so strange. How could it be that, despite the huge emotional upheaval she’d gone through since that fateful evening when her world had been turned upside down and she had discovered the truth about Ben’s parentage, she could now be feeling so…carefree?
So relaxed.
And yet she was.
It had seemed impossible at the outset of their panicked arrival here. The enormity of what had happened, what she had done, had been overwhelming, and yet here, in this tranquil, beautiful place—so far from the rest of the world, it seemed—she had found a peace of mind she had never thought to find.
Her eyes went to the man playing with her son, and she felt gratitude welling through her—and wonder.
He was being so kind to her. And not just because of Ben. He had gone out of his way to be endlessly kind and patient to her, for her own sake.
It was a world away from his image as the Playboy Prince.
There’s more to him than that. Much more, she thought fiercely.
She had misjudged him, she knew, seeing only the image, not the man beneath. He was a man who had defied his father, his sovereign, to defend and protect her and Ben. A man who had unhesitatingly married himself to the very last woman in the world he’d ever have chosen for a wife for the sake of a small child.
A child he really seemed to love.
She felt her heart warm as she watched Rico haul himself out of the pool. His lean body glittered with diamonds in the sun as he leant down, let Ben clutch his arm with his hands, and with effortless strength lifted him clear out of the water.
‘Again!’ shouted Ben, and jumped back in the water.
Rico repeated the process, swinging him high into the air with a laughing grin before lowering him gently to the paving beside the pool.
Ben rushed up to Lizzy.
‘I scored five goals,’ he exclaimed.
‘Did you? How fantastic.’ She smiled.
‘Why don’t you come in the water, Mummy?’
‘Because she needs a nice new swimming costume, Ben. And lots of new clothes, like you’ve already had. Clothes for a princess.’