Read The Royal Affair (The Palmera Royals) for Free Online Page B

a glance at the bedside clock It was barely dawn.
    Tossing aside her bedcovers, she wrapped herself in her robe, then walked out into the lounge. The knocking had become disturbingly insistent, and her chest tightened. Her sister-in-law was pregnant and due very soon. Surely if she’d gone into labor, her brother, Prince Lucas, would have phoned.
    Oops! She’d turned off all her phones.
    Heart racing, panic escalating, she opened the door. Shock jettisoned from head to toe and right back up in one brutal assault as her gaze fixed on the man at her door. “Jonas. What are you doing here?”
    He didn’t bother to reply but pushed past her, his cologne an instant battering ram to her unprepared senses. From behind him, a nervous Pierre began to follow, but Marina stalled him.
    “I tried to dissuade him, Your Highness, but he was insistent.”
    She offered Pierre a sleepy smile. “It’s fine. I can handle this.”
    For a few seconds, Pierre hesitated, and then finally he stepped back. “As you wish, Your Highness.”
    Marina shut the door and turned to Jonas. She wasn’t about to play nice. Playing nice got you hurt, and Jonas had hurt her one too many times. “I asked you what you’re doing here.”
    He dragged a hand through his disheveled hair, which was as unkempt as the rest of him. Dark circles underscored his eyes, his shirt and jeans the same as what he wore yesterday.
    “Oh shit, I don’t know.” He spun toward the door and then stalled.
    Marina pursed her lips, and he offered a sheepish half smile and a shrug. She wished he hadn’t. She tugged her robe a little tighter. “Jonas, if you’ve come about a horse, I’m afraid I’ve bought all I need right now. I’m off home soon.” She checked her Bulgari watch. “In four hours. Besides, I think we said all we had to say yesterday.”
    “I need you.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    He stepped closer, and instinctively, she stepped back. Still, he was close. Touching close. All dark Hershey eyes and molten-sex close.
    “What I meant was Suzie needs you. She hasn’t spoken for…for years.” He choked on his words. “Since the accident.” He shoved his hands into his jean pockets, and Marina had to force herself not to look down or notice the way the fabric stretched over one place in particular. Dark eyes drew her in as understanding dawned and infiltrated her sleep-deprived brain. He began to reach out to her, and every inch of her went rigid.
    She stalled him with the flat of her palm. “The accident when you rushed off without a word.”
    He nodded. “I’m sorry. I should have, but…I didn’t have time.”
    “One call, Jonas. That’s all I wanted.”
    “I know, but I couldn’t. I promised myself if Suzie was all right, I would never leave her again. She’s the most important thing in my life. I don’t have time for…”
    “Me.”
    His gaze shifted away from her. “Suzie was in the accident with her mother and her mother’s lover.”
    Marina shook her head, then tucked her hair behind her ears, drawing a shaky hand over her sleep-filled eyes as Jonas continued. “Talia and I were divorced. Stella asked me to come with her to your brother’s wedding. I never should have stayed longer in San Torrevna. I was meant to go home earlier, but, well, Suzie lived with me after Talia left, and then you happened, and I, well, got seduced, sidetracked.”
    “Gee, thanks. So I was just a diversion?”
    “No…I…” Jonas spun half away and then right back again. “I’m totally to blame. I made a mistake in staying when I should have gone back right after the wedding. Lust got in the way.”
    Lust—not love. “I’m sorry about Suzie, really. She’s a cute little girl.”
    “Who has been mute since the accident. They say it’s PTSD, but yesterday, that all changed. Yesterday, because of you, she spoke. My little girl talked for the first time in four long, sad, silent years, Marina.”
    She heard the emotion in Jonas’s voice, and