Princess Wanted - The Complete Book Set: An Alpha Billionaire Prince Trilogy (3 page)

Wordlessly, Luke put his arms around her and Emma allowed herself to be hugged.

“He’s a fighter, Emma.”

Emma nodded into Luke’s shoulder, face buried against him. “He’s so little.”

Luke stroked her hair comfortingly. “Let me tell you: there is a little country in Europe, so small you’d barely notice it on a map. But during the Second World War, it never fell to the Nazis. Now, some people say that’s because it was so small they forgot it was there, or just didn’t bother, or marched round it without realizing. But I like to think it’s because they never stopped fighting.”

Night fell. A distant rumble of thunder heralded rain closing in.

“That’s all he needs,” said Emma, stroking Tosca’s flank.

“Maybe it’ll help cool his fever?” suggested Luke.

“I’m not sure that’s how fever works.”

“Me neither.”

“It always seems messed up somehow,” said Emma, talking about anything just to distract herself. “A bad cold turns into a fever which makes you hot? Where’s the sense in that?”

“I think it may be a discrepancy in the English language,” said Luke.

“Is your language any better?”

Luke shook his head. “No. We’ve got about fifty thousand words less than English.”

“Fifty thousand?”

“English has way too many different words for the same thing.”

“Dung for example,” said Emma.

“Exactly. Red, scarlet, crimson.”

“Walk, amble, wander, meander.”

They lapsed into silence, mentally searching for examples to further a thoroughly ridiculous conversation.

“And still, in some areas the language feels short of words,” said Luke, not looking directly at Emma. “Relationships, for example.”

“Yeah?”

“Love, I mean.”

“Yeah.”

Luke shifted awkwardly on the ground. “How do you tell someone you like them? Because you don’t mean you ‘like’ them: you
like
, like them. Which is a very silly thing to have to say. But ‘love’ is way too big a word to say to someone out of nowhere - that just scares people off. And saying you fancy someone is a bit… I don’t know - crass. ‘I’m attracted to you’ is unemotional. ‘I adore you’ is too emotional. You know what I mean?”

“Sure.”

“It’s… difficult.”

Emma sat, waiting for Luke to continue, but he did not.

“Are you trying to tell me something?” she asked, prompting.

“No.” It was unusual to hear Luke so uncertain.

“Oh.” Emma tried unsuccessfully to keep the disappointment from her voice. “Why not?”

“Did you want me to tell you something?” came the tentative reply.

“Well if you don’t know…”

“Of course I don’t know!” Luke threw his hands in the air. “You seem to like me, but you spend all your time criticizing me and rubbing my face in elephant dung.”

“I did that once and you deserved it.”

“Maybe. But since then I think I’ve been nice, but you… You snap at me, and tell me all my belief are wrong, and call me names, and ignore me, and…”

“Don’t you know anything about women?”

“No!” cried Luke. “I’ve never had this problem before. Women usually just throw themselves at me, like they’re lucky just to be in the same room…”

“Oh, is that right?” There were still times when Emma could not quite believe his arrogance.

“That’s not what I… It’s hard to explain.”

“Almost impossible from where I’m sitting.”

“Maybe it’s a cultural thing,” Luke fell back on his standard ‘get out of jail free’ card.

“It’s not important!” snapped Emma. “If it helps: maybe I did like you for a minute there. But just because, you know: we’re out in the middle of nowhere and a girl gets lonely. I don’t
like
, like you. And now -
now
- I don’t even like you. No way is Mike winning his bet! But it’s okay, cos we’re not here for long and I wouldn’t want to spoil you for all the women back in your own country. I imagine they’ll all be lined up at the airport waiting to throw themselves at you!”

Luke shook his head. “I know you’re joking, but they probably will.”

He didn’t look happy about it, and perhaps, had she been less irritated, Emma might have taken the time to wonder why, but she had saddled up her high horse already and was not getting down.

“You think you’re God’s gift to women?! Well God can take you back.”

With a peal of thunder the rain began to pour.

“You stay out of this!” Emma yelled at the heavens before turning back to Luke. “Why don’t you go bed!”

“I’m not leaving Tosca.” He said it with absolute resolution. “You’re not the only one who cares.”

“You don’t care about anyone but yourself!”

“That may have been true a few weeks ago!” Luke shouted back. “I am a selfish man who puts himself first, second and third. And you are an irritating, infuriating and confusing woman, whom I find utterly brilliant in every way. I
do
care about you. And I care about this elephant, with his stupid name. And no matter what you say, or what you do or whether you like me or
like
, like me or hate my living guts, I am not going anywhere.”

The lightning flashed.

Emma grabbed Luke by collar, pulled him to her and kissed him. It was not something she had thought about doing, it was just something that she had to do, and she was rewarded with the feel of Luke’s strong arms folding around her, drawing her closer still as he returned the kiss.

It was a long kiss, and when it ended, Emma and Luke were startled to find that they were being watched.

“Tosca?”

The little elephant’s head was up off the cushion of straw on which he had been resting, his eyes wide. He blew a jet of water from his trunk, further soaking the already drenched couple and started to get to his feet.

“If you tell me that something happened last night,” said Mike, “(And we both know what I mean by ‘something’.), then I will never speak to you again. Unless it happened after midnight, in which case we’re cool.”

“Nothing happened,” said Emma.

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“Cos you’ve been walking around all day with a smile on your face that says different.”

Emma tried to force herself to stop smiling but her lip muscles refused to receive the message. She couldn’t help it: she was happy.

“Okay maybe not nothing,” she admitted, her smile involuntarily broadening still further. “But you haven’t won any money yet.”

Mike smiled back. “The only word I heard in that sentence was ‘yet’.”

Truth be told, Emma was actually not sure what to do now. The miraculous recovery of Tosca had been wonderful, the best news she could have asked for, but it had rather overtaken the moment. Luke had immediately gone to rouse the vet from his bed to give the baby elephant the once-over, and while it would have been tempting to sneak off together while the vet was doing this, it would also have been quite noticeable. Then, this morning, there was work to do: the day-to-day business of the Bamboo Trust did not stop because one elephant had got better. In fact, Emma and Luke had barely seen each other, for more than a polite and slightly embarrassed nod, the whole day.

But then there was this evening. Emma could not stop her mind from harking back to what Mike had said about ‘no-strings volunteer sex’. Was that what she wanted? Well, yes it sort of was. But it wasn’t
all
she wanted. And based on what Luke had said last night it wasn’t all that he wanted either. Which was good. And then again not, because they were both here for a limited amount of time and, whatever good intentions they had going in, it would be hard for this to be anything other than ‘no-strings volunteer sex’, as in a few weeks there would be half the world between them.

All of which rather presumed that they
were
going to have sex later. On reflection, Emma decided that she was fine with that presumption.

At lunch, she finally had the chance to speak to Luke, albeit in a crowded room filled with other volunteers who were constantly sneaking glances and surreptitiously whispering. Emma wondered just how much money was riding on tonight, and whether it was too late to make a bet herself.

“Hi,” said Luke as he sat down.

“Hi.”

“Having a good day?”

“You know. Same old. Still just so pleased about Tosca.”

Luke nodded enthusiastically. “It’s amazing; he’s running around like he hasn’t a care in the world. You wouldn’t think that twenty-four hours ago he was…”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

There was a long pause as they both chewed their food.

“I was wondering…” Luke began.

“Yes?”

“Maybe you’d like to do something later?”

Emma nodded slowly. “Did you have something in mind?”

“There’s not a lot of options around here.”

“No cinema you mean?” said Emma.

“Or bowling alley,” Luke added. He toyed with his food for a moment. “Look, I really like you. If you’d like to go for a walk later or sit and talk or whatever - that’d be really nice. I’d like that. I’d like anything that lets us spend a bit of quality time together.”

“That’s lovely,” said Emma, genuinely touched.

“Thing is,” Luke went on, “there’s been some talk around the place, and I don’t want you to think that I’m presuming anything. What I mean to say is: if you want to then… But if you don’t then that’s fine too. Our relationship…”

“Luke?”

“Yes?”

“You can presume.”

Luke waited a moment. “My English is…”

“Your English is fine.”

“I don’t want to misunderstand what you’re…”

“I think you understand fine.”

“I don’t want you to feel coerced,” said Luke, solicitously.

Emma nodded. “I appreciate that. But I’d rather not feel like I have to coerce you. At some point, it’s just a bit insulting.”

Luke grinned.

The moon was just starting rise when Emma came out of the women’s sleeping quarters, dressed in her best jeans and T-shirt. Even when at home, Emma was not a particular fancy and formal girl, she was always happier when going casual. Had this been a date back in New York, she would have made a bit more of an effort, but she hadn’t packed for this sort of situation. To do so would have been pretty optimistic. It was funny the tricks fate could play on you.

“Emma?”

Emma turned to see Luke coming towards her. Her first thought was: he was gorgeous. Her second thought was: who the hell brings a jacket, shirt and smart trousers to the middle of the jungle? But her third thought was: someone who is unlike any man I’ve ever been out with before, that’s who brings jacket, shirt and smart trousers to the middle of the jungle. He was endearingly daft, desperately handsome, and really rather sweet.

“You look fantastic.”

“I look like a girl living out of a suitcase.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s what I said.”

They kissed. It was only meant to be brief, but somehow the moment overtook them and they melted into it, unable to pull away from each other. It was the sort of kiss that even an elephant spraying them with water could not have broken, the sort of kiss that every other volunteer staring at them could not end. In fact, there were very few things that could have stopped that kiss. But a helicopter was one of them.

The sound of the helicopter’s approach had been easy to ignore for two people lost in each other, but the down-draft from the blades whipping up the dust into a stinging storm was less easily ignored, as was the powerful searchlight scanning the ground around them.

“What the hell?” Emma shielded her eyes from the dust. As she did so she was surprised to hear Luke whisper:

“Not now. Please not now.”

As the helicopter landed in the yard at the center of the compound, Mike ran out, swearing profusely.

“Would someone like to explain to me what the,” his next few words were lost beneath the sound of the helicopter, “is going on here?!”

Dark-clad men sprang from the helicopter’s interior, ran across the yard and took Luke by the shoulders.

“This way, your Highness.”

“Your Highness?” Emma could not quite believe any of this was happening.

Luke went with the men, unresisting. As he went he turned back to look at Emma and mouthed the words ‘I’m sorry’.

With Luke inside, the helicopter door slammed and the noise level rose once more as it climbed back into the air.

Emma stood and watched. There were a couple of hundred questions to which she would like answers but all of them sunk into a bottomless pit in her stomach. He had seemed, just maybe, just for a minute, like everything she was looking for.

“Damn,” the voice of Mike standing beside her seemed to come from a million miles away. “I just lost fifty bucks.”

Chapter Two - New York

D
espite every fiber of her body telling her to go home, Emma had stayed in Thailand and diligently served out her month.

“I should damn well think so,” was all Mike had said when she told him. But he said it in that tone of voice that was as close to sympathy as Mike ever came. Perhaps he had realized that the much-anticipated no-strings volunteer sex had become more than that, for her at least.

“You can’t help yourself can you?” he had said to Emma, when she was leaving.

“What?”

“Shouldn’t have given him a name.”

You don’t name an animal that is probably about to die. You don’t fall for a man you’re only going to be with for a few short weeks. You keep your distance, you don’t get attached, you don’t let emotions get involved. You don’t give yourself something to lose. Emma hadn’t meant to do any of those things, but dammit she had, and she had paid the price.

And, as it turned out, she was not yet done paying yet.

The dramatic events of that night in Thailand had left many unsolved mysteries, but the most intriguing revolved around two words: ‘Your Highness’. At first Emma wondered if she could have misheard, but Mike had heard the same. Then, in the dining room the following morning, she had heard the buzz of conversation and a voice saying, ‘I said he looked like Prince Lukas. Didn’t I say that? I said that, didn’t I?’.

Who was Prince Lukas? Emma paid little attention to celebrity culture, and her knowledge of European monarchy was even less than her knowledge of classical music and elephants. Mike had been out in the wild for years on end, with little or no access to the news media – he could not have picked Angelina Jolie out of a crowd, let alone Prince Lukas of Who Knows Where.

With the expense of some little effort, Emma managed to get hold of last month’s copy of ‘Snapp!!’ (the second ‘p’ was apparently important). It was the sort of celebrity gossip magazine that she would not usually have touched with a ten foot pole, but it gave her at least some of the answers for which she was searching. There, splashed across the cover, was a picture of Luke, looking devastatingly handsome and flashing a suggestive smile at the readers of Snapp!!. Below the picture, the headline read: ‘Where is Prince Lukas?!! – story continues inside on pages 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 11, 15, 17 and 22!!!’. Holding the magazine gingerly, as if afraid that she would get tawdriness on her hands, Emma delved deeper and read about the playboy Prince, known for his wild parties and extravagant lifestyle, who had mysteriously vanished a month before his wedding.

His wedding…

Even after all that had happened, that revelation still made Emma’s stomach hit the floor as she read it. And that gut-wrenching sensation only got worse when she arrived back in New York to find Luke’s face on the front of every newsstand, grinning at her smugly from the cover of every magazine and newspaper. She could not turn on the TV or go online without seeing him or hearing about the details of his upcoming wedding to Princess Anya (who came from some equally unregarded corner of a continent, which Emma had now vowed never to visit). It was a real love match, every reporter insisted, the couple were perfect for each other and Prince Lukas was ready to put his carefree bachelor life and scandalous antics behind him. And his disappearance? Well, that had been blown out of all proportion by the press and certainly should not be regarded as the groom getting cold feet. He had simply wanted to get away from media attention for a bit, and see something of the world. Naturally the more salacious magazines would not accept so easy an explanation and keenly endorsed the idea that he had been going on one last spree, sowing a few more wild oats before being tied down to a wife.

Try as she might, Emma could not help but agree: that was exactly what he had been doing. Look at the evidence: he had found the most remote, out of the way place that he could, somewhere where the paparazzi cameras would never find him. He had found a woman who, despite his high media profile, was so ridiculously ignorant that she did not know who he was. Despite her hostility he had been unremittingly nice, he had pressed all the right buttons and used her pathetic devotion to a baby elephant as the key to her seduction. Most cunningly, he had not made any effort to get her into bed - he had suggested it by saying that he did not expect it, and so planted the desire in her head, whilst still coming off as the good guy. It was a technique recommended by every seduction manual ever written, and Emma had fallen for it. Because she had also fallen for him.

But, of course, she had not. Not really. At least she had not fallen for Prince Lukas; she did not know him, she had fallen for this creation, this web of lies that called itself Luke. She had fallen for a man who did not really exist, but who had been constructed with the sole purpose of getting her into bed (or at least into the jungle, since bedrooms were shared in the Bamboo Trust compound). What an idiot she was.

But worst of all was that she still mourned for that lost relationship. Hard as she tried to deny it, she was still in love with Luke, with this non-existent cut-out. After years of searching she had found someone who fulfilled that elusive x-factor, who had the missing something. In all her years of dating she had always felt single, even when she was seeing someone; with Luke she had felt part of a couple, even though they were not technically together. And she still felt part of that couple. She was no longer a single woman, she was a woman in a serious, committed relationship with a man who did not exist, and yet whom she saw on a daily basis, because, from now until the royal wedding, it was as if no other news story in the world mattered.

It was too much. Carefully checking the time difference between New York and Thailand, Emma made the call.

“Hi Mike.”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Emma.”

“Emma who?”

“Emma Clark.”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Emma Clark, Mike.”

“Do you know what time it is?”

Emma glanced over her temporal calculations and admitted that she might have got am and pm mixed up while making the conversion.

“Did I wake you?”

“Who is this?”

“Mike, I need your help.”

“Do you know what time it is?”

After a few minutes Emma managed to establish who she was and that, while she did now know what time it was, she had not known when she had dialed and was sorry for that. Then she was able to get down to the business of the call.

“I can’t stay here, Mike.”

Mike grunted. “I’m used to hearing that, but usually from people who are out here.”

“Luke’s everywhere,” Emma explained. “I can’t get away from him.”

“Well, there’s always a place for you here,” said Mike. “Half the volunteers are here because they got dumped. But I get the impression that’s not what you’re asking.”

“No.” Obviously she had thought about it, but the idea of going back to where she and Luke had first met was more than she could bear. “I was hoping you could recommend somewhere.”

Mike grunted again. “Nothing like being woken up to be asked your advice.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“Whatever. Look, I’ll tell you what,” Mike continued, “I’m going to Africa next week to visit a friend of mine (another old volunteer - used to be a priest - long story). He’s working with threatened African elephants in some wildlife reserve. Come along, I’ll introduce you.”

“That sounds great!” Emma enthused. “Can you give me the details?”

“Yeah, sure, why not? It’s not like I’ve got anything else to do,” snapped Mike with biting sarcasm. “Or, alternatively, maybe you could wait until the morning!”

He hung up.

Emma sat back in her chair. It would be too much to say that she was happy - the knot of sadness that had sat in the pit of her stomach for the last month was still there – but now she could see some happiness on the horizon. Another trip would be a chance to lose herself and her cares by attending to someone else’s. Everything was going to be alright.