Page 6 of His Hidden Royal Heirs

But dwell on it he did.

For months.

He couldn’t seem to eradicate the woman whose name he didn’t even know out of his mind. He could have looked for her. Sometimes the memory of one night drove him so crazy, he nearly began a search. He was a finder. It would be easy to do just that.

Forwhat? One random woman? Who he knew next to nothing about except that she was well-traveled and gorgeous? That she liked music more than art, gardens more than museums. And what she sounded like when she came apart in his arms.

What was he going to do? Track her down?Dateher?

It was so ludicrous every time he got to that part in the circular thought process of not being able to forget her, he laughed. And moved on.

For a time.

When a case finally came in, one worthy of his skills and with the kind of payment he preferred, Cristhian took the first plane out to the small country of Lille, nestled in northern Europe.

A job would surely solve this...problem of his. By the end of it, he would forget about some nameless woman and her one night in his bed over six months ago.

But when he was greeted at the airport by a royal guard to the king, Cristhian found himself all too reminded of his mystery woman, because the guard’s accent wasexactlylike hers. She had called Hamburg home, but he had a feeling even if she’d been telling the truth about her current home, she wasfromthis country.

He was escorted into a blacked-out car and driven to the castle. The country was small and clearly took its traditions very seriously. If not for the people walking streets in jeans and noses pressed to phones, Cristhian might have felt like he was stepping back in time. The architecture was very old, the buildings crowded together, until they reached the center of the capital where a grand square spread out in front of a modest castle. All very old stones and towers and stained glass.

It reminded him of his mother’s country. The one that still tried to lure him back from time to time. For a photo op or to stir up stories that made the royal family look good. Luckily, as his mother had been the seventhchild of his grandparents, and his aunts and uncles all had multiple children, Cristhian had only a small title, and a few holdings he had negotiated when he had stood up to his aunt, the current queen, and demanded release on his twenty-first birthday.

He had refused to run away. He had fought instead. And maybe he wasn’t as perfectly free of their titles and their legacies as he’d like, but he wasfree.

Somehow, even now, worse than thoughts of those people, were thoughts of the woman he was supposed to forget.

He could picture her here. Walking the street to whatever job she had. Shoulders back, that athletic body carefully hiddenaway in something boxy. Maybe she was some kind of athlete.Thatwould be interesting.

And neither here nor there. Because that had been a nameless night. He would not look for her here. There was no point. He had a job to do.

But ifkismetstepped in...

The car pulled to a stop in the back of the castle, and Cristhian was led inside, through curving hallways and up elaborate staircases. He was asked to wait in an interior room, and he seated himself on a plush chair, taking in the surroundings. Old, well-preserved wallpaper in deep blues. Dark wood polished to a shine. He vaguely remembered a visit here as a child. Most of the royal visits of his childhood sort of ran together, but this one he remembered because his father was supposed to have been filming somewhere, but he’d left the set to accompany Mother, knowing she hated taking on these royal appearances alone.

She’d been so happy at his surprise arrival. Sometimes Cristhian thought that was the best memory he had of the two of them, when there were so many. But his father’s important gesture, and his mother’s heartfelt gratitude, had stuck with him in perfect imagery.

It was strange to realize that the memory did not make him as sad as it once had. There was a strange contentment mixed in with the grief. Perhaps their lives had been cut too short, and perhaps they’d had a part in the mistakes that had led them here, but they’d had each other. A love so bright and encompassing they’d both sacrificed for it.

But they’d never sacrificed him, and as Cristhian had navigated the world as an adolescent in high-end circles, he’d realized how very rare that was, and how mixed in all the tragedy he had a little bit of luck on his side.

But none of that was why he was here, so he studied the rest of the room and put the past away.

There was a large royal portrait dominating one wall. Cristhian recognized the current king, and his queen standing next to him. The young girls must be their twin daughters.

Cristhian frowned at the painting. The girls couldn’t have been more than ten or so in it, so it was an old painting. But something about them...felt familiar.

An uncomfortable foreboding moved through him, but he didn’t have time to analyze it as the king walked in.

Cristhian got to his feet and took the king’s outstretched hand. He knew the royal protocol in different countries as he no doubt would if his mother had lived into his adolescence. He considered it a part of his job, but for a strange out-of-body moment he wondered if he’d learned all these silly rules forher, because it would have made her proud.

He gave a short bow with the handshake. “King Rendall.”

“Cristhian. I haven’t seen you since you were a boy.” The man slapped him on the shoulder, then gestured to the chair he’d been sitting in.

Cristhian fortified himself for the inevitable comment about his mother. How beautiful she was, how kind, how she was missed. He settled back into the chair knowing all these things were true, but when strangers commented on her he felt a wave of fury that no one hadhelpedher. That she had suffered under all these people who had seen her as a perfect, untouchable princess.

When she’d just been a woman. His mother.

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