Page 28 of Her Secret Royal Dilemma

‘It was so quick,’ she said in a low voice. ‘One second Mum was there, and in the next she had disappeared before my eyes.’

‘I know what you mean. I watched my brother try to outrun the avalanche and then he was gone, buried beneath tons of snow. I prayed for the only time in my life,’ Eirik admitted rawly. ‘I prayed that Niels would be found alive. I couldn’t accept that he was dead until his body was found three days later.’

He could only imagine how traumatised Arielle had been when she’d seen her mother swept away by a giant wave. He tightened his arms around her, wishing he could shield her from painful memories.

‘I felt guilty that I hadn’t jumped into the sea to help Mum. I suppose I was in a state of shock, and I clung to the rocks until I was spotted by some people on a boat, who rescued me.’

Eirik tilted Arielle’s face up and felt a tug in his chest when he saw tears clinging to her eyelashes. ‘There was nothing you could have done to save your mother. You must believe that.’

She nodded. ‘Just as you could not have skied uphill and snatched your brother from the path of the avalanche.’

‘I know,’ he muttered. ‘I felt so helpless. After Niels died, I felt guilty for being alive. My brother was not only the better skier, but he was also the better son, and he would have been a better Sovereign than me.’

‘You can’t think that. It’s not true.’ Arielle’s voice was fierce, and she stared at him intently as if she was willing him to believe her. She laid her hand on his jaw, and Eirik turned his head and kissed her palm.

‘Thank you,’ he said gruffly. If he was fighting a battle, he would want Arielle by his side, he brooded.

‘Sometimes things happen that are beyond our control,’ she murmured.

Like getting more involved with Arielle than he had intended. Eirik’s jaw tightened. He had lost count of how many times he had made love to her, and it was always, impossibly, better than the time before. Their sexual compatibility was off the scale. But there was more. He liked her, which was a first for him. In the past, personality had come at the bottom of the list of attributes he’d looked for in his lovers. Sexual attraction had invariably led to a brief affair, or more often a one-night stand before he’d moved on to the next pretty woman who had caught his eye.

This was different. For a start he wanted to know everything about Arielle, and he felt protective of her. He had brought her to Fjernland after her studio had been vandalised, but he could have sent a couple of his security team to her cottage to keep an eye on her. It was odd how she had been adamant that she did not want to report the break-in to the police, Eirik remembered.

Arielle rested her head on his shoulder. ‘Mum’s body was never found. Search and rescue teams looked for days, but it was likely that she had been swept out to sea by the strong current.’

‘How is it that you love to swim in the sea after your mother drowned? You risked your life to save mine.’ Her bravery was even more astonishing now he knew what she had witnessed as a child. ‘I would have expected you to be scared of the power of the ocean.’

Her sweet smile made Eirik want to protect her from all of life’s hurts. ‘Mum believed that mermaids exist and maybe she was right,’ she said softly. ‘When I free-dive wearing my monofin I feel close to her.’

He brushed his lips over her hair. ‘What about your father? You haven’t mentioned him.’

She stiffened and pulled out of his arms. ‘I’d rather not talk about him,’ Arielle said abruptly. ‘It’s...difficult.’

Eirik vaguely recalled that she might have told him both of her parents were dead. Perhaps she had lost her father recently and found it too painful to speak about him.

He frowned. Why did he feel frustrated and hurt, dammit, because Arielle had shut him out? He moved down the bed and settled her on top of him. Framing her lovely face with his hands, he kissed the tip of her nose. Her skin was flawless apart from the tiny scar beneath her left eye. ‘How did you get this?’ he asked softly, brushing his thumb pad over the mark.

Once again, she tensed and avoided his gaze. ‘Oh, it happened years ago. I...um...tripped and banged my face against the corner of the table.’

Arielle pushed herself upright so that she was sitting astride him and circled her pelvis against his. The effect was instantaneous, and Eirik felt himself harden. ‘I can think of more enjoyable things to do in bed than talk,’ she murmured seductively.

He let her take the lead and groaned when she guided herself down onto him, taking his throbbing erection deep insider her. With her fiery curls flying around her shoulders and her green eyes darkened to mysterious pools, she was utterly irresistible as she rode him to another mind-blowing climax. But afterwards, while their limbs were still tangled and their breathing was fractured, Eirik wondered why Arielle had lied about the scar on her cheek.

The weather, like Arielle’s mood, had turned dismal. Rain lashed the promenade next to the beach, and the car splashed through puddles when Eirik turned into the courtyard in front of the Fjernland Marine Research Institute. It was Tuesday morning after the extended weekend, and they had left the mountain cabin early so that she could be at the institute in time for work. Conversation during the journey to the coast had been stilted. Eirik seemed to be absorbed in his own thoughts, and even Maks was subdued and lay on the back seat with his head between his paws.

‘I have a feeling of déjà vu,’ Arielle muttered when Eirik pulled into a parking bay, and they watched the rain beating against the windscreen. ‘You dropped me off at the institute two and a half weeks ago, and I wished you luck in your search for a wife.’

He scowled at her flippant tone. Arielle refused to let him guess that her heart felt as fragile as spun glass. ‘It is my duty to marry,’ he said curtly.

‘What would happen if you didn’t get married and have a son and heir?’ Her common sense told her to drop the subject and walk away from him with her dignity intact, but she seemed to be glued to the passenger seat.

‘The heir to the throne does not have to be male,’ he surprised her by saying. ‘If my firstborn child is a daughter she will be the future Sovereign.’

Arielle pictured Eirik holding a little girl with blonde hair and blue eyes the colour of summer skies. If he married Ida Lundberg they would have beautiful children, she thought, feeling a pang of envy.

‘To answer your question,’ he continued. ‘If I did not have a legitimate heir to ascend the throne after me, then, under the rules of the constitution, Fjernland would become a protectorate of Denmark. To put it simply, Fjernland would no longer be a principality and would lose its independent status that it gained in the tenth century.’

Eirik ran his hand over the stubble on his jaw. He hadn’t trimmed his beard for a few days and looked rakishly handsome. ‘A recent poll showed that ninety-eight per cent of the population want to be ruled by the monarchy. I will not let my parents down, or fail the Fjernlandic people,’ he said tautly.

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