Read Online A Queen for the Taking? by Kate Hewitt - Free Book Online

when it had been taken over six years ago. Leo had been twenty-four, Alyse eighteen. A single, simple kiss that had rocked the world and changed their lives for ever. And for the better now, thank God.
    ‘Although to be honest,’ Leo continued, ‘I don’t think Liana was ever really interested. It seemed as if she was humouring me, or maybe her parents, who wanted the match.’
    Or hedging her bets, perhaps, Sandro thought, just in case the black-sheep heir made a reappearance. ‘I’m happy for you, you know,’ he said abruptly. ‘For you and Alyse.’
    ‘I know you are.’
    Yet he heard a coolness in his brother’s voice, and he could guess at its source. For fifteen years they hadn’t spoken, seen each other, or been in touch in even the paltriest of ways. And this after their childhood, when they’d banded together, two young boys who had had only each other for companionship.
    Sandro knew he needed to say something of all that had gone before—and all that hadn’t. The silence and separation that had endured for so long was, he knew, his fault. He was the older brother, and the one who had left. Yet the words he knew he should say burned in his chest and tangled in his throat. He couldn’t get them out. He didn’t know how.
    This was what happened when you grew up in a family that had never shown love or emotion or anything real at all. You didn’t know how to be real yourself, as much as you craved it—and you feared that which you craved.
    And yet Leo had found love. He was real with Alyse. Why, Sandro wondered in frustration, couldn’t he be the same?
    And in the leaden weight of his heart he knew the answer. Because he was king...and he had a duty that precluded such things.

CHAPTER FOUR
    L IANA GAZED AT her reflection in the gold-framed mirror of one of the royal palace’s many guest suites. She was in a different one from the last time she’d been here six weeks ago, yet it was just as sumptuous. Then she’d come to Maldinia to discuss marriage; this time she was here for a wedding. Hers.
    ‘You’re too thin.’ Her mother Gabriella’s voice came out sharp with anxiety as she entered the room, closing the door behind her.
    ‘I have lost a little weight in the past few weeks,’ Liana said, and heard the instinctive note of apology in her voice. Everything with her parents felt like an apology, a way to say sorry over and over again. Yet she could never say it enough, and her parents never seemed to hear it anyway.
    They certainly never talked about it.
    ‘I suppose things have been a bit stressful,’ Gabriella allowed. She twitched Liana’s short veil over her shoulders and smoothed the satin fabric of the simple white sheath dress she wore.
    Her wedding to Sandro was to be a quiet affair in the palace’s private chapel, with only family in attendance. After the fairy-tale proportions of Leo and Alyse’s ceremony, and the resulting fallout, something quiet and dignified was needed. It suited Liana fine.
    She wondered what Sandro thought about it. She hadn’t seen him since she’d arrived two days ago, beyond a formal dinner where she’d been introduced to a variety of diplomats and dignitaries. She’d chatted with everyone, curtsied to the queen, who had eyed her coldly, and met Sandro’s sister, Alexa, as well as his brother, Leo, and sister-in-law, Alyse.
    Everyone—save the queen—had been friendly enough, but it had been Sandro’s rather stony silence that had unnerved her. It had occurred to her then in an entirely new and unwelcome way that this man was going to be her husband . She would live with him for the rest of her days, bear his children, serve by his side. Stupid of her not to think it all through before, but suddenly it seemed overwhelming, her decision reckless. Was she really going to say vows based on a desire to please her parents? To somehow atone for the past?
    No wonder Sandro had been incredulous. And it was too late to change her mind now.
    Gabriella