Page 66 of Claimed By the Crown Prince
He finally made it to the other side of the ballroom and stepped out into the blessedly empty corridor. But there was no one. Nothing. Acrid disappointment filled his gut.
Then he saw a flash of dark green out of the corner of his eye.Laia.
Dax followed her. She wasn’t going to escape again. He saw her then, walking fast towards an exit.
No way.
She’d stopped for a second, as if wondering which way to go, and Dax seized the opportunity. He’d caught up with her and said her name before she could move again.
He saw how she tensed and everything in him rejected it. Slowly she turned around.Por Dios. He’d missed her.
He shook his head. ‘Laia, you’ve been avoiding me for the whole day...what the hell is going on? Can’t we even be civil with each other?’
Her face went red. A sign of life. Dax welcomed it.
She said. ‘Of course. I didn’t mean for it to be like this. But, look, I have to go back to Isla’Rosa. Something has come up. An emergency. A crisis.’
She turned around again and Dax caught her arm. She pulled away jerkily. Dax gritted his jaw against the hurt. She couldn’t even bear to be touched by him.
He realised she looked very alone at that moment, and in spite of her obvious reluctance to be with him he felt protective. ‘What’s going on? Do you want me to come with you?’
She paled and backed away. ‘No way. You are literally the last person I want to come with me right now.’
Dax felt winded. All he could do was watch as Laia started walking again. She went to the exit, where a car was waiting, and got into the back. He watched it pull away.
When Dax’s brain started functioning again he wondered if he’d been deluded on the island. Had he really meant so little to her that she couldn’t bear to be around him now? Did she regret everything in spite of what she’d said?
He wanted to turn away, leave and nurse his hurt. But something stopped him. Some instinct.
In spite of Laia’s rejection she’d looked terrified. Something was going on.
Cursing himself for being such a sap, Dax got his things and arranged transport to Isla’Rosa.
When he arrived a couple of hours later he checked into a mid-range hotel, to draw less attention. Wearing a baseball cap, he left the hotel and walked around the capital city, Sant’Rosa. He was charmed by its quaint medieval streets, but he could see that it needed drastic modernisation and development.
He’d never been here before—it hadn’t been considered necessary for him to visit when Ari had—and then Dax had wanted to put Santanger behind him. So Isla’Rosa had never really been on his radar.
The imposing castle stood on a hill overlooking the town. Not unlike the palace in Santanger, albeit on a much smaller scale. Laia was up there now. Dealing with whatever was going on.
Dax cursed himself for being an idiot and went back to the hotel, vowing to leave again first thing in the morning. Clearly she wanted nothing to do with him. She’d moved on.
But when he went out for coffee the following morning all he could see were huddles of people talking in whispers. Looking worried. He saw a newspaper stand and the picture of Laia on the front page caught his eyes.
He didn’t even have to buy a copy to see the blazing headline, and when it sank in he realised what the crisis was.
And also that he wasn’t leaving Isla’Rosa any time soon.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
One day later
LAIASATATthe head of a long boardroom table in the castle in Sant’Rosa. The capital city. But that was a bit of a stretch. It was more of a big town, with a lot of its medieval infrastructure still intact, which was lovely for the tourists but not so much for a modern economy.
Her head throbbed.
About twenty men looked at her with varying expressions of shock, dismay and disgust. There was only one of compassion. From her advisor Giorgio.
He’d called her with the news at the wedding reception. The news that was going to break all over Isla’Rosa’s media. And it had. Yesterday. Luckily it didn’t seem to have filtered through to Ari and Maddi on their honeymoon.Yet.