Best Friend To Royal Bride. Annie Claydon
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some years. Ever since I first went to medical school.’
‘But—’
Marie bit her tongue. He’d never spoken much about his family, but she knew that he was an only child and that his parents lived in a big house in the country somewhere. There hadn’t ever been any mention of an estrangement, and Marie had always assumed he came from a normal happy family.
Now wasn’t the time to mention that this was what Alex had allowed everyone to believe. He had no chance to make things right with his father now.
‘That must have hurt you a great deal.’
He shrugged. ‘That door closed a long time ago. I came to terms with it.’
There were too many questions, piling up on top of each other like grains of sand in an hourglass. What was Alex doing here? Why had he never said anything about this before?
Maybe she should just stay silent and listen.
Alex glanced at her uncertainly and Marie motioned for him to keep talking.
‘I didn’t expect that my father would leave me anything, let alone his whole estate. But he did. I find that I have more money than I know what to do with.’
‘How much…?’
It wasn’t good manners to ask, but money had never bothered Alex all that much. If this was a life-changing amount, then that was both good news and bad. Good, because he could do the things he’d always wanted to. Bad, because he seemed so burdened by it.
‘If you include all the assets and property then it runs into something more than two billion. Less than three.’
She stared at him. That was the kind of number that Marie would never get her head around, so it was probably better not to even try.
‘And this… You’ve done all this?’ She waved her finger in a wild circle.
‘My ancestors viewed wealth as a way to gain power and more wealth. I want to spend the money a little more wisely than that.’
It was worthy. Altruistic. Right now it was about all she recognised of the Alex that she knew. The smiling, carefree soul who was in the habit of taking one day at a time had gone.
‘Wait a minute…’ A thought struck her. Had Alex been hiding all this in plain sight? ‘Alex King?’
‘Dr Alex King is who I really am. But my birth certificate says Rudolf Aloysius Alexander König.’
Suddenly she couldn’t bear it. She hadn’t even known his name? The man she’d thought of as her friend, whom she’d dared to kiss and had loved every minute of it…
Marie sprang from her seat, marching over to the window and staring out at the street. Maybe that would anchor her down, keep her feet firmly on the ground, and then she could begin to address the question of whether this really was Alex any more, or just a stranger who looked like him.
Marie wasn’t taking this well. It was almost a relief. The small number of other people he’d had to tell about this had congratulated him on his sudden and immense wealth and started to treat him as if he was suddenly something different. It was typical of Marie that her objection to the whole thing wasn’t what he’d expected. She brushed aside the money and his royal status as if they didn’t exist. All she cared about was that she hadn’t known his name.
‘King is a translation of König. Alex is my middle name…’ He ventured an explanation.
She shook her head. ‘I thought I knew you, Alex…’
There was no point in telling her that a lot of people changed their names, or that a lot of people came from unhappy families. Marie was hurt that he’d never told her about any of it before. Maybe if she’d known his father she would have understood a little better.
‘Rudolf König was the name my father gave to me to remind everyone who my family was. I wanted to make my own way in life, Marie, and to be measured by what I’ve done.’
‘Yeah. I see that.’ She was staring fixedly out of the window and didn’t turn to face him.
‘Then…?’
‘Give me a minute. I’m processing.’
Okay. Processing didn’t sound so terrible. If Marie could come to any conclusions then he’d like to hear them, because all he’d felt since he’d heard about his father’s will was that he was being dragged back into a life from which he’d previously torn himself. Money and status had soured his parents’ lives, and it already felt like it was slowly squeezing all the joy out of his.
She turned slowly, leaning back against the windowsill and regarding him thoughtfully.
‘So…it’s still Alex, is it?’ Not Your Majesty…?’
‘You don’t need to rub it in, Marie. Who the hell else do you think I know how to be?’
Her face softened and she almost smiled. It was one step towards the warmth that he craved.
‘Sorry.’ She pressed her lips together in thought. ‘Who knows about this?’
‘A few people that I know from school. No one here. But it’s not a secret. I just don’t talk about it.’
She turned to face him, her eyes full of violet fire. ‘Isn’t that what secrets are? Things you keep from your friends?’
‘I never lied.’ He heard himself snap, and took a breath. ‘I want the clinic to be about the work and not about me.’
‘It is about you, though. You built it.’
‘I facilitated it. I want people to talk about the things we do here, and talking about who I am is only going to divert attention away from that.’
Alex decided to leave aside the fact that he really didn’t want to talk about who he was, because that would be a matter of reopening old wounds.
Marie was nodding slowly. It was time to take a risk.
‘If you’re not interested in a job here you can always just walk away.’
She pursed her lips. ‘I never said I wasn’t interested.’
Good. That was a start. He knew she’d seen the possibilities that the clinic offered, and maybe it was a matter of getting her to look at those and not at him. Not at the friend who’d broken the rules and kissed her. The friend who’d never told her about where he came from.
‘This is the deal, then. This clinic is a flagship development, which is funded and run entirely by a trust I’ve set up with part of my inheritance. I don’t want it to be the only one of its kind; it’s intended that what we do here will be a model for future clinics all over the country. In order to achieve that we’ll need to attract extra funding from outside sources.’
‘You always did think big, Alex.’
He saw a flicker of excitement in her eyes. That was exactly the way he wanted to feel.
‘I want you to share that vision with me as my co-director for the whole project. This clinic and future developments as well. You’ll be able to dictate policy and do things on your own terms.’
She stared at him. ‘Me? You want me to do that?’
Marie hadn’t said no yet. He resisted the impulse to laugh and tell her that she could do anything she set her mind to doing. He was offering her the job on purely business grounds and he had to treat this conversation in that light.
‘Your professional experience in A&E and diagnostic wards makes you ideally suited to the work here, where we’re suggesting effective therapies and ways forward for patients. And you’re