by Dani Collins
“I just apologized. That doesn’t happen often. I suggest you accept it.”
He sighed with frustration, then said with austerity, “You have been dealt a cruel blow from life. I won’t dismiss that. But it didn’t kill you, so start learning to live with it.”
Wow. He didn’t pull any punches, did he?
“How?” she demanded in a burst of angry despair. “You’re not telling me anything I don’t know, but how do I just get over it?”
“You want to be with a man, Tiffany. You like it when I touch you. Be with me.”
He did make her feel more confident, but it would take about a hundred of these heart-to-hearts before she’d be able to face being naked in front of him.
“We could meet for breakfast,” she offered. The inside of her cheek stung and she realized she was biting it, feeling very insecure at putting herself out even this much.
“Where?” he asked.
“I assume they have a buffet or a restaurant downstairs.”
“I meant your place or mine, but I see. Yes, they have a breakfast room. Nine?”
He wasn’t making any effort to hide his disappointment, but she only confirmed, “Downstairs at nine. It’s a date.”
Ending the call, she rolled onto her back and stared at the dark ceiling. What was she doing? There was even less point in seeing him at breakfast on their last morning. They’d never see each other again after that.
Still, just thinking about seeing him made her body feel ripe and wanton. Running her hands over the hard swells of her breasts with their taut tips poking sharply against her rippling fingertips, she tried to erase the sensations nagging at her. The hunger deepened, provoking memories of Ryzard leaning on the wall, disheveled pants barely containing flesh she had memorized with her mouth, his eyes heavy lidded and voracious.
Rolling a frustrated moan into her pillow, she wished she’d said yes to the phone sex.
* * *
When she arrived in the dining room, Ryzard was standing in the entrance talking to another woman.
It was a low blow and nearly made her turn in retreat, but he lifted his hawkish mask and held out a hand to her even before he locked his gaze on her.
Stupid watches. Hers was shivering at its nearness to his, just like her to him. As she walked across, she experienced a little thrill at how good he looked in simple black pants and a white shirt open at the throat. His hair, clipped so short you could barely tell it curled, was still damp.
A dip of insecurity accosted her at the same time. The woman gesturing so passionately in front of him wore a light cover-up over a bikini that barely contained her flawless figure. Her mask was equally spare, just a sleek line from temple to temple.
Tiffany felt overdressed in her pants suit and elaborate mask as well as intrusive as she arrived, causing the woman to break midsentence.
Ryzard grasped her hand in a firm, warm grip, drawing her a step closer while continuing to give his attention to the other woman. “Please continue.”
“I—” She was obviously disconcerted by Tiffany’s arrival. Her body language changed from enticing to standoffish. “I just wonder if the sudden rumors being spread about this weekend, talk of dirty deals and Greek Mafia connections, could be true. Zeus’s reputation is important for all of us, and if he’s no better than a crook we should talk about it. Figure out what to do.”
Tiffany was a little lost, coming in late and distracted by the strength and heat of her lover. He smelled freshly showered, and his flimsy white shirt was hardly any barrier, allowing her to nearly taste the texture of his skin.
Still, being excluded niggled at her. She’d been The Family Behind Him too many times for her father, a required face in a photo, but heaven forbid she open her mouth. Being relegated to arm candy here, where she was supposed to be an equal, was the final straw.
“Who is Zeus?” Tiffany asked.
“No one knows,” the woman said, dismissing her with a patronizing jerk of her shoulder, adding, “Which is part of the problem. He should identify himself so we can decide if we want to continue associating with him.”
Tiffany followed the entreating glance the woman sent to Ryzard. She was obviously trying to pull him over to her side for reasons other than any real concern about the club.
“That seems hypocritical, doesn’t it?” Ryzard said calmly. “When we keep our own identities secret?”
“I have to agree. It’s quite possible to have a wrong impression about someone until you know them better,” Tiffany said with a significant look upward to Ryzard.
“Well, we don’t keep any secrets from Zeus, do we?” the woman insisted. She wavered with indecision a moment as her gaze touched on his hand holding Tiffany’s so possessively. Then she made a noise of impatience and muttered, “I’m just saying,” before she walked away.
Tiffany raised her brows, not that Ryzard could see them and appreciate her pique at coming upon a woman hitting on him so blatantly.
“Good morning,” he said before swooping to kiss her.
She stiffened, but he took his time, working swirls of reawakened passion down through her torso and into her belly until she softened into his loose embrace. When he lifted his head, he said, “I’m starving. You?”
Food was the last thing on her mind, but she followed him through the indoor/outdoor dining room to a table near the lagoon-shaped pool. They accepted coffee and placed their orders before she lost her ability to stay silent and asked, “Do you pick up women at all these things?”
Setting down his coffee, he regarded her with a hard look. “Your pretty blue eyes have gone quite emerald, draga.”
“Who is she?”
“That’s a question I can’t answer. Members do not out other members. That’s why I didn’t introduce you.”
She narrowed her eyes. “If I had looked at my watch, would I have seen her nickname?”
He shrugged. “Possibly. Mine is turned off except for you. She only spoke to me because we happened to meet at the door and have spoken before.”
“About?” she prompted.
“It’s confidential.”
“Have you seen her away from these things?”
“Also confidential.”
“So you won’t tell me anything.”
“This is how the club works. That’s why it works. But I will tell you that I have never had a sexual relationship with her.”
“And she would never admit to one if you had because members don’t out other members. I’m just supposed to trust that you’re telling me the truth.”
“Yes,” he said firmly. “I do expect you to trust me.”
Her gaze dropped to the button he’d only half pushed through its hole in the middle of his chest.
“If you had let me make love to you last night, you would not be feeling so insecure this morning,” he added.
Her heart skipped at that, but she only said, “I’m not insecure. I don’t know you.”
“Exactly.”
Oh, he was infuriating. And sexy. Her eyes were eating up the way his shirt was perfectly tailored across the line of his shoulders and hugged the strength in his arms. Her fingers itched to unbutton the whole shirt and expose his very promising chest again.
It’s just hormones, she tried to insist to herself, not wanting to succumb to feelings that were a lot more complex than mere lust.
“I’m jealous of her for being pretty,” she admitted in an undertone, ashamed that she was this shallow, but, “I used to be and it gave me confidence. Don’t deny that being physically attractive is powerful,” she warned with a point of her finger. “My mother still turns heads and uses it every day. And she places so much importance on looks.”
The weight of that knowledge slumped her into her chair.
�
�Sometimes I wonder if that’s why she chose Dad and not Paul Sr. He wasn’t ugly by any stretch, but Dad’s got that Mr. President, all-American look. Mom wanted the best-looking kids in the state and she got them. Now, when she looks at me...”
Time to shut up. Her throat was closing and it was impossible to fix.
“Your mother sounds very superficial.” His tone of quiet observation told her he’d heard and weighed every word she’d said. Being such a tight focus of his concentration made her feel oddly vulnerable and safe at the same time. It made her think he genuinely cared about what she was revealing.
“She’s the wife of a politician. Her world revolves around how things look. You’re judged on everything in that position. Looks matter.”
“I suppose,” he allowed with a negligent tilt of his head. “Did she push your father into politics?”
“No, it was something he wanted, but maybe that’s the real reason she married him.” Tiffany considered her parents’ marriage a moment. “Dad is a good father, a super husband, a really good man, but he aspires to be a Great Man and Mom aspires to be the wife of one. She set me up to...” want? demand? “expect the same thing.”
“Was your husband planning to go into politics?”
“If our parents had anything to do with it, yes.” She curled her mouth in mild distaste.
“You didn’t want him to.”
Once again she was able to speak a truth to him that she couldn’t say aloud to anyone else.
“I honestly didn’t think I had a choice. But I’ve seen how that life has affected my mother over the years. Every word she says is guarded. Half the time she’s Dad’s mistress. His work is his wife. Our family day at the fair was always a photo op with Dad glad-handing everyone except us. He couldn’t buy me the candy floss I wanted. A taffy apple was a better message.” She sighed, still more bewildered than bitter. “My life was staged to look like the life I wanted, but we weren’t allowed to actually live it that way.”
“Another reason why I will never marry. Too much sacrifice on a family’s part.”
“Another’ reason? You don’t intend to marry? Don’t you want children? That’s the one thing I looked forward to when I agreed to marry. I wanted to give my kids the childhood I hadn’t had.”
As the words left her mouth, she realized how leading they sounded. As if this was a conflict they’d have to resolve before proceeding with their relationship. She never talked this openly, except maybe to her therapist, but who else did she talk to these days? She was out of practice with hiding her real thoughts and feelings.
“You can still have a family,” he said with a calm blink of his eyes within the holes of his mask. “Why couldn’t you?”
Behind her own mask, she burned with self-consciousness, her gaze fixed to his. Her finding that kind of happiness wasn’t as easy as he made it sound, and he knew it. With her teeth bared in a nonsmile, she said, “Why don’t you want to marry?”
“I’m married to my country,” he stated. “As you said, my work is my wife. Everything I do, I do for my people.”
She tried to ignore the dull pain that lodged in her chest. That was good, wasn’t it? She admired patriotism, and that certainly kept things simple between them. No false expectations.
“How did you become, um, president?” she asked, faltering because it was an impulsive question that sounded a lot more loaded than she’d meant it to.
“I was elected,” he said coolly.
She waited while their meals were delivered, then said, “I meant, how did people come to know who you are and want to vote for you? I’m sure it was covered in the news, but as you’ve said, that’s usually slanted, and quite frankly I’ve had other things on my mind for the last few years. I missed how it all happened. I’m really asking what drew you back to your country and into representing it.”
“My mother was killed in a random attack. I went back for the funeral and my father was determined to fight. I couldn’t leave him to it. I was angry with myself for not returning sooner, for thinking someone else would sort out the trouble and I could return when there was peace.”
“You’re either part of the solution, or part of the problem,” Tiffany murmured. “I’m sorry about your mom.” Was that whom he’d been talking about yesterday, she wondered, when he’d held her in shared grief? “At least your father is safe.”
“He died, as well. Fighting.”
“Oh. I’m so sorry.”
He waved that away with a lift of two fingers. “I believe he wanted it that way. To be with my mother.”
“Still...” She swallowed, ready to cry for him because he seemed so withdrawn and contained. Tears would never dare to seep from his bleak eyes. “I’m sure he would be very proud of you for what you’ve achieved.”
“Once you’ve paid the price of a loved one, you don’t stop until the job is done. I managed to bring enough of our various factions together to throw over our corrupt government and campaigned on a promise of peace. There is still a very long road. The biggest challenge is keeping the country from falling back into fighting, but we had some corruption charges work through the courts recently that gave people confidence. Small things like that matter.”
She nodded, tipping a little further into the primordial world of deeper feelings for him. Genuine admiration. Awe. Empathy.
Careful, Tiffany.
“Shall we take the art walk?” he asked when they finished eating.
“I didn’t know they had one.” She looked around, expecting artists with pads and a jumble of still lifes and caricatures had arrived to line the stones near the pool.
“They set it up inside to avoid sun and humidity damage.”
“Really? What are we talking about? Priceless artifacts? Da Vinci?”
“If something like that is on the market, absolutely. Most of it is contemporary, but they’re all good investments.”
Moments later, they entered a gallery of comic book art competing with old-world landscapes and elegantly carved wooden giraffes. She fell in love with a stained glass umbrella, mostly because it was so ridiculously useless.
“How much is it?” she demanded, searching for a tag.
“The auction is in a few hours.”
“We’ll come back?”
“If you like.”
“I want to use it as a parasol against the sun.” It had to weigh fifty pounds. It was the most impractical object ever created and she had to own it.
“You have a beautiful laugh,” he remarked, tugging her into a space behind a giant sculpture of ladies’ shoes. “I’d like to see you smiling under this umbrella of yours, your face painted by the colored glass. I’d like to see you sunbathe naked under it,” he added in a deeper tone that seemed to stroke beneath her skin and leave a tingle.
At the same time his words put a pang in her heart. She wished...
He bent to kiss her, pulling her into his aroused body as if they were the only two people in the room. A second later, as his tongue invaded her mouth, she forgot everything except the feel of him, shoulders to thighs, branding her.
“I want you in my bed,” he told her huskily, as he found her bare earlobe and drew it between his lips.
Her body felt as if it swelled to fill his arms, breasts aching, all her skin thin and sensitized. Willpower and self-protection fell away as she confided in a whisper, “I want that, too.”
He lifted his head. His possessive hands stilled and firmed on her. “Yes?”
Her heart stalled. He wouldn’t accept any more waffling. She swallowed, still terrified by the idea of being naked in front of him, but she would hate herself forever if she refused him out of sheer cowardice. With breath held, she gave an abbreviated nod.
His smile should have alarmed her. It bordered on grim, but a light of excitement behin
d his eyes made her tremble with anticipation. He really did want her.
Blood rushed in her ears so she barely heard him speak to a petite q as they made their way back to the main floor.
“Early checkout?” she repeated as he led her through the door the petite q released with a thumbprint and security override card.
“Gold membership has its privileges,” he said drily. “But they’ll only let me leave early. They won’t allow us back in.”
“Oh, but what about my things—?” She paused on the ramp down to the marina, where several eye-popping luxury yachts bobbed like toys in a bathtub.
“Our luggage would be packed for us regardless. That’s the level of service we pay for, Tiffany.” He waved and called something in Bregnovian to a young man as they approached a catamaran. It was called the Luiza and had an orange sail wrapped around its single mast. The body was such a brilliant white she had to squint.
“We’ll remain docked a few hours yet,” Ryzard said in answer to a question from his crewman. “Unless we have to move to let someone out.” He nodded at the boat they’d traversed to reach this one. “Tell the captain we’re aboard and will order lunch when we’re ready, but we don’t wish to be disturbed.”
Tiffany blushed behind her mask, thinking Ryzard was making it incredibly obvious what they were about to do. He didn’t seem concerned, however, as he led her through the interior salon of sleek curved lines, the colors a soothing mix of bone and earth tones. Panoramic windows slanted over the lounge and bar, bringing splashes of turquoise water and cerulean sky into the room. Bypassing a short staircase that led to an elevated pilothouse of some kind, he brought her down a half flight of steps into the master stateroom.
“This is amazing,” she couldn’t help blurt. No stranger to the finer things in life, she was awestruck by the simple elegance and understated masculinity in the surprisingly spacious room. Drawers and cupboards in blond teak lined the space below the windows that provided a one-eighty view. A door led to an exterior deck on this side and into a well-organized head on the other. One curved radius corner of the room was a scrupulously efficient work space, the other a rounded sofa that looked to a flat-screen television set into the wall offset from the bed.