by Sandra Hyatt
And the heat she’d thought she’d tamped down…stirred. “This is all some kind of game to you, isn’t it? Like chess and you see me as a pawn.”
“That’s one way of looking at it. But I’d have to see you as the queen, don’t you think? Do you play?”
“Not if I can avoid it. Chess is more Adam’s game. I used to play with him but I didn’t look far enough ahead and kept falling into the traps he’d set.” The stray notes of the string section of the orchestra retuning violins and cellos sounded. “Do you play?” Did he set traps? Was she walking unwittingly into one?
“Occasionally. It’s not really my thing, either. Takes too long.”
“You played with your brothers?”
He nodded, offering nothing further. For some reason his upbringing, his brothers and the relationship they had intrigued her. Probably because she knew it would be so utterly different from her own experience of family life—brought up in a castle, largely by nannies and then a private all-girls school. The lights dimmed and the curtain rose.
“What about your parents?” He’d mentioned brothers several times but never a mother or father.
“Shh. It’s starting.”
“And you don’t want to miss a thing?”
His lips stretched into a grin as he slid a little lower in his seat.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting comfortable.”
The delicate strains of flute music twirled through the theater. “Don’t you dare fall asleep,” she said quietly.
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“You might not dream of it but you might actually do it.”
He smiled, a glimpse of white teeth. “Help me stay awake then.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Too innocent.” His smile widened as he raised an eyebrow and his gaze dipped to her legs, and the glimpse of thigh revealed by her dress.
Rebecca tugged her dress down a little. “Be serious.”
“I was. I’ll be fine. Just hold my hand.”
As the dancers pirouetted onto the stage she slipped her hand into the one he held out for her, too enamored as always by that simple touch, so different than any other.
Logan drove back to the palace in silence. Floodlit gravel crunched beneath the wheels as he pulled to a stop in front of a discreet entrance to the towering west wing. Discreet it might be—but only in comparison to the main entrance. The armed, uniformed guards at the door were a whole new spin on Daddy waiting up in the porch rocker with a shotgun across his lap. Daddy might not be here in person but his eyes and ears and his firepower were. Logan grinned. He’d had his share of encounters with protective daddies. None quite of the caliber of Rebecca’s father, though. But he’d never been one to back down in the face of a challenge.
Making sure the doors were locked—he didn’t want an enthusiastic valet, or overly suspicious guard interrupting—he turned to her. Read and relished the uncertainty in her eyes. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that she may not have had the same level of experience as he did. Conflicting urges surprised him. The urge to protect her vied with the urge to show her a world he suspected she knew little about, to show her things about herself she might not even know. And, of course, there was the urge to explore further what they’d begun on the steps of the plane.
She averted her gaze. “Thank you.”
“Thank you?” So polite. So royal. So challenging. Logan slid his hand behind her neck. Lustrous hair caressed the back of his hand, silky skin lay beneath his fingers. A world of sensation at his fingertips.
If they had, as she’d suggested, taken a royal car they would have had the entire drive back and the entire comfortable width of the Bentley’s backseat.
She glanced at him but then looked back out the windshield, her delicate throat moving as she swallowed. “For coming to the ballet. I know it wasn’t—”
He did what he’d wanted to do the entire drive home, the entire evening actually, since the moment he’d first seen her in that dress. He dropped his other hand, slipped it through the split in her gown, the split that had worked its way to midthigh. He touched sleek skin only a little above her knee and still had to suppress his groan even as he enjoyed her breathless gasp.
She turned to him, her eyes wide with surprise and something more. Curiosity? Temptation?
She opened her mouth and he covered her lips with his before she could say anything. Captured her words, her breath. She was too full of questions and protests and analysis. Too reluctant to trust in the obvious. The simple. And the obvious and the simple were the heat that flamed right here and right now as his tongue found and teased hers. As he felt her tentative return exploration. Not just her tongue but the hand that snaked around his neck, pulling him closer, threading into his hair.
Kissing her was like kissing a dream, effortless perfection, no awareness of anything other than their simple joining and sharing, mouths that fit as though made only for each other. She sighed into him, deepening the kiss. Drugging him with her taste, her scent.
They had something.
Something far more potent than he’d even thought to consider.
She was far more potent to him than he’d thought to consider. He, who liked to think through all the possible scenarios, had bought in to the carefully constructed portrayal of her as someone without spontaneity, without passion. The Ice Princess.
How wrong he’d been.
The Ice Princess currently had him heading toward fever point. And it wasn’t just him. She moved beneath him, arching and pressing. Her body soft and yielding against his and yet straining to get closer. Her mouth beneath his, supple and seeking, her leg beneath his palm, moving ever so slightly away from the other, inviting access. Another gasp escaped her as he slid his hand farther up the soft skin, his thumb finding the thin silken barrier, pressing against it. He wanted it all—her surprise, her passion. The taste of her, the feel of her. Only after lifting her hips to press against him in return did she seem to realize what she was doing. Her legs snapped back together, trapping his hand in the velvet warmth between them in an exquisite prison.
Logan lifted his head. The shock and desire in her parted lips and in her wide eyes reflected his own.
Who knew?
He lifted a corner of his mouth in as much of a smile as he could manage right now. While his heart still pounded and blood still rushed in his veins.
“How did you do that?” she whispered.
“That wasn’t me, sweetheart, that was you.” He curved his palm where it lay blissfully snared against her thigh. Then, regretting the necessity, he withdrew it.
“No.”
He nodded.
“No.” She refused to believe. “That was you. It had to be. Because if it was me it would have…”
“Would have what?”
“Happened before,” she said with a confused frown. “I have to go.” She reached for the door handle.
“Leave it. I’ll get your door.” He couldn’t tell her that the plunge into the conflagration that just touching his lips to hers had caused was new and different for him, too. He’d been there before. But not like this, blindsided by the chemistry, insensible to anything else.
“It’s okay.” She raised her hand. About to signal a doorman? “One of the—”
“I’ll get it.” He cut her off. “It’s what I do when I bring a woman home from a date.”
“Oh.”
Though she was like no other woman and this was like no date he’d ever been on before. He was out and walking around the front of the car before she could change her mind. Opening her door he reached for her. She didn’t take his hand. “Afraid of me, Princess?”
She straightened to her full height. Even in her heels she was only somewhere between his chin and his nose. But somehow she managed to look down her nose. “Yes, Logan. I think I am.” A gentle breeze swept a tendril of hair across her lips. She reached for it before he could and tucked it behind
her ear, denying him that excuse of touching her further.
Her candor surprised him. He’d expected her to bluff her way out with royal composure. Not to admit that she was unsettled. Afraid of him. He reached for the hands she’d kept from him. “Don’t be.” Soon they would be someplace where they had time to explore what sizzled between them. Where he had time to explore her.
“I don’t see how I can’t be. That…” She inclined her head toward the car, the jerky movement a far cry from her normal gracefulness. “That. You. What happened. The way I forgot about everything.”
“That’s what’s supposed to happen when you kiss someone.” Admittedly it didn’t always. And almost never so completely and so quickly.
“In books.”
“In life.” There was a faint tremor to the hands he held. Again the conflict. Soothe away the tremors or make her tremble all over? For him.
“Not to me.”
“Ever?”
She shook her head. Her eyelids dropped, shielding her gaze. In the distance the tower clock chimed.
That it hadn’t happened before, but had happened with him, pleased him inordinately.
“I stay in control. It’s who I am. It’s everything.” She said the words with a vehemence that was perhaps meant to convince herself as well as him.
He waited until she looked back at him, caught and held her gaze. So serious, so wary. “I can respect that. I like control, too. But there are times when it’s overrated and times when it’s just plain wrong.” He dropped his voice. “Like when making love.” Her eyelids lowered. And he knew that, like him, she, too, was imagining what that might be like between them. He’d never expected things to get this far this fast between them, like fireworks bursting into life at the touch of a match, flaming gloriously, belying a simple exterior.
She took a step back from him, gave a small shake to her head, but tellingly left her hands in his and her eyes on his face—searching for something. Confirmation, reassurance, promise? He didn’t know which or how much of any he could give her. He just knew that against reason and judgment he wanted—almost desperately—to make love with her. And when they did there would be nothing controlled about it.
Dropping one hand, he led her to her door and she turned to him. “Good night.” She was struggling to put back in place the barriers they’d broken through tonight. She might not know it but they were broken for good. Some fences couldn’t be mended.
“Good night? You’re not inviting me in?” He kept his tone light, teasing. He didn’t want to frighten her with the sudden intensity of his desire for her, and he didn’t want her to realize his weakness for her. She still had some figuring out to do. For that matter, if he was sensible, so did he.
The crown prince’s warning and his concerns for his daughter rang in Logan’s ears. If they took this further the potential for hurt grew exponentially. And the last thing he wanted to do was hurt her.
“No.” Her eyes darted to the various staff standing discreet distances away, and doing their best to appear invisible. “It wouldn’t be appropriate.”
He leaned in and brushed his lips over hers. Kissed her jaw once. Then whispered in her ear, even as he inhaled one last breath of her scent and spoke on impulse, “No. I’d make sure it was anything but appropriate.”
Six
Rebecca finally had it figured out by the time she finished her shower the next morning. She ought to have—she’d spent enough hours tossing and turning through the night thinking of Logan and their…situation. His kisses and what they did to her. She dried herself off, hopping as she patted the towel beneath her foot. He was so unlike any other man she’d known that he kept her off balance.
Planting her feet firmly on the cool marble she looked sternly in the mirror, willing conviction and strength into her expression. Sometimes you just had to look like you were in control to convince other people you were and even to believe it yourself. It wasn’t, however, a strategy that was working today.
Because of the unpredictable impact Logan had on her thought processes, on her senses and even on her body, she would have to keep him at a distance emotionally. Which shouldn’t be too hard because he didn’t strike her as the sort to encourage deep emotions.
She dropped the towel and reached for the body lotion. In their remaining weeks together, an insistent voice whispered, maybe he could teach her…things, show her…things. Things that weren’t deep and meaningful or emotional, but things that were shallow and physical. Things no one had ever thought to show a princess and things a princess had never thought, or dared to ask. They would have their scheduled dates and there would be private moments.
Like last night.
She could ask him to…tutor her.
She smoothed the scented lotion on her legs and remembered the touch of Logan’s palm on her thigh in the darkness. Gently abrasive and fiercely seductive. Banishing the recollection she pulled silk underwear on—and was reminded again.
She caught her reflection, the uncertainty on her face, in the full-length mirror. She turned to the side, stood straighter. It was a long time since she’d really looked at herself. She wasn’t tall and willowy like the model girlfriends her brother dated or the type of women Logan had gravitated toward when she’d watched him socially. But there was nothing overtly wrong with her, nothing that makeup and well-tailored clothes couldn’t compensate for. And she had to hope that within the confines of their agreement, what she could offer him in return was enough.
She pulled her hair back into a ponytail and examined the effect. Maybe she could pretend for a time to be normal, to be the type of woman a man like him, who, despite phenomenal financial success, still enjoyed life’s simple pleasures, might go out with.
Because clearly the woman she actually was, a princess whose life was governed by rules and protocol, was not that type of woman.
She tried to imagine herself in jeans and a T-shirt.
She’d always been curious about what life outside the confines of her role might be like. Logan, more than any other man she knew, could give her a taste of that. If in doing so she kept her father’s matchmaking at bay and helped Logan achieve what he wanted in San Philippe, then it was, as he’d called it, a win-win situation.
Her phone rang. Logan’s number showed on the screen. As if she’d conjured him. Had he been thinking of her?
“I need to see you again,” he said when she answered. “Soon.”
Her heart gave a girlish flutter at his use of the word need. Ridiculous. She wasn’t a teenager. She was supposed to be mature and dignified. At all times. Rebecca looked away from the bright hope in her reflection. Away from the fact that she wore only her underwear while she was speaking to him. A concept that seemed almost scandalous and, well, just a little bit exciting. As were his words.
“We could go out to dinner tonight,” she suggested.
“It needs to be something your father will be present at.”
The glimmering bubble of delusion burst. Rebecca turned away from the mirror. “Ah.”
“I have an unscheduled meeting with leBlanc Industries next week. And one of the members of the board of directors and the main opponent to leBlanc signing with me will be there. He’s an ardent royalist believing firmly in tradition and connections. If I’ve been seen with you and your father, it’ll help my cause.”
She was a means to an end for Logan. She had to remember that. This was business for him. “He’s careful about being seen to sanction individuals.”
“But he’d do it for you?”
“He might, yes.” He would if she asked.
“I’m not asking for an audience with him, just to be seen with you, at something he’s at.”
This was their agreement. Rebecca pushed aside her disappointment and mentally sifted through what she could remember of her schedule, specifically events at which her father would also be present. “There’s not much coming up that you could attend.”
“I don’t care what
it is. It just needs to be soon.”
Walking through to her bedroom, she called up her schedule on her organizer. “There is one thing on this Thursday afternoon, and it’s semipublic so my father won’t be too concerned about you being there,” she said hesitantly, “but I don’t know that it’s your kind of thing.”
“Whatever it is. Count me in.”
“Thank you. I think.” Logan spoke the words through partially gritted teeth and Rebecca smiled.
He sat by her side under the white silk canopy shading the temporary stage. A “new rose” walk in the San Philippe botanical gardens was being dedicated today and each of the seven rose breeders who’d developed one of the feature roses in the walk had been invited to explain the genesis and naming of each flower. They were passionate about their craft and their blooms. And each one of them strove to outdo the others, to demonstrate his or her depth of skill and knowledge, part science, part art, part magic.
But all seven of them speaking, it was too much, even for her. Most of the guests did their best to look riveted but many were fidgeting. And those were just the ones Rebecca could see from her elevated position. Doubtless there were those fighting sleep in the back rows warmed by the sun and lulled by the speakers.
Which reminded her of Logan. Worried, she glanced at him. His eyes were open though a little glazed. Sensing her scrutiny, he leaned closer, his shoulder brushing against hers. His scent tempting, beguiling, making her want to close her eyes and inhale deeply. “What are you thinking about?” she asked.
“I was wondering how the Cubs will do this season.”
Figured he wouldn’t be contemplating the subtleties of rose breeding. Not that she blamed him. She’d like to see a baseball game one day. See what all the fuss was about. She imagined sitting next to Logan at a game as opposed to the opening of a rose walk, and didn’t need any special knowledge to know it would be an entirely different experience, he would be a different man. Keyed up, sitting forward in his seat. “If it keeps you from snoring I guess it’s a good thing.”