“You’d like to get your hands on that house?”
“Are you kidding me? I’d be in line at midnight, the first one,” she said. “I’d probably run to the back of the house and work my way forward. After all, everyone else would be busily gnawing away at the front and I’d have all that back end to myself.”
Adrian leaned back in his seat and stared at her in the dark. “You seem to have given this some thought.”
“Not really,” Emma said. “It’s the same strategy as at an amusement park. When they open, I begin backwards and ride the roller coasters at the far end, because most people start out toward the front, and then they’re stuck in long lines immediately, whereas I can then ride and ride and ride for a while before people work their way to the back. I figure the same thing for gorging on your cookie mansion. So tell me, is there lots of candy with it?”
Adrian nodded his head vigorously. “So much candy. Once when I was a boy, I had a stomach ache for two days afterward, I ate so many marshmallows and so much chocolate.”
“Yummm…chocolate and marshmallows. What perfection. Throw it in a mug and heat it up with a candy cane and I’m golden.”
“I take it you have a sweet tooth?”
“Sweet tooth? You don’t know the half of it. I have a sweet mouth. Or sweet face. Maybe sweet body. I can’t get enough of the stuff.”
“Sweet face, indeed,” Adrian whispered.
“Did you just say something insulting?” Emma asked as they pulled up to the next home, which was blasting Christmas carols in beat to a throbbing light show projected against the wall of the house.
“Hardly,” he said.
“C’mon! What’d you say?” She chucked him in the arm like she would a brother who was teasing her.
“Nothing!”
“Of course you said something. What was it?”
Adrian sighed loudly. “If you must know, I said you have a sweet face, okay? I agreed with you. And if you want, I’ll throw in that you have a sweet body as well. Are you happy now?”
Emma squinted her eyes at him. “Are you teasing me?”
Adrian shook his head, bemused and irritated all at once. “Do I look like I’m teasing you?” He reached out his hand toward her chin and with just the tips of his fingers tilted her face toward his. “You have a beautiful face, Emma. One I’m growing to like quite a bit, thank you.” He leaned forward and gave her the tiniest kiss on her forehead.
Emma blinked at him, not knowing how to respond to his sweet gesture. On the one hand, was this a sort of “just friends” thing, with a perfectly platonic peck on the forehead? Or was he testing her, reaching out to see if she reciprocated his feelings. Did she? The prince who packs? That stunning shirtless chest? The golden-boy smile? How could she not?
Suddenly Emma could no longer deny that she had it bad, which wasn’t good. She couldn’t crush on Adrian. She was charged with keeping him under the radar for a few days, nothing more. After that she’d never see the guy again. Well, maybe she’d see his ten-page wedding spread in People after he succumbed to his mother’s pressure and married Serena. Serena—the name stirred the acid in her stomach. What a complete rhymes-with-witch. Why did she get all the luck of being entitled to become the officially sanctioned Mrs. Prince Adrian? Which made Emma realize she knew little to nothing about Adrian, including his last name. Clearly she would not be a candidate to marry him — she didn’t even know his surname.
Adrian had fixed his eyes on Emma’s, which was making her squirm. Suddenly she remembered she needed to respond to his compliment. She was so busy being a complete doofus about this situation she was going to be rude on top of it.
“Oh, God, thank you,” she said. “I mean, oh, God, I forgot to say thank you. Not ‘Oh, God, thank you.’ I don’t want you to think I’m like praying to God or anything for what you just did. Nor do I want you to think I was so exceedingly thankful to you because I never get compliments. Oh, God, not that I get a ton of compliments. I mean, I don’t, but I’m not a total loser. I’m just not on anybody’s radar, I guess—”
“Emma?” Adrian brushed some hair away from her eyes, still staring at her, not letting his eyes leave hers.
“You probably think I’m a certifiable lunatic.” She babbled on. “Poor Emma, can’t even accept a compliment, she’s so unaccustomed to anyone paying her one.”
Adrian raked his fingers gently through her hair. “I was thinking nothing of the sort. I think you’re rather charming, in a nutty sort of way. And I think it’s refreshing that you don’t soak in flattery like a thirsty houseplant demanding water. There’s something to be said for someone being completely unaffected by attention.”
Emma snorted. Lovely sound, that. “It’s not that I’m unaffected,” she said. “It’s more that I’m just uncomfortable with people singling me out for things. Maybe it’s a side effect of being on the back end of a camera: I’m used to not being noticed. I hide behind my equipment, I suppose. So if someone puts me front and center, I honestly don’t know what to do.”
Adrian affectionately tweaked the tip of her nose. “It’s what’s most charming about you, Emma. You’re totally you. No pretense, no ego. I’ve been with women who shamelessly fish around for the second compliment the very minute they get the first one.”
“Yep, that’s me, good old Emma, estranged from even the possibility of a compliment. It bounces off of me with the power of my flattery-rejection force field. I deflect it like a superhero dispels bullets.”
Adrian kept staring at her, compounding her discomfort tenfold. “You are an interesting bird,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone quite like you. So different from the women who show up on my doorstep.”
“Women show up on your doorstep?” Emma said, smiling. “Don’t you have palace guards to take them away to the dungeon? Maybe a spare guillotine lying around so you can lop off their—”
Adrian shook his head and then took her face between his hands and pulled her toward him. “I’m not quite sure what is possessing me to do this,” he said, leaning in even closer. “Part of me thinks I must be mad, but the other part of me thinks I must be mad about you.”
With that he settled his warm lips on hers, pressing softly against hers as he pulled her closer to him. Emma let out a quiet groan, wrestling with whether to join in the fun or resist. It was sheer folly to think this could go anywhere at all, but he was right here, and those blue eyes, the dimples when he smiled, so charming, so Prince Charming, so—
“Wait! What am I doing?” she said with a start, halfway pushing away from him. “I can’t kiss you! You’re a prince. I’m a commoner. An American one at that. This has no future whatsoever, and I can’t engage in going-nowhere-fast activities like this that are totally counterproductive and so completely out of character—”
Adrian pulled her closer again, this time his tongue reaching out and grazing the tip of her lips. "Shhhh,” he implored her. “Maybe you shouldn’t think so much, and instead, let’s just be, okay? It’s just me, and you and these giant air-filled Christmas decorations enjoying a quiet—with the exception of the confounded air pumps and blasting holiday tunes—moment. Let’s not spoil it with thoughts about now or later, shall we?”
At that Emma let out a sigh and released the tension in her body that held her tight like a bow ready to launch an arrow far off into the ocean. And with it she melted just a little bit into his grip, opening her mouth to him as he tilted his head just enough to fit perfectly to her lips. Outside she could hear the dulcet strains of a rapper chanting, “Give up the dough on Christmas, yo,” oddly juxtaposed with the huge house blasting the song. But Emma barely heard the noise through the sounds inside the car of his breathing and her gasping and a few moans and a groan or two and the sounds of their tongues dancing in unison as they explored one another for the first time.
Adrian’s hands slipped from her face and worked their way down her body and oh, right there, yes, oh, yes, Emma’s mind was chantin
g silently to him as he tried to lean across the gear shift of her car in an attempt to gain some leverage and access and all those good things one wants when one is trying to get to know someone just a little bit better while enjoying the local color. Emma’s hands glanced across a few of Adrian’s spare parts, and she realized the rumors about what he was packing just might well be true. Don’t get your hopes up, girl. He’s a look-don’t-touch guy for you. But damn, she’d be thinking about that package for the next umpteen years if she had any say over it.
Just as Adrian was gaining a toehold against the gearshift and his hands had started landing on Emma’s most prime real estate, they heard a loud rap on the window. Emma gasped and jumped at the unexpected interruption. They both looked up, startled, only to realize the windows were completely steamed up and they couldn’t even tell who the damned killjoy was who’d stopped their most important forward momentum at such an inconvenient time.
“Oh, my God, I feel like it’s eleventh grade all over again with Randy Michener back behind Dogwood Park,” Emma groaned.
“Should I know what you mean by that?” Adrian asked, wiping his lips with his shirtsleeve.
“Hell, no,” she said. “Bad boyfriend number three, I believe he was. It was early days, still, well before I realized that all males were evil incarnate. Sadly, I was hot to trot for Randy but Randy was looking for just one thing from me and I wasn’t putting out. At least not as far as he’d expected. We were making out in the back seat of his father’s mid-life crisis Mustang and darned if the windows weren’t steamed up just like this, and then we heard someone pounding on the window and—”
There was another knock, this time even harder. Emma sat up fast, straightened out her mussed-up clothing and flattened her tangled hair, then wiped a sight line across the driver’s side window, only to see a nosy cop staring in at them.
“Oh, man, it’s Randy Michener, redux,” she moaned. “What is it with me and The Man?”
“‘The Man?’” Adrian asked as he tried to make himself look less obviously in the throes of hot and bothered teeny-bopper make-out session behavior, hoping the dark would adequately hide the bulge in his brand new surfer-boy pants.
“The cops. PoPo. Men in blue,” she said, as if that made more sense. “Though I guess for you, men in uniform are usually at your beck and call, so they never would threaten your moves, even if you were underage in the back seat of a car with some girl with her shirt half off and your hand up her skirt.”
“Believe me, I was working on that,” he practically sobbed back at her, dismayed at this completely unfair make-out-us interruptus.
“Excuse me while I get this. And how about you act completely innocent so they don’t run an identity check on you. And don’t say a word. That accent will arouse more suspicion than we need to deal with.”
“As if we need any more arousal around her than we already have,” he said. Emma just rolled her eyes at him while she wiped lipstick smudges away from her mouth with the back of her hand.
She pushed her window button to make it go down. “Officer? Can I help you?”
He peered in with suspicion, no doubt assuming it was a couple of fourteen-year-olds, surprised at their comparatively stately age. “Some neighbors noticed you loitering and saw the car rocking and called us to check up on what was going on. I think they were worried there was some sort of struggle happening inside.”
Emma blushed, grateful no one could see her crimson-stained cheeks in the dark. The car was rocking? Unbelievable. Seems she couldn’t even discreetly make a fool of herself, and instead had to act like an oversexed, hormonally charged beer wench or something. “Sorry, sir. I’m afraid we got a little carried away. ’Tis the season and all that.” She shrugged her shoulders and held her hands palm-side up in a what’re ya gonna do gesture, trying to make light of the situation so he’d leave her the hell alone in her shame.
The cop paused for a minute, aiming a blinding flashlight into the far recesses of her vehicle, peering more closely, ensuring nothing untoward was going on inside her car. Well, nothing more untoward than they all knew had been happening in there, but at least it was between two consenting adults.
“I’d suggest you move along, ma’am, maybe get a room,” the cop said, nodding toward Adrian as well.
“Absolutely, officer,” she said, mortified, quickly pulling on her seatbelt and getting ready to peel out of there as soon as he stepped one foot away from them, silently muttering get a room under her breath, appalled at herself.
The cop tipped his hat toward her. “Have a good evening,” he said, dusting his hands off like he’d completed his work there. Emma tried hard not to cringe and instead probably looked like she had bad gas.
As soon as he was a safe enough distance from her car, Emma took off like a bat out of hell.
Chapter Ten
“THAT’LL teach me for behaving like a, like a, a, a—”
“An insatiably adorable and surprisingly sexy rescuer of wayward royalty?” Adrian asked, filling in the blanks.
Emma’s jaw dropped open for a split second. “I was going to say more like a dog in heat,” she said. “But your version sounds far more upstanding, thanks.”
“My pleasure,” he said, emphasizing the word.
She rolled her eyes at the innuendo.
“No, really. My great pleasure.”
Emma groaned, yet again. “Adrian, that was a foolish mistake on my part. We can’t do that. I’m in charge of keeping you out of the public eye for a few days. That’s it. In no way am I supposed to be your, your girl-toy while we do so.”
“Girl-toy?”
“It’s the opposite of boy-toy. Sorry, it’s the only terminology I could come up with on such short notice. Pardon me, but I’m a little under the gun here.”
“You really would have been under the gun, if I’d have had a few more minutes to get us situated,” Adrian said.
“Was that a sexual reference?”
“Do you want it to be one?”
“Your gun?” she asked. “As in that’s what you’re packing?”
“Think of it however you want, Emma.”
Emma turned down a side street that ran perpendicular to the beach road, happy to get away from the prying eyes of uninvited cops.
“Speaking of packing,” she said. “I read that article.”
It was Adrian’s turn to roll his eyes. “Oh, that one? The ‘royal secret,’ exposed, as it were?”
Emma nodded. “So, uh, it’s true, then? Inquiring minds want to know.”
“I knew I’d rue the day I let some team of simpering designers dress me for that charity event at Fashion Week in Milan,” he said. “All these minions happily slapping outfits on me and undressing me with equal fervor. At least in Monaforte when someone helps me to get my dress colors on, they’re not measuring the girth in my crotch.
“Here I was doing this to help out my father’s favorite charity in Italy. Little did I know they would put word out to gossip rags about it.” Adrian took a swig of a water bottle next to him in the cup holder.
“It?” Emma asked, grateful he hadn’t given it a name. Nothing like a guy who names his penis Schwartz or Johnson or Big Boy, or whatever else they liked to tag it with. But weird that she was sitting there chitchatting about the princely penis with the guy. “Um, forgive me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that something most men would be happy to have broadcast to the world? I mean, after all, the bigger the package, the bigger the pleasure, right?”
With that Adrian choked on his water, splattering some of it onto the windshield. Emma reached over to pat his back to help clear his airway.
“You okay?” she said, grinning.
“I have to say, I’ve never had such a frank conversation with a woman about my — how would you say this graciously? My endowment? — before,” he said. “It’s almost a bit embarrassing.”
“Almost,” she said. “But you’re a guy. So if you’ve got it, flaunt it.”
Adrian reached over for Emma’s hand, which was resting on the stick shift. She squirmed in her seat, realizing she was only making matters worse with her suggestive talk but unable to stop herself.
“So how about we pick up where we left off?” Adrian asked with a hopefulness of one who always gets what he wants, when he wants it. “After all, you even admitted it: the bigger the package…”
“It’s a lovely idea in theory,” Emma said. “But honestly, I’ve promised myself I will not get in any more go-nowhere relationships. I simply can’t dabble in men; it’s just not good for my psyche.”
“Your psyche? What does your psyche have to do with this? Can’t you just take pleasure in the moment? Don’t worry about what will happen in ten years. For the here and now we were having a lovely time and I’m quite convinced it was about to get much lovelier, had we not been so rudely cut off by that killjoy.”
“I suspect that killjoy was simply a manifestation of my conscience, reminding me of my vow of quasi-chastity, made under duress after about the thousandth encounter with the wrong man. I need to stop engaging with men who aren’t good for me. Not that you’re not a good man. But you’re not my man. Nor will you ever be my man. And by extension you’re not a good man for me. Does that make any sense to you?”
Adrian knit his brows. “I want to understand what you’re saying but honestly, I think it’s nonsense. We like each other, we enjoy one another’s company. We are clearly attracted to each other. So what is the harm in following through on that to see where it leads?”
“Where it leads? You’re here hiding out from your mother, who is telling you how your entire future is to unfold, and it does not involve a lowly photographer from across the pond, I can assure you that. Your mother would want to see me on your arm about as much as she’d welcome news that you were gay. Which I’m sure you’re not. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
“No, no, of course not,” he said. “But I wish you’d reconsider. Can’t think of a better way in which to pass the next several days together. Think of it: you and me, alone together, nothing but the sound of water lapping along the shores, and our hearts beating as one.” He waggled his eyebrows trying to milk his pathetic plea to her as much as possible.
Something in the Heir (It's Reigning Men Book 1) Page 9