by Nora Roberts
“If you want to weigh the pros and cons, Brie, consider that you’ll be away from the palace and responsibility for a few hours.”
“With you.”
“Engaged couples are expected to spend some time together,” he said easily, then put a firm hand on her arm before she could jump up. “You agreed,” he said with the steel just below the calm tone. “Now you have to follow through.”
“Only in public.”
“A woman in your position has little private life. And,” he continued, moving his hand down to hers, “I’ve put mine under the microscope, as well.”
“You want gratitude? I find it difficult right at the moment.”
“Keep it.” Annoyed, he tightened his grip until her eyes met his. “Cooperation’s enough.”
Her chin was up, her eyes level. “Yours or mine?”
He inclined his head slightly. “The answer seems to be both again. Officially, we’re engaged. In love,” he added, testing the words.
The words worried her. “Officially,” she agreed. “It’s simply a trapping.”
“Trappings can be convenient. And since we’re on the subject …” Reaching into his pocket, Reeve brought out a small velvet box. With his thumb he flipped up the top. The sun shot down and seemed to explode within the white, square-cut diamond.
Brie felt her heart begin to thud in her breast, then her throat. “No.”
“Too traditional?” Reeve drew the ring out of the box and twisted it in the sunlight. The white stone was suddenly alive with color. “It suits you. Clean, cool, elegant. Ready to give off passion at the right touch.” He was no longer looking at the diamond, but at her. “Give me your hand, Gabriella.”
She didn’t move. Perhaps foolishly, she felt she didn’t have to. “I won’t wear your ring.”
He took her left wrist and felt the pulse thud under his fingers. The sun poured through the window, showering on her hair, into her eyes. The fury was there—he could feel it. And the passion. Hardly romantic, he thought as he pushed the ring onto her finger. But, then, romance wasn’t the order of the day.
“Yes, you will.” He closed his hand over hers, sealing the bond. He didn’t allow himself to think just yet of how difficult it might be to break.
“I’ll just take it off again,” she told him furiously.
He spoke in a tone she didn’t trust. “That wouldn’t be wise.”
“Still following my father’s orders?” she said between her teeth.
“It seems we both are. But the ring was my idea.” He cupped the back of her neck with his free hand. It was long and slender and smooth. “So’s this.”
When he kissed her he gave her no choice. She stiffened; he stroked. She shuddered; he soothed. The moment he felt her respond, he took her deep and fast.
His fingers were in her hair, his hand on hers, yet her body throbbed as though he touched everywhere. She would have welcomed that. The mouth didn’t seem to be enough to give, to take, to demand. Whole worlds opened up and spun at the touch of mouth to mouth. She could taste what he offered—passion, wild, ripe, free. Fulfillment was there, churning within her if she chose to let go.
She came alive when he held her. Reeve hadn’t known a woman could be so electric while remaining so soft. He could feel pulse beats, tempting him to touch them, one by one. He started with her throat, just a skim of a fingertip. Her moan rippled into his mouth. The inside of her elbow—the blood pounded there. At her wrist it jumped frantically.
He drew her bottom lip into his mouth to suck, to nibble. Her body trembled, arousing him beyond belief as he took his hand slowly up from her waist to find her breast. The thin robe she wore could have been pulled away with one hand, leaving her naked, but Reeve kept the barrier knowing his sanity would be pulled away with it.
When he made love with her, fully, completely, there wouldn’t be servants or staff or family. When he made love with her the first time, there’d be nothing, no one but the two of them. She’d never forget it. Or him.
He ran his hand down her once, one long, firm stroke. Possession, threat, promise. Neither of them could be sure which. When he let her go, neither of them was steady.
Brie saw something in his eyes that had her skin heating. Desire, but more. Knowledge. His eyes were blue, dark, not quite calm. In them she saw the knowledge that she wouldn’t walk away from him easily. Not today. Not tomorrow.
She drew back against the window seat, as far away from him as she could. “You have no right.”
He looked at her until she had to hold back the tremble. “I don’t need any.” When he reached up to cup her face she went still. It was a habit of his she hadn’t quite fathomed. It might be gentleness; it might be arrogance. “I don’t want any.”
Her strength was nothing to be underestimated. She was still, yes, but she wasn’t weak. “I’ll tell you when I want to be touched, Reeve.”
He didn’t remove his hand. “So you have.”
Try a different tactic, she decided. Something had to work. “I think you’re taking this charade too seriously. You overstep yourself.”
“If you want bows and protocol, you’ll have to look elsewhere. Remember, you told me not to be kind.”
“A request that isn’t difficult for you.”
“Not at all.” He smiled, then lifted her hand where the diamond flashed. “You and I know this is no more than a pretty rock, Brie. Another trapping.” On impulse, he turned her hand over, held it, then pressed his lips to her palm. “No one else will.”
This time she jerked her hand away and rose. “I told you I won’t wear it.”
Before she could pull the ring off he was beside her. “And I told you you would. Think.” When she paused, the ring half off her finger, he continued. The tone he used was precisely the tone he used to draw the answer he wanted out of reluctant suspects. Deals, he thought ruefully, were deals. “Would you rather swallow your pride and wear it, or explain every time you go out why you don’t have an engagement ring?”
“I could say I don’t care for jewelry.”
He grinned, touching the sapphires on her right hand, then the deep-blue stones she wore at her ears. “Could you? Some lies are more easily believed than others.”
Brie pushed the ring back on. “Damn you.”
“Better,” he said with a nod of approval. “Curse me as much as you like, just cooperate. It might occur to you, Your Highness, that I’m just as inconvenienced by all this as you.”
Trapped, she turned away. “Inconvenienced? You seem to be enjoying it.”
“I’m making the best of a bargain. You could do the same, or you can stomp your feet.”
She whirled back around, eyes flashing. “I don’t make a habit of temper tantrums.”
“Could have fooled me.”
She calmed, only because to have let loose would have gratified him. “I don’t like it when you make me feel like a child, Reeve.”
His voice was equally calm. “Then don’t object when I make you feel like a woman.”
“Have you an answer for everything?”
He thought of her, of what was growing inside him. Briefly he touched her cheek. “No. A truce for the moment, Brie. Before this business of the engagement came up we got along well enough. Look at it as a simplification.”
She frowned, but discovered she was willing to call a truce. Until she had her full strength back. “A simplification of what?”
“Of everything. With this”—he lifted her left hand again—“you won’t have to explain why we spend time together, what I’m doing here. As an engaged couple we can get out a bit, get away. People are tolerant of lovers escaping. You won’t be as tied to the palace.”
“I never said I felt tied.”
“I’ve seen you looking out the window. Any window.”
Her gaze came back to him and held. Abruptly she surrendered and, with a sigh, sat back on the window seat. “All right, yes, sometimes I feel closed in. None of this is familiar to me, a
nd yet it isn’t altogether strange. It isn’t a comfortable feeling, Reeve, to feel as though you belong, but never being quite sure you won’t make a wrong turn and find yourself lost again. And the dreams—” She broke off, cursing herself. It was too easy to say more to him than was comfortable.
“You’ve had more dreams?”
“Nothing I remember very well.”
“Brie.” The patience wasn’t there as it had been with Franco, but the knowledge was.
“It’s true, I don’t.” Frustrated, she pulled her fingers through her hair. He saw his ring throw out fire against the fire. His fire, he thought. And hers. “It’s always basically the same—the dark, the smells, the fear. I don’t have anything tangible, Reeve.” For a moment she closed her eyes tight. Weakness was so easy. Tears were so simple. She wouldn’t allow them for herself. “There’s nothing for me to hold on to. Every morning I tell myself this could be the day the curtain lifts. And every night …” She shrugged.
He wanted to go to her, hold her. Passion he could offer safely. Comfort was dangerous. He kept his distance. “Tomorrow you won’t have to think about it. We’ll go out on the water. Just sail. Sun and sea, that’s all. There won’t be anyone there you have to play a role for.”
A few hours without pretenses, she thought. He was offering her a gift. Perhaps he was taking one for himself, but he was entitled. Brie looked down at her ring, then up at him. “Nor you.”
He smiled. She thought it was almost friendly. “Agreed.”
Chapter 7
Like too many other things, Brie had forgotten what it was to really relax. Learning how was a discovery in pleasure, and one that was blissfully easy. She hoped that when other memories came back to her, they’d be as sweet.
Still, she’d found one more thing she could be certain of. She was as at home on the sea as she was on land. It was a simple pleasure—as relaxing was—and therefore an important one, to find that she knew her way around canvas and rope. If she’d been alone on the pretty little sloop, Brie could have sailed her. She’d have had the control, the knowledge and the strength. Of that she was certain.
She could listen to the noise of the water against the hull as the boat gathered speed and know she’d heard the sound before. It didn’t matter where or how.
She loved to sail. Everyone Reeve had spoken to had confirmed it. The idea for a day on the water had come to him when he’d noticed that the finely strung nerves, the strain and the depression hadn’t eased. Not as much as she pretended. She’d told him not to be kind, but it wasn’t always possible to follow even the orders of a princess.
Relying on his instincts, he’d let her take the tiller when they’d cast off. Now he watched her turn it slightly, away from the wind. In accord, he pulled in on the main-sheet to quiet and stretch the flapping canvas. As the boat sped across the wind, it gathered more speed. He heard Brie laugh as the sails filled.
“It’s wonderful,” she called. “The best. So free, so simple.”
The wind exhilarated her. Speed, on this first run, seemed to be imperative. Power, after being for so long under the power of others, was intoxicating. Control—at last she’d found something she could control. Her hand was light on the tiller, adjusting, as Reeve did, whenever it was necessary to keep the pace at maximum.
Walls, obligations, responsibilities disappeared. All that was left was water and wind. Time wasn’t important here. She could push it aside, as perhaps she’d done before. As she now knew she’d do again. The sun was as it should be on a holiday. Bright, full, warm—gold in the sky, white on the sea. Holding the tiller steady with her knee, Brie slipped out of the oversized cotton shirt. Her brief bikini made a shrug at modesty. She wanted the sun on her skin, the wind on it. Skillfully she navigated so that she avoided any other boats. Privacy she wouldn’t sacrifice.
For a few hours she’d be selfish. For a few hours she didn’t have to be a princess, but only a woman, stroked by the wind, soothed by the sun. With another laugh she shook back her hair, only to have the wind swirl through it again.
“I’ve done this before.”
Reeve relaxed; the wind was doing the work for the moment. “It’s your boat,” he said easily. “According to your father, Bennett can outride anyone, Alexander can outfence the masters, but you’re the best sailor in the family.”
Thoughtful, Brie ran a hand along the glossy mahogany rail. “Liberié,” she mused, thinking of the name on the stern. “It would seem that like the little farm, I use this for an escape.”
Reeve turned to look at her. Through his amber-tinted glasses she looked gold and lush. Primitive, desirable, but still somehow lost. Whatever his inclinations, it wouldn’t do to be too kind. “I’d say you were entitled. Wouldn’t you?”
She made a little sound, noncommittal, unsure. “It only makes me wonder if I was happy before. I find myself thinking sometimes that when I remember, I’ll wish I’d let things stand as they are now. Everything’s new, you understand?”
“A fresh start?” He thought of his own farm, his own fresh start. But, then, he’d known where he’d ended, where he’d begun.
“I’m not saying I don’t want to remember.” She watched Reeve pull his T-shirt over his head and discard it. He looked so natural, she thought, so at ease with himself. His trunks were brief, but she felt no self-consciousness. She’d been held against that body. Brie let herself remember it. He was lean, hard. Little drops of spray glistened on his skin. A dangerous man. But wasn’t danger something she’d have to face sooner or later?
Yes, she remembered his embrace. Should she be ashamed to discover she wanted to be held against him, by him, again? She wasn’t ashamed, she realized, whether she should be or not. But she was cautious. “I know so little,” she murmured. “Of myself. Of you.”
Reeve took a cigarette from the shirt he’d tossed on the bench. He cupped his hands, flicked his lighter, the movements economical. As he blew out smoke, he looked at her again. “What do you want to know?”
She didn’t answer for a moment, but studied him. This was a man who could take care of himself, and others when he chose. This was a man, she was all but certain, who made his own rules. And yet … unless she was very mistaken, he was a man who’d lived by rules already set for most of his life. Which was he doing now? “My father trusts you.”
Reeve nodded, making the adjustments as the sail began luffing. “He has no reason not to.”
“Still, it’s your father he knows well, not you.”
His lips curved. The arrogance was there again, she thought, no matter how elegant, how well groomed he was. It was, unfortunately, one of the most attractive things about him.
“Don’t you trust me, Gabriella?” He made his voice deliberately low, deliberately challenging. He was baiting her; they both knew it. So her answer, when she gave it, left him speechless.
“With my life,” she said simply. She turned into the wind again and let the boat race.
What could he say to her? There’d been no guile in her words, no irony. She meant exactly what she’d said, not merely the phrase but the intent. He should have been pleased. Her trust, theoretically, would simplify his job. So why did he feel uncomfortable with it, wary of it? Of it, he asked himself, or of her?
It came back to him now what he’d realized from the first moment he’d seen her again in the hospital bed. Nothing between them would ever be casual. In the same way, he was all but sure nothing between them could ever be serious. So he was caught, very much as Brie was, in an odd sort of limbo.
They were both, in their own way, beginning a new life. Neither of them had any reason to want the other complicating it. The truth was that Reeve had made himself a promise to simplify his life. Almost as soon as he’d begun, there had been the call from Cordina, and things had become tangled again.
He could have said no, Reeve reminded himself. He hadn’t wanted to. Why? Because Brie, as she’d been at sixteen, had stayed in his mind for too many years.
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Since he’d come to Cordina, things had only become more involved. The bogus engagement had the international press kicking up their heels. A royal wedding was always good copy. Already three of the top American magazines were begging for interviews. The paparazzi were there like eager little terriers every time he or Brie stepped out of the palace.
He could have refused Prince Armand’s request that he pretend to be engaged to Brie. The fact that it was a logical solution to a delicate problem was outweighed by the nuisance value. But he hadn’t wanted to. Why? Because Brie, the woman he was coming to know, was threatening to stay in his mind for a lifetime.
Being with her, and not being with her, was like taking a long, slow walk a few inches over very hot coals. The steam was there, the sizzle—but it wasn’t possible to cool off or take the fatal plunge into the heat.
“That little cove.” Brie lifted her hand to point. “It looks quiet.”
Without fuss they began to tack toward the small shelter. She worked with the wind, coaxing it, bowing to it. Once the lines were secure, Brie merely sat staring across the narrow strip of water.
“From here Cordina looks so fanciful. So pink and white and lovely. It seems as though nothing bad would ever happen there.”
He looked with her. “Fairy tales are traditionally violent aren’t they?”
“Yes.” She smiled a little looking up at the palace. How bold it looked, she thought. How bold and elegant. “But then no matter how much it looks like one, Cordina isn’t a fairy tale. Does your practical democratic American mind find it foolish—our castles, our pomp and protocol?”
This time he smiled. Perhaps she didn’t remember her roots but they were there, dug in. “I find it intelligently run. Lebarre is one of the best ports in the world regardless of size. Culturally Cordina bows to no one. Economically, it’s sound.”
“True. I, too, have been doing my homework. Still …” Brie ran her tongue over her teeth before she leaned back and circled her knee with her arms. “Did you know that women weren’t granted the right to vote in Cordina until after World War II? Granted as though it were a favor, not a right. Family life is still very Mediterranean, with the wife subservient and the husband dominant.”
“In theory, or in practice?” Reeve countered.
“From what I’ve seen, very much in practice. Constitutionally, the title my father holds can pass only to a male.”
Reeve listened, looking across the water as she did. “Does that annoy you?”
Brie gave him an odd, searching look. “Yes, of course. Just because I have no desire to rule doesn’t mean the law itself isn’t wrong. My grandfather was instrumental in bringing women’s suffrage to Cordina. My own father has gone farther by appointing women to positions of importance, but change is slow.”
“Invariably.”
“You’re practical and patient by nature.” She gave a quick shrug. “I’m not. When change is for the better, I see no reason for it to creep along.”
“You can’t overlook the human element.”
“Especially when some humans are too steeped in tradition to see the advantage of progress.”
“Loubet.”
Brie sent him an appreciative look. “I can see why my father enjoys having you around, Reeve.”
“How much do you know about Loubet?”
“I can read,” she said simply. “I can listen. The picture I gain is one of a very conservative man. Stuffy.” She rose, stretching so that the bikini briefs went taut over her hips. “True, he’s an excellent minister in his way, but so very, very cautious. I read in my diary where he tried to discourage me from my tour of Africa last year. He didn’t feel it proper for a woman. Nor does he feel it proper for me to meet with the National Council over budget matters.” Frustration showed briefly. She was, Reeve noted, learning fast. “If men like Loubet had their way, women would do no more than make coffee and babies.”
“I’ve always been of the opinion that such things should be joint efforts.”
She smiled down at him, obviously amused and relaxed. “But then, you’re not such a traditionalist. Your mother was a circuit-court judge.” At Reeve’s steady look, her smile widened. “I did my homework,” she reminded him. “You weren’t a subject I overlooked. You graduated from American University summa cum laude. Under the current circumstances, I find it interesting that you have a degree in psychology.”
“A tool,” he said easily, “in the career I chose.”
“True enough. After two and half years on the police force and three citations for bravery, you went undercover. The facts become vague there, but rumor has it that you were on the team responsible for breaking one of the major crime rings operating in and around the District of Columbia. There’s also a rumor that at the request of a certain United States senator, you served on his security force. With your reputation, your intelligence and your record you could easily have made the rank of captain, despite your age. Instead you chose to resign from the force altogether.”
“For someone who said they knew little about me, you certainly have enough data.”
“That tells me nothing about you.” She walked to starboard. “I want to cool off. Will you come?” Before he could answer, she was over the side and in the water.
She was unbelievably provocative, but he’d yet to determine if this was deliberate. Thoughtful, Reeve rose. Finding out might be an education in itself. As smoothly as Brie, he slipped into the water.
“Soft,” she said as she treaded water lazily. She’d already been under and her hair was wet, sleeked back from her face. Dripping, struck by the sun, it was