The air thickened between them—conversation forgotten for the moment as they stared into one another’s eyes.
Thierry found himself willingly drawn into her gaze. Her brows were perfect dark arches, framing unusual amber eyes fringed by thick dark lashes. Their coloring seemed at odds with her long blond hair, but she was no less beautiful for it. If anything, it made her even more striking. Her cheekbones were high and gently sculpted, her nose short and straight. But it was her lips to which his eyes were most often drawn. They were full and lush and as she parted them on an indrawn breath he felt a deeply responsive punch to his gut. Arousal teased at his groin. It was as if he was in a spell of some kind. A spell from which he had no desire to break free.
It was only as someone walked past their table, bumping it and spilling some of her coffee, that the enchantment between them was broken.
Angel laughed and sopped up the mess with a paper napkin. “Seems I’m destined not to finish my coffee this evening. And in answer to your question, no, I live in Boston. I’m only visiting the city.”
“I didn’t think your accent was from around here,” Thierry commented.
With elegant fingers, she balled the napkin and picked up her cup to take a sip of what was left of her drink. He found himself captivated by her every movement. Enthralled by the flick of her tongue across her lip to taste a remnant of the topping of chocolate and milk foam that lingered there. Thierry swallowed against the sudden obstruction in his throat. It was as if his heart had lodged there, hammering wildly.
He shouldn’t be here with this woman. He was engaged to another—someone he barely knew, even though he would be married to her by the end of the month. And yet, not in all his years of bachelorhood had he felt a compulsion to be with someone as he did with the enchanting female sitting opposite him. It was almost as if he knew her already, or felt as if he should. Whatever the sensation was that he felt, he wanted more of it. Hell, he wanted more of her.
Angel put her cup back down. “Actually, I’m in New York to attend a lecture on sustainability initiatives.”
Thierry felt his interest in her sharpen. “You are? I was scheduled to attend that lecture tomorrow myself.”
“And you can’t delay your return home?”
The dark pull of reality crept through him and with it the reminder of what tomorrow would entail. Eight and a half hours by air to Sylvain’s main airport, then another twenty minutes in his private helicopter to the palace. All of which to be followed by meetings with his household and the heads of government. His time wouldn’t be his own until after his father was buried in the family vault near the palace. Maybe not even then.
“Hawk?” Angel prompted him.
He snapped out of his train of thought and gave her his full attention. “No, I must return home. An urgent matter. But enough of that. Tell me, what takes a beautiful young woman like yourself to a dusty old lecture hall?”
She looked affronted by his question. “That’s a little sexist, don’t you think?”
“Forgive me,” he said quickly. “I did not mean to undermine your intelligence, or to sound quite so chauvinistic.”
He was disappointed in himself. It seemed the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree, after all. Thierry’s father had been nothing but old-fashioned in his view that women were for the begetting of heirs and to be a faithful and adoring ornament by his side. His consort had failed miserably at the second part. Instead of considering that he might have made a mistake in his treatment of her, the king had clung more fiercely to his opinions about a woman’s role in the monarchy and it was obvious in palace appointments that his chauvinism guided his choices.
Thierry had recently begun to wonder if part of the reason for his mother’s infidelity had been a lack of self-worth caused by her husband’s condescending treatment. Maybe his actions had meant that she’d desperately sought meaning for her life anywhere but within her marriage. But that mattered little now. She and her lover had died in a fiery car wreck many years ago. The resulting scandal had almost brought two nations to war and it was one of the reasons Thierry had vowed to remain chaste until marriage and then, after he was wed, to remain faithful to his spouse. He also rightly expected the same in return. While he wouldn’t marry for love, his marriage would last. It had to. He had to turn the tide of generations of marital failure and unhappiness. How hard could it be?
Across the table, Angel inclined her head in acknowledgment of his apology. “I’m glad to hear it. I get quite enough of that from my brother.” She softened her words with another smile. “In answer to your question, my professor recommended the lecture.”
For the next hour they discussed her studies, particularly her interest in developing sustainable living solutions, equal opportunities for all people and renewable energy initiatives. He found her fascinating. Her enthusiasm for her causes made her quite animated and he relished the pinkish tinge of excitement that colored her cheeks. The subjects they discussed were dear to his heart as well, and topics he wished to pursue further with his government. His father had seen little point in breaking away from the methods that had been tried and true in Sylvain for centuries, but Thierry was acutely aware of the need for long-term planning to ensure that future generations would continue to benefit from and enjoy his country’s many resources—rather than plunder them all into oblivion. Their discussion was exhilarating and left him feeling mentally stimulated in a way he hadn’t anticipated.
The clientele of the coffee shop had thinned considerably during their talk and Thierry became aware that the members of his security team were beginning to shift uncomfortably at their tables. Angel appeared to notice it, too.
“Oh, I’m sorry to have taken so much of your time. When I get on my pet subjects I can be a little over-excited,” she apologized.
“Not at all. I enjoyed it. I don’t often get to exchange or argue concepts with someone as articulate and well-versed as you are.”
She looked at her watch, its strap a delicate cuff of platinum and, if he wasn’t wrong, diamonds. The subtle but obvious sign of wealth made him even more intrigued about her background.
“It’s getting late. I guess I’d better head back to my hotel,” she said with obvious reluctance. “This has been really nice. Thank you.”
No. Every cell in his body objected to the prospect of saying goodbye. He wasn’t ready to relinquish her company yet. He reached out and took Angel’s hand.
“Don’t go, not yet.” The words surprised him as much as they appeared to surprise her. “Unless you have to, of course.”
Damn. He hadn’t meant to sound so needy. But in the face of the news he’d received tonight, Angel was a delightful distraction in what was soon to be a turbulent sea of chaos. He looked deep into her eyes, struck again by the beauty of their unusual whiskey-colored hue. He’d seen that color before, he realized, but he couldn’t quite remember where. Thierry looked down to where their hands were joined. She hadn’t pulled away. That had to be a good sign, right? He certainly hoped so. He wasn’t ready yet to relinquish her company.
“No, I don’t have to, exactly...” Her voice trailed away and she looked at her watch again before she said more firmly. “No. I don’t have to go.”
“No boyfriend waiting for you at home?” he probed shamelessly, running his thumb over her bare fingers.
Angel chuckled and his heart warmed at the sound.
“No, no boyfriend.”
“Good. Shall we walk together?” he suggested.
“I’d like that.”
She rose with a fluid grace that mesmerized him, and gathered up her coat and bag. He reached for her coat and helped her into it, his fingertips brushing the nape of her neck. He’d felt a shock of awareness when he’d touched her hand, but that was nothing compared to the jolt that struck him now. It was wrong, he knew, to feel such an overpowering attraction to Angel when he was engaged to another woman. Was he no different than his mother, who had been incapable of observing the boundaries of married life?
Thierry pulled his hands away and, balling them into fists, he shoved them deep into his pockets. A sense of shame filled him. This was madness. In a few weeks’ time he’d be marrying Princess Mila and here he was, in New York, desperate to spend more time with someone whose first name was almost the only thing he knew about her. Well, that and her keen intelligence about topics dear to his heart. Even so, it didn’t justify this behavior, he argued silently.
And then she turned to look at him and smiled, and he knew that whatever else was to come in his life, he had to grasp hold of this moment, this night, and make the most of the oasis of peace she unwittingly offered him.
They headed out of the coffee shop and turned toward Seventh Avenue. His security detail melted into the people around them. There, ever vigilant, but not completely visible. The rain had stopped and Thierry began to feel his spirits lift again. This felt so normal, so unscripted. It was a vast departure from his usual daily life.
“Tell me about yourself,” he prompted his silent companion. “Any family?”
“I have a brother. He’s in Europe right now,” Angel said lightly, but he saw the way she pressed her delectable full lips together as if she was holding something back. “How about you?” she asked, almost as if her question was an afterthought.
“An only child.”
“Was it lonely, growing up?”
“Sometimes, although I always had plenty of people around me.”
Angel gestured to the guard in front and the others nearby. “People like them?” she asked.
“And others,” he admitted.
They stopped at a set of lights and she lifted her chin and stared straight ahead. “Sometimes you can be at your most lonely when you’re surrounded by people.”
Her words struck a chord with him. There was something about the way she’d made her statement that made him think she spoke from personal experience. The thought made something tug inside him. He wished he could remove the haunted, empty tone from her voice and fill it with warmth. And what else, a voice inside him asked. He pushed the thought aside. There could be nothing else. Come morning he would be a different man to the rest of the world. A king. This interlude of normality would be nothing but a memory. One, he realized, he would treasure for a long time to come.
“So what do you do?” Angel asked him after they’d crossed the street.
“Do?”
“Yes, for a living. I assume you do work?”
Yes, he worked, but not in the sense she was probably expecting. “I’m in management,” he said, skirting the truth.
“That’s a very broad statement,” she teased, looking up at him with a glimmer of mischief in her tawny eyes.
“I have a very broad range of responsibilities. And you, what do you plan to do once you have completed your studies?”
Her expression changed in an instant—the humor of before replaced with a look of seriousness. Then she blinked and the solemnity was gone.
“Oh, this and that,” she said airily.
“And you accused me of being vague?” he taunted, enjoying their verbal sparring.
“Well, since you asked—I want to go home and make a difference. I want people to listen to me, to really listen, and to take what I have to say on board—not just dismiss me out of hand because I’m female.”
He raised his brows. “Does that happen a lot?”
“You did it to me,” she challenged.
“Yes, I did, and I apologize again for my prejudice. I hope you get your wish.” He drew to a halt beside a food truck. “Have you eaten this evening?”
“No, but you don’t have to—”
“I’m told you haven’t been to New York until you try one of these rib eye sandwiches.”
She inhaled deeply. “They do smell divine, don’t they?”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
He turned to the head of his security and gave an order in Sylvano. The man grinned in response and lined up at the food-truck window.
They continued to walk as they ate, laughing in between bites as they struggled to contain their food without spilling it.
“I should have taken you to a restaurant,” Thierry said as Angel made a noise of disgust at the mess she had left on her hands when they’d finished.
“Oh, heavens no! Not at all. This is fun...just messy.” She laughed and gingerly extracted a small packet of tissues from her bag so she could wipe her fingers.
Thierry felt his lips pull into a smile again as they had so many times since he’d met her. What was it about her that felt so right when everything else around him felt so wrong?
“I can’t get over this city,” Angel exclaimed. “There’s never a quiet moment. It’s exhilarating.”
“It is,” he agreed and then looked over at her. “Do you dance?”
“Are you asking me if I’m capable of it, or if I want to?” Angel laughed in response.
Thierry shrugged. “Both. Either.” He didn’t care. He suddenly had the urge to hold her in his arms and he figured this would be the only way he could decently do so without compromising his own values.
“I’m not exactly dressed for it,” Angel said doubtfully.
“You look beautiful. I’ve heard of a quiet place not far from here. It’s not big and brash like a lot of the clubs. More intimate, I suppose, and you can dance or talk or just sit and watch the other patrons if that’s all you want to do.”
“It sounds perfect.”
“So, shall we?”
She grinned back. “Okay, I’d like that.”
“Good.” He took her hand in his, again struck by the delicacy of her fingers and the fine texture of her skin.
What would it feel like if she touched him intimately? Would her fingers be firm or soft like a feather? Would she trace the contours of his body with a tantalizing subtlety, or would her touch be more definite, more demanding? He slammed the door on his wayward thoughts. It seemed he had more of his mother in him than he’d suspected. Still, there was nothing wrong with dancing with a woman other than his betrothed, was there? He had to do it at state functions all the time.
He tugged her in the direction of a club he’d visited on his last trip to New York and sent Armaund ahead to ensure they’d gain entry. The night was still young and he wasn’t ready for it to end yet.
Drawing her into his arms on the dance floor was everything he’d hoped for and more. The only problem was that it made him want more—and that was something he’d forbidden himself until marriage. He was determined to hold sacred the act of love and making love. It was something he would share with his wife and his wife alone. He hadn’t remained celibate purely for the hell of it. Sometimes it had been sheer torment refusing to acknowledge the demands of his flesh. But he’d promised himself from a very young age that he would not be that person. He would not allow physical need to cloud all else. Over the centuries his family had almost lost everything several times over because of a lack of physical control.
He’d always believed his forebears’ susceptibility to fleshly pursuits to be a mark of weakness, and nothing had happened in his thirty-one years to change his mind. Except perhaps the young woman dancing with him right now. Even so, he denied himself any more than the sensation of her in his arms—the brush of her breasts against his chest as he held her close, the skim of her warm breath on his throat—they were torments and teases he could overcome. When he boarded the plane a few short hours from now, to return to Sylvain, he would do so with the full knowledge that he had honored his vow to both himself and to the woman he was to marry.
But until then, he’d enjoy this stolen night as much as his duty and honor would allow.
* * *
The night had been magical—something even her wildest imagination could never have dreamed up. In fact, Mila doubted even Sally, with all her romantic ideas, could have come up with something like the night she’d just had. She felt like Cinderella, except in her fairy tale the prince was seeing her home and it was well past midnight. As the limousine, which had been waiting outside the club when they’d left it, pulled up outside her hotel she turned in her seat to face the prince. Tonight, she’d seen a side of him she’d never anticipated—and she was utterly captivated by him.
Maybe it was the champagne they’d drunk at the club, or maybe it was simply the knowledge that at month’s end she’d be standing next to him beneath the ancient vaulted ceilings of the Sylvano palace cathedral and pledging her life to him, but right now she felt as if she was floating on air.
At least now she knew what Thierry was like away from the pomp and ceremony that was attached to his position in the world. Once they were married and had the chance to spend time together alone, without all the trappings and formality of their official lives, she believed that they could become important to one another beyond what their marriage would gain for their respective nations. Tonight she’d had a chance to get to know the man beneath the crown. The man who would be her husband—who would share her days and her nights. And, given the fierce attraction between them, she looked forward to getting to know him even better. In every way.
He’d been the consummate gentleman tonight and, for the first time in her life, she’d felt like a desirable woman—one who could be confident that she would be able to make him happy in their marriage, too.
She turned to face him in the seat of the limo. “Thank you, Hawk. Tonight was incredible. I will never forget it.”
He took her hand and lifted it to his lips, brushing them across her knuckles in a caress that sent a bolt of longing straight to her center.
“Nor I.”
Thierry leaned forward, his intention to kiss her cheek obvious, but at the last minute Mila turned her head, allowing their lips to brush one another. It was the merest touch, sweet and innocent, and yet in that moment she felt something expand in her chest and threaten to consume her. It shook Mila to her core.
Words failed her and she pulled away, blindly reaching for the door handle and stumbling slightly as she left the private cavern of the vehicle. She didn’t look back. She couldn’t. If she did she might ask for more and it wasn’t the time or the place to do that.
She moved swiftly through the hotel lobby and to the elevator and swiped her key card to head for the penthouse. In the elevator car she reached up and tugged the blond wig loose and locked her gaze with her reflection in the mirrored walls. She’d been a stranger to Thierry tonight and he’d enjoyed her company. But would he enjoy it quite so much when he met the real Angel, or would he remember the gauche and chubby girl for whom he’d shown a moment of disdain? Only time would tell.