Rebecca sat in the car given to her for the evening by the chief of security. It wasn’t one she’d driven before. And never before had she sat so uncertain for so long.
Out of a desire to preserve the architectural heritage of San Philippe, there were no true high-rises in the city. So it was easy enough to look up at Logan’s riverfront penthouse apartment.
But what if Logan’s yes hadn’t actually been in response to the question she’d wanted to, but hadn’t quite asked? What if his yes had been “yes, I’ll teach you to row a boat.” He hadn’t called her or made any attempt to contact her to discuss her question. Admittedly, it had only been a matter of hours since she’d asked it but if she didn’t act now she’d lose her nerve. His windows revealed nothing. All she could make out was that lights were on inside. She looked from those uninformative windows to the phone clutched in her hand.
Spineless. Time to either go through with her plan or go home.
Men were supposed to like the hunt, the thrill of the chase. She knew that much. Desperate women who threw themselves at men were desperately unappealing. Then again, she didn’t need Logan to like her, she just needed him to…help her.
On the ancient bridge spanning the river, couples walked hand in hand. Women leaned heads on partners’ shoulders, so trusting, so gently intimate. Two looking almost as one. And here she was sitting alone in her car.
Following the photo session and then the meeting, her father had wanted a private conversation with her this evening. But she’d figured she’d face an inquisition over Logan so she’d cried off, explaining she’d already arranged to see Logan, knowing that her father would be in Switzerland for the next couple of days. She was becoming quite adept at evasion, at telling…things that weren’t quite the truth. In her head she could almost hear Logan challenging her to call it what it was—a lie.
The only person she was practiced at lying to was herself. For so long she’d pretended she didn’t have wants and needs of her own. In the time she’d known Logan he had made her far too conscious of her self-deceit. And more than anything else he made her conscious of those wants and needs.
She lifted her phone then closed her eyes and doubt flooded in.
She couldn’t go through with it. What was she even doing here? What had she been thinking? She was not, and never would be, a normal woman. She’d never walked with her head resting on a man’s shoulder. Because she couldn’t depend on a man like that. She couldn’t trust Logan—or any man—like that.
Because if you didn’t trust someone they couldn’t betray you. Trusting someone gave them power over you.
And Logan was too much an unknown quantity. Too unpredictable. Too uncontrollable. She had too much to lose.
A light rain began to fall, refracting the light on her windshield, obscuring the world outside, making it shimmer.
Home. She would go home where she was safe and knew the rules. They had a plan. A good plan. Safe, if not completely sensible. All she had to do was stick to it and pretend to date Logan for the allotted weeks. No more. No less.
The phone cradled in her palm vibrated and rang, making her jump. Logan’s name lit up on the display. He needn’t know anything. “Hello,” she answered, keeping her voice casual, a little curious.
“What are you doing?” His voice was almost all curiosity. Curiosity with a hint of something knowing.
The knowing could only be her imagination, her guilt. “Reviewing the minutes from the foundation’s meeting,” she said with a bored sigh. But her lack of skill at lying shined through and she spoke a little too quickly, her voice a little too high.
“In your car?”
“Sorry?” She pretended she was confused, that she hadn’t quite heard or understood a question that ought to make no sense. In part she was confused. He couldn’t possibly know she was outside his apartment building. She looked around to make sure. There was no one near her car, no one paying any attention to it. The windows were darkly tinted.
“That is you, isn’t it? Parked along the riverfront. Near the street lamp.”
Her face heated in the darkness. Clearly he could, and did, know.
Part and parcel of being no good at lying was being no good at extricating herself from a lie. “I…I…have to go. I’ll talk you later.”
“You’re sure you wouldn’t rather see me sooner?”
“I have another call coming through. I think it’s my father. Bye.” She jabbed at the off button and let her head fall back against the headrest. But only for a few seconds while her heartbeat slowed. Anyone else in the world would surely have handled that better than she had. And she was a princess. She was supposed to be adept at handling delicate situations. Time to get a grip. She turned her key in the ignition and flicked on her lights. Illuminated in their beam, a tall, broad-shouldered man, his dark hair rumpled, walked toward her, his long, easy stride eating up the distance. Rebecca tapped her forehead against the steering wheel. She’d had extensive training in defensive, and evasive driving; hand-brake slides, high-speed escape maneuvers. But none of that would be any help to her now. There was no dignified retreat.
He tried her door. She pressed the button to unlock it and cut the engine. As he opened her door he held a hand toward her. She focused on that hand rather than his face and held on to it only until she stood. Eventually she had to look up. A frown creased his brow, not irritation but…concern? As his gaze traveled over her, assessing, the frown eased. His breathing was rapid but controlled. As though he had raced to get here? His button-down shirt was untucked and the first few buttons undone. He started walking and Rebecca had little choice but to fall into step beside him.
He asked no questions. She volunteered no explanation, no excuses. Their footsteps sounded in quiet unison on the damp cobbles.
He walked slowly, strolling, when the part of her that wanted to escape her foolishness would have strode as though she could leave it behind. The more distance she put between her and her car, the more she could pretend she’d never parked on the road in front of his apartment, never been caught.
They crossed the pedestrian bridge that arched over the river. Balmy night air wrapped around them. Light shimmered and reflected in the inky water and on the damp cobbles. Ahead of them a couple walked hand in hand, their mingled laughter barely audible. And somewhere in the unseen distance the rapid, fluid notes of a Spanish guitar sounded.
Still she waited and mentally prepared for Logan’s request for an explanation, or his mockery. She would be regal. She owed him no explanation. And she could rise above his mockery.
Neither came.
They just walked. Side by side. And she didn’t feel regal. She realized, after maybe ten minutes, that this might be what it was like to feel normal. She could be with a man and not be compelled to make polite conversation. She could just…be, soaking in the sights and sounds and sensations.
His shoulder was close to her head. If she had the courage she’d reach for his hand, she could tilt her head, rest it on his shoulder like the couples she’d watched earlier. She did not have the courage. They passed beneath an ornate street lamp.
“Jeans?”
It was the last thing she’d expected him to ask. She’d almost forgotten them. “I was trying to be normal. You know, not a princess. For an evening.”
They walked on. His silence perplexing.
“What do you think? Of the jeans?” They both knew she could pretend but she could never be normal. Leopards and spots and all that.
“Nice.” His hand swung back and patted her butt. “Very nice.”
Nobody had ever patted her butt.
Rebecca smiled.
Logan lifted his arm and settled it around her shoulders, pulling her gently against him. And her head nestled against his shoulder as though designed to fit there. Sensation surged within her. She recognized it as happiness. Maybe she could walk like this all night long, circling the old parts of the city.
The sounds of the guitar grew clearer as they approached a strip of waterfront cafés and restaurants. “Have you eaten?” he asked.
“No.” She’d escaped the palace rather than have dinner there.
“Neither have I.” He steered her down a side road then stopped to open a door beneath a small green awning. “The view’s not the same as on the waterfront, but it’s quieter and the food—”
“Is divine?” she asked with a smile, remembering his previous descriptions of food.
He matched her smile. “It’s simple but good. I think you’ll like it.”
They walked down a set of narrow stairs into the small restaurant redolent with aromas of Mediterranean cooking, olives and tomatoes and garlic. A short, balding man hurried up to them, arms held wide, his gaze and his smile lighting first on Logan, then freezing momentarily as he noticed Rebecca.
“Stefan,” Logan said, “a quiet table, please.”
“Of course.” Stefan led them past the tables in the busy restaurant. The hum of conversation died away, to be replaced by whispers as diners realized who she was. Stefan showed them to a small corner table partially screened from the main restaurant. “I hope this will be suit able.”
Stefan seated her. Logan sat opposite. A low candle flickered and danced between them.
She watched him, wondering when it was that Logan had changed from an irritant to the pearl.
Gradually the noise level resumed its initial volume.
Logan leaned back in his chair, watching her. And all the reasons this might not be such a great idea returned. The primary one being that now there was no escape for her, no avoiding his questions. Stefan placed a basket of assorted breads on their table. Rebecca smeared pesto on a small wedge of bread and waited. And waited. Until she could bear it no more. “I suppose you’re wondering what I was doing outside your apartment.”
“Actually, I was wondering what it must be like to have people fall silent just because you walk past them. To have people stare.”
No one had ever asked her that. “It’s just how it is, how it’s always been. And it will undoubtedly help give you the profile you’re after.” She tried to keep the hint of hurt from her voice.
“Undoubtedly. So, you’re here with me for my benefit?”
She didn’t need the hint of sarcasm. “No. To be honest I’m not sure why I’m here with you. It seemed like a good idea to drive to your place. I know my father keeps tabs on me, that it will help convince him we have a real relationship. He has doubts.”
“Smart man. And that was your only reason.”
“And,” she said and took a deep breath, “partly I just wanted to see you.”
He hesitated for just a second. “And the other part?”
She waited while Stefan poured two glasses of ruby-red wine. But by the time he’d backed away her resolve was gone.
“The other part doesn’t matter anymore.”
“It always matters.”
Rebecca took a sip of her wine. “Try this. It’s divine.”
And Logan laughed, recognizing her use of his own distraction techniques. She’d never met anyone whose laugh was quite so deep, quite so warming. It was one of the things, if not the thing, she liked best about him. There was such an appealing openness to his laugh, a complete lack of pretension. And it stirred a warmth within her, made her want him more. Made her wonder what it would be like to wake up to that smile, that laughter.
One of the other things she liked about him was his patience, though she knew that he could probably wield it as a weapon. He didn’t press, seemed content to enjoy a meal that was as he’d predicted very good. She’d never heard of Stefan’s, never eaten at a place like this in San Philippe. How much more was there for her to discover in her own small country?
She watched Logan’s hands as he buttered bread, his lips as he sipped wine, the vitality in his eyes as he talked. Did he have anything like her level of awareness of him?
And she thought about those eyes watching her, those hands touching her, those lips kissing her.
Forbidden thoughts for a princess. She’d never before had trouble controlling her thoughts. It was what she did. But Logan with his indifference to royalty made her keep wondering what it would be like not to be royal. Foolish notion. She couldn’t, and wouldn’t want to, change who she was. There was no point wondering.
No point in wondering, or wishing, for just a few weeks of anonymity. A few weeks when everything she said and did, or didn’t say and do, wasn’t scrutinized, reported, speculated on. A few weeks when she did something real. Her work with charities and schools and the arts was appreciated and did, she knew, benefit others. But sometimes she daydreamed about being a gardener, or a cook, or a painter—not an artist, but someone who painted walls and fences. Someone who at the end of the day could stand back and see what they’d achieved, other than neatly bisecting a ribbon or attending meetings.
And then she would berate herself for her daydreams because she knew that a good portion of the rest of the world daydreamed about having her life. She should be nothing but grateful.
“You have a very expressive face.”
Rebecca’s grip tightened on her fork. “Expressive?”
“Thoughts and emotions seem to flit through your eyes, even while you’re looking far away.”
“I do sometimes get a little caught up in my thoughts.”
“A man could find it less than flattering.”
As if he needed flattery from her. From anyone for that matter. “Doubtless women fawn all over you.”
“Less, I expect, than men fawn over you.”
“Actually, they don’t. They tend to be intimidated.”
“The threat of beheading, no doubt.” It must be something to do with the candlelight, the way it glinted in his eyes.
Rebecca smiled. “No one’s been beheaded in San Philippe in centuries.”
“The dungeons?”
“They’ve been converted. Lighting. Heating. Part’s even a gymnasium. You’d never guess their history.” And despite her joking she knew it wasn’t the nonexistent prospect of royal incarceration that kept suitors at bay. Though it was generous of Logan to give her that out. “No. I think I intimidate them.” It was only men like Logan with an agenda—to make it into royal circles—who were prepared to overlook “her” and the glass bowl of her life in order to get what they sought. But at least Logan had been honest about that, which gave her leave to be honest in return.
“You’re a princess. I can see how that might throw a man off his game, so to speak.”
“But not you?”
“A person’s a person. Regardless of what they do for a living, or where they live.”
“Not so many people think like that. But it’s more than the princess thing. I can be reserved.” And sometimes she came across as remote, cold even. And the more uncertain she was the more reserved she became.
“I noticed,” he said agreeably. “And haughty.”
“No. Just reserved.”
“Especially when you enunciate so clearly.”
Like she just had. Years of elocution lessons were almost impossible to recover from. The princess persona was all of her training. All of her security. “Is it bad?”
“I was teasing you, Princess.”
“That’s another thing. I’m not always sure when people—and you in particular—are joking. And I don’t want to not laugh if they’ve made a joke, but on the other hand I don’t want to laugh if they weren’t making a joke.”
“I’m sure you’re making this a whole lot harder than it needs to be. How about you laugh if and when something strikes you as funny?”
She shook her head. “Too risky.”
They lapsed into silence as their dessert arrived, a rich decadent chocolate tart, along with two spoons. The chocolate melted into her mouth, almost seeming to soak into it. They watched each other eat. Surreptitious glimpses and other more openly appreciative glances. And the liquid heat that she’d come to associate with Logan, as though her insides were following the example of the melting chocolate, filled her.
“Do you analyze everything?”
“Almost everything.”
“Must be hell on your lovers.”
Rebecca swallowed. “I wouldn’t…I don’t…analyze that. Only things about myself. Public things.”
“I’m relieved to hear it.”
Because? The question almost slipped out. Because he might think there was potential opportunity for her to analyze him, or merely because he believed in male solidarity?
He watched her over the rim of his wineglass, a frown clouding his expression. “There have been other lovers, haven’t there?”
Relief, at the clarification—he did know what she’d asked of him, and had agreed to the same—warred with embarrassment at having this discussion here and now. For long seconds she looked at her wine, the red so dark it was almost black in the candlelight.
Then she looked up, met Logan’s gaze. “Yes. But my experience is limited.” He hadn’t asked for numbers. “And I wasn’t analyzing, not at the time, but I’ve come to think there might have been room for improvement.”
One man, not much more than a boy really, at the end of her first summer home from college. They’d met a few times over that week. It was a time she’d be happy to forget. It hadn’t been, she suspected, earth-shattering for Ivan, either.
“It always gets better as lovers get to know one another’s bodies.”
She looked around the restaurant. “I’m not sure that this is a conversation we should be having here.” No one was sitting close enough to hear, but all the same.
He nodded. “I just wanted to be clear.”
“Would it have been a problem if there hadn’t been others?” Why, when she was the one who didn’t want to be having this conversation here and now, did stupid questions slip out? But she had no idea how men thought, not about things like this.
“Not a problem as such, but…” He shrugged.
How would it change things, she wanted to ask, but finally had the good sense not to.
Logan tipped his head back and looked for a moment at the ceiling. At the curving brickwork of what had once been some kind of cellar. He looked back at her. “Do you know how hard this is?”
“How hard what is?” she teased, quietly pleased with the flirtation and double entendre she was usually so appalling at.
She was rewarded with the flash of his grin. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the small table. “How hard it is to sit here discussing this with you when from the very moment you asked me that question at the rose gardens, and if I’m honest from well before then, I’ve been imagining you naked and beneath me. How if we weren’t in this restaurant I’d have hauled you against me and—” He looked back at the ceiling again, exhaling roughly.
His words thrilled her. She’d thought he was so in control.
Logan stood. “Let’s go.”
He took her hand and led her from the restaurant. They crossed back over the river to head in the direction of her car. And his apartment. There was still a voice, a royal cautionary voice, in the back of her mind insisting that she didn’t know what she was doing. That she was making a mistake. It was the same voice that dictated her behavior day in and day out, year in and year out. That voice was saying run, get in her car and get out of here before she got into something she was ill-prepared for.
But the louder voice came from the hunger that stirred and swirled whenever she was with Logan, whenever she thought of him, the clamoring hunger that said this man could both inflame it and satisfy it.
This man who’d insinuated that she analyzed things too much.
She forced her mind to still, to focus on the here and now. They neared her car. “Thank you,” she said. “I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed a meal so much.” It was true. The meal, eating with Logan, just being her self had been a rare pleasure. The sensual currents had heightened everything. A new and delicious experience.
“I could say the same. And although the food was good, it was the company that elevated it. You’re an intriguing woman, Rebecca.”
They were almost opposite her car when Logan paused in front of the wide, gold-lettered, glass doors of his apartment building, the oldest and most exclusive in San Philippe. He turned to her and lifted an eyebrow in inquiry.
And she knew what he was asking.
No discussion, no pressure, no expectation. That in itself was a novelty. Her life was usually nothing but pressure and expectation. The decision was hers alone. She thought—hoped—that he had a preference as to her answer. He was, after all, issuing the invitation. This was the moment. The fork in the road. And, for all her angst, it was a surprisingly easy decision. She wanted this. She wanted it academically for all sorts of reasons that made sense in her head but she wanted it physically, as a woman. She wanted it inside and out. And deeper still there was a yearning in her heart for this connection with Logan.
He held her gaze, his searching and utterly serious, as she nodded. In turn, Logan nodded to the doorman who opened the door and ushered them through. The sounds of the street outside were silenced as the door closed behind them.