For her.
And even though she was the one to draw back, her lips clung to his. Temptation to stay, to say more, gripped her, but he distracted her.
“You’ve lost an earring.” His fingertip flicked at her lobe.
“No!” Both hands went to her ears, finding one empty. “Here? In the room? Did you notice if I had both while we were downstairs?”
“I’ll buy you new ones,” he offered with an offhand shrug.
“They’re sentimental. A gift from my father.” To Gili. She clicked on the lamp and flung back the bed covers, searching.
A polite knock tapped on the main door, her guard telling her the car was in position. They avoided waiting whenever possible. It drew a crowd.
“I’ll find it and send it to you at the design house.”
“Promise?” She looked from his muscled chest to the sheets to his eyes. Oh, he was spectacular in the golden light, emptying her brain all over again.
“I only make promises I can keep.”
“Thank you.” She didn’t bother worrying about him addressing it to Angelique. She would intercept it or come clean if she had to. “I really did, um, enjoy this.”
His eyes warmed with laughter. “My pleasure, bella.”
She was starting to sound like the neophyte she was. Definitely time to make her escape. She ducked her head and made for the coach before she turned into a pumpkin.
CHAPTER THREE
Present day...
COMMUNICATIONS FROM PRINCE XAVIER’S grandmother fell into three categories. All were delivered by the palace’s Private Secretary, Mario de Gaul.
“Your grandmother requests a meeting to discuss...” Fill in the blank. Those were routine and benign. She listened to her grandson’s opinions and they worked together on a strategy for whatever event, negotiation or dignified visitor stood on the horizon. They were equals, more or less.
The second, more ominous type of appointment began with “Her Majesty invites you to join her at...” Fill in the meal. Those were more dictatorial instructions on how she wanted something handled. A parliamentarian or ambassador needed massaging. A high-level staff member needed firing. He was doing her dirty work.
Then there was—
“The Queen is in her receiving room. She expects you.”
Mario entered with that missive on the heels of Xavier’s Personal Assistant, who still stood before him, his speech bubble of grim news dissolving in the air above his pleading don’t-shoot-the-messenger expression.
“Of course.” Xavier rose from his desk. It was the appropriate response. One didn’t refuse the Queen. One certainly didn’t leave her waiting.
Still, his agile brain leapt to all the triage he needed to accomplish in the next few minutes, not least of which was to reassure his new fiancée, Patrizia, before she saw the headlines herself.
Switched Before Birth!
Future King an Expectant Father?
Trella Tricked Everyone—Including the Prince!
He should have said something a few weeks ago, of course, when the first bomb went off. Trella Sauveterre, lately returned to the public eye, had turned up pregnant. The reaction had been loud enough to shake the world off its axis, forcing him to reach out to her, again, much to his dismay. He didn’t want anything to do with her after realizing how thoroughly she’d duped him.
Why had she done it?
The sting of chasing her to Berlin a week after Paris, like a fool with his first crush, came back hot and fresh under his skin. He’d had a very real duty to meet with Patrizia, but he had put it off, stealing an extra few days of bachelorhood, inventing excuses so he could...what? Have sex with a stranger once more?
Sex was sex. He’d had many lovers over the years and experienced varied degrees of pleasure. He put down the better experiences to chemistry, the less satisfying ones to inhibitions and incompatibility.
That night in Paris had seemed extraordinary while it was happening. She hadn’t been a virgin, but she’d made sex feel new again. She’d been so responsive. So sensual. So abandoned. His stomach tightened just remembering it.
So what? He knew from his father’s history that letting the brain below his belt do his thinking was disastrous.
Nevertheless, a day later, when he had read that Angelique would be in Berlin, he had reconfigured his entire schedule. Rather than courier her earring as promised, he had sought her out—only to find her with another man.
It had been the most lowering of moments, not because his ego was dented, but because he had revealed something of himself to her. Somehow, she had tricked him into believing they had a connection that went beyond the physical. What had possessed him to talk of those dark hours when his parents had been banished?