‘Your Royal Highness is, as ever, a most perceptive man,’ Nero drawled, raising one sweeping ebony brow as he connected with Bella’s narrow-eyed stare.
Bella Wheeler in a dinner gown. This was an image he had toyed with on his way to the castle. He had thought she might free her shiny auburn hair from its cruel captivity and reveal the young body that lurked beneath her workmanlike clothes. Instead, she was trussed up in a gown her grandmother would have approved of, and her hair was more tightly dressed than he had ever seen it. Did she have to make a statement every time they met? If it went on like this, he fully expected her to be wearing a sandwich board on the next occasion, proclaiming: Look, Don’t Touch.
‘So, Bella,’ the prince said, distracting him, ‘I’ve been hearing good things about you—and not just as far as training polo ponies goes. I’m thinking more of your work with children,’ he explained.
Bella blushed. She didn’t like to make a song and dance about the work she undertook in her free time.
‘Have you ever thought of expanding your scheme?’ the prince pressed.
Bella noticed Nero appeared to be equally intent on her answer. ‘My polo commitments don’t allow for it, Sir—’
‘But you do what you can, which is more than most people even attempt,’ the prince went on. ‘And I’ve been hearing some very good things about you—’
Bella answered this with a modest smile.
As the meal continued her tension relaxed. She was imagining things, Bella reassured herself. Nero sitting across the table had made her edgy. There was no plan afoot between Nero and the prince. Her royal host was always well briefed, and was not only genuinely interested in the people he met but was an excellent conversationalist. Her father had been invited to the castle in his heyday, but this was Bella’s first time and she wasn’t going to waste it fretting about the prince’s fanciful seating plan that saw spinster-and-contented-with-her-lot Bella Wheeler seated across the table from the world’s most desirable man. She could only hope Nero had got her message—Butt out of my life, Caracas. You’re not wanted here.
But she did want him. She wanted Nero with an ache so bad she could only hope the prince, who was undoubtedly a man of the world, hadn’t picked up on it. Nero was a force of nature, a man who could have any woman in the world. What if he suspected how she felt about him? How professional would Nero think her then?
He’d think her a naïve fool. And he wouldn’t be that far out. Right now, she was feeling as if she’d been parachuted in from Little Town in Nowhere Land to a life of such pomp and privilege she had to pinch herself to prove she wasn’t dreaming. Thank goodness she’d found a gown at the back of the wardrobe suitable for dinner—ten years out of date, but conservative, which was all that mattered. She didn’t like to draw attention to herself, which was another reason she appeared cold.
She stiffened and held Nero’s gaze as he looked at her for one long potent moment, then turned away when the prince began talking to him. It was an opportunity to soak everything in—all the life-sized oil paintings on the ruby silk walls. Stout kings and thin kings, with glittering swords and crowns bearing testament to their wealth and power. Happy women and sad women, wearing sumptuous gowns, some of whom were surrounded by strangely disaffected children staring off bleakly into an unknowable future. With a shiver, she dragged her gaze away and began to study the vaulted ceiling instead. On a ground of rich cobalt blue, this was lavishly decorated with rosy-cheeked cherubs and cotton wool clouds and, coming back down to earth again, there was more crystal and silver on a dinner table made magical by candlelight than she had ever seen before. There must have been fifty people sitting at the table with them, and it was longer than a bowling alley to accommodate that number. A mischievous smile played around her lips when the royal butler and his team of efficient footmen strode silently by—some wild child inside her wanted to dance a crazy quickstep after them down the jewelcoloured runners that marked out their transit through the hall.
She could act serene, but inside her there was a wild child longing to get out. Nero was as relaxed in this setting as he was on the polo field. How elegant and confident he appeared, lounging back in his chair, chatting easily to the prince—as well he might. Rumour said Nero lived in considerable style on his estancia back home, where he ruled his estate like his own private fiefdom. And if he had been devastating in match clothes, he was off the scale tonight in a beautifully cut evening suit. The dark cloth moulded his powerful frame to perfection, while the crisp white shirt and steel-grey tie showed off his tan.
Damn! He was watching her. She turned her attention quickly to her plate. She was safer with her ponies than with all these men. Men were strong and could physically over
whelm her, and Nero Caracas was the strongest of them all. When you’d fought and lost as badly as she had, you never forgot—
Yet here she was, wrapping her lips around the tines of her fork as if she wanted him to look at her.
Must she court danger at every opportunity?
It must be the Nero effect. She was never so foolish, but just sitting across from him was enough to make her act differently—made her monitor how she held herself and how she ate. She had even taken to sipping her drink demurely!
Damn this to hell! She was a professional woman, not some impressionable teenager. Straightening up, she made a special effort to engage the prince in a topic of conversation which she knew he would appreciate, but even the prince seemed to be on Nero’s side.
‘I’m surprised you haven’t made an offer for the pony of the match, Caracas,’ the prince observed after a few minutes of conversation which had fallen well within the bounds of what Bella considered safe.
Bella tensed. Must everything come back to this?
‘But I have,’ Nero said mildly. ‘I would love to own Misty, but Ms Wheeler seems to have her doubts—’
‘Doubts?’ The prince’s eyebrows shot up as he turned to stare at Bella. ‘Señor Caracas has an enviable estancia in Argentina, with the best living conditions for polo ponies I’ve seen anywhere in the world—’
‘And still Ms Wheeler doubts me.’ Nero’s eyes were glinting with humour as he attempted to capture Bella’s stony stare.
‘You must reconsider, Ms Wheeler,’ the prince insisted. ‘Nero is the best rider in the world, and as such he should have access to the best ponies.’
Should he? By whose right?
Bella flashed a furious look across the table, only to be met by Nero’s relaxed, sardonic stare. Her heart thundered—and not with anger. She could have coped with that more easily than this lust-fuelled desire to engage in combat with him. But the prince’s message was unmistakable. If she was intransigent she would lose his favour and, as the prince was one of the foremost sponsors of the game, everything she had worked so hard to build could quickly turn to dust. ‘Your Royal Highness.’ She appeared to agree—even adding a meek dip of her head, but inside she was fuming. She would not be forced to sell her most cherished possession—and Nero Caracas could stop pulling the prince’s strings. There must be a way out of this and she would find it.
But then Nero foiled her by mentioning a project close to her heart and now, it appeared, close to his. He planned to work with children who wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to ride. She’d been doing that for years, and had seen the benefits first hand.
‘I want them to experience the freedom of the pampas,’ Nero was explaining to the prince, ‘and discover what life is like on my estancia in Argentina.’
She would like to find out too, Bella thought wryly. But then her suspicions grew when it became clear that the prince and Nero had been in negotiations for some time over this proposed scheme—long enough for Nero to persuade the prince to be its patron.