Instead, Jacyn took the high road. “I’m find, Dad. I’m safe and healthy and happy. You can pass that on to whoever cares enough about me to want to know.”
“But why are you there?” George insisted. “Did you get a job?”
“Let’s just say I stumbled upon an opportunity,” she waffled. But then she thought, why the hell not come right out and say it? In for a penny. “Actually, Dad, I’m visiting my fiancé’s family. In his family’s château.”
There was a long pause. “Château! That’s French for—”
“Castle, yes,” she finished for him. “That’s what it is. You see, my husband-to-be is the son of a count. A member of an old royal lineage. His brother is the Count d’Ambly des Ayvelles. Look them up online.”
The pause stretched all the way to eternity. “You’re engaged? Why haven’t we heard of this?”
Jacyn examined her fingernails, willing her voice to stay casual. “It all happened very suddenly. His name is Alexandre, and he’s a businessman. A very,verysuccessful one. I met him and discovered there was no way I could resist. You know what that’s like, don’t you? After all, you met Teresa and suddenly everything in your old life, including me, no longer mattered.”
She could almost see him cringe. When he failed to say anything more, she went on chirpily, “You can tell your wife and stepdaughter that I’m doing great, and that my fiancé and I will be back in the States in two months.”Where you can continue to ignore me,she finished silently. “In the meantime, I’ll just be here learning to ride horses and riding around on limousines and private jets.”
She listened to her father bluster until she couldn’t stand it anymore. “Thanks for checking up on me, Dad,” she said firmly. “But I really have to go.”
Satisfaction washed over her as she hung up, then she turned off the phone for good measure.
***
When Alex heard the sound of the bathroom opening, he turned around, smiling. Then he froze.
Out stepped Jacyn, wearing nothing but the sheen of dripping water.Nue comme un ver,was the phrase that sped through his head, but he immediately dismissed it. He loved his native tongue, but there were times when it fell short. The expression ‘naked as a worm’ certainly couldn’t cut it. Not in this instance. Not for Jacyn.
She wasn’t pink and bare and helpless, as the expression suggested. No, she was bronzed and slick and glowing and glorious. Her hair piled up onto her head, thick and red, like a halo of color. Her beautiful skin buffed and luminous and…
Breathtakingly naked.
She was also frozen into place, eyes fixed on his, stunned into immobility by the sight of him.
Alex knew he should do the gentlemanly thing and look away. Turn his back. Shut his eyes. But, God help him, he was powerless to move. His eyes took in everything at once. The gentle slope of her shoulders, the line of her throat down and down to the curve of her breasts, tipped with nipples as dark as a baccara rose. The flatness of her abdomen interrupted only by a shell-like navel, and the soft, womanly curve of her belly. And below that, a soft, dark fuzz.
He heard himself groan. It was an act of supreme mastery to control the tautness in his groin, and the blaze of hunger that roared through him.
Her voice sliced through the air between them. “What are you doing here?” her hands rose to her breasts, and then, as if she realized that her bottom half was uncovered, dropped to hide her mound, which left her beautiful, swaying breasts free. With an anguished chirp, she twisted away from him.
He didn’t want to tell her that all that did was present him with a sight that was just as mind-blowing; her pert, perfect butt.
If I’m dead and this is heaven,he thought,pray they don’t snatch me back from the brink.Instead, he said, “I knocked several times.”
“And then just walked in without permission?” she all but shrieked.
“Well, yes.”
Her eyes cast frantically around for something to cover herself with. Taking pity on her, he reached for a towel and held it out. She snatched it from him and wrapped it hastily around herself, glaring at him all the while.
Too late,he thought.Every inch of you is burned into my brain.
“I guess you’re so used to everyone waiting on you that it never crossed your mind that maybeyoushould wait onthem!”she grumbled, grabbing a handful of clothing items seemingly at random and backing into the bathroom again.
“I would apologize,” he said cheekily, “but that would suggest that I regret the magnificent sight of you—”
“Oh, hush,” she groused from behind the closed door. “But if anyone else hears about this, so help me—”
“Might I remind you that in the eyes of everyone in this house, you and I are engaged to be married, and therefore lovers, and therefore already intimately acquainted with each other’s bodies.”
She groaned.