Kitabı oku: «Cinderella's Royal Seduction / Crowned At The Desert King's Command», sayfa 5

For the rest of the afternoon, every time she tried to think up a reason to cry off the dinner invitation, she touched the card in her pocket and could hear Rhys’s deep voice warning, “No excuses.” Why did she find his profanity-laced impatience so reassuring? It brought a secretive smile to her lips every time she thought of it.

At five fifty-five, Maude called her. “Sopi. We have a disaster in the kitchen. You’ll have to run out or breakfast won’t happen tomorrow morning.”

Here was her excuse to skip dinner, but a devilish part of her refused to seize it.

“We’re expected to dine with the prince this evening, aren’t we?” she asked with a full pound of smugness. “I had a note from him, personally inviting me. I don’t want to be rude.”

A pause that was loud enough to thunk. Maude might have swallowed. “I assumed you would decline. You tend to set yourself apart from us.”

Oh, was it was her who did that?

Actually, maybe she did. She had never forgiven Maude for keeping her father in Europe or for spending all his money. Still, Sopi pulled the phone from her ear and scowled at the screen. Maude was sounding particularly petty about a simple dinner invitation. Was she that embarrassed of her unrefined stepdaughter?

“Well, tonight I’ll join you,” Sopi said cheerfully. “Since it’s not often I get a chance to dine with royalty.” She hung up and stuck her tongue out at the phone.

Then she suffered a churning stomach for the next hour as she showered and dressed. Her hair, which she never bothered to cut because she always wore it up, was ridiculously long, falling to her waist. At least it had a hint of wave, but it tickled her lower back, where her new dress had a circular cutout.

The dress was a sleeveless knit with a high collar, but it made her look fuller in the chest than she was, which balanced hips that were a shade wider than her stepsisters’ fashion magazines told her they ought to be.

She wasn’t much for makeup, but her cheeks were pale with nerves. She gave them a swipe of blusher and painted her lips with a pink gloss. She hadn’t thought about new shoes when she’d been shopping today so she had only the plain black pumps she wore when she played hostess in the dining room.

As she went onto tiptoe in the bathroom, trying to see her bottom half in the mirror, the butterflies in her stomach turned to slithering snakes. She was kidding herself. Not only would she not measure up to Nanette and Fernanda, she would look downright foolish in everyone’s eyes, trying so hard to impress.

Just as she started to kick off her shoes, however, Gerard texted that the prince was sending an escort for her.

Sopi choked on her tongue, texted back that it was unnecessary and decided to do what she’d been doing for years now—brave things out for one more day.

She had put up with Maude’s proprietary orders and her stepsisters’ snobbery because the alternative was to cede the territory to them and wind up with nothing. Cassiopeia’s was her home. She would fight for it to the bitter end.

Which came sooner than she’d expected.

What happens when it’s over?

It would never be over. Rhys had found the woman he would marry. The knowledge should have afforded him nothing beyond a contented sense of completion. He didn’t like the gnawing sense in him that he needed to leap and snatch and hold on tight. Gerard had assured him Sopi had promised to join them for dinner, but she had become so important to him in the last few hours, Rhys feared that if she wasn’t in the dining room when he got there, he might well devolve into shedding blood.

He stalked from the elevator across the short bridge that overlooked the foyer below to the dining room reservation desk. He was as combat ready as any of his ancestral knights, vibrating with a drive to claim.

The babble inside the dining room went silent as he appeared. Everyone rose with a muted shuffle of chairs. A small pocket of women stood to the side of the reception desk. One of them was backed into a corner behind a potted palm.

The tension in their small group hit him like a battering ram, but the sight of Sopi’s drawn cheeks and bravely lifted chin reached out to claw into his chest.

“Ladies,” he greeted.

Sopi stiffened and skimmed her gaze to a distant corner, refusing to make eye contact.

“Your Highness,” the rest murmured.

So. They’d told her about the sale. And she was taking it badly.

Rhys kept an impassive expression on his face, but he wanted to catch her by the chin and force her thick lashes up, so she looked directly into his eyes. He wanted to ask how she dared let these women take advantage of her. Didn’t she realize who she was?

No. She didn’t. Steps had been taken to bury it too deeply.

He had thought to make a dramatic announcement here in the dining room, but as he read the angry hurt in her, he realized he couldn’t spring it on her like that. She would hate and blame him a little longer, but he could withstand it.

Any guilt Rhys might have experienced for his underhanded actions in buying the spa dried up, however. It was past time Sopi learned the truth about her mother and herself. He couldn’t wait for the transformation.

Maude’s younger daughter demanded his attention by stepping forward and offering a curtsy with a breathy, nervous giggle.

“Your Highness, some of my friends have just arrived.” She waved at a long table with a half dozen women down either side, all looking his way with anticipation. A few empty seats had been saved in the middle. “We wondered if you might enjoy a more lively evening? They’re anxious for a chance to meet you.”

“Another time.” He glanced impatiently at Maude.

“Of course,” Maude said smoothly. “We have a quiet table reserved at the back. Sopi?”

“This way.” Sopi didn’t smile, and her voice was cold and pointed as an icicle aimed at the middle of his chest. She led the way through the staring crowd.

Ingrained protocol nearly had him offering an arm to escort Maude and her eldest daughter, but he shunned them at the last second, moving ahead of them, all his attention on the sensual swish of loose hair across the top of a stunning, heart-shaped ass that swayed provocatively as she wound her way between the tables.

Dear God, that hair. How dare she hide such a thing from him? It was an instant fetish he would need a thousand nights to indulge.

It was a good thing the place was filled with mostly women, because if he caught any man, even one of his lethally trained bodyguards, checking her out, he would duel to the death.

He gritted his teeth, trying to suppress this unwelcome surge of possessiveness. Where was it coming from? It was more than his innate preference to act on his decisions the minute he made them. It was positively primeval. It was an aspect of that wildness he knew lurked in any human, and he didn’t like it. He only hoped it would ease up once he knew she was his. It had to. Otherwise they were doomed.

He was given the position at the head of the table, Maude on his right, Nanette on his left. Sopi sat on Maude’s right and glared at Fernanda, who shrugged across at her in a silent, Don’t blame me.

“I want to thank you for your hospitality,” Rhys said as their champagne arrived and was poured. “I’ll be leaving tomorrow.”

“You won’t stay the week?” Maude murmured, but she was drowned out by Fernanda’s, “Us, too, in a few days. Finally!” Fernanda raised her glass.

Sopi choked strongly enough they all lowered their glasses. Her eyes glimmered as she shot hard looks at each of them.

“You suck. You all suck,” she croaked.

There was a collective gasp from tables nearby. Maude said a sharp, “Sopi! Consider who you’re speaking to.”

Rhys said nothing, pleased to see she possessed a spine after all. She would need one.

“All of you.” She rose and glared directly at him with betrayed hurt sharp as the edge of a knife.

Her hand jerked, but before she could fling the contents of her wine at him, Rhys’s bodyguard caught her wrist.

“Stand down,” Rhys barked at him, also rising.

Sopi shrugged away from the bodyguard’s hold and stepped away from the table. She threw her glass to the floor in a shattering statement.

“Go to hell. Every single one of you.” She stalked out.

“Someone doesn’t know which side her bread is buttered on,” Nanette said into her champagne.

“True,” Rhys bit out, sending Nanette a dark glower that made her blanch. He set his hands on the table to lean over the three women. “Those who betray others to get what they want should expect the same treatment. Skip the meal and start packing. Be gone by midnight.”

“What—”

He ignored the women’s cries of shock as he straightened and sent a curt nod to Gerard. His assistant would ensure the staff were notified that Maude and her daughters no longer gave the orders and, in fact, were no longer residents of the hotel.

As the buzz of gossip and speculation spread like wildfire through the room, Rhys jerked his head at his bodyguard to lead the way to Sopi’s cabin.

How stupid could she get? She had genuinely thought her worst humiliation was allowing a man with more experience to talk her out of her clothes and take a few liberties with her person. She had thought letting down her physical guard where his sexual intentions were concerned had been the careless act, but no. Last night’s dalliance had been some kind of misdirection so she would be blindly ignorant of what Maude was really doing.

What he was doing. Of course he wasn’t interested in her. He had toyed with her the way some executives spun fidget spinners while brokering a deal.

The pressure in her chest threatened to crack her breastbone, but Sopi refused to scream or cry or release any of the aching sobs branding her throat.

Fine, she’d been thinking for the last twenty minutes, after Fernanda had spilled the beans that Maude had definitely meant to be delivered a few days from now, no doubt after ordering Sopi to load their damned luggage for them. Maude had hissed in warning and Nanette had said, “For God’s sake, Fernie. Mummy told you it’s confidential.”

“What?” Fernanda had had the gall to cast it as a good thing. “She’ll be happy. Mummy sold it all to the prince. We’ll all be out of your hair by next weekend. You should be happy, Sopi.”

Sopi had been utterly speechless, standing there in shock as the prince arrived and everyone stared. She had moved on autopilot, only feeling reality hit her as they reached the table. Instead of holding a chair for their guest the way she would as a hostess, the prince’s assistant, Gerard, had moved behind her and held her chair.

It had been so unexpected, it had knocked her out of her stasis and into a plummeting realization that everything had changed. The one dream she had clung to was gone. The only home she had ever known would never be hers.

The nascent fantasy she had had that a prince—a damned royal prince—might see something in her beyond a penniless chambermaid had burst like a bubble, leaving her coated in a residue of disillusion and humiliation.

Slamming into her cabin, she kicked off her shoes. Hard. So that one dented a cardboard box and the other went flying toward the bathroom door.

She wrenched at the dress she’d bought with him in mind. It was meant to be pulled on gently to retain the shape and prevent snags in the delicate knit. She dragged roughly at it. Tried to tear it because she hated it. She yanked it off and dropped it where she stood and wiped her feet on it. She was panting and shaking, still trying to catch her breath after her sprint through the snow-laden trees, filled with an endless supply of hate.

With a final twist of her foot, she flicked it to the side and shoved at a stack of boxes, freshly delivered this afternoon and left for her to move to a more convenient location. Everything was always left to her to do, and she was sick of it. She shoved the stack even harder, so it fell with a tumble.

The crash wasn’t nearly as satisfying as she had hoped, especially when it was followed by a loud stomp of a heavy foot leaping onto her stoop. The door flung open to let in a burst of cold air that swirled like a demon around her nearly naked body.

Him. The instrument of her ruin.

“Bastard,” she muttered and turned away to take her narrow stairs two at a time.

Below her, she heard the door click closed. She glanced down from the loft and gripped the rail with humiliated rage as she watched him take in the clutter and the mess of boxes. He picked up her dress and gave it a light shake.

“Come right in,” she said scathingly. “Act like you own the place.”

He lifted his gaze, and she instantly felt naked. Not just physically, which she mostly was, but as though she was utterly transparent. As if he could see through her sarcasm to those puerile fantasies she’d spun in her head. It was so agonizing to be seen this way, she had to hold back a sob and turn away. She yanked out a drawer in her dresser, digging for jeans and a pullover. The stairs creaked as she stuck her legs into her jeans.

He appeared in the loft and flicked his gaze in harsh judgment of her used furniture and what she had always thought of as a cozy living space. As her turtleneck nearly choked her, and she yanked at her hair enough that it had some slack outside her collar, she saw the loft through his eyes and was mortified to realize it wasn’t humble. It was shabby.

Angry that he was seeing it and forcing her to see it, she said, “I was being facetious. What I really meant was get lost.”

What she really meant were two words she had never said to anyone, no matter how badly Nanette had ever baited her, but she was feeling them this evening. She really was.

He draped her dress over the footboard of her bed. “We’ll continue this discussion in my room.”

“Gosh, I would love to accommodate you, Your Highness, but I have to pack and find a place to live. Because if you think I’m going to work for you, you need to see a psychiatrist about your loose grasp on reality.”

“My people will pack for you. Socks,” he said, nodding at her bare feet.

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“Süsse, I will carry you out of here kicking and screaming if I have to. We are not talking here.”

“There is nothing wrong with the way I live.” Everything was wrong with it, but she would die on the hill of defending what was left of her home after the way he had treated her. “This is what a person has to do when they’re kicked around by people who have more power than they do.”

“I know that!” he shouted, then seemed to pull himself together with a flex of his shoulders and a clench of his jaw. “It reminds me of the way my brother and I lived when we were in exile. I hate it. I won’t stay here, but you and I will talk. Am I carrying you?”

Shaken by that completely unexpected admission, she only hesitated long enough for one brow to go up in a warning that he was dead serious.

She swallowed and told herself she was only cooperating because this was too small a space for the explosive emotions still detonating inside her and radiating off him. She found a balled-up pair of socks and sat on the top stair to put them on with her boots, aware of him looming over her the whole time.

“I don’t know what we could possibly have to say to one another,” she muttered.

“You will be surprised,” he promised in a dark vow. He followed her down the stairs and out the door.

His bodyguard flanked them as they crossed to the hotel and blocked anyone from joining their elevator.

Sopi refused to make eye contact with the wide stares that came at them from every level of the foyer.

“I forgot my phone,” she murmured as she realized her hands and pockets were empty.

“It will be retrieved.” He let her into his suite himself, waiting while the bodyguard moved through in a swift check of all the rooms. Rhys stationed the man outside his door with, “Only Gerard, and only if the place is burning to the ground.”

“Yes, sir.”

Rhys let out the sort of breath that expelled hours of tested patience.

Sopi hugged herself and moved to the window where she noted he had quite the view of naked women frolicking in the pool below.

“I was in here last week,” Sopi murmured. “Packing Nanette’s and Fernanda’s things to move them down the hall so you could have this suite. Except that’s not what I was doing, was I? You’ve all been cooking this for ages, and I just did the heavy lifting so they could be on their way faster.”

“If they’re still here in three hours, I’ll set them on the stoop myself.”

Taken aback, she realized that whatever fury she was nursing, he had plenty of his own. “If you’re so angry with them, why—”

He held up a hand to stop her, pausing in removing his suit jacket before finishing his shrug. He threw his jacket over the back of a chair and loosened his tie on the way to retrieving stapled documents from a stack on the desk.

He dropped one set onto the coffee table. “That’s a copy of the offer Maude accepted today.” Slap. “That’s the transfer of Cassiopeia’s into your name.”

CHAPTER FIVE

“WHAT?” STUNNED, SOPI stepped forward in shocked excitement, unable to believe it. She pulled up as she realized such a thing would have to come with conditions. Her excitement drained away. “Why?” she asked with dread, fearing she already knew.

His beard darkened where he bit the inside of his cheek. His irises glowed extra blue and laser sharp as he branded patterns on her skin with his gaze. “Last night, you asked me where this was going.”

“It’s not going anywhere. You made that perfectly clear when you didn’t come back to the pool afterward.” Her heart hammered in her chest.

“Nanette was loitering in the spa. I was protecting you by sending my bodyguard.”

“Sure you were,” she choked. “That’s also what you’re doing here, I guess?” She waved at the paperwork.

“I am,” he said in a voice so gritty it left her feeling abraded all over. “Nanette knew I was with someone last night. I could have revealed you, but I wasn’t ready to. I wanted time to consider exactly how I would answer your question.”

“And this is your answer?” She was growing more appalled by the second. How did he manage to hurt her so easily? So deeply? Despite last night’s intimacy, they were still virtual strangers. He shouldn’t be able to impact her like this. “You went behind my back to cut a deal to buy my home?”

“I wanted to talk to you about it.” Her temper didn’t faze him. He stood as an indifferent presence, unrepentant and untouched. “You weren’t here. From now on, you’re not allowed to be angry with me for actions I take if you don’t show up to hear my side of it before I take them.”

“Wow. Sure,” she agreed, laying on the sarcasm with a trowel. “I will be sure to never be angry with you in future when I never see you again.”

“Dial back the histrionics. We have a lot to cover, and you don’t want to peak too early.”

Her blood boiled. She shot her arms down straight at her sides, hands in tight, impotent fists.

“I have a right to be angry, Rhys! You bought property stolen from me.” She jabbed at her chest. “Now you want to gift it to me like you’re doing me a favor—” Her voice caught, but she forced out the rest, each word like powdered glass in the back of her throat. “But I expect you want favors in return, don’t you? Virginity is quite the precious commodity these days, isn’t it? You make me sick!”

She turned to wrench at the door latch, but he was on top of her, surrounding her and catching her hand in a firm but strangely gentle grip as he caged her. His deep, velvety voice growled into her hair, causing tickles against her ear that made goose bumps rise on her nape.

“It’s a wedding gift.”

“To who!” She tried to shove her elbow into his gut.

“You.” He spun her and pinned her to the door. “Now settle down before my bodyguard bursts in here and I have to kill him for trying to touch you again.”

“You really have lost half the cards from your deck. I’m not marrying you.” She pressed her forearms against his chest, forcing space between them, so astounded she didn’t have the sense to be intimidated. “We’ve known each other two days. Why would you even suggest such a thing?”

“Because the gradual approach is not open to me.” His jaw clenched as he studied her flushed, angry expression.

She didn’t want to be aware of his heat and weight pressing into her, but she was. She really didn’t want to like it. She turned her face to the side, resisting and rejecting.

“You were going to come to my room last night. Weren’t you?” His voice was smoke and mirrors, casting a spell she had to work to resist.

“If you had come back to the pool and asked me yourself, I probably would have, yes.” She lifted her chin but winced internally as she admitted it, hating herself for that, too. “Were you planning to propose if I had?” she scoffed.

He backed off a fraction. “I wasn’t thinking much beyond how badly I wanted you in my bed.”

“That’s a no, then.” She gave him a firm nudge, but he was immovable.

“Everything changed while you were playing hide-and-seek this morning.”

“I was doing my job.” Her voice faded into a discouraged sob that rang in her chest as she realized she no longer had one of those.

He sighed and gave a comforting brush of his thumb against her jaw. “Maude was determined to sell the spa, Sopi. Someone else would have bought this property if I hadn’t. Be happy it was me.”

“You people need to quit telling me how to feel about this.” A burning ache of blame stayed hot in her throat.

“Don’t lump me in with your stepfamily,” he warned, not even flinching. He only grazed her cheekbone with his fingertips as he tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear. His voice changed. Gentled. “And hear what I’m saying. Your life would have toppled regardless. Whether you’re happy about it or not, I’m offering you a cushion. A velvet one. With gold tassels.”

His words, edged in irony, held a quiet finality that shook her to the core. Her world was shattered. All she had known had been upended and was sliding beyond her reach.

Her heart began to tremble and she pushed harder on his chest, freshly angry, but scared now, too. “Let me go.”

He waited a beat, then stepped back and dropped his hands to his sides, watchful.

She hugged herself, moving into the room to put space between them so she could think, but she remained too anxious and confused to make sense of any of this. Marriage? Really?

“I’ve always thought that if I were to marry, it would be to someone I love. Someone I trust. I’m not going to marry to get a thing. Especially not to get something that should already be mine.”

“I wanted you to be here while I negotiated with Maude.” He sounded brisk but tired as he moved to the bar and poured two glasses from a bottle of whiskey that was already open. “If it were up to me, I would have hired the lawyers you needed to fight Maude, taken a partnership in the business in exchange, but there was no time. Plus, all of my business dealings are scrutinized. I can’t foot the bill on a stranger’s legal fight—or gift a hotel to a woman with whom I am having an affair—without causing a lot of questions to be asked. Buying this property as a present for my future wife, however…”

She shook her head, unable to take in that he really meant that.

Nevertheless, a distant part of her was processing that she would finally be the boss here. All her friends would have secure jobs. That was as important for the village as for the spa. She grew dizzy with excitement at the prospect.

But why her?

“Is this like a green-card thing or something?” she managed to ask. “Would it be a fake marriage?”

He snorted as he came across with the glasses. “Not at all.”

“You’re genuinely asking me to marry you. And if I do, you’ll give me this hotel and spa, all the property and rights to the aquifer. Everything,” she clarified.

“If you’ll live in Verina with me and do what must be done to have my children, yes,” he said with a dark smile.

She was still shaking her head at the outrageous proposition but found herself pressing her free hand to her middle, trying to still the flutters of wicked anticipation that teased her with imaginings of how those babies would get made.

She veered her mind from such thoughts.

“Why? I mean, why me?” She lifted her gaze to his, catching a flash of sensual memories reflected in the hot blue of his irises.

“I’ve already told you. I want you in my bed.”

“And that’s it? Your fly has spoken? That’s the sum total of your motivation?”

His eyes narrowed, becoming flinty and enigmatic. “There are other reasons. I’ll share them with you, but they can’t leave this room.”

That took her aback. “What if I don’t want to carry your secrets?”

“You’re going to carry my name and my children. Of course you’ll keep my secrets. Would you like to tell me yours?” He regarded her over the rim of his glass as he sipped, as though waiting for her to tip her hand in some way.

She shrugged her confusion. “I’m not exactly mysterious,” she dismissed. “The most interesting thing that’s ever happened to me is happening right now. You realize how eccentric this sounds?”

“Eccentric or not, it’s a good offer. You should accept it before I change my mind.”

She snorted. “You’re quite ruthless, aren’t you?” She spoke conversationally but knew it as truth in her bones.

“I do what has to be done to get the results I want. You understand that sort of pragmatism, even if you’ve pointed your own efforts in dead-end directions. I look forward to seeing what you accomplish when you go after genuinely important goals.”

“This is my home. It’s important to me.”

“Then claim it.”

A choke of laughter came out of her. “Just like that? Accept your proposal and—” She glanced at the paperwork. “I’m not going to agree to anything before I’ve actually reviewed that offer.”

“Due diligence is always a sensible action,” he said with an ironic curl of his lip. He waved his glass toward the table, inviting her to sit and read.

Gingerly, she lowered onto the sofa and set aside her whiskey.

Rhys kept his back to her, gaze fixed across the valley as he continued to sip his drink, saying nothing as she flipped pages.

His behavior was the sort of thing a dominant wolf would do to indicate how little the antics of the lesser pack affected him, but she was glad not to have his unsettling attention aimed directly at her as she compared the two contracts. Aside from the exchange of money on Maude’s—and the fact that hers finalized on her wedding day—they were essentially the same.

“I want possession on our engagement. If I decide to accept your proposal,” she bluffed, fully expecting him to tell her to go to hell.

“Done. On condition we begin the making of our children on the day our engagement is announced.” He turned, and his eyes were lit with the knowledge his agreement had taken her aback. “We’ll keep the conception part as a handshake agreement. No need to write that down in black-and-white.”

He brought her a pen. His hand was steady as he offered it. Hers trembled as she hesitantly took it.

“Are you completely serious?” she asked.

“Make the change. Sign it. I’ll explain why I want you to marry me. You’ll accept my proposal, and Cassiopeia’s will be yours.”

Inexplicable tears came into her eyes. This was too much. Too fast.

“What if we get engaged and I back out?”

“I expect you to go into this with good faith, Sopi. I will.”

And he expected her to sleep with him. Get started on making his babies. She might not have the option of backing out on their marriage if that happened.

She wanted to sleep with him. That was the unnerving part. Not for Cassiopeia’s or a wedding ring or babies. For the experience. To be able to touch him and feel…

She swallowed, hearing him say her life would have changed regardless. He was right about that. Which made her stupid to turn this down. It was probably the best outcome she could anticipate. Her alternative was to let him have Cassiopeia’s while she tried to sue Maude for a slice of the purchase price. Good luck with that. Maude was headed out of the country. Sopi would most likely lose any settlement she won to lawyer fees anyway.

She told herself she was only signing as a matter of hearing him out, not really committing to changing her entire life.

Shakily, she made the change and set her signature to the page, feeling so overwhelmed her head swam as she rose to bring the pages and pen to him.

He set the contract on an end table and inked his name next to hers, handing it back to her for her inspection.

She moved away from the intensity of his gaze, trying not to think about the full severity of what she was edging toward. She returned the document to the coffee table and picked up her drink, took a bracing sip of scorching whiskey.

“The floor is yours, Rhys.” The alcohol left a rasp in her voice. “Tell me what sort of husband I’ll get for the price of a spa.”

“No more sarcasm,” he said flatly and threw back the last of his drink, then went to pour another. “I offer more than a damned spa in exchange for marriage. You’ll have security of every kind. Wealth and power and a type of fame that can be tiresome but has its uses. It can be very effective when used for altruistic acts. I thought that might interest you.” He cannily noted the way she swung to face him.

“Why would you think that? You don’t know me.” She demurred, forcing her gaze elsewhere while she took another nervous sip.