The Royal House of Niroli: Secret Heirs: Bride by Royal Appointment / A Royal Bride at the Sheikh's Command

She looked startled. “What could happen? Why are you talking in riddles?”

He smiled, glad to be back in control. “Tired of games? You seemed all for them yesterday.”

It was her turn to flush. “Sorry about that,” she said breezily. “But you’ve got to admit, you asked for it.”

He wasn’t prepared to admit anything of the kind, but he didn’t say so. He was still trying to adjust to the fact of her blindness. There were so many angles to it, aspects he’d never considered before. He pushed away the pity factor immediately. His intuition told him she would scorn any sort of sympathy for her condition. And that left him to wonder at her elegance and how gracefully she seemed to deal with the situation. He couldn’t imagine coming to terms with such a thing himself. Anger and bitterness would probably rule his life.

As if they didn’t already, he thought wryly, though he knew he was overstating a bit. Still, no one would call him a happy man these days. A cynical man, yes. A hard man. Life tended to make you that way.

He’d been taken aback recently when he’d overheard a young female employee at his film production company say, “Mr Ryder is so hot. How come he never smiles?”

Smile, he’d thought at the time. What the hell was there to smile about, anyway? Who had time? Smiling was for losers.

And yet he’d made it a point to stop by the men’s room and look into a mirror. She was right. Smiling didn’t seem to come naturally anymore. He finally forced the corners of his mouth up into the proper shape but his silver-blue eyes didn’t join in. They were still as cold as an Arctic winter.

He hadn’t been born angry. In fact, despite having a mother who spent her days dashing about the world with the jet set, his childhood had been relatively calm. But it seemed as if he was angry all the time lately. Maybe that was why Jeremy was so impossible to handle. The sins of the father and all that.

He looked at Elena and wondered if she had a lover.

“I guess you didn’t make those sketches, did you?” he said sadly.

Her laugh sounded like chimes. “No, I did not.”

“That’s disappointing.”

“Such a pity.” She pretended sympathy. “You thought you’d found a woman with a lot of naked male anatomy on her mind.”

She had him there. The idea had been appealing. “I thought I’d found a very interesting woman, that’s for sure.”

“So women aren’t interesting if there is no sex involved?”

There was a pause, and then he said softly, just because he couldn’t resist, “Who says there’s no sex involved?”

“I …”

That stopped her for the moment. She actually blushed. He grinned. The waiter brought a tall coffee drink he didn’t recognize as anything he would have ever ordered, but he accepted it, then waited for the man to leave before he leaned forward and asked, “So if you didn’t draw them, who did?”

“My friend Gino did. He came out on the ruins with me, but he went back before you arrived to make a phone call and left his sketchbook in my bag.”

That made him raise his eyebrows. “So he’s the one interested in male nudes.”

She smiled. “You might say that. He’s a very good artist, isn’t he?”

“I suppose. Though I’d be a better judge of that if the nudes were female.”

Her smile faded. She didn’t need any reminders that he was aggressively heterosexual. His vibes were coming through loud and clear—and making her nervous. She had no intention of getting chummy. As soon as Fabio and the boy came back, she would find an excuse to leave. In the meantime, she didn’t mind sparring with him a bit, as long as he didn’t take it as an invitation toward anything friendlier.

He moved and she tensed, not sure what he was going to do, then felt a bit foolish when it was obvious he was just using his cell phone. She reached for her drink, as if that had been her objective all along, but she knew she wasn’t fooling anyone.

“Damn,” he said after a moment. “Why don’t cell phones work around here? I can’t get through to anyone on this phone.”

“Is it set up for international?” she asked.

“I bought it deliberately for just that reason,” he said. “I’m beginning to wonder if there’s a magic button or something.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to offer him the use of her landline. Her cottage was just around the corner. But she stopped herself just in time. She really didn’t want this man in her little house. Better not to suggest it. There ought to be a line he could use at whatever hotel he was checked into.

“Where are you staying?” she asked, since the subject had come up, at least in her mind.

“Why do you want to know?” he shot back without missing a beat.

“Oh!” This was surely the most defensive and distrustful man she’d ever met. She made a quick sound of exasperation. “What do you mean, why do I want to know? That is so rude!”

“Sorry,” he said gruffly. “But, believe me, I have reason to not want people to know where I’m staying.” He hesitated. “We started out at the Ritz but I’m afraid we’ve got to move to another place. They’ve likely put our possessions in the street by now.”

She shook her head, uncomprehending. “What are you talking about? What happened?”

He sighed heavily. “My adorable son Jeremy happened. As usual.”

She frowned. The man was impossible. “I wish you wouldn’t talk about him that way.”

“I wish I didn’t have to.” He saw the look on her face and backed down a bit. “Okay, I’ll try to hold back on the sarcasm. But, believe me, you’ll be saying mean things about him too when you hear what he did.”

She made a disbelieving face. “Tell me.”

He took a sip of his unfamiliar coffee drink and had to admit it was pretty good. Settling back, he began his story.

“Here’s how it all went down. I was up half the night trying to make business calls to the States, so Jeremy woke up before I did this morning and headed out to see whose life he could ruin.”

“Adam!”

He grinned, then, realizing she couldn’t see a grin, shrugged and went on. “When I woke up and saw he was gone, I knew right away we were in trouble. I searched all over for him, looking for evidence of recent disasters. It took awhile, but I finally went to the hotel kitchen. And there he was.”

“And? What did he do there—sneak a cookie?”

“Oh, no.” He issued a short laugh. “Jeremy never does small things like that. I’ll tell you what he did.” He grimaced, remembering the sight he was about to recount to her. “You see, the kitchen staff were preparing for a wedding, and in a sweetly fashioned little portico they had placed a beautifully decorated wedding cake, all ready to go. It was about five layers tall. And I’m sure it was a work of art … before Jeremy got to it and licked off most of the frosting.”

She gasped. “Oh, no!”

“Oh, yes.” He groaned, stretching out in his chair and shaking his head as he remembered the horrible scene. “The funny thing was, he liked the yellow roses and gobbled them right down, but the red roses didn’t taste right to him, so as he pulled them off he merely squished them on the table. They looked like sad little soldiers lying there, abused and unwanted. It was heartbreaking. Really.”

Elena was trying not to laugh but it wasn’t easy holding it back.

“In the meantime, he dipped his finger into the white foundation coat, making swirly pictures as he scooped off hunks of white frosting and gorged himself with it. And no one caught him in time, so he just kept eating. He was looking a bit green around the gills by the time I found him—and still trying to stuff more frosting down his greedy gullet.”

She sighed, shaking her head. “Poor Jeremy.”

“Poor Jeremy?” He was slightly outraged by her misdirected sympathy. “How about poor Jeremy’s father? Or the poor pastry chef? Or the poor bride, for God’s sake. You should have heard the screaming once everyone realized what had happened.”