The Mediterranean Prince's Passion

But Ella heard the evasion in his voice and stared at him. Nothing added up. She stared at him as if seeing him properly for the first time. His clothes were simple, but his bearing was aristocratic, and there was something about his appearance that she had never seen in a man before. Something in the way he carried himself—an arrogant kind of self-assurance that seemed innate rather than learned. Yet he wore faded jeans and a worn T-shirt…

He had brought her to this beach hut, where the shower dripped in a single trickle and yet the soap and shampoo were the finest French brands. She frowned. And he had called her cara, hadn’t he?

‘Are you Italian?’

He shook his head.

‘Spanish?’

‘No.’

‘French, then?’

He smiled. ‘Still no.’

Words he had spoken came back to her. ‘Yet you speak all three languages?’

He shrugged. How much to tell her? How long to continue this delicious game of anonymity? How long could he? ‘Indeed I do.’

‘And your English is perfect.’

‘I know it is,’ he agreed mockingly.

This time she would not be deterred by the soft, seductive voice. Ella leaned across the table, challenging him with her eyes. ‘Just who exactly are you, Nico?’

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_8ec9c691-a018-5067-85ab-66a2ec3d8050)

THE strangest thing was that Nico was really enjoying himself. It was like a game, or a story—the one where a prince disguised himself as a beggar and no one recognised him.

For a man whose life had been composed of both light and dark fairy tale aspects, it was a new and entertaining twist. And if he told her…then what? Nothing would be the same, not ever again. Her attitude towards him would change irrevocably. No longer would she speak to him as if were just a man—an ordinary man.

When he was a little boy, had he not sometimes wished to be made ‘normal’, just for the day? And even when he had been at college in America, doing his best to blend in, people had still known of his identity. It had been inevitable—security had arrived before he had, to make the place fit for a prince.

And since when had he been asked to make an account of himself? To explain who he was and his place in the world?

Never.

He leaned back in the wooden chair. ‘How does a man define himself?’ He asked the question as much of himself as of her. ‘Through his possessions? His achievements, perhaps?’

Ella gave him a bemused look. ‘Are you incapable of giving a direct answer to a direct question?’

Probably. In the world he inhabited he was never asked a direct question. Conversation was left for him to lead, at whim. It was forbidden by ancient decrees for others to initiate it. When he spoke people listened. He had never known anything else, had accepted it as the norm, but now—with a tug of unfamiliar awareness—he recognised that total deference could be limiting.

‘I am Nico,’ he said slowly. ‘You know my name. I’m twenty-eight and I was born on Mardivino—a true native of the principality.’ His eyes glittered. ‘So now you know everything.’

‘Everything and yet nothing,’ she challenged. ‘What do you do?’

‘Do?’ His eyes glittered. How could he have forgotten that in her world people were defined by what they did for a living?

‘For a living?’

‘Oh, this and that,’ he said evasively. ‘I work for a very rich man.’

That might go some of the way towards explaining things. Maybe that was why he seemed so impressively self-assured. Perhaps he had picked up and now mirrored some of his rich employer’s characteristics, as sometimes happened. That might also explain the extravagant soaps in the bathroom—he might be the recipient of a rich man’s generosity.

Ella gestured towards the humble interior. ‘And is this your home?’

There was a pause. ‘No. No, I don’t live here. It’s just a place that belongs to my…employer.’

‘And the jet-ski?’

‘You remember that?’ he questioned.

The food and the shower had worked a recuperative kind of magic, and more fragments of memory now began to filter back. She recalled being clasped against a firm, hard body and the comforting, safe warmth of him. Then fast bobbing across the water, with spray being thrown against her fevered skin.

‘Kind of.’

‘What about it?’ he asked carelessly.

‘Is it yours?’

Inexplicably, he felt a flicker of disappointment. Would that matter, then? A top-of-the-range jet-ski was a rich man’s toy. His habitual cynicism kicked in. Of course it would matter—things like that always did. You were never seen for who you were but what you owned and what you possessed. Take away the trappings and what was left?

‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘It’s just something I use when I want to.’

‘Well, I hope I’m not going to get you into trouble,’ she ventured.

His cynical thoughts began to crumble when she looked at him like that. So…so sweet, he thought. So scrubbed and so innocent. So utterly relaxed in his company and now worrying about his welfare! And when had anyone ever done that before?

Now that it was dry, the tawny hair was spilling in profusion over her shoulders and face, but not quite managing to disguise the lush swell of her breasts. The aching in his body intensified as he imagined himself running the tips of his fingers over their heavy curves. ‘No, you won’t get me into trouble,’ he murmured. ‘I suspect he wouldn’t have minded rescuing you himself.’

The words were flirty, and almost imperceptibly something in the atmosphere changed and then intensified. A blurry sexual awareness that had been there all the time was now brought into sharp focus. Ella felt the warm tongue of desire licking its way over her skin and the heated clamour of her response. She found that she didn’t dare look at him—and yet where else was there to look? The room was so small, and he was so…so…

She swallowed, her mouth as dry as the sun-baked sand outside. ‘Maybe I should think about getting home,’ she said quietly.

Nico had watched her body tense, and then seen the wary look that crept into her eyes. He forced himself to steel against the demands of his hungry body, aware that he could frighten her away. Because sex was easy. He could get sex any time he wanted. But not a unique situation like this. And what would sex be like with a woman who didn’t know?

‘Not yet.’ His dark eyes on her face, he took a mouthful of wine. ‘You still haven’t told me anything about you.’

‘Well, you know my name. And I’m twenty-six and I was born in Somerset.’ Her eyes mocked him. ‘So now you know everything about me, too.’

‘Everything and nothing.’ He echoed her sardonic words. ‘And what of the men on board—one of them is your lover, perhaps?’

Ella found her cheeks colouring. ‘You can’t just come out and ask me something like that!’ she protested.

‘Why not?’

‘Because I thought we were sitting here having a polite conversation, and that sort of question breaks all the rules!’