Some Like It Scandalous, page 3
He wanted to pin her against the wall and kiss her senseless. He wanted to lap up all that radiant passion she so easily shared with him. He wanted to find out what movies she liked and what book she curled up in bed with at night. He wanted…
Slamming the pool cue down on the table, he ignored Richard’s wince. “I want to know everything about her life. Where is she living? Is she living with someone?” The thought made him sick, but he pressed on. “What does she spend her free time on?”
Richard nodded, his thumbs moving swiftly as he typed on his phone. “And while we dig up all this information?”
He cleared his schedule. Anna was his only talking point. “She hates the title.”
“That’s resentment, not hate.” Richard corrected. “But it’s an advantage. Use it.”
“To do what? Chase her away again? Let her box me up and put me squarely in the category she believes I belong?” He scowled. For someone so tempestuous and grounded in reality, she maintained a very black-and-white view of the world.
Thirteen years before, a busty little brunette burst into his introduction to business ethics class, interrupted the professor’s dry as hell lecture, and set the whole classroom laughing. With few seats to be had in the packed hall, he’d offered her his and she’d made him sit back down, while she squeezed into the narrow space next to him.
Their thighs touched for the entire class.
He never did hear what the professor droned on about with regard to compliance laws. He’d introduced himself, but she barely shook his hand before racing off. He didn’t even know what color her eyes were. A bribe at the register’s office earned him her schedule, and he’d waited for her outside her next class. The workload surprised him, but a week of putting himself in her path worked.
She’d said yes when he asked her out.
“Where does she jog in the morning? What coffee shop does she frequent? Where does she shop?” He drummed his fingers. “Her address is in the file, get that for me…”
“There’s a law against stalking.”
“Don’t be my attorney, Richard. Be my friend—help me.”
“Call her. Make up some excuse and get her on the phone.” Richard glanced at his watch. “It’s late, but it can’t hurt if you’re the last thing she thinks about before she goes to sleep.”
“Unless she hates me.”
“Oh, she’s probably angry, and like I said earlier, she resents the title. And the lie.” The droll response didn’t make him feel better. Richard held up his hands. “Look, you made a mistake and you paid for it—but at the end of the day, she was the one who walked.”
“She walked away because I’m a prince.” The bitter churn of that fact burned.
“You can’t change the fact that you’re a prince—or I guess you can. But it’s not in you to drop the titles altogether and walk away from your family.” Richard always knew what buttons to push. Armand was the head of his family, he couldn’t—and would never—abandon them.
“You are very good at poking holes, Richard, but do you have any suggestions?” He bit off the next words because his friend didn’t deserve the anger. Not this time. If anyone was at fault it was Armand himself.
“You can’t stop being a prince, Armand. So why bother?” Richard rolled his sleeves down one at a time and buttoned them at the cuffs. Their billiards game was over.
“What’s your point?” They’d already established that his position had an undesirable effect on Anna.
“My point, Your Highness.” Richard shrugged on his jacket. Disapproval rang in his words—he only used the appellation when Armand annoyed him. “You can’t stop being a prince, so why not use it to your advantage?”
Use it to my advantage how? She doesn’t like the damn title. He frowned.
Richard pulled his keys out of his pocket. “I’ll call you in the morning. I have some strings to go pull so you can stalk—I mean court—your lady.”
Armand half-scowled, then waved a hand, still considering his friend’s advice. He left the pool table as it was—someone would be along to straighten it—and walked through the apartment he maintained in the city. It was a recent acquisition, purchased after the family learned about his cousin’s existence. He’d intended to give her the penthouse, but her subsequent marriage to Daniel Voldakov had changed his mind.
Just ten rooms, the penthouse was silent. He maintained a staff but gave them their own apartments downstairs rather than have them live in. Privacy was a rare commodity—rarer still with the increase in security the family endured over recent months thanks to negative publicity in Eastern Europe. Between his cousin Francesca’s sudden interest in military service, Rosemary’s determination to be in every tabloid and his brother George’s behavior, it was a wonder he’d managed the last few months in Los Angeles at all.
In the kitchen, he opened the refrigerator and stared at the labeled containers. The housekeeper hated it when he rummaged, but she wasn’t here to stop him so he claimed a random Tupperware container and carried it out to the sunken living room. The city lights gleamed in the darkness beyond the windows of the tower. Stabbing a fork into a piece of shrimp, he ate without tasting the rich sauce he normally favored.
He couldn’t get Anna out of his mind.
“Exactly how does this help me study for my final again?” She sprawled across his chest, her hair clinging to his damp skin.
“Stress reliever.” He grinned, trailing his fingers up and down her spine. He loved her like this, boneless and loose from sex. “The release of endorphins will help us retain what we’re reading.”
Laughter shook her and she lifted her head, a lazy smile curving her lips. “You are so full of it, Charlie. You just wanted to get laid.”
“Do you feel better?” He traced the curve of her shoulder and the soft line of her throat. She had the most beautiful neck, long and graceful.
“Hmm.” She closed her eyes and leaned into his gentle caress. “I definitely don’t have a headache anymore.”
“Which will contribute to your ability to study.” He might not get any more done, content to simply lie here and touch her.
“True.” Eyes half-open like a cat about to purr, Anna stretched. The delicious friction of her sweat-slicked body on his roused him all over again. The doorbell rang and his contented kitten popped up. “Food!”
Armand groaned, but Anna already bounced to her feet and grabbed his shirt from the clothes they’d stripped off earlier. Fortunately, with his height, the shirt struck her at midthigh.
The doorbell rang again and she vanished down the hall. Sitting, he fumbled for his abandoned jeans and dragged them on.
“Charlie?”
“Anna…?” The strained note in her voice urged him to action. His security knew not to flirt with her, though they still did it occasionally to give him a hard time.
Halfway up the hallway, the quiet murmur of multiple male voices penetrated the pleasured haze and he frowned. He halted at the entrance to the living room—across the narrow space he and Anna called home. Three things struck him at once.
The man in the doorway was Gerard Danielson, the head of his father’s private security force. He was framed on either side by two others—Michel Jerome, the family’s legal representative in the United States and Peterson, the senior member of Armand’s personal security. They were in his doorway. All three men stiffened as he appeared, then bowed.
His heart sank. They’d bowed to him in front of Anna.
“Your Highness,” Gerard began without preamble. “Please forgive the lateness of the hour, but this news had to be delivered in person. His Imperial Highness, Grand Duke Phillipe, passed away late yesterday afternoon…”
His father. Dead.
Time stopped.
His university life was over.
“…all announcements were delayed until you could be informed…”
Anna turned a bewildered look in his direction. His world shredded.
“…the plane has been fueled and we have made all security arrangements to bring you home…”
Armand stared into Anna’s eyes, their languorous heat frosting over. He held out his hand to her and she came, but hesitance marked her steps. Still, she let him pull her stiff frame to him.
“…if you wish Miss Novak to accompany you, we shall have to make additional arrangements, Your Highness. We await your will.” Gerard’s sympathy echoed beneath the protocol, but no amount of sympathy could repair what had been shattered.
Shoving that dark memory back into the box where it belonged, he looked at the city. He had her address—did she live in a house on the beach? Did she wake every morning to walk out onto a deck and feel the salty kiss of the dawn? Or was it a tiny little house tucked into a bedroom community with neighbors who knew her name?
Most of the people in their apartment complex at school had known her name. She just had a way of making everyone think she cared about what was going on with them. They reached out, firmed the connection and renewed it with every meeting.
He put the container down and walked over to the phone. He stared at the digits on the receiver. All he had to do was pick it up.
“You can’t stop being a prince, so why not use it to your advantage?”
He could only think of one person to call, and after another long moment, he picked it up and dialed.
ANNA
It was barely five in the morning when her phone rang. Anna thumbed it off and rolled back over. She didn’t get up before seven a.m. unless the house was on fire. A minute later her phone pealed out Adele, her sister’s ringtone. She shut it off again. When it rang for the third time, she thumbed it on to answer. “What?”
“Oh. My. God. How could you start seeing him again and not tell us—scratch that—tell me? How could you not tell me? It’s so romantic.” Penny’s voice crackled with excitement. “So, when did it happen? Last month when you had that ‘conference’ to attend in Milan? Oh, I know, when you were in New York a few months ago and didn’t have time to see me.”
Her sister’s voice kept climbing, revving up with excitement, and it pierced the fog of sleep clouding her mind, threatening to ruin the rest of her morning’s rest. “Penny. It’s five in the morning. I keep telling you that there’s a three-hour time difference.”
“Holy fuck, are you in bed with him right now?”
The ice pick burrowed into Anna’s brain.
“In bed with who? What are you talking about?” Pushing the covers back, Anna sat and grimaced at her sister’s whine. Penny was the worst of her siblings when it came to recognizing other people needed sleep. A night owl by nature, she pounced at the worst hours to ask the most ridiculous things.
“You and Charlie—I mean the prince—does he mind if I call him Charlie? I am your sister and if you two are back together that means royal wedding and I can be the next Pippa. Oh God—you think I’ll get a spread in People magazine?”
Awake now, irritation flared through her. “Penny!”
“Sorry, got a little carried away.” Her sister squealed again. “I’m just so happy for you. And for me, because I’m going to look fabulous on television.”
“What are you talking about?” And how the hell did her sister know she’d seen the prince the day before? She told no one—least of all her family. They’d been as supportive as they could—her brothers had even threatened to beat him up—but they went through that mourning with her once. She didn’t want to open old wounds.
“You getting back together with Charlie, it’s so romantic.”
Her blood went cold. “I am not—we’re not together.”
“Oh yes you are, it’s all over ACE this morning. ‘Playboy Prince reunites with his first love.’ I still can’t believe you didn’t tell me…” Her sister continued to yammer, but Anna fumbled for the television remote and turned it on. She found the ACE channel by scanning the guide and stared. A commercial offering superstar figures detailed how every woman could look like a model segued into a red-dressed studio where the reporter started talking.
Thumbing up the volume, she waited.
“…and recapping our top of the hour, playboy prince, Armand Dagmar, the titular head of the Andraste royal family, is very well-known for his exotic tastes and revolving door of beauties to grace his arm, but has happily ever after finally rubbed off on him?” Images of Armand cavorting with some blonde model in Majorca punctuated the story. “The grand duke has been seen out and about in the Los Angeles area for months following the fairy-tale reunion with his long-lost cousin, the Princess Alyxandretta. But now sources close to the prince confirm that it wasn’t his cousin that kept him in the City of Angels but the chance to recapture romance with his first love, a woman ACE has identified as Anna Novak…” And then her face was on the screen.
“See!” Penny’s voice squealed through the phone.
I’m going to kill him.
Chapter 3
Anna
By eight a.m. there was a circus parked in front of her little two-bedroom bungalow. Give the paparazzi a bone and they make a meal out of it. She sipped her coffee, staring at the sea of cameras setting up housekeeping on her lawn. Her poor neighbors gawked at the vans sitting crookedly against the curbs. To leave, she would have to push through them to get to her car.
But they were in her driveway too.
Three took off with her trash. I hope they like microwavable meal remains and takeout boxes.
Yesterday’s headache returned with a vengeance. When her phones wouldn’t stop ringing, she took the landline off the hook and shut her cell down. There was no sense in wondering how they got her private number. She did far too much business via her phone. To leave, she had to make them move their cars. But that required she step outside and confront them, then they could just as easily follow her. She wasn’t sure how murder would play on national television, so she kept herself planted in the house. Maybe she could hold out two to three days on the coffee and nukables in the freezer.
A pair of black sedans and one SUV pulled right down the center of her already overcrowded street. They prowled like bears lumbering through the woods—and the reporters paid attention.
None of the vehicles parked. Doors opened on the sedan in the lead and two men in black suits with black ties exited.
Check that—two huge men in black suits. They shouldered their way through the crowd, ignoring the reporters asking them questions. Two more men exited the rear sedan and joined the first. Three took charge of the crowd, backing them off her lawn and right down to the sidewalk. Walking tanks had that effect.
The fourth man walked right up on her porch and rang the doorbell. Once.
She checked the peephole. Just the single man standing on her porch, the crowd of reporters pushed back—but she knew long-range cameras. They didn’t have to be in her face to get a picture.
Deciding against opening the door, she slid sideways and pressed her ear to the wood. “Yes?”
“Miss Novak, His Highness sent us to provide you with a safe escort to the Petersburg Tower.” She heard the deep baritone clearly despite the door’s muffling effects.
She cut off the knee-jerk reaction to ask the security guard to tell his boss to go to hell. Taking her temper out on him would serve no purpose. She’d rather smack His Highness personally.
“Give me a few minutes, please.” The amazing calm in her voice impressed her—the rage trembling inside her defied description.
“Take your time, Miss Novak.”
She glanced back out the peephole but only saw the back of the man’s suit coat. She cleaned up her coffee cup in the kitchen, shut off the pot and emptied it as well. She took her time wiping down the counters and setting up the coffeemaker for another brew later. In her bedroom, she surveyed her clothes and chose her most professional business outfits—slacks, a waistcoat and a periwinkle-blue blouse.
Thankfully, she’d showered for after hanging up on her sister. She used a flat iron to straighten her hair, methodically putting herself together. His Imperial Highness may have sent in his private security as troops, but she wasn’t some impressionable coed. And she sure as hell didn’t think flooding her with peeping toms was a way to win friends and influence people.
She used the bare minimum of cosmetics.
This wasn’t a date. She geared up for battle.
Straightening up the bathroom, she had no more excuses to make the security guards wait. She packed her workbag and her laptop. She still had the scholarship papers in her bag from the day before. She paused in the second bedroom and picked up a small filing box. It contained the hard-copy application for federal grant money. They could work off the soft copy on her laptop, but she wanted to be prepared for everything.
Sunglasses in place and keys in hand, she slid her purse strap onto her shoulder and carried both bags to the door. She knocked on it once before turning the security locks—all four of them.
“One moment, ma’am.” Sculpted politeness kept the words from being an order.
She waited as he requested. It couldn’t have been more than a minute when the door opened and the guard filled the partial space he allowed. He glanced at her and then offered a hand. “Would you like me to carry those?”
Surrendering the file case, she held on to her laptop bag. “Thank you.”
“Walk straight for the SUV in the center. We’ll be right with you all the way. Don’t engage. Don’t meet their gazes. Smile if you feel like it, but otherwise just walk like you do this every day.” He gave her a quick, tight smile. “Fortunately, it’s only the press. Keys?”
Fortunately? Odd word choice. She kept her comments to herself and handed him the door keys. She appreciated the advice. He stepped back and opened the door farther. The two additional men in black suits stood at the edge of the porch, shoulder to shoulder. The crowd stirred as she walked out. She glanced back at the first security guard, but he waved her on.
“I’ll lock up.”
