The Prince's Forbidden Cinderella, page 12
An ebullient Freya spotted Kate and came running over, pushing her way through the crowds and effectively putting all curious eyes on her nanny, an identity that she heard pronounced on all sides as Freya pulled her onto the floor for their dance.
Kate recognised the child was over-wound and overtired, over being the operative word at the moment the normally sweetly biddable child showed a marked inclination to pout when thwarted. Kate knew that she just as easily become tearful.
I’ve created a monster, Kate thought with fond amusement. There was definitely more of Freya’s father in her than she had realised, watching as the little girl imperiously demanded a ‘salsa if you know one’ from the indulgent conductor.
A ripple of laughter went around the room as the salsa beat, backed by a full orchestra, pumped out.
‘You promised,’ Freya reminded Kate. The bright cheeks and glitter in her eyes had all the hallmarks of exhaustion as she held out her hands and showed a strong inclination to sulk.
‘One dance and then you say goodnight.’
Freya looked inclined to argue but after a moment, much to Kate’s relief, she nodded and sighed. The last thing Kate wanted to cope with was a childish meltdown in front of the several hundred VIP pairs of eyes.
‘OK.’
As couples joined them on the dance floor and she gently pushed the child through the series of moves they had been practising as a pre-bedtime treat, Kate’s eyes were drawn to a laughing young couple sealed at the hip, moving in unison as they swayed sinuously to the music with practised show-stopper ease.
What would it feel like to dance this one with Marco? To move to the beat with their bodies sealed? She pushed the image away but not before her body reacted feverishly to the imaginary scenario.
After the dance ended and before Freya could make the inevitable plea for just one more, Kate scanned the room but failed to locate Marco. It wasn’t as if he blended in with the crowd. Nor could she see the beautiful blonde model. What a coincidence, she thought sourly.
She looked at Freya’s too bright, overtired eyes and pale face and made a unilateral decision, which was what she was being paid for.
‘Let’s go and say goodnight,’ she said, placing a hand on the child’s shoulders and guiding Freya across to where the King and Queen were watching the proceedings in the company of a select few.
Rosa, who had organised the entire event, was not one of them. At least the King did not rub his wife’s nose in it publicly.
* * *
Marco struggled and failed to hide his frustrated response to the interruption.
‘Yes?’ Like all his team, the head of security was dressed to blend in. He didn’t, but then that was not necessarily a bad thing.
‘Can you not deal with it?’ Whatever the ‘it’ was, he already knew the answer. The man had ten years’ special forces experience. If he couldn’t deal with it, Marco wouldn’t stand an earthly chance.
‘I could, as I told His Majesty, but the message came back and he has requested that you personally...’
Marco sighed. ‘What is it?’ he asked with forced calm. You didn’t question a royal command, at least not in public.
‘A helicopter has strayed into the no-fly zone... It’s not an issue, our intel suggests just an opportunist film crew, and we have two of our choppers escorting them into the airport as we speak.’
‘It sounds like you are on top of it. So what does my father expect me to do?’
‘As to that, Highness, I have no idea, but the message I received was that he wanted you to—’
Across the room the King caught Marco’s eye, tipped his head and tapped the side of his nose in a secret-shared attitude.
Marco heaved out a sigh of understanding. Now it made sense! His father had decided to don the mantle of an unlikely fairy godmother, in a ‘you will leave the ball early’ sense.
The request was his legitimate headache, get-out-of-jail excuse; the irony was that on any previous occasion he wouldn’t have needed asking twice.
‘Fine,’ he sighed out, clinging by the skin of his teeth to his sense of irony. With a well-meaning father like his, who needed anarchists to spoil your plans? ‘A royal command? What can you say? Lead the way.’
* * *
Despite her previous vow not to curtsey, Kate found herself doing just that, or at least a modified version, when she came face to face with the King. Did size matter, curtsey-wise?
Kate had been prepared to dislike him but, like his wife, he actually came across as very approachable, a lot less daunting in reality than his son, though she suspected that Freya’s presence helped. It was hard to be standoffish when a five-year-old was declaring herself bored, but at least she managed to get through the ordeal of introduction without saying anything controversial.
* * *
‘Where’s Papa?’ Freya sulked as she got into bed, protesting she wasn’t even slightly tired.
‘I don’t know.’ Kate had her dark suspicions, though, and all of them involved a blonde with endless legs. ‘How about you just close your eyes and if you’re still awake in a bit you can have a story?’ she suggested, switching on the night light before she switched off the main light in the room.
‘I won’t fall asleep,’ the child asserted confidently.
Kate smiled and brushed the hair off her warm forehead before quietly moving around the room, picking up the clothes that had been dropped on the floor. By the time she left Freya was sleeping deeply.
Moving back to her own apartment, switching off the lights behind her as she went, Kate was pretty sure that she wouldn’t be able to follow suit. Her thoughts were still racing, the sights and sounds of the glittering evening a confusing blur, but most disturbing was the imprint scorched into her brain of Marco’s face as he had stared at her. The fierce, scorching intensity still making her stomach flutter now, and feeding her restlessness.
The party would still be going on, though Marco, his duty done, might have taken his party somewhere more private by now, she thought, feeding her misery with the masochistic imagined scene of seduction. Which was ridiculous because she already knew what his lifestyle was, it was just that seeing him in action tonight had brought it home.
She’d seen him at work and he was good, very good. Was he as good at play? wondered that little voice in her head—the one that enjoyed picking at an unhealed wound.
Except she wasn’t wounded, she was just thinking of someone having meaningless sex with her boss. She didn’t envy her one bit. She had decided a long time ago that she didn’t want meaningless sex, she wanted something deeper, more meaningful.
‘And Kate never changes her mind about anything.’
Her delicate jaw quivered and her eyes filled with tears as she heard her brother’s voice in her head.
The accusation might have been true once, but in the short time she’d been here Kate knew she had changed. Her preconceptions had been challenged, not just by Marco, but by the feelings he had shaken loose in her.
She considered her options. A long relaxing soak in the bath, or slipping between crisp sheets and falling into a deep sleep? Both excellent options had she not known that there was zero chance of relaxation or sleep, deep or otherwise.
The evening scent of flowers blowing in through the open window suggested another option. Sliding her feet back into her shoes, she winced, the pressure on the balls of her feet burning.
She sat down and checked out her feet, relieved to see they were not blistered, but she definitely wouldn’t be squeezing into any heels for the next few days. In fact, why bother at all? she asked herself rebelliously. The idea of damp grass on her bare feet was actually rather appealing.
CHAPTER NINE
ALTHOUGH MARCO WAS ninety-nine per cent sure that his father’s command that he accompany the security detail to the airport was a ruse to provide him with an excuse to absent himself from the ball, there had been the one per cent possibility there was a legitimate reason for his presence.
This possibility quickly vanished; his royal presence was actually a hindrance to the men who knew their jobs. Marco only stayed long enough to have his suspicions confirmed, before bagging a car to drive himself back from the airport.
He’d learnt to drive in a similar open-sided soft-top Jeep. He smiled to himself as he negotiated the white-knuckle bends of the coastal road, remembering the days when being grounded for taking the off-roader onto a road, and practising his behind-the-wheel skills on this very stretch, had got him grounded.
Grounded, the worst thing in the world that, to his resentful teenage mind, could happen. Dio, he felt quite nostalgic for those lost days as he accelerated smoothly out of a bend in a way that only someone who knew the road like the back of his hand could.
How did life get so damned complicated?
Complications, he mused, thinking of Kate Armstrong dressed in that blue dress looking... The woman had taken up residence in his head. His had not been the only eyes following her, the only eyes admiring her fresh beauty, her glorious hair.
He didn’t want her in his head. He wanted her in his bed—you couldn’t get much more simple than that. He was actually creating complications where there weren’t any.
And any rules he’d be breaking were of his own making. Couldn’t he unmake them?
The party was still in full swing when he slipped back into the palace through the kitchen. He got as far as one of the corridors leading off it. This corridor was lined with cool rooms, tonight acting as a rat-run for wait staff, who stared at him and, when he stopped dead, diverted around him.
They were probably wondering what he was doing, and now Marco was asking the same question of himself. What was he doing? He’d been gifted his get-out-of-jail-free card by his father. Only a masochist, a madman or someone who actually enjoyed small talk, which was the same thing, would walk back into his cell and lock the door behind him.
So instead he retraced his steps, on impulse snatching a bottle of champagne from a cooler containing dozens, and headed out into the night.
He knew where he was heading but he didn’t acknowledge it even to himself. Only when he reached his destination did he admit that it was not by accident.
It was by need.
He allowed himself to relive that sizzling moment of eye contact when all the pretence had been peeled away. He had to do something about it... Two people who wanted sex should be a straightforward thing, and to hell with the consequences, mocked the voice in his head. Very mature.
* * *
The simple pleasures, Kate thought with a sigh as she enjoyed the squish of the cool grass between her toes, were underrated. She rubbed her upper arms as a cooling breeze all the way from the ocean made her shiver. She found herself at one of the viewpoints scattered around the grounds. This one the nearest to the nursery wing. Eyes trained on the ocean, a dark strip beyond the glitter of the illuminated walled city of St Boniface.
A dark strip that represented miles and miles of emptiness...vast. And...she slowed her breathing, trying to emulate that emptiness, conscious of the tension loosening its grip on her body.
When she closed her eyes could she hear music or was it simply the gentle breeze in the trees? She didn’t care as she let herself sway to an invisible rhythm, her dress floating around her as she dipped and whirled, head back, eyes closed. At the end of the silent melody she paused and curtsied to the invisible audience until she realised it wasn’t invisible, at which point she pulled herself upright in a jerky motion, and, heart pounding, faced her audience of one.
‘What are you doing here?’ she snapped spikily, thinking goodbye relaxation, goodbye common sense.
* * *
‘I live here. That was very pretty.’ But she was not pretty. She was beautiful, and never more so than at that moment. He ate up the visual, committing to memory her eyes, enormous in the pale oval of her face, as she stood there looking like some sort of sexy sacrificial virgin in that dress.
Then he saw her feet and a slow smile spread across his lean face.
‘To lose one shoe, Cinders, could be considered a misfortune, but to lose two...?’
She responded to his taunt with a defensive, ‘I haven’t lost them. I know exactly where they are.’
* * *
Pity the same could not be said of my mind, Kate mused despairingly as she struggled to remove her hungry stare from his mouth. When was the last time I actually felt in control of my life...? At least when she had arrived she had still had the security of knowing what was right and wrong. Now exposure to this man had blown that out of the water.
It was wrong to want him, but she did. Did that mean she was wrong about other things too?
Feelings she hadn’t known she possessed had been awoken and they hurt. The constant confusion, the constant questioning, the constant yearning that made her feel... Feel as if she were walking on the edge of a cliff. She glanced towards a very real cliff in the distance. It didn’t seem nearly as precarious as the one she was balancing on.
No wonder her nerves were shredded.
‘Have you come to say goodnight to Freya?’ she asked, thinking, Have you come straight from the blonde’s bed? A question that came straight from her newly discovered jealous streak.
She silently listed the reasons she shouldn’t feel jealous: firstly she had no right, and secondly... Actually, firstly was enough.
‘I’m afraid she’s asleep.’
‘As all good girls should be at this hour...’ he drawled, his voice dropping a seductive octave as he delivered a skin-tingling, ‘Are you a good girl, Cinders...?’
Kate moistened her lips and swallowed, fighting the childish impulse to cover her ears to cut out the insidious sound of his beautiful voice, all honey warmth and sinful suggestion.
‘I am not a girl, I’m a woman, and it will be a cold day in hell...’ She paused, discarding the analogy. No analogy was strong enough to convey how much she didn’t need a prince to save her. A miracle...now that was different. If there were one of those on offer she’d definitely be a taker!
Shaking her head, she walked over to a gentle mound in the grassy expanse some feet away from where he stood and sat down, her eyes directed at the distant sea view. Regaining that little window of peace she had enjoyed was, she suspected, a non-starter, but at least it was breathing space.
After a pause, Marco came over to where she sat. ‘Can I join you?’
‘It’s a free country,’ she retorted childishly, and then sighed because it was his country. Lucky his shoulders were broad because the idea of that much responsibility was daunting in theory, but for him it was a reality.
She stared ahead, resisting the temptation to turn her head when her tingling senses told her he had come to sit beside her, not close enough to shift her defences into the red-alert zone, but enough to make her...twitchy.
‘I was just getting some fresh air,’ she said when the silence became unbearable.
‘Me too.’ He held up the bottle he carried, tilting the tip before, with an expert twist and a gentle pop, he released the fizz.
‘You’ve done that before.’
‘Like to join me in a toast?’
‘To what?’ she asked, feeling as though this conversation of nothing was just a prelude... Or foreplay, suggested the voice in her head.
What she knew about foreplay could be written on a postage stamp.
‘To fresh air?’ he suggested, his eyes going from the bottle to her face. Confessing with a lopsided smile, ‘I haven’t got two glasses. In fact, I haven’t got one.’
Something about him, the reckless combustible quality in his attitude, made her wonder if this was his first bottle.
‘No, I haven’t even had a sip,’ he said, responding to her unspoken question. ‘There we go!’ He held the bottle like a trophy, before lifting it to his lips and taking two deep gulps. ‘Waste not want not, is that not what you say?’
She responded to the challenge in his eyes by snatching the bottle off him and taking a large swallow, rather spoiling the effect when she choked.
‘Not your first...?’ he suggested, taking it back.
‘I had two glasses, my limit,’ she admitted.
Their eyes connected. ‘So, you are playing dangerously tonight?’
A little shiver went down her spine as she veiled her eyes with her lashes. ‘I’m not the type.’ But there were times when she wished she were.
He took another swallow. ‘Who told you that, cara...?’ he drawled.
‘I was always the sensible one at home. Jake was the emotional, reckless one.’ She laughed, suddenly realising that the roles had been reversed.
‘What’s the joke?’
‘Me?’
He arched a brow but didn’t say anything as he lifted the bottle to his lips. Kate watched his brown throat work as he swallowed and felt a stab of pure lust. He put the bottle on the ground and turned his head. Caught looking, she lifted her chin, refusing to lower her gaze.
She managed to maintain eye contact for seconds until the heat in his gaze, the quickening in her blood, got too frightening. She had never felt this way, never imagined feeling this way.
For a while they sat side by side not saying anything. She’d heard of companionable silence, but this one was not. It was dangerous silence. It made Kate think of a pile of dry tinder waiting for a spark, and yet, despite the tension in the darkness and silence, she felt a strange connection to the man beside her.
