I instinctively rest a hand on the hard curve of his bicep.

  He curls his arm around my lower back. He draws me close. Too close. My breasts brush against his chest. I can’t breathe.

  I retreat the appropriate step back.

  Curious guests, some with craned necks, crush together along the edges of the dance floor watching us, including somewhere my sister.

  She should be here instead of me.

  This had not been the plan tonight—me touching him. I was to wear my mask of aloofness, disinterest as I always portrayed whenever he is around.

  It’s one thing to ogle him from across the crowded room without him knowing. It’s another to have him so close, to watch his eyes rove over me.

  A shiver of pleasure shoots through me and ripples across my body.

  “Are you all right?” He leans in, whispering in my ear.

  I nod.

  Focus, Emma!

  I steady my eyes on the square center of his chest—and find the definition of his muscles straining against fabric.

  My blood pulses hot. My nerves dance their own dance of forbidden desire.

  Focus.

  But my mind is lost in the sensations he causes within me. I register that music plays, and he leads me across the dancefloor. I cling to him, caught up in the rhythm of us together again, but this time with clothes—and an audience.

  “I’ve got you,” he breathes only for me to hear.

  I tighten my fingers into the strength of his arm harder, fighting the remembered sensations of his naked body against mine, fighting the images of the valleys and peaks of his bare chest, fighting his masterful control of my body aligned against his as he floats us across the dancefloor.

  Piano notes inject into the music and spill across the ballroom with a bittersweet melody—an instrumental version of an old country music song by Garth Brooks called “The Dance.” There are no lyrics, but they reflect the pain of loving something, only to lose it in the end.

  Of course that would be the song played—the last one we danced to that summer before everything changed between us. Did he choose that song on purpose?

  How often had I played that song on repeat and cried over what was lost between us, cried for what could’ve been, cried until I thought I couldn’t possibly have any more tears? But those tears had kept coming.

  Not anymore.

  Haven’t I spent the past two years proving to myself and him that he is nothing more than a friend? Less than a friend. An acquaintance whom I sometimes work with for the Foundation.

  “Thank you for thinking of the Foundation to fill in for tonight’s charity gala.” Despite the heat he causes coursing through my veins, I measure my words to achieve a cool, professional impact.

  There. I can do this.

  “Anything for you, Emma.” His voice caresses my cheek.

  My knees wobble, along with my bravado.

  “I’ve got you,” he says once again. “You’re mine.” A primal claim.

  My body responds by pressing closer to him.

  Damn traitorous body.

  As hard as it was, I wrench myself back mere inches, enough to challenge his hold over me.

  “You can’t deny it,” he says.

  “Prince Adam, you speak in riddles tonight.” Although I can’t deny it, neither will I admit it. Not here. Not now. Not ever.

  Something indiscernible passes through his eyes. He takes in an audible breath and casts a brief glance at the onlookers surrounding us.

  He shifts his attention back to me, a glint in his eyes.

  “Another time then.” He steps us into another direction across the floor. “And there will be another time,” he promises.

  After a few more steps, he asks, “So why did you lie?”

  “Lie?”

  God, she is gorgeous. Hazel eyes with those flecks of emeralds and bright flashes of gold. Heart-shaped face with those twin dimples. Hair a rare shade in between blond and red.

  No, I’m not some superficial prick. Yeah, pictures are out there with supermodels hanging on my arm, but that’s mostly them wanting in on a photo op. Trust me. Happens all the time.

  It’s the title. Prince. But most people forget the name that comes after—Adam. Me.

  Except her.

  For one summer, she was mine.

  Stay with me.

  Two years ago, that had been me—begging. I’d never begged for anything in my life. But I did. For her. Right before she left me.

  For what?

  An opportunity in L.A. to work as a movie costume designer.

  Okay, so she won an Academy Award.

  And it launched her brand to international superstardom.

  But hell, she could’ve come back to me afterwards.

  Something else tore us apart.

  Or maybe it’s just as simple as she’d said: Her career comes first.

  The occasional times I connive a way for us to be in the same room, she treats me with cool professionalism or distances me with her you-were-only-a-fling-and-I’ve-moved-on attitude.

  If I was a goddamn fling, why hasn’t she dated any men after me?

  Tonight I have her. In my arms. Where she belongs.

  With me.

  One dance—not enough.

  I desire more.

  I’m taunted by memories. Her laughter when I tickle her bare stomach. Her soft skin underneath me. Her moans when I lose myself inside of her.

  I pull her closer to my chest, and we have too many clothes between us.

  Doesn’t matter. That electric spark still hits me like lightning. The same as it always does when we touch.

  I should step back. Everyone watches us.

  Let them.

  Let them see: I claim her.

  Let them know: She is mine.

  I massage my fingers in circles on the small of her back. Her eyes close. A soft sigh escapes her.

  Even her body understands what she refuses to admit.

  Mine.

  I’m tired of waiting. Two years too long.

  Stay with me.

  The music comes to a close. The piano and strings intermingle like lovers about to part.

  She opens those hazel eyes and gold sparks flash.

  She’s bound to feel it—what we have together is too good to end.

  She opens her mouth, about to say something, but then she scrunches her lips together, highlighting those adorable dimples in that way she does when she’s immersed in thought, and then she looks away.

  I follow her line of vision to the throng at the edges of the dancefloor.

  She returns her gaze to me, but whatever she was about to say is gone. Instead she only offers, “Thank you for the dance.”

  The final notes of music have drifted away—as has her body from mine.

  This familiar pang hits my chest. It intensifies the ache carved into me after Dad died.

  Dad had cradled his body around mine to protect me from impact of that tree in a skiing accident when I was ten.

  The air whooshed out of his lungs. And even though I couldn’t see it, I heard the crack of his back and the blow that crushed his skull.

  That ache for Dad might never go away, and I don’t want it to. Carrying that ache is nothing compared to his sacrifice.

  Every accomplishment I achieve honors his love.

  But there’s a piece of me that’s haunted by the part I played in his death. The part I don’t show to the world. The part only she knows how to soothe because of what happened to her when she was sixteen.

  I stare down at my Emma. So strong. So talented. So much heartache inside her. I want to kiss all the pain away for her, to remind her that her mother would want her to be happy.

  That I’d make her happy—if she’d just let me.

  I could kiss her senseless to prove it.

  Damn the crowd watching us.

  She sways into me, as if she reads my mind.

  Her body beckons me, and I dip my head closer to her, until she rests her palm on my chest, diffusing the heat between us. Though fire still burns inside me where she touches.

  “I’d forgotten how good you are at dancing,” she admits and lets her hand fall from my chest.

  “It’s my partner.” I say, missing the feel of her hand on me. “I hope you haven’t forgotten everything we’re good at together.”

  She turns her face away, but not before I see a blush stain her cheeks.

  The orchestra cues another song, and she retreats from me, heading to the edge of the dancefloor.

  I follow beside her. Other couples assemble to the floor and begin to dance. Although they don’t spare curious glances her way.

  They must realize who they are watching—their future queen. Because I will not stop until she is.

  Mine.

  We near the edge of the dancefloor. She mumbles something to herself and then whirls around to me. “Yes, Adam, we did many good things together, including build this Foundation.” She lifts her arms slightly to refer to this charity gala and the money we’ll raise tonight.

  Correction: The money I’ll give tonight. She doesn’t know it, but my assistant will ensure I’m the highest bidder tonight and that the new family center will bear my father’s name.

  I could’ve done all that without the trouble of this gala, but then I wouldn’t have an excuse to see her.

  “Are we going to be able to put the past behind us so we can continue to work together?” She thrusts a hand at her hip.

  I smile at my precious Emma. “Not if you’re always going to be this grouchy towards me.”

  She sighs and her shoulders slightly slump. “I’m sorry. I’m swamped with work, and you didn’t deserve me snapping at you.”

  “Like you said, let’s put the past behind us.”

  She nods and then straightens her back. “Hey, you never did tell me what I lied about—what it is you think I did, anyway.” Her smile curves into a challenge.

  I can’t resist her, and perhaps I should stop while I’m ahead. Tonight is the longest conversation we’ve had that wasn’t dominated by Foundation business since our breakup.

  But too much is at stake, not just for me, but my country, my family.

  “One more dance and I’ll tell you.” I return the challenge.

  Emma surveys the ballroom, searching for whom or what, I don’t know, before she takes my hand in hers.

  I don’t question my luck, and I lead her back onto the dancefloor.

  We rub elbows with other couples, yet I maintain a more formal distance between us. Even though our first dance had onlookers, this dance is even less private with so many dancers in close proximity.

  “So?” she asks.

  “You lied to my sister about that doll.”

  “How did you know?”

  Because you take in a deep breath right before you do it, like it’s painful for you to lie.

  “A hunch.” I shrug my shoulders.

  “You’re right,” she sighs. “I did a trade with my Hard Metal Lilith doll.”

  Don’t tell a soul, but I know way more than any man should about those dolls she and my sis collect. Call it collateral damage from hearing them talk about dolls, just so I can be near Emma.

  “I remember you liked that one.” I had no idea what the hell that doll looked like, but I’d heard the name often enough.

  “I like your sister better.”

  “Would you have done that for me?”

  “Are you saying you want a doll?” She laughs. Unrestrained. The way she used to do when we were together.

  To hell with a doll—I want her.

  She’s my drug, and when she’s gone, I suffer the withdrawal.

  I’d do whatever it takes to have more of her, even talk about a doll. “I’d take an Eden.”

  “Not Lilith, the naughty twin?”

  “Well, when you put the twins that way, every guy’s fantasy is…,” I smirk.

  She swats my shoulder with her hand.

  Before you mentally slap me, too, you should know: Every man’s fantasy is not having sex with two women at the same time. It takes everything a man has in him to please one woman, much less two.

  Besides, God didn’t build man to pleasure more than one woman at a time. He meant for Adam to have only Eve—or in this case, my Emma.

  “I’m surprised you even know the twins’ names,” Emma chuckles.

  She’s right. How crazy is it that I know the Lilith and Eden dolls are twin sisters?

  Thank my own sis for that one.

  For Christmas, Poppy wanted some giftset called Lead Singles that had these two twin dolls. I assigned the task to my staff, but turns out, it was a lot harder than anyone expected. Only four hundred and fifty of them back in 2012 were ever made on this entire plant.

  Plus, Poppy had to have all her dolls NRFB, “Never Removed From Box”—yeah, I know what that means. Don’t judge me until you have a little sis who collects these Integrity dolls like Jay Leno collects cars.

  A NRFB doll out that long in secondary market circulation is like trying to find a virgin at a Hugh Heffner party. Rare.

  But Emma found those twins. She reached out to members of the W Club Forum, an exclusive Internet board for Integrity doll collectors. The kicker was she registered under my name—and used a freaking pink flower with butterflies as my screen avatar.

  Yeah, have a good laugh over that. Emma does.

  “Why wouldn’t I know these dolls’ names? Thanks to you, I am an official W Club member,” I quip back. “By the way, my sis keeps asking if I know the login password.”

  “She should know it,” Emma says, “I gave it to her. It’s…,” she hesitates. Finally she says, “Paris.”

  “Paris,” I repeat, letting the word sink into my consciousness.

  That word makes me feel like the first time I drank too much wine and my head spun.

  Was the Paris password a reminder of one of our favorite let’s-stay-in-and-lay-on-the-couch movies Casablanca? As in that film with the famous Humphrey Bogart line, “We’ll always have Paris.”

  Was it a tie-in to where I first met her? Or that weekend in Paris when I proposed?

  I have to ask, “Why Paris?”

  “I knew I wouldn’t forget it.”

  “Because of us?”

  She heaves in a deep breath. “No, Paris is where my career first took off.”

  “Of course,” I say even though I can tell that’s not true. She wouldn’t admit to anything else, right here, right now in the middle of a crowded dancefloor.

  “Why don’t you let Poppy go to an Integrity Convention?” She rushes out the question in an obvious change of subject.

  “Poppy’s never been anywhere without her family.”

  “She’ll have her bodyguards,” she says. “And it’s a very family-oriented convention. The whole Newsum family—like over 30 members fly in from all over the world. And the Chan family is there, too.”

  I’d bet a million she and Poppy had rehearsed that entire pitch.

  “And I’d be there to look after her,” she added.

  “And who’d be looking after you?”

  “I don’t need anyone to look after me.” She lifted her chin. “Besides, I don’t imagine you would go to a doll convention.”

  “You’d be surprised what I’d do—for the right incentive.”

  “Oh, and what is that?”

  “Poppy tells me about a quarter of the men who go are husbands—there for their wives.”

  “Your point?”

  “She knows that when I marry, my wife and I will take her.”

  She missteps to the music, but recovers. “What if she doesn’t like dolls?”

  “That won’t be a problem.”

  “Of course not,” she says. “What sane woman wouldn’t go to a doll convention, even if she hated dolls, just to be near you?”

  “Was that a compliment?”

  “A fact,” she says. “What woman would turn down becoming a princess?”

  “You.”

  She sighs. “I thought we agreed to keep the past in the past.” She takes a step back from me. “It’s over.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Yes,” she says, amid mingling couples leaving the dancefloor. She sucks in a deep breath. “It is.”

  The song is over.

  I reach for her arm. She slips away from me.

  But things between us are far from over.

  Why I am chasing—almost literally—after a woman who makes it clear she doesn’t want me?

  After all, I’d vowed by age nine never to marry, never to repeat my parents’ past, never to drag my entire family into a messy divorce.

  Shortly after the birth of my youngest sister Poppy, our family had been ripped apart by lies and accusations associated with our parents bitter divorce, made more painful with the blow-by-blow media coverage.

  Mom disappeared back to New York to focus fulltime on her fashion empire. She didn’t even show up for Dad’s funeral a year later.

  Our grandparents stepped in to shield us as best they could from all the heartache. Grandfather had the additional burden of wearing our country’s crown until I could come into the title.

  Somewhere between my parents’ divorce and Dad’s death, Grandfather had taken me aside and told me about the Thorton Thunderbolt.

  Until I’d met Emma, I’d put my grandfather’s tale of this Thorton Thunderbolt on the same scale of probability as Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny. I was certain he’d made it up to help a 9-year-old boy deal with a difficult divorce.

  Back then I initially laughed when he spoke about this strange thunderbolt, but Grandfather told me it was very important and to listen closely.

  “All the Thorton men have trusted the Thunderbolt,” he said, allowing me to sit on his lap. “And when the Thunderbolt comes to you, it changes your life forever.”

  “Because it has magical powers?!”

  “Well, you see, it’s not really magic,” Grandfather said, and I started to lose interest.

  “It’s more like lightning,” Grandfather boomed, and I perked up again. “When it strikes you, you’ll know.” Grandfather thrust his free hand in the air and then drummed it against his chest.

  “What will I know, Grandpa? All the secrets of the universe?”

 

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