Falling for the Princess (6 page)

“And that's a capital offense in San Philippe?”

“I'm a patron of the ballet,” she said in a low voice.

“I'm so sorry.”

For a moment she almost believed he was sincere in
his regret. He took two champagne flutes from a hovering waiter and passed one to her.

“That must be awful for you. Do you have to come very often?”

“I love the ballet.”

“You do?” For the first time this evening she knew she was hearing genuine sentiment—surprise—in his question.

Eduardo appeared at Logan's side. She'd been so intent on Logan that she hadn't seen him approach. “Rebecca.” He nodded and gave a small tight smile. “Logan.”

She knew the two men had met previously. She just didn't think they'd got along. Even looking at them now, and even both good-looking and dressed in tuxedos, they were polar opposites. Eduardo lean and fair, Logan with his darker coloring and more powerful build.

“How are you enjoying the ballet, Logan? I wouldn't have thought it was your thing.” Eduardo had been raised in the same circles she had, privileged and cultured—a world away from the blue-collar background Logan had told her a little of, and of which he was so proud. Eduardo was basically a decent man when things were going his way, but he could be cold and calculating and could, at times, be a complete and utter prat. She had the feeling now might be one of those times. She'd refused his offer to accompany her to this very ballet.

Logan darted a glance at Rebecca, amusement in those dark eyes of his, and she tried to convey with her gaze that she needed him to take this seriously. Her family and friends, many surreptitiously watching, needed to be convinced that they really were in a relationship. That they had things in common.

“I'm enjoying it almost as much as I'm enjoying Becs's company.” Hopefully only she knew that meant not at all.

“Becs?” Eduardo repeated disapprovingly, echoing Rebecca's surprise. Logan moved so that he stood beside her. He lifted his hand and touched the bare skin of her back, sending a shiver coursing through her. She couldn't step away from the touch without destroying the image they wanted to create. And a part of her—a small rebellious part—didn't want to. His fingers were warm and gentle. His touch possessive. Rebecca took a sip of champagne.

Eduardo looked intently at Logan for long seconds. “I heard you two were an item,” he said. “I'll admit I didn't believe it until I saw you here together.”

“We ran into each other in New Zealand. Becs hasn't been able to tear herself from my side since.” His fingers trailed up and down her spine. He couldn't know the strange effect that movement had on her, causing heat to coil and swirl low within her. She tried to ease just a little away from him, but he spread his fingers and pulled her in closer. She felt the imprint of his palm and of each fingertip. She couldn't be certain but she thought perhaps those fingertips had slipped beneath the edge of the back of her dress. And again, that image that he'd planted outside on the steps, of him peeling her dress off, came back to her. Those large calloused hands of his that she knew, from watching him at his laptop and tying his bow tie, could also be deft and clever.

Rebecca swallowed another sip of champagne and marshaled her errant thoughts as she tried to force the heat from her face. “He's joking, of course. Logan does so love to twist things. He's the one who can't seem to let go of me. I was scarcely aware of him until he invited me to dinner that first night.”

“Ahh, but you're aware of me now, aren't you,
ma chérie?
” His thumb circled slowly.

Far too aware.

Rebecca's gaze latched on to the distant entrance to the restrooms. She hadn't hidden out in a rest room since her early, awkward teenage years, but the thought of doing so at this instant was infinitely tempting. But, she took a deep breath. Logan was watching her, testing her, seeing how far he could push her and she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of running away. She looked over her shoulder at him. “You're certainly impossible to ignore.” Her comment could be interpreted as a compliment…or not.

Her deliberately ambiguous response seemed to please him because he smiled. A smile that crinkled the skin around his eyes. She found herself smiling back and holding his gaze for the longest time, losing herself in the depths that were as tempting and sinful as chocolate. There was something so different, so…invigorating in the way he teased her, and the way he allowed and encouraged her to tease him back.

Eduardo cleared his throat. “How are the leBlanc negotiations coming along?”

Logan's smile vanished and he swung his gaze to Eduardo. “I never discuss business when I'm on a date with a beautiful woman.”

“Of course not,” Eduardo said, something smug and unattractive in his eyes. “And I'm interrupting.” With a small bow he excused himself.

Logan dropped his hand from her back.

Rebecca stepped a little away from him, needing more air, more space. “Shall we go back in? I don't know that I'm ready for more performances like that.” She put her champagne flute on a passing waiter's tray.

“But you're a natural. If I didn't know better I would
have thought there was real warmth, almost heat, in that gaze.”

Rebecca lifted her chin. “Then it's a good thing you do know better.” His laughter was quiet and deep as he offered her his arm and they began walking. Beneath her palm she felt the solid strength of a powerful forearm.

“What's Eduardo's interest in leBlanc?”

She lifted a shoulder. “Probably his new stepfather.”

“Who is…?”

They reached their seats and she slid her hand from his arm. “Theo Summerfield.”

“Damn.”

“That's a problem?”

“No. But I should have known. I hadn't made the connection.” He stood while he waited for her to sit in one of the plush red seats then lowered himself beside her.

“Theo is Eduardo's mother's fourth husband. And Eduardo is the son of her second. It's not easy to keep track of.”

“No. But it's the sort of thing I do like to keep track of.”

“Know your opposition?”

“Exactly. For instance, I did know that you and pretty boy—”

“Eduardo.”

“That you and Eduardo were once an item.”

He knew her dating history? Not that it required extensive research or even a particularly good memory. In stark contrast to what she knew of him, her list of suitors was short. “Not an item. We went out. Twice.” She really should have learned after the first time. All Eduardo had wanted was the kudos for dating a princess. He still did. He had political aspirations. And from what she knew, his stepfather was currently in the process of seeking “By
Royal Appointment” endorsement for his line of breakfast foods. He too wanted her to date Eduardo.

“It's beginning to make sense,” Logan said.

“What is?”

“The ‘once a day and for five seconds only' rule you have.”

She wanted to disagree with him but maybe he was right. The rules she'd tried to establish with Logan had been based on her previous—limited—experience. She'd only dated men who didn't push boundaries, who respected—too much—her position, failing to see who she was inside. Men who neither tempted nor taunted her.

But the thought that Logan had
researched
her was disconcerting on several levels. “Does this interest you appear to have in my social life mean you see me as the op position?”

He leaned closer. “No. Not the opposition. But I make a point of knowing how things stand with the people I'm…dealing with. We're allies now, remember.”

“Now, yes. Uneasy allies, I might add.”

He shrugged and slipped his arm behind her shoulders, the fabric of his suit brushing against her skin. “But allies nonetheless. And I'm starting to think things might not always be uneasy. That in fact, some things might be very easy and enjoyable.”

“That's right. The things that don't require us to talk. As I recall I'm allowed to sit next to you and whisper in your ear at the rowing regatta.”

“There are other things that wouldn't require us to talk.” His thumb moved slowly over her shoulder.

And the heat she'd thought she'd tamped down…stirred. “This is all some kind of game to you, isn't it? Like chess and you see me as a pawn.”

“That's one way of looking at it. But I'd have to see you as the queen, don't you think? Do you play?”

“Not if I can avoid it. Chess is more Adam's game. I used to play with him but I didn't look far enough ahead and kept falling into the traps he'd set.” The stray notes of the string section of the orchestra retuning violins and cellos sounded. “Do you play?” Did he set traps? Was she walking unwittingly into one?

“Occasionally. It's not really my thing, either. Takes too long.”

“You played with your brothers?”

He nodded, offering nothing further. For some reason his upbringing, his brothers and the relationship they had intrigued her. Probably because she knew it would be so utterly different from her own experience of family life—brought up in a castle, largely by nannies and then a private all-girls school. The lights dimmed and the curtain rose.

“What about your parents?” He'd mentioned brothers several times but never a mother or father.

“Shh. It's starting.”

“And you don't want to miss a thing?”

His lips stretched into a grin as he slid a little lower in his seat.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting comfortable.”

The delicate strains of flute music twirled through the theater. “Don't you dare fall asleep,” she said quietly.

“I wouldn't dream of it.”

“You might not dream of it but you might actually do it.”

He smiled, a glimpse of white teeth. “Help me stay awake then.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Too innocent.” His smile widened as he raised an eyebrow and his gaze dipped to her legs, and the glimpse of thigh revealed by her dress.

Rebecca tugged her dress down a little. “Be serious.”

“I was. I'll be fine. Just hold my hand.”

As the dancers pirouetted onto the stage she slipped her hand into the one he held out for her, too enamored as always by that simple touch, so different than any other.

 

Logan drove back to the palace in silence. Floodlit gravel crunched beneath the wheels as he pulled to a stop in front of a discreet entrance to the towering west wing. Discreet it might be—but only in comparison to the main entrance. The armed, uniformed guards at the door were a whole new spin on Daddy waiting up in the porch rocker with a shotgun across his lap. Daddy might not be here in person but his eyes and ears and his firepower were. Logan grinned. He'd had his share of encounters with protective daddies. None quite of the caliber of Rebecca's father, though. But he'd never been one to back down in the face of a challenge.

Making sure the doors were locked—he didn't want an enthusiastic valet, or overly suspicious guard interrupting—he turned to her. Read and relished the uncertainty in her eyes. It didn't take a genius to figure out that she may not have had the same level of experience as he did. Conflicting urges surprised him. The urge to protect her vied with the urge to show her a world he suspected she knew little about, to show her things about herself she might not even know. And, of course, there was the urge to explore further what they'd begun on the steps of the plane.

She averted her gaze. “Thank you.”

“Thank you?” So polite. So royal. So challenging. Logan slid his hand behind her neck. Lustrous hair caressed the
back of his hand, silky skin lay beneath his fingers. A world of sensation at his fingertips.

If they had, as she'd suggested, taken a royal car they would have had the entire drive back and the entire comfortable width of the Bentley's backseat.

She glanced at him but then looked back out the windshield, her delicate throat moving as she swallowed. “For coming to the ballet. I know it wasn't—”

He did what he'd wanted to do the entire drive home, the entire evening actually, since the moment he'd first seen her in that dress. He dropped his other hand, slipped it through the split in her gown, the split that had worked its way to midthigh. He touched sleek skin only a little above her knee and still had to suppress his groan even as he enjoyed her breathless gasp.

She turned to him, her eyes wide with surprise and something more. Curiosity? Temptation?

She opened her mouth and he covered her lips with his before she could say anything. Captured her words, her breath. She was too full of questions and protests and analysis. Too reluctant to trust in the obvious. The simple. And the obvious and the simple were the heat that flamed right here and right now as his tongue found and teased hers. As he felt her tentative return exploration. Not just her tongue but the hand that snaked around his neck, pulling him closer, threading into his hair.

Kissing her was like kissing a dream, effortless perfection, no awareness of anything other than their simple joining and sharing, mouths that fit as though made only for each other. She sighed into him, deepening the kiss. Drugging him with her taste, her scent.

They had something.

Something far more potent than he'd even thought to consider.

She
was far more potent to him than he'd thought to consider. He, who liked to think through all the possible scenarios, had bought in to the carefully constructed portrayal of her as someone without spontaneity, without passion. The Ice Princess.

How wrong he'd been.

The Ice Princess currently had him heading toward fever point. And it wasn't just him. She moved beneath him, arching and pressing. Her body soft and yielding against his and yet straining to get closer. Her mouth beneath his, supple and seeking, her leg beneath his palm, moving ever so slightly away from the other, inviting access. Another gasp escaped her as he slid his hand farther up the soft skin, his thumb finding the thin silken barrier, pressing against it. He wanted it all—her surprise, her passion. The taste of her, the feel of her. Only after lifting her hips to press against him in return did she seem to realize what she was doing. Her legs snapped back together, trapping his hand in the velvet warmth between them in an exquisite prison.