The Virgin's Proposition (11 page)

And Anny could see the wisdom of it. But still it felt lacking now—because she didn’t want to be a guest. She wanted to belong.

And how foolish was that?

Demetrios had told her clearly and emphatically that he wasn’t interested in a relationship. He could not have made it plainer.

If she let herself get involved with him now, it would not be some fairy-tale night with a silver-screen hero. Nor would it be the adolescent fantasy of an idealistic teenager. It wouldn’t have anything to do with duty and responsibility.

It would be a lifetime commitment of love to a real live flesh-and-blood man—a man who didn’t want anything of the sort.

“So just have a nice two-week holiday and get on with your life,” she told herself firmly.

She vowed she would. All she had to do was convince her heart.

About noon Anny brought him a sandwich and a beer.

“I figured you’d be getting hungry.” She set the plate on the bench seat near where Demetrios stood, then went back down to return moments later with a sandwich of her own.

“I’ve been through the provisions,” she told him. “Made a list of possible menus, and another of some things we should probably get when we go ashore.”

He stared at her.

She finished chewing a bite of sandwich, then noticed the way he was looking at her, and said, “What? Did I overstep my bounds?”

He shook his head. “I’m just…surprised.”

Anny didn’t see why. “Maybe it was presumptuous,” she went on after she’d swallowed, “but I’m a better cook than a sailor. And if I’m going to be here two weeks, I need to do my share. So I thought I’d do the meals.”

“You cook?” That seemed to surprise him, too.

She flashed him a grin.
“Cordon Bleu,”
she told him, causing his brows to hike clear into the fringe of hair that had fallen across his forehead. “All part of my royal education. But don’t expect that standard under these circumstances,” she warned him.

He shook his head. “No fear. I’m happy with sandwiches. I wasn’t planning on cooking.”

“I noticed,” she said drily. Besides bread, cheese and fruit, there was little in the pantry besides granola bars and protein bars and beer.

“I wasn’t expecting company.” His tone was gruff. The wind was ruffling his hair, making him look dangerous and piratical and very very appealing.

“I realize that. And I’m grateful. I—” she hesitated “—appreciate your offer to bring me along. Your insistence, actually,” she corrected. “It is a better alternative than wandering around Europe trying to stay a step ahead of Papa.”

He nodded, then looked at her expectantly because the note on which she ended made it clear she had something else to say.

Which she did. She just couldn’t seem to find the right way
to say it. Finally she simply blurted it out. “But even so, I don’t think we should make love together again.”

Yet another look of surprise crossed his face, this one more obvious than the earlier two. His green eyes met hers. “You don’t?”

Anny gave a quick shake of her head. “No.”

Demetrios tilted his head to regard her curiously. “You didn’t like it?”

Anny felt her cheeks begin to burn. “You know that’s not true,” she protested. “You know I liked it. Very much.”

He scratched his head. “And yet you don’t want to do it again.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want to do it again. I said I didn’t think we should.”

He stared at her. “Your logic eludes me.”

“It would mean something if we did,” she explained.

He blinked. “I thought it did mean something last time. All that stuff about your idealistic youthful self…”

“Yes, of course it meant something,” she agreed. “But it would be different if we did it again. That time it was…like…making love with a fantasy.” Now her cheeks really did burn. She felt like an idiot, didn’t want to meet his eyes. But she could feel his on her, so finally she lifted her gaze. “When we did it then, I was with the you I—I had dreamed about. The ‘fantasy’ you. The one I imagined. If we did it again, it wouldn’t be the same.
You
wouldn’t be the same. You’d be—
you!”

“Me? As opposed to…me?” He looked totally confused now.

Anny didn’t blame him. She didn’t want to spell it out, but obviously she was going to have to. “You’d be a real live flesh-and-blood man.”

“I was before,” he told her. “Last time.”

“Not the same way. Not to me,” she added after a moment.

He still looked baffled. “And you don’t want a ‘real live flesh-and-blood man’?”

What she wanted was to jump overboard and never come up. “It’s dangerous,” she said.

“No, it’s not. Don’t worry. I won’t get you pregnant. I promise. I can take care of that.”

“Not that kind of dangerous. Emotionally dangerous.”

He looked blank. Of course he did. He was a man.

“I could fall in love with you,” she said bluntly.

“Oh.” He looked appalled. “No. You don’t want to do that.” He was shaking his head rapidly.

No, she didn’t. Not if he wasn’t going to fall in love with her in return, at least. And he’d made it clear that he had no intention of doing so. She supposed there was always the chance that she could change his mind, but from the look on his face, it didn’t seem likely.

“Like I said, dangerous,” Anny repeated. “For me.” She shrugged when he just continued to stare at her. “You said it was up to me,” she reminded him.

His mouth twisted. “So I did.” He rubbed a hand through his hair. “That’ll teach me,” he muttered.

“I’m sorry.”

He made a sound that was a half laugh and half something Anny couldn’t have put a name to. “Me, too, princess,” he told her. Then he gave her a wry smile. “Let me know if you change your mind.”

“Sure,” Anny said.

But it wasn’t going to happen—she hoped.

She was the most baffling woman he’d ever met.

When she didn’t know him, she wanted to make love with him. When she knew him, she didn’t want to—but only because she might fall in love with him.

Where the hell was the logic in that?

Well, perversely, Demetrios supposed, squinting at the Italian shoreline as if it might provide some answers, there was some. But it wasn’t doing his peace of mind much good.

It made all those glimpses of Anny he kept catching out of the corner of his eye all too distracting, though he supposed she intended nothing of the sort at all.

She wasn’t coy and flirtatious the way Lissa had been, eager and enthusiastic one minute, pouting and moody the next. With Lissa he’d never known where he stood or what she wanted.

With Anny, she flat-out told him.

When she wanted to make love, she’d said so. Now she didn’t, and she’d said that. No, he’d never met a woman even close to her.

After their discussion, she had finished her lunch, then taken both their plates below. He’d expected she would stay there to avoid him and his “dangerous” appeal. But she came back to put her feet up on one of the cockpit benches and leaned back to lift her face. She still wore Theo’s visor, but for the moment her face was lit by the sun and the wind tangled her hair.

“Isn’t this glorious?” she said, turning a smile in his direction. And there really was nothing flirtatious about the smile at all. Just pure enjoyment of the moment.

“Yeah,” Demetrios agreed, because it was.

But also because it was pretty damned glorious to stand there and simply watch her take pleasure in the moment. For the longest time she didn’t move a muscle, didn’t say a word, just sat there silently, absorbing, savoring the experience.

She didn’t glance at him to see if he was noticing. Lissa had always been aware of her audience.

He remembered when she’d badgered him to take her sailing. He had been in Paris at the time and she back in L.A., having just finished a film. And every time they talked on the phone she’d chattered about how wonderful it had been going sailing with a couple of big A-list stars.

“We could go sailing,” she’d said to him.

It was the first time she’d shown the least interest in any such thing. When he’d taken her to his parents’ place on Long Island right after they were married, she hadn’t set foot on the family boat. She’d had little to do with anyone, and she’d been eager to leave almost as soon as they’d arrived.

He’d thought at the time it was because she’d wanted to spend some more time with him alone. Only later he began to realize a family vacation on Long Island wasn’t fast-lane enough for her.

But when she’d made the remark about sailing, he’d taken her suggestion at face value and offered to charter a sailboat so they could go to Cabo San Lucas as soon as he got back home.

Lissa had been delighted.

“Ooh, fun,” she’d squealed on the phone when he’d tossed out the idea to her.

They hadn’t seen each other for more than two days at a time in the past two months. It seemed like a great way to spend some time alone with her. And he’d been delighted she was as eager for some uninterrupted time together.

“It will be wonderful!” Lissa had crowed. And he knew that tone of voice—it was the one that went with the impossibly sparkly blue eyes. She’d let out a sigh of ecstasy. “The wind. The water. The two of us. Oh, yes. Let’s. I always feel as if I’m in communion with nature.”

So two days after he got home, he’d chartered a boat, and they’d set sail to Cabo from Marina del Rey.

For the first five minutes Lissa had looked exactly as content as Anny did now. But an hour later the contentment had vanished.

The wind was too cold. The boat tilted too much. The ocean spray wasn’t good for her complexion. She was afraid of sunburn.

Demetrios had tried to be sympathetic. Then he’d tried to joke her out of it. But Lissa didn’t take teasing at all. She pouted. She wept. She slammed around and threw things when she was upset. They weren’t two hours out of Marina del Rey and she had become seriously upset.

Demetrios did his best to placate her. “I’ve missed you, Lis. I’ve been waiting for this.”

She looked at him, appalled and flung her arms in despair. “This? This? There’s nothing here!”

“We’re here. The two of us. Alone,” he reminded her. “No press. No fans. No one at all. Just us. Relax and enjoy it.”

But Lissa hadn’t relaxed and she hadn’t enjoyed it. She’d gone below, she’d come up to the cockpit. She’d flipped through a magazine, tried to read a possible script. There was no one to talk to. She was bored.

He’d offered to let her take the wheel. She’d declined. “I wouldn’t know what to do.”

“I’ll teach you,” he’d offered.

She hadn’t wanted that, either.

As the hours passed, she’d become more agitated. She hadn’t been able to sit still.

“When do we get there?” she’d begun asking when they’d barely left Catalina behind. She had looked around hopefully, as if their destination might materialize on the horizon. “It’s only a couple of hours to Cabo.”

Demetrios had stared at her. “Flying,” he’d agreed. “Sailing it’ll probably take us about a week.”

“A week?” Lissa’s voice was so loud and so shrill he thought they probably could have heard it in Des Moines.

“Well, depending on the winds, of course, but—”

But she hadn’t let him get any more out than that. She’d lit into him with a fury he’d only seen before on the set when she’d played a drug addict deprived of her source. She’d got an Emmy nomination for the performance.

It turned out she hadn’t been acting. It turned out Lissa had more than a small drug habit. She’d been intending to score some in Mexico, though Demetrios hadn’t known it at the time. There was a whole lot about Lissa he hadn’t known then—things that even now he wished he’d never known.

It would have made it easier to forgive her. To forgive himself.

That disastrous trip had occurred just six months into their marriage. Later he’d thought it was the beginning of the slide downhill. Even that wasn’t true. The slide had begun before she’d even walked up the aisle to become his wife.

He’d been fooled. Conned. Duped into believing he’d found the woman of his dreams.

Because he’d wanted it so much that he’d convinced himself? Or because Lissa had played the role so well?

How much had been intentional misdirection and how much had simply been bad judgment? Demetrios had no idea still.

All he could remember is that she’d looked so perfect on their wedding day. So content. So happy, Anny looked that way now—happy, her eyes closed, her face in repose.

But hers was not like Lissa’s version of “happy.”

Lissa’s “happiness” had always had an effervescence to it. She had bubbled, emoted, reacted. She had
acted
happy.

Sitting here now basking in the sunshine, eyes shut, wind in her hair, Anny wasn’t acting. She simply was.

There was no bubbliness, no bounce. No reaction. Her emotion was quiet, accepting, serene—and, heaven help him, enticing in its very stillness.

Dangerously enticing.

And Demetrios understood quite clearly now what Anny meant about making love with him being “dangerous” because it would involve her heart.

Indulging these thoughts about Anny—seeing in her the antithesis of Lissa—was dangerous in the extreme. It could undermine his resolve. It could make him vulnerable.

She didn’t have to entice him intentionally. It was worse, in fact, that she wasn’t. It made him want things he had promised himself he would never want again.

“You’re going to get a sunburn if you keep doing that,” he said gruffly.

Anny’s eyes flicked open in surprise. She dipped her head so that Theo’s sun visor shaded her face again and she sat up straight, then smiled up at him. “You’re right,” she said, flexing her shoulders and stretching like a cat in the sun. “But it feels wonderful.”

To his ears, her voice almost sounded like a purr. He didn’t answer. He didn’t know what to say in the face of such inocent happiness.

He found himself wishing she were more like Lissa so she would be easier to resist.

At the same time he couldn’t help being glad she was not.

C
INDERELLA ONLY GOT
a single evening to indulge her fantasy.

Anny had had her evening with Demetrios. But now, amazingly, it seemed as if she was going to get two whole weeks.

Two weeks to be simply herself—not a princess, not Gerard’s fiancée. Just plain Anny. With no demands, no expectations at all.

Not even sex.

Not that she wouldn’t have liked to enjoy sex with Demetrios. The one night she’d spent with him had been astonishing, revelatory, incomparable.

It had made her want more.

Too much more.

So much more that she had not dared to allow herself to think about it. Limiting it to one night and walking away had been possible. But indulging herself in the joy of spending two weeks of nights in his bed, in his arms, would not work.

She would want more than those two weeks.

She would want a lifetime of them. And not just of making love with Demetrios, but of being loved by him.

She wasn’t there yet. But she would be if she allowed herself to give into the temptation. And so she’d said, “No sex.”

She hadn’t explained it well. She wasn’t sure that she could ever explain it so that it made sense to him. He was a man. Men didn’t think about sex the same way. And he clearly had no
problem enjoying sex with her and then walking away without a backward glance.

He’d basically promised to do just that.

Well, more power to him, Anny thought wryly. She knew her own limitations. And she knew they precluded that. So she said she was sorry and she stuck to her guns.

Having made her statement, though, she went below to work on her dissertation for a while. It seemed a good idea to give Demetrios some space to get used to a platonic two weeks.

Apparently it didn’t bother him at all because when she came back out on deck late that afternoon, he was perfectly cheerful and equable—as if it didn’t matter to him a bit.

Which she supposed it didn’t. Which served her right, Anny supposed, telling herself it was all for the best.

“When do you want to eat dinner?” she asked him.

“Up to you.”

“Are you planning to sail through the evening or moor somewhere?”

He gestured toward the shoreline. “There’s a small village with a protected harbor up ahead. We’ll moor there. Too much work to sail overnight. And what’s the point?”

She completely agreed. “Then I’ll plan on dinner for after we’re tied up.’”

“Sounds good.” He slanted her a grin that made her heart beat a bit faster.

“Will you be going ashore?” she asked him.

He shook his head. “Not unless you want something.”

She could use some clothes that were more appropriate for sailing. But she didn’t want to go ashore to get them. Not in a small village not so very far from her own country. Too many people might recognize her around here. And they would certainly recognize Demetrios. He was famous the world over.

“No,” she decided. “Call me if you need help,” she said, knowing full well he wouldn’t. Then she went back below and put together a salad and some bruschetta to go with the bread, then sliced some meat and cheese.

She was just setting the table when she heard him call her name.

Startled, Anny climbed quickly up the steps and saw that they were coming into the harbor.

“Come take the wheel while I bring down the sail,” Demetrios commanded.

She blinked in surprise. But apparently he’d taken her offer at face value and was now looking at her expectantly. So she did what she was told.

“Theo would be a purist and skip the engine,” Demetrios muttered as he started it up. Then he shrugged. “But I’m not as good at it as he is.”

He seemed fine at it to Anny. His quick efficient competence as he hove to, then brought the mainsail down over the boom, seemed nothing short of miraculous to Anny. She hung on to the helm and tried to keep the boat where he wanted it as he finished furling the jib.

And she was just congratulating herself on doing her bit and handing the wheel back over to him, when he said, “Get up on the bow. I need you to signal me which side the buoy is on and then tie on to the mooring ball.”

“Me?”

Something unreadable flickered in his gaze. Anny didn’t even try to figure it out. She just said, “Right,” and scrambled up to do what he asked.

Using her hand signals to guide him, Demetrios adjusted the course, backing down the motor as they closed in on the buoy. “Okay. Grab the mooring line,” he instructed.

She grabbed it, then, continuing to follow his directions, she passed the bridle line through the eye, and quickly, trying not to fumble, wrapped the other end securely to the bow cleat. Then she sat back on her heels and waited for something dire to happen.

Nothing did. Or if it did, she was too inept to tell.

But then Demetrios called, “Great. That’s it.”

“It is?” she asked cautiously.

A quick glance at him and she saw a grin lighting his face. It was as if she’d been awarded some distinguished medal. At his
thumbs-up, Anny took a deep breath and let it out again in a whoosh. She flexed her shoulders and grinned back at him. A warm elemental sense of satisfaction filled her.

The feeling was closest, she supposed, to the satisfaction she felt when she figured out a bit more of the culture and history of the cave painters she was writing her dissertation about. It was as if a significant piece of the puzzle fell into place.

She felt like that now.

But this was more. Now she felt a physical satisfaction as well. She hadn’t done much of the sailing today. But she’d done more physical work than she ordinarily did. She was tired, her muscles had been challenged by the unaccustomed exertion. Her skin was a bit sunburned even in spite of the lotion she’d slathered on exposed body parts and the visor she wore. She felt alive, aware. Wonderful.

Free.

She opened her arms and spun around, embracing the whole world in the joy of it.

“That good, is it?” Anny heard Demetrios’s amused voice behind her.

She felt faintly embarrassed by her childish exuberance, but not embarrassed enough to pretend complacency. She turned and smiled at him. “It’s the best day I’ve had in years.”

His brows lifted and he looked at her a long moment, as if he were trying to determine if she was sincere. She met his gaze squarely, unapologetically.

Finally, slowly, a heart-stoppingly gorgeous smile lit his face. “Then that is good,” he said. “I’m glad.”

He was glad he’d brought her along.

It was better than being alone.

All the time he’d been at Cannes, he’d longed for time alone. But he knew that if he’d been here alone, he’d have been restless. He would have sailed happily enough. But he would have spent most of the time in his head thinking about work, about the new screenplay, about the distribution deal he’d just done. He would not have appreciated the moment.

Now he couldn’t help it.

It was hard not to with Anny embracing it every time he looked at her.

And he did look at her. A lot.

From the first day he’d met her, she had stirred something in him that he thought Lissa had killed. Not just his desire for sex—though admittedly Lissa had done a number on him there, too.

But Anny’s whole outlook on life was so different.

Of course it would be, he could hear Lissa scoff in his mind. Princess Adriana had never had the disadvantage of growing up illegitimate in tiny, dusty Reach, North Dakota. Princess Adriana had always had everything her little heart desired. Why shouldn’t she embrace life? It gave her everything she wanted.

Yes, he had known Lissa well enough to know exactly what she would have said about Anny. It was what she said about everyone. No one had ever had things as tough as Lissa. No one had overcome as much, had suffered more.

Admittedly his late wife had overcome her fair share of obstacles. But some of them, Demetrios knew, were of her own making. Some of them were the product of the chip on her shoulder she could never quite shake off.

“Why should I?” she’d said to him once. “It’s made me who I am.”

For better or worse, yes, it had. And what he knew above all was that it had never made her happy. She’d never felt joy like Anny had expressed tonight. She’d never opened her arms and embraced life.

“You’re very pensive,” Anny said to him now.

They were eating dinner on deck. She’d brought their salads, meat and cheese up to the cockpit because, as she’d said, “Why be down below when it’s so glorious up here?”

They’d enjoyed the sunset while they’d eaten, and his mind had drifted back to the miserable nights he’d spent sailing to Cabo with Lissa, and how different it had been from this.

“Is something wrong?” Anny asked him. “They don’t look like good thoughts.”

He flexed his shoulders. “Just thinking how much better this is than the last time I went sailing.”

“I thought you went with your brother and Franck,” she said, frowning.

“I meant the last time I went a few years ago.” But he smiled as he remembered the very last time. “When we went with Franck it was good.”

“He thought so,” she agreed. “I wish he could do more of it. Mostly he won’t leave his room.” She paused thoughtfully. “It’s easier not to, I think.”

“Yes.” It was definitely easier not to risk. Safer, as well not to want what you couldn’t have.

Demetrios drained his beer and stood up. “You cooked. I’ll clean up.”

“You worked hard all day,” Anny said, standing, too. “I’ll help.” And carrying her plate, she followed him down into the galley.

She was no help. Not to his peace of mind, anyway. Oh, she washed plates and put away food. But the galley was small—too small for them not to bump into each other. Too small for him to avoid the whiff of flowery shampoo, the occasional brush of her hair as she dodged past him to get to the refrigerator, and—once—the outright collision that brought his chest and her breasts firmly against each other.

He remembered her softness. Wanted to feel it again.

The more time he spent with her, the more he wanted to spend. And, let’s face it, the closer he wanted to spend it. He wanted to touch her fresh, soft skin. He wanted to thread his fingers through her hair. Wanted to carry her off to his bunk and know her even more thoroughly than he’d known her the one time he’d made love with her.

But it wasn’t going to happen.

She’d said so. Had explained why. He understood. He just wished his hormones did.

He stepped back out of the galley and said abruptly, “Not going to work.”

Anny blinked at him. “What’s not?”

“This.” He jerked his head toward her in the galley. “You can clean up or I will. Not both of us.”

“But—”

If she were Lissa, all this brushing and bumping would have been a deliberate tease. Not with Anny. Now he just looked at her and waited for the penny to drop.

He could tell the moment that it did. Instead of looking at him coquettishly and giving him an impish smile as Lissa would have done, Anny looked mortified.

“You think I—” Her face flamed. She shook her head. “I never—! I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—Oh God!”

“It’s all right,” he said. “I can control myself. But I’d rather do the cleaning up myself.”

Her cheeks were still bright red. “Of course,” she mumbled, and she practically bolted up the companionway steps without a backward glance.

Demetrios watched her go. It was a tempting view.

He didn’t need the temptation, God knew, but there were some things a man simply couldn’t resist.

As the days went on it wasn’t only the physical Anny that Demetrios found hard to resist. She was as appealing as ever physically.

But it was something more that attracted him. She was cheerful, bright, thoughtful, fun. And he never knew what she was going to do next.

One afternoon she decided she’d fish for their dinner. He scoffed at the notion. “You fish?”

“What? You think princesses can’t fish?”

“Not in my experience.”

“Known a lot of princesses, have you?”

“One or two,” he told her. That one had been five and the other ninety-five didn’t seem worth mentioning.

“Well, live and learn,” she told him, putting the rod together and settling down on the deck. “We used to go fishing on Lake Isar in Mont Chamion. We had our own little hideaway there, a little rustic cabin my great-grandfather built.”

“No castle?” he teased.

She shook her head, smiling, but her expression softened and she got a faraway look in her eyes. “About as far from a palace as you can get and still have indoor plumbing. Grandfather had that put in,” she told him. “We loved it there—Mama, Papa and I—because we could be ourselves there. Not royal, you know?”

He didn’t, of course. Not about the “royal” bit. But Demetrios nodded anyway because since he’d become famous he’d learned all about the need to get away.

“It was the perfect place,” Anny went on. “Quiet. Solitary. Calm. I felt real there. Myself. My family. No distractions.”

“Except the fish.”

She grinned. “Except the fish.”

“I presume you brought bait for the fish there—which is going to be something of a problem here.” He nodded at the bare hook on the end of her line.

“Sometimes we did,” she agreed. “Sometimes, though,” she added saucily, “we used whatever was handy. Like now.” And she dug into her pocket and pulled out a tin of sardines she’d found below.

Demetrios laughed. “If you catch a fish with that, princess, I’ll cook it.”

She laughed, too. Then she baited her hook and cast the line over the side. It was less than half an hour later that he heard her say, “I got one!”

It was a sea bass, Demetrios told her.
Spignola.
“Good eating,” he said, taking if off the hook and heading down to the galley.

“I can cook it,” Anny protested.

But he insisted. Once they moored the boat for the evening, she stayed on deck and kept fishing, he baked it with a bit of olive oil, lemon, tomatoes, and basil.

“Nothing fancy. Just something I learned at my mother’s knee,” he said when he brought the plates up on deck. He’d torn up greens for a salad and had two beer bottles tucked under his arm.