by Maya Blake
‘Don’t worry—the croupiers know not to let that happen.’
The words were reassuring, the tone laconic, but Fran glanced at him all the same.
‘You sound like you know that,’ she said.
He nodded, the blue eyes on her. ‘I do,’ he answered.
She looked at him. So that sounded as if he was definitely part of hotel security, didn’t it? But she still wasn’t sure.
Then she realised she didn’t care either way. He was speaking again, in that deep, laconic and oh-so-attractive voice of his.
‘So, has it been a good conference for you?’ he was asking.
She nodded. He was keeping her in conversation. She knew he was, he knew she knew he was, and she was OK with it. She didn’t know why she was OK with it, but she was. And right now she would give him an answer to his question.
‘Yes—it’s been mentally stimulating. Full-on, but good. And this hotel...’ she gestured with her hand ‘...is fantastic. I don’t really know the Falcone chain, but they’ve pulled out the stops here. My only regret is that I haven’t made enough use of the facilities—I haven’t even had a chance to try out the pool. I definitely will tomorrow, though, before we leave. It’s just a shame I won’t have time to take any of the tours on offer—not even the one to the Grand Canyon!’
The minute she’d said that she regretted it. Oh, Lord, did he think she was angling for an invitation? She hoped not.
To her relief he let it pass and simply said, ‘I’m glad you like the hotel—a lot of work went into it.’
There was professional pride in his voice—she could hear it. It confirmed to her that he must, indeed, be part of the security team that any hotel—let alone one that included a casino—would surely need.
‘I’d prefer it without the casino, but there you go. When in Nevada...’ she finished insouciantly.
‘Casinos make a lot of money,’ came the laconic reply, and there was another sweep of those long dark lashes over those blue, blue eyes.
Another whoop of triumph came from the post-grads at the blackjack table.
Fran laughed. ‘Maybe a little less tonight,’ she observed dryly.
‘Maybe,’ he allowed, with a glint of amusement in his face, his eyes, around his mouth.
The amusement didn’t leave his face, but suddenly there was something else there in his expression—a question. A question that told her, with a quiver of reassurance, that maybe he was not so absolutely sure of himself as he was giving out. And she liked him the more for it.
‘And maybe...’ he went on, and there was a speculative look in his eyes now that went with the question, that went with the sense that he was in no way taking her answer for granted. ‘Maybe,’ he continued, the change in his tone of voice matching the change in his expression, ‘if I asked if I might buy you a drink to celebrate your fellow astrophysicists’ obvious win over there, you might say yes?’
Fran looked at him, glanced back over towards the blackjack table, then looked back at the man who had been chatting her up and was now clearly intent on getting to second base.
Should she co-operate? Did she want to? Or should she say no politely and head to her room to mug up on her presentation?
Even as she cogitated, in the milliseconds it took for her brain’s synapses to flash their signals to each other, she felt another emotion stab through her. A sense of restlessness, of wanting something more than to give a fluent presentation the next day. Something more than the hard year of non-stop slog she’d put in since breaking up with Cesare, taking up her research post with the world-famous Nobel Laureate, producing a clutch of published papers with him and his team.
Whoever this blue-eyed, tough-faced, muscled hunk was, and why it was that, for reasons she could not yet figure out, he was capable of drawing her into conversation the way he so effortlessly had, only one thought was dominating her consciousness right now.
No, she didn’t want to retire meekly to her room. She wanted, instead, to keep this conversation going, keep this encounter going—keep the rush of fizzing blood in her veins from falling flat.
A smile parted her lips and she climbed back on to the high bar stool. He let her this time, without trying to help. She looked straight at him. Liking what she saw. Going for broke.
‘Why not?’ she said.
* * *
Nic’s gaze swept over her with distinct appreciation as she resettled herself on the bar stool. And with gratification too. He hadn’t been entirely sure she would accept his move on her. But that, he knew, was part of her appeal. He was bored with women being over-keen on him, and maybe that was why he was being evasive about who he was—Nicolo Falcone, billionaire founder and owner of the Falcone hotel chain.
For that very reason he threw a warning glance at the barman as he glided up to them, and received an infinitesimal nod of acknowledgement in return.
They gave their orders—a Campari and soda for her, a bourbon for him—and Nic lowered himself to sit beside her on the next bar stool.
‘So,’ he opened, ‘are you giving any papers yourself at the conference?’
‘Yes, a post—that’s a small presentation—about where I’ve got to in my current research. It’s for tomorrow, before the final plenary session.’
‘What’s it about—and would I even understand the title?’ he added with good-humoured self-deprecation.
For all that her incandescent beauty lit up the room for him, she lived in a world that was far, far distant from the cut and thrust of his.
He watched her take a sip from her drink, admiring her delicate fingers, the elegant air she had about her. She was wearing a mid-price-range cocktail dress, with a square neckline and cap sleeves, which, although it was fitting for the purpose of a formal conference dinner, had little pizzazz about it. Her hair was dressed in a neat pleat, and her make-up was subdued. She looked what she was—an academic dressed up for the evening.
Desire curled in him, focussed and demanding.
She was answering him now, and he paid attention, subduing his primitive response to her.
Her voice, light and crisp in the English style, had warmed with an enthusiasm that came, he knew instinctively, from the intellectual passion in her that lit up in her eyes, animating her fine-boned face.
‘My research field is cosmology—understanding the origins and eventual fate of the universe. This poster is just one small aspect of that. I’m running observational data through a computer model, testing various options for the geometry and density of space which might indicate whether, to put it at its simplest, the universe is open or closed.’
Nic frowned in concentration. ‘What does that mean?’
Her voice warmed yet more as she explained. ‘Well, if it’s open, the expansion that started with the Big Bang will cause all the matter in the universe to be dissipated, so there will be no stars, no planets, no galaxies and no energy. It’s called heat death and it would be really boring,’ she said with a moue of dislike. ‘So I’m rooting for a closed universe, which could cause everything to eventually collapse back in a Big Crunch and trigger another Big Bang—and the universe will be reborn. Far more fun!’
Nic took a mouthful of bourbon, feeling the strong liquid ease pleasantly down his throat.
‘So, which is it?’ he asked in his laconic fashion.
She gave another moue. ‘No one knows for sure—though it’s tending towards open at the moment, alas. Whichever it is we have to accept it—even if I don’t like it.’
Nic felt himself shake his head. ‘No. I don’t buy that.’
She was looking at him questioningly, her eyes beautiful and wide.
He elaborated, his voice decisive. ‘We should never accept what we don’t like. It’s defeatist.’ His jaw set. ‘OK, maybe it applies to the universe—but it doesn’t apply to humanity. We can change things, and it
’s up to us. We don’t have to accept the status quo.’
She was still looking at him, but her expression was one of curiosity now. ‘That sounds like it runs very deep in you,’ she said. Her eyes rested on him a moment, as if reading him.
He gave a half-shrug of one shoulder, as if impatient. ‘We can’t just accept things as they are.’
She frowned slightly. ‘Some things we have to, though. Some things we can’t change. Who we are, for example. Who we were born as—’
Like I was born Donna Francesca—that’s in me whether I want it to be or not. It’s part of my heritage—an indelible part. For all the changes I’ve made to my life, I can’t change my birth.
‘That’s exactly what we can change!’ There was vehemence in his reply, and he took another slug of bourbon. Memories were pressing in on him suddenly—bad memories. His hapless mother, abandoned by the man who’d fathered her son, abandoned by all of the other men who’d taken up with her—or worse. His memory darkened. Like the brute who had inflicted beatings on her until the day had come when Nic had reached his teenage years and had been strong enough to protect her from thugs like that....
I had to change my life! I had to do it for myself—by myself. There was no one to help me. And I did change it.
She was looking at him, a slightly curious look in her eyes at the vehemence of his expression, her beautiful grey eyes clear in her fine-boned face.
She gave a slow nod. ‘Then perhaps,’ she said, in an equally slow voice, ‘we have to bear in mind that old prayer, don’t we? The one that asks that we be granted the courage to change what we can, but the patience to accept what we can’t, and the wisdom to know the difference.’
Nic thought about it. Then, ‘Nope,’ he said decisively. ‘I want to change everything I don’t like.’
She gave a laugh—a deliberately light one. ‘Well, you wouldn’t make a scientist, that’s for sure,’ she said.
He gave an echoing laugh, realising with a sense of shock that he had spoken more about his deepest feelings to this woman than he had ever done to anyone. It struck him that to have touched on matters that ran so very deep within him with a woman he hadn’t known existed twenty minutes earlier was....
Significant?
I don’t have conversations like this with women—never. So why this one?
It had to be because of her being a scientist—that had to be it. It was just that, nothing more.
She’s a fantastically beautiful woman—and I want to know her more. But there have been a lot of beautiful women in my life, when I’ve had time for them. She’s just one more.
She was different, yes, because of her being an incredibly talented astrophysicist when the women he was usually interested in were party girls, prioritising good times and carefree enjoyment, which allowed him time out from his obsession with building his personal empire. Females who didn’t ask for commitment. For more than he could give them.
But thinking about the assorted women who’d been and gone in his life was not what he was here to do. He was here to make the most of this one.
He flexed his shoulders, feeling himself relax again, his eyes focussed on drinking in her extraordinary entrancing beauty.
She had finished her drink, and so had he. With every instinct in his body, long honed by experience, he knew it was time to call time on the evening. He’d set the wheels in motion, but tonight was not going to get them further to the destination he wanted for them both. She was not, he knew, the kind of woman who could be rushed. He’d followed through on the impulse that had brought him across the casino floor to her, and for now that was enough.
He signalled the barman, signed the chit as presented, making sure his scrawling ‘Falcone’ was visible only to his employee, and got to his feet with a smile.
Fran did likewise. Her emotions were strange—new to her—but she smiled politely. ‘Thank you for the drink,’ she said.
The long dark lashes swept over the blue, blue eyes. ‘My pleasure,’ came the laconic reply. ‘And thank you for the science tutorial,’ he added, the smile warm in his gaze.
‘You’re welcome,’ Fran replied, her smile just as warm, but briefer, more circumspect.
She headed towards the bank of elevators across the lobby, conscious of his gaze upon her. Was she regretting the fact that he was calling time on their encounter? Surely not? Surely anything more was out of the question?
And yet even as with her head she knew it must be, with quite a different part of her body she knew—from the heady buzz in her bloodstream and the quickened heart rate—that she was regretful that she must retire to her solitary bedroom.
That sense of restlessness she’d felt earlier filled her again. Cesare had been a long time ago—over a year ago now—and anyway, theirs had never been a physical relationship. That, she knew, would have waited until well into their engagement, or even their actual wedding night, for Cesare was a traditionally-minded Italian male.
Not many would have understood their relationship—understood that, having known each other all their lives, it had made perfect sense for them to marry one day. In the meantime, they had both been single agents, and she was well aware that Cesare—an extremely attractive male, blessed with a high social position and great wealth to boot—had indulged in many a romantic liaison.
He had accepted that such tolerance was two-way, and until they had become formally engaged she had been as free as he to indulge in affairs. She’d had only two what might be called ‘full affairs’ in her life—one with another undergrad at Cambridge, a very boy-girl romance, and one brief liaison with a visiting academic while on her PhD course on the East Coast—and that had amply sufficed.
Her dating had nearly always been with fellow academics, and usually based around concerts, films or theatre outings. Searing passion had not played a role, and its absence had not troubled her. One day, after all, she would be marrying Cesare...
Except that now she wouldn’t, after all.
She was footloose and fancy-free. If she chose to be. Free to move on from Cesare, to seek romance—free to take a break, if she wanted, from the demands of academia.
Free to be chatted up by a muscled hunk with the bluest eyes she’d ever seen in a man, let alone one of Italian origin. A man whose smile was lazy, his speech laconic, and whose expression and long-lashed deep blue eyes were telling her just how very much he appreciated her.
She jabbed at the elevator button, her feeling of restlessness increasing as she stepped inside, feeling it swoop her the couple of floors upwards in this low-rise hotel that blended so gracefully into the desert landscape.
Inside her room, she glanced at the folder with her notes, but did not open it. Instead she stripped off for bed, taking off her make-up, brushing out her hair. Wondering why her heart rate still was not back to normal.
Her dreams, when they came, were full—and unsettling.
Copyright © 2019 by Julia James
ISBN-13: 9781488044304
Crown Prince’s Bought Bride
First North American publication 2019
Copyright © 2019 by Maya Blake
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