by Valerie Parv
He had leapt way ahead of her, and her puzzlement was genuine. “What are you talking about? I’ve given you a list of Shane’s contacts.”
“If the names are genuine. Are you a plant, Meagan?”
“A plant? I don’t understand.”
“Is this whole exercise a scheme to get you inside the castle as your lover’s agent?” He almost spat the word out. “What are you supposed to do on the inside? Make it easy for whoever wants the throne to get it? Tell me, Meagan.”
He was shaking her, his fingers digging into her shoulders, and she felt hot tears start, but they were angry tears prompted by his lack of faith in her. In refusing to marry him, she had tried to protect herself. She had never dreamed he would decide that she was involved in some grand conspiracy. “You’re hurting me,” she said.
He released her, looking shocked. “I didn’t mean to. What’s come over me? You drive me to do things I’d never do ordinarily. I’d better go.”
He looked pained as he stood up. “Don’t go like this,” she implored, feeling as if she must also be white to the bone.
He shook his head. “Around you, I’m not rational anymore. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
At least he had given her that much, she thought as the great carved door slammed behind him, the sound reverberating through her like a thunderclap. It wasn’t what she yearned for, but she had forfeited her right to more, and the awareness made the pain in her ankle seem trivial by comparison.
She had never dreamed that he would misread her reluctance to marry him as loyalty to Molly’s father. Now he thought she loved a man who was behind the abduction of the king and Ben himself. She ached to convince him he was wrong about her, but perhaps it was better to let him think what he liked. This way she could keep her emotional distance for her own self-preservation.
She had a feeling it would be easier said than done.
Chapter Eleven
A mother’s instinct made Meagan’s head lift from the historical novel she had taken from a well-stocked bookcase in the sitting room that opened off her bedroom. Molly was supposed to be asleep in the next room. The child couldn’t possibly have called to her through the apartment’s massively thick walls, but Meagan sensed that Molly needed her.
The little girl was standing up on the bed, her tiny form dwarfed by the antique furniture. At the sight of her mother, she rubbed her eyes and gave a tremulous smile. Smiling back, Meagan moved toward her, favoring her injured ankle, although it was much improved after her day of rest. “Bad dream?”
Molly nodded. “I called and called, but you didn’t come.”
Meagan enveloped the child in a hug. One thing she could say for the present-day royal family, they believed in central heating. The apartment was cosy, and Molly felt warm to her touch, although thankfully not feverish. “It was only a dream. I’m here now. Go back to sleep.”
“I’m not sleepy.”
Meagan settled the child on her lap, and stroked her fine hair. “Can’t you pretend to be sleepy? You could be Sleeping Beauty.”
Molly giggled. “I’m too little. You be Sleeping Beauty. Then Uncle Ben can kiss you awake.”
Robbed of breath for a moment, Meagan wrestled herself under control. It was only a child’s fantasy, the last thing Ben would be interested in. The last thing she should want. “I’m pretty sure Sleeping Beauty didn’t have a bandage on her ankle,” she said.
Molly climbed off her lap, planted a wet kiss in her palm, then patted it on to the bandage, making Meagan smile. “Poor Mummy. Kiss it better.”
“That’s much better, sweetheart,” Meagan assured her. She put her weight on the ankle. Apart from a slight twinge, she stood easily. “See what a kiss can do?” If you didn’t count the emotional havoc it caused when it came from a man she had no business kissing.
Molly took her hands. “Lie down, Mummy. Be Sleeping Beauty.”
Knowing better than to prolong the scene by resisting, Meagan stretched out on Molly’s bed. “Like this?”
Molly fussed around her, arranging her nightgown and robe so they draped over the edge of the bed. She put a small hand over Meagan’s eyes. “Now be asleep.”
Meagan obediently closed her eyes, then opened one to peek at her child. “Since we don’t have a prince handy, Mr. Snug had better kiss me awake.”
“Oh, I think we can do better than that.”
Meagan’s eyes flew open to find Ben leaning over her, the last person she had expected to see tonight. He had evidently been taking a dip in the heated indoor pool he had shown her soon after they arrived, because his midnight-blue tracksuit was studded with damp patches, and a towel was slung around his neck. His face glowed with exertion.
She was afraid her color mirrored his, without the excuse of the exercise. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I thought a swim would help me to sleep. On my way back to my apartment, I saw Molly’s door standing open. I heard voices so I looked in to make sure she was all right, in time to hear that you’re short of a prince.”
Tension gripped her. “You’re a duke, not a prince. Just as well, because princes don’t wear tracksuits.”
“This one does. What do you think, Molly? Do I look royal enough?”
She giggled again. “No. But you can kiss my mummy.”
His eyebrows lifted. “What if she doesn’t want me to?”
“She has to, so she can wake up and marry you.”
This had gone far enough. Meagan tried to scramble to her feet, but Ben sat down on the side of the bed. With the edge of her robe trapped under him, she wasn’t going anywhere.
It was only a game, she told herself. The sooner she let him, in Molly’s words, kiss her awake, the sooner the little girl would go back to sleep. Then Meagan could bid Ben good-night and return to her own room, alone.
Tension gripped her as Ben turned to Molly. “You’d better tell me what to do.”
“I don’t know. I’m only three.”
Ben leaned closer. “Perhaps the prince should take Sleeping Beauty in his arms, like this.”
Molly nodded, her expression pleased. Meagan tried not to react as he slid an arm under her shoulders and lifted her so she was cradled against him. He felt hot and hard, the tracksuit barely disguising his taut muscles. His dark hair was slick with water, but he still managed to look disturbingly royal.
She closed her eyes, partly to please Molly, but also because being so close to him was scrambling Meagan’s thought processes. It only served to concentrate her sensory awareness of him, sending her pulse rate into overdrive. He smelled of shower soap and masculinity. Through the silky robe his touch felt electrifying. If this didn’t end soon, she didn’t know what she was going to do.
She felt Molly scramble onto the bed beside her, where she curled against the pillow with a sigh of satisfaction. “Good,” she pronounced, sounding sleepy. “Now you can wake Mummy up.”
Ben’s soft sigh whispered over Meagan’s heated skin. “It seems a shame. She looks beautiful just as she is.”
He was only saying it to please the little girl, Meagan told herself, trying unsuccessfully to subdue the feelings tearing through her like brushfire.
She felt sure she wasn’t anybody’s idea of a princess, although she would never have known it from the look she saw on Ben’s face when she peeked at him through a fringe of lashes. He looked…transfixed, she thought, and found herself curiously unwilling to examine what it might mean.
Molly yawned hugely. “Mummy looks like a princess.”
“Yes,” Ben responded softly, his voice thickening. “Just like a princess.”
His hands smoothed her hair away from her face as she had done for Molly a few moments before. But there any similarity ended. His touch spoke of very grown-up needs and desires.
It wasn’t all on her side, she thought in wonder. She felt the strength of his desire in the way his fingers traced her features, lingering over her mouth before skimming along the line of her jaw.
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Such a light touch. So innocent. But there was fire in his fingers, transmitted through her nerves like the lighting of a fuse.
Ben had imagined Meagan like this. No, not precisely like this. Not playing a game to please a child, although that, too, gave rise to dreams he knew he had no business indulging. It was all too easy to imagine Meagan as his wife, and Molly as their child as they shared a moment of family closeness together.
The thought led him to imagine himself alone with Meagan, when he could drink his fill of her, man to woman.
His hunger was reflected in the fast beating of his heart, and the fire inside him that threatened to turn into an inferno at any second. Each touch of his fingers to the curve of her lips made him want to taste all of her. He yearned to explore her secrets while giving her all that he was capable of giving.
He sensed that she would have as much to give as he would. Like him, she wasn’t content to remain on the surface of any experience.
When they had first arrived, he had shown her around this wing of the castle. She had been as excited as her child. Molly’s delight had been infectious as she touched every statue with curious fingers. Meagan had concealed her fascination better, but not from him. He had read the sparkle in her eyes and the bloom on her cheeks, and felt as if he was seeing the wonders of the castle for the first time himself.
Making love to her would be like the first time, too, he sensed. He couldn’t help it. He lowered his mouth to hers and tasted.
A mistake. As soon as his lips met hers, desire threatened to swamp his rigid self-control. It took everything he had not to deepen the kiss, knowing where it must lead. Where it couldn’t lead as long as she stubbornly refused to let him protect her.
The morsel he permitted himself was dangerous enough. It filled his head with thoughts of tearing aside her silk robe and gown, and taking her without ceremony. It would be dangerous and exhilarating, like riding out a force-ten gale at sea. Then, first passions sated, he would take the time to pleasure her with all the finesse at his command.
Lying in his arms she looked almost more beautiful than he could bear. More delicious than any food he had ever tasted. She didn’t have to do anything to make him want her so much it was akin to pain.
His desire found its way into his kiss, so that when he ended it and her eyes flew open, he saw astonishment in her gaze. And something else. Recognition, he decided. She knew what he wanted, and her eyes said yes. He had to struggle to keep in mind that she still loved another man.
He saw the moment when she came back to reality. Her gaze became shuttered, and she plucked at his clothes as if she couldn’t quite bring herself to push him away although she knew it was what she should do.
He made it simple for them both by easing her back against the pillow and standing up. He looked at the child curled up like a kitten, her breathing quiet and even. Mother and daughter looked so heart-stoppingly beautiful that an ache of longing fisted inside him, as powerful as it was unexpected. “It worked. Molly fell asleep.”
Meagan turned her head, her gaze softening as she looked at the sleeping child. It hardened when she looked back at him. “But you didn’t stop.”
The accusation in Meagan’s tone was justified. He had seen the little girl drift off to sleep, unable to fight exhaustion any longer. He could have ended the kiss then but he hadn’t. “I didn’t want to,” he admitted frankly.
“Why not?”
Slowly he ran a hand down the side of her face, and felt her shiver of response. “Do you need to ask?”
“I suppose not.” She let her lashes close for a second, then opened them to look squarely at him, her expression accepting her part in what had just happened, whatever it was. She wasn’t sure what to call it. Not love. Never love. Passion? Most definitely that, and more. It felt like a wholesale attack on every defense she possessed. “This has to stop,” she insisted.
A flash of anger lit his expression before he masked it. “Because of your misplaced loyalty to Molly’s father?”
She let her gaze answer, unable to find the strength to lie to him outright. He looked so cold that Meagan wished she had told him the truth about Kevan from the beginning, instead of hiding behind a man who had vanished from her life long before.
So why not be honest with Ben? Self-protection, she acknowledged. She had survived one man’s deception, and built a life for herself and Molly. She didn’t plan on leaving herself open to any man’s blandishments again.
Until Ben.
Nothing in her careful planning had anticipated him. With the lightest caress he made her want more than was sensible or attainable. As long as he thought she was in love with another of the conspirators, she might have some defense against him.
She should have been relieved when he bid her a terse good-night and strode out of Molly’s room, but instead she felt empty and alone. Slowly she got up, covered the sleeping child and turned on the night-light, telling herself she had done the right thing, the only thing.
When she quietly walked between her suite and Molly’s, she found him waiting in her sitting room. Still angry she saw, from the way he paced up and down in front of the unlit fireplace. Still impossibly handsome and compelling. Still a danger to her peace of mind.
“How is the ankle?” he asked, noticing her slight limp as she came in.
“Almost better. The doctor said I’ll be able to use it normally after another night’s rest.” She wished she could say as much for her peace of mind.
“Is there something else?” she asked as coolly as she could, although it wasn’t reflected in her inner temperature. “I’m tired, and I want to go to bed.”
“We could, you know.”
The internal heat banked higher. “What?”
“We could go to bed together. I know you have the crazy notion that you owe your loyalty to your child’s father, but you said he’s married. I gather he doesn’t plan on leaving his wife for you, so why not pay him back in kind?”
“How does sleeping with you do that?” she demanded. Saying it out loud clogged her throat with desires she didn’t want to feel.
“It gives you the chance to get even with him.”
Just desserts, Meagan thought, annoyed with herself for the quick flash of anger. She had let Ben think she still cared about Molly’s father, leading Ben to conclude that she’d welcome his suggestion. “What does it give you?”
“You.”
The one word was almost her undoing. “Why do you want me when you can have any woman in the kingdom?”
“I don’t want any woman in the kingdom.”
And he only wanted her because he couldn’t have her. If she told him there was no one else, would he still feel the same way? The admission hovered on her tongue, held back only by the fear that honesty would betray the depth of her love for him.
Then what would happen? He didn’t want a lasting relationship. He had only proposed marriage to protect her and Molly. “We can’t always have what we want,” she said, speaking for herself.
“What do you want, Meagan?”
His question caught her off guard. “I have my daughter, my home, work I enjoy. They’re enough for me.”
His pacing brought him close to her, and he rested his hands on her shoulders, his gaze penetrating. “Are you sure? I notice there’s no mention of love.”
His nearness threatened to undermine what little resistance she had left. “I thought I was in love once. Look where it got me.”
He started to knead her shoulders, reading the tension in them and dispelling it, only to trigger new kinds deep inside her that no amount of massaging would cure. She felt molten, unable to summon the strength to move away. “It got both of us this far,” he said, his tone husky.
She shook her head, her hair pooling around her shoulders. “There is no us, Ben. If it wasn’t for King Michael being abducted, we would never have met.”
“But we did meet, and we both felt the pull from the beginning.”
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br /> It wasn’t a question. He knew she couldn’t deny it.
“The point is, what are we going to do about it?”
Slight panic gripped her. “Why must we do anything? It’s easier for a man. You’re made to act on your passions, then move on. It’s different for a woman.”
His hold tightened. If he wasn’t careful, she would have the marks of his fingers on her shoulders tomorrow, she thought. Branded, the way he would do to her soul if she wasn’t careful.
“You seem sure I would move on,” he said.
“It’s what men do.”
“It’s not what I do.”
Finding the strength at last, she tore herself out of his grasp. “Listen to yourself. You’re the son of a princess. You may have chosen an ordinary life, but that’s what it is, a choice. All you have to do is say the word to belong here again. I don’t have that luxury. I don’t belong here and I never will.” Let him think she feared being out of place in the castle, instead of in his heart.
She clenched her hands. “Say we do give in to what we feel. Tonight it would be wonderful, I don’t doubt. But tomorrow, what would I have then?” Not even her self-respect, she knew.
“I’ve already asked you stay.”
“As what? You won’t grant me—or any woman—equal status in your life.”
“I regard you as my equal,” he said in measured tones.
She could hardly speak, she was so angry. He regarded no female as equal. “I suppose next, you’ll tell me you want our marriage to be real?”
“Not yet. As long as the country is in crisis, all I can offer you is an engagement, and the protection of being known as my fiancée.”
“And you’ll marry me as soon as the crisis is over,” she supplied. “Surely you don’t expect me to fall for a line like that?”
He looked frustrated. “How did we get into this? It isn’t a line, it’s the truth.”
She splayed her hands, relieved to see they shook only a little. She had never wanted to lash out at a man as much as she wanted to at Ben at this moment. Couldn’t he hear himself? “I believe you want to make love to me,” she put in before he could interrupt. Dear heaven, she wanted it almost more than she could bear, but she made herself face reality. “You may believe you’ll marry me as soon as the king is safely returned to the throne. But after he’s found, something else will come up and you’ll have to put our marriage off for a few more days or months. Or years,” she added tiredly.
