Prince of Secrets

by Lucy Monroe

  “Tell her I approve.”

  “She said you would.”

  His gaze skimmed her body. “Though I am not sure how I feel about everyone else seeing your body.”

  “They’re just legs.”

  “Nice ones.”

  “It’s the tae kwon do.” Chanel’s mother had heard somewhere that taking martial arts could improve Chanel’s grace.

  It hadn’t done much for her poise and composure, but Chanel had discovered she enjoyed the classes. She’d insisted on continuing when her mother would have preferred she take a dance class.

  Just one of many arguments between her and Beatrice during Chanel’s formative years marked with parent-child acrimony.

  “Then I am very grateful for your interest in Korean martial arts.”

  “You’ve never asked what color belt I am,” she observed as he led her into the theater.

  His thumb brushed up and down against her waist as if he couldn’t help touching her. “What color?”

  “Third-level black belt.”

  “Sixth-level black in judo,” he said by way of reply.

  “Want to spar?” she teased breathlessly.

  The silk of her shirt transmitted the heat from his skin to hers and she wondered if she was the one who was going to end up teased to distraction by her outfit tonight.

  “I spar with my cousin. I prefer less competitive physical pursuits with you.”

  She looked up into the side of his face, loving the line of his jaw, the way he held himself with such confidence. “Me, too.”

  He groaned.

  “What?”

  He stopped in the lobby and pulled her around so their gazes locked.

  His was heated. “How can you ask what? You are dressed in a way guaranteed to keep my thoughts off the play and on what I plan to do to you once we get back to my condo.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  HE SHOOK HIS HEAD as if trying to clear it. “What do you think has me groaning? It has been three nights.”

  She tried not to look as pleased as she felt, but was afraid she wasn’t doing a very good job.

  So she averted her head and met the envious gaze of another woman. Chanel ignored it, the envy having no power to pierce the bubble of happiness around her.

  Demyan was with her and showed zero interest in being with, or even looking at, another woman.

  She looked up at the sound of his laughter. He was watching her.

  “I’m funny?” she asked.

  “You are very pleased with yourself.”

  “I am happy with life, and you most of all,” she offered.

  She wasn’t one to share her feelings easily, but Laura hadn’t spent the afternoon just coaching Chanel on fashion choices. Her little sister had told Chanel that if she really liked this man, she needed to open up to him.

  “You can’t do that thing you do with Mom and Dad and everyone else besides me and Andrew,” Laura had said.

  Even though Chanel thought she knew, she’d asked, “What thing?”

  “The way you hold the real you back so no one can hurt her.”

  “You’re pretty insightful.”

  “For a teenager, you mean.”

  “For anyone.” Their mother was nearly fifty and Beatrice had less understanding of her oldest daughter’s nature.

  Demyan’s hand slid down her hip, his fingertips playing across her exposed flesh through the slit.

  Chanel gasped and jerked away from the touch.

  His look was predatory. “I don’t like to be ignored.”

  “I wasn’t ignoring you.”

  “You weren’t thinking about me.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “I know.”

  “You’re arrogant.”

  “So you have said, but you know I do not agree.”

  And the more she knew of him, the less she believed the accusation herself. There was a very hard-to-detect strain of vulnerability running through the man at her side. You had to look very closely to see it, but she watched him with every bit of her formidable scientist’s brain focused entirely on one thing. Deciphering the data that made up Demyan Zaretsky.

  “I’m thinking about you now,” she promised.

  “I know.”

  She laughed, feeling a light airiness that buoyed her through the crowd.

  “Demyan!” a feminine voice called.

  There was no mistaking the way his body tensed at the sound, not with him so close to Chanel as they walked.

  He was coiled tightly, even as he turned them toward the woman who had called his name, with one of those fake smiles Chanel hadn’t seen since their very first dates on his face. “Madeleine.”

  Madeleine’s fashion sense and poise was everything Chanel’s mother wished for her daughter.

  Unfortunately, Chanel refused to make it a mission in life to live up to such hopes. She’d learned too young that nothing she did would ever be enough; therefore, what would be the point in trying to be someone she was not?

  Madeleine’s blond hair probably wasn’t natural, but there were no telltale indicators. She wore her Givenchy dress with supreme confidence, her accessories in perfect proportion to the designer ensemble.

  Chanel couldn’t tell the other woman’s age by looking at her but guessed it was somewhere between thirty and a well-preserved forty-five.

  The look she gave Demyan said he knew her age, intimately.

  If this had happened a month ago, Chanel would have withdrawn into herself and given up the playing field.

  But what she’d denied on their third date was a certainty now. She was head over heels in love with Demyan Zaretsky, though she hadn’t had a chance to tell him yet. Wasn’t sure exactly when she wanted to.

  While he’d never said the words, either, he hinted at a future together almost every time she saw him.

  That love and his commitment to their future gave her strength.

  Drawing on a bit of her mother’s aplomb, Chanel stepped forward and extended her hand. “Chanel Tanner. Are you an old friend of Demyan’s?”

  Madeleine didn’t miss Chanel’s slight emphasis on the word old, her eyes narrowing just slightly with anger but no righteous indignation. So, she was older than she looked.

  “You could say that.” Madeleine put her hand on Demyan’s sleeve. “We know each other quite well, though I admit I didn’t know he wore glasses.”

  Demyan adroitly stepped away from the touch while keeping a proprietary arm around Chanel. “Is your husband here tonight, Madeleine?”

  Stress made Chanel’s body rigid. Had Demyan and this woman had an affair? He’d said he didn’t believe in infidelity.

  Had he been lying?

  “He couldn’t get away from the Microsoft people. I’m quite on my own tonight.” Madeleine smiled up at Demyan, her expression expectant.

  It was clear she was angling for an invitation to join them, though Chanel wasn’t sure how that was supposed to happen.

  Their tickets had assigned seats.

  Demyan ignored the hint completely. “The cost of being married to a man with his responsibilities.”

  The older woman frowned again, this time genuine anger lying right below the surface. “Does your little friend here know that? Or is she still in the honeymoon phase of believing you’ll make her a priority in your life?”

  “She is a priority.” He pulled Chanel closer.

  She didn’t know if the move was a conscious one, but Madeleine noticed it, too.

  That made Madeleine flinch and Chanel felt unexpected compassion well up inside her. “I’m sure you’re a priority to your husband. He works to make a good life for you both.”

  That’s what she remembered her father saying to her mother.

  “I knew what I was getting when I married him.” Madeleine gave a significant look to Demyan. “And what I was giving up. I liked my chances with Franklin better.”

  “He married you. You read the situation right.” There was a message in Demy
an’s voice for the other woman.

  He was telling her he wouldn’t have married her, and her words had put Chanel’s mind at rest about the affair. Oh, it was clear the two had shared a bed at one time, but it was equally obvious that circumstance had ended before Madeleine married Franklin.

  “How long were you two together?” Chanel asked with her infamous lack of tact but no desire to pull the question back once it was uttered.

  It might be awkward, but it struck her how very little she really knew about Demyan.

  “Didn’t he tell you about me?” Madeleine asked, her tone just this side of snide.

  And still Chanel couldn’t feel anything but pity for her. She didn’t look happy with her choices in life.

  “No.”

  The other woman didn’t seem happy with the answer. Maybe Madeleine had thought she’d made a bigger impact on Demyan’s life than she had. “You’re a blunt one, aren’t you? Did your mother teach you no tact?”

  “To her eternal disappointment, no.”

  That brought an unexpected but small smile to Madeleine’s lips.

  Demyan leaned down and kissed Chanel’s temple, no annoyance with her in his manner at all. “She is refreshingly direct,” he said to Madeleine while looking at Chanel. “There is no artifice in her.”

  “So, she does not see the artifice in you,” Madeleine opined, sounding sad rather than bitter.

  “He holds things back,” Chanel answered before Demyan could, but she did the older woman the courtesy of meeting her gaze to do so. “But if I know that, he’s not hiding anything. I understand how hard it can be to share your true self with someone else.”

  “Heavens, don’t you have any filters?” Madeleine demanded.

  “No.”

  It was Demyan’s turn to laugh, the sound genuine and apparently shocking to the other woman. Madeleine stared at him for a count of five full seconds, her mouth agape, her eyes widened comically.

  Finally, she said, “I’ve never heard you make that sound.”

  “He’s just laughing.” Okay, so he didn’t do it often, but the man had an undeniable sense of humor.

  “Just, she says. This young thing really doesn’t know you at all, does she?” Madeleine was the one looking with pity on Chanel now.

  “It was a pleasure to run into you, but we need to find our seats. If you will excuse us,” Demyan said, his tone brooking no obstacles and implying the exact opposite to his words.

  Madeleine said nothing as they walked away.

  When they reached their seats Chanel understood how the other woman had thought she might be included in their evening. Demyan had a box.

  Although there was room for at least eight seats in it, there were only two burgundy-velvet-covered Queen Anne-style chairs. A small table with a bottle of champagne and two-person hors d’oeuvres tray stood between them.

  Demyan led her to one of the seats, making sure she was comfortable before taking his own.

  He looked out over the auditorium, stretching his long legs in front of him. “She’s wrong, you know.”

  “Madeleine?”

  “Yes.”

  “About what?”

  He turned his head, looking at her in that way only he had ever done. As if she was a woman worthy of intense desire, of inciting his lust. “You know the man at the base of my nature.”

  “I hardly know anything about you.” The words came from the scientist’s nature even as her heart knew he spoke the truth.

  That man who lost his control when he tried so hard not to, that man was the real Demyan.

  Demyan shook his head, his dark eyes glowing with sensual lights she now recognized very well. “You know the most personal things about me.”

  “So does she.”

  “No.”

  “You had sex with her.” And even though she now knew that Madeleine hadn’t been married at the time, Chanel realized it still bothered her a little.

  She knew he’d been with other lovers. Probably lots of them, but she really didn’t want to keep running into them.

  “She never saw the more primal side of my nature. No other woman has seen it.”

  “You think I know you better than anyone else because you don’t show absolute control in the bedroom?” It’s what she’d thought only seconds before, but saying it aloud made the very concept seem unreal.

  “Yes.”

  “I want to know about your past. Not names of every woman you’ve been with. I hope I never meet another one, but I don’t know anything about you.” Except that to him, she was special.

  She kept that to herself. She wanted more.

  “It’s the future that counts between us.”

  “But without a connection to the past, there is no basis for understanding the future.” Historians made that claim all the time and scientists knew it to be true as well, for different reasons.

  “I thought scientists were all about progress.”

  “Building on the discoveries of the past.”

  “Not making something entirely new?”

  “Nothing is new, just newly discovered.”

  “Like your sexy fashion sense?” he teased.

  “That’s all Laura.”

  “I don’t see Laura here now.”

  “I’d like you to meet her.” If they had a future, they had to share their present lives.

  Even the less-than-pleasant bits, which meant he’d have to meet her mother and Perry, as well.

  “I would enjoy that very much.”

  “You would?”

  “Naturally. She is your sister.”

  “A part of my past.”

  “And your present and your future.”

  “Yes, so?” she prompted.

  He gave her a wary look she didn’t understand. “You want to meet my family?”

  “Very much. Unless… Do you not get on?” Maybe his relationship with his parents was worse than hers with Beatrice and Perry.

  “I get on very well with the aunt and uncle who raised me.”

  “What happened to your parents?”

  “Ambition.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “They gave me to be raised by my aunt and uncle to feed their own ambition.”

  There had to be more to the story than that, but she understood this was something Demyan didn’t share with everyone. “Do you ever see them?”

  “My aunt and uncle? Often. In fact, that’s where I spent the last three days.”

  “I thought it was business.”

  “I did not say that.”

  “You didn’t say anything at all.”

  “You did not ask.”

  “Do I have the right to ask?”

  “Absolutely.”

  That was definitive and welcome. “Okay.”

  “My parents come to family social occasions,” he offered without making her ask again, proving he’d known what she meant the first time around.

  “And?”

  “They do not consider me their son.”

  “Or their beloved nephew.”

  “Not beloved anything.” His expression relayed none of the hurt that must cause him.

  “I am sorry.”

  “You don’t have it much better with your mother and Perry.”

  “I’m not sure I have it better at all,” she admitted.

  “Your parents do not understand you.”

  “They don’t approve of me. That’s worse, believe me.” It would have been so much easier for her if her mother and Perry simply found her an enigma.

  Instead, they considered her a defective model that needed constant attempts at fixing.

  “I approve of you completely.”

  “Thank you.” She grinned at him, letting her love shine in her eyes. She had a feeling the words weren’t far from her lips, either. “I approve of you, too.”

  “I am very glad to hear that.” He picked up the champagne bottle and poured them each a glass.

  “Why champagne?” s
he asked.

  If it was his favored wine of choice, she wouldn’t ask, but he’d shared with her he drank champagne on only very special occasions.

  He handed her a glass. “I’m hoping to have something to celebrate in very short order.”

  Goose bumps broke out over Chanel’s skin, her heart going into her throat. “Oh?”

  He reached into his pocket and brandished a small box that was unmistakable in size and intent.

  “Isn’t this supposed to happen after a five-course dinner and roses, and…” Her breath ran out and so did Chanel’s words.

  “I am not a man who follows other people’s dictated scripts.”

  She had no trouble believing that. “Just your own.”

  Something passed through his eyes, almost like guilt, but that didn’t make any sense. He might be bossy outside the bedroom a bit, too, but it was nothing to feel guilty about.

  Chanel was no shrinking violet that she couldn’t stand up to him if need be.

  He moved, and suddenly he was on one knee in front of her, the ring box open and in his palm. “Marry me, Chanel.”

  “You… I… This… How can you want… It’s only been a month…”

  “Is longer than three dates. I knew I wanted to marry you from the beginning.” There could be no questioning the truth of that statement.

  It was there in his eyes and voice. Nothing but honesty. He’d known he wanted her, had never wavered in that belief.

  “What about love?”

  “Do you love me?” he countered.

  She nodded.

  “Say it.”

  She glared. “You first.”

  “I may never say the words. You will have to accept that.”

  “If I want to marry you.”

  “Oh, you want to.”

  She did, but she didn’t understand. “Why can’t you say the words?”

  “I can promise you fidelity and as good a life together as it is within my power to make for us. Is that not enough?”

  The syntax change was odd and then she realized that as a native Ukrainian speaker, he was using the sentence structure of his first language. Did that mean he was nervous despite how calm and assured he appeared?

  She looked at him closely and saw it, that small strain of vulnerability she knew he’d rather she never witnessed. “I do love you.”

  “And I will always honor that.”