Pure Princess, Bartered Bride

by Caitlin Crews

  Was he teasing her? In a good-natured way? Gabrielle found this possibility shocking—but no more shocking than her body’s immediate response to the feel of his mouth against hers. Her nipples hardened, and she felt herself soften for him. On command. At the slightest touch. Even the faint soreness between her legs failed to keep the desire from coiling in her middle. She slid her hands into his thick black hair, reveling in the texture of it, the shape of his head, his hard body once again moving over hers, crushing her so deliciously beneath him.

  But she only whispered, “Perhaps,” and lost herself in him once again.

  CHAPTER TEN

  WHEN Gabrielle woke again, late morning sunshine spilled into the room, disorienting her as she sat up in the big bed.

  She knew immediately that Luc was gone—from the bed, from the room—knew even before she looked around to confirm it. His presence was too elemental, too disturbing—she knew she would have sensed it if he was near.

  Gabrielle pushed the heavy mass of her hair back from her face, stretched, and took a moment to catalog the various twinges and aches in interesting places in her body. She felt herself flush as she remembered all the ways she’d moved, all the things she’d done, all the things he’d taught her in one short night.

  Not that she had been a prude, exactly, before this strange marriage. She might not have done as much with the opposite sex as her contemporaries had. Or, truthfully, anything at all. Her knowledge of men might have been more theoretical than practical. But she’d dreamed, and her dreams had never been particularly tame. She had assumed her imagination filled in the blanks adequately enough. But she had dreamed about sex the way she’d dreamed about love—all so vague and hidden in soft focus.

  Nothing about Luc Garnier was in soft focus. He was vivid and challenging and shockingly physical.

  Gabrielle swung out of bed and pulled on the silk robe she’d left draped over the plush armchair near the dark mahogany armoire. She tiptoed over to the bedroom door. It was open a crack, and she stood near it, straining to hear. From far off she heard the unmistakable deep tones of Luc’s voice. She eased the door shut and realized that her breathing had gone shallow—her flush deepened and spread. What had he done to her? And how could she possibly face him now, knowing what it had been like between them in the dark—in the bed?

  Pressing her hands against her cheeks, as if that could calm her, Gabrielle turned and headed for the en suite master bathroom. She was, apparently, no longer able to control herself, but she could certainly control how she looked. Best not to appear before him half-naked and wanton, with her hair in disarray. Gabrielle might not have known what to do about the intimidating man who had suddenly become so intimate with her, but she certainly knew how to dress herself to hide her emotional state. It was one of her gifts.

  After a shower—which she knew she drew out longer than she should have, so anxious was she about this morning after—Gabrielle blew her hair dry and then took care to dress like the princess she was. Not the Americanized version of herself Luc had been so displeased with the day before.

  She chose a pair of cream-colored linen trousers made especially for her by the Miravakian designer she had hired to oversee her official wardrobe, and paired them with a whisper-soft cashmere sweater in a champagne hue. Then she arranged her hair into its usual French twist, smooth and elegant. She added the slightest dab of scent behind each ear, and put on a pair of pearl studs that announced their pedigree—and hers—with an understated gleam. She chose her makeup with care, deciding that Luc was the kind of man who, like her father, preferred the fantasy of the bare face—little realizing the amount of work and skill it took to produce such a look. But understated elegance was what Gabrielle was known for and what Luc had signed on for—the pinnacle of her personal achievement to date, she thought then, her mouth twisting into a wry smile.

  Casting her thoughts aside, since they did her no good, Gabrielle eyed herself critically in the full-length mirror on the back of the closet door. She would do. Gone was last night’s wild creature, with her uninhibited hair and bare feet. In her place was the Princess Gabrielle she had always been. Muted. Pastel. Soothing.

  It was her armor.

  Luc looked up when she walked out through the sliding glass doors onto the deck, where he was taking one in a series of business calls that had started early in the morning. He murmured a few closing remarks in French, then ordered his assistants to fax him the relevant documents before hanging up and giving his wife his full attention.

  The bright California sunshine spilled over her, highlighting the fine elegance of her features. She looked every inch the well-bred, well-behaved Miravakian princess he had originally believed her to be—from the smooth hair swept back from her face to the quietly sophisticated apparel. This woman standing before him was the one he’d seen in Nice—not a hair out of place, oozing composure.

  She nodded at him, her cultivated social smile at the ready. “I’m sorry that I slept so long this morning,” she said. “I hope I haven’t kept you waiting.”

  So polite. As if she had not spent a long, sweaty night in his arms. But, much as Luc wanted to remind her of what had happened between them, he was also relieved to see this version of her. It proved he had not been delusional in Nice—that this had been the woman he’d thought he was marrying. And he preferred that the world see only this: the capable, elegant princess, a credit to her country. And, of course, to her husband.

  He would be the only one who knew the other side of her. His own, private, uninhibited princess behind closed doors. He nearly smiled at the thought.

  “The rest suits you,” he replied, rising and beckoning her closer, to take the seat opposite him at a small wrought-iron table. The housekeeper had prepared a tray—a selection of ripe, inviting Californian fruits and fresh-baked pastries. “Come. Do you take coffee in the morning?”

  “Please,” Gabrielle replied, settling herself into the chair with an unstudied grace that Luc found mesmerizing. She nodded her thanks when he poured her a cup of steaming black liquid from the carafe in the center of the table, and cradled the cup in her hands.

  “It’s a lovely morning,” she remarked, and then talked for a few moments about the differences in temperature between Miravakia and Los Angeles, and her delight in the unexpected similarities between the two places—all in that same well-modulated, polite tone.

  Luc recognized the fact that she was handling him with consummate skill—as if they were complete strangers seated next to each other at a formal dinner. Acting the perfect hostess, making perfect small talk to ease any possible awkwardness, smoothing her way into their shared morning with bright words and an easy tone.

  She was a natural at it, he thought in satisfaction and some amusement.

  He wondered if it was difficult for her—particularly today, when so much had happened between them the night before. He wondered how she felt—and then had to check a laugh at the notion that he, Luc Garnier, was concerned about a woman’s feelings.

  The last woman whose feelings had interested him at all had been his mother, and that had been an issue of survival rather than concern. Vittoria Giacinta Garnier had been as histrionic as her name suggested. She had tyrannized the household with her ever-shifting moods, making her feelings the centerpiece not only of her own life but of her husband’s and her son’s as well. Her gravitational pull had been like a black hole, sucking them all in.

  “Does that amuse you?” Gabrielle asked, jolting him out the past. She placed her cup back on the table and folded her hands neatly in her lap. “I assure you I would not like to live so far from Miravakia, but I’m surprised to discover that Los Angeles is not as barbaric as I had been led to believe.”

  “And what of your husband?” Luc asked. He had promised himself that he would go easy on her, having misjudged her so severely. Yet the words seemed to come out anyway, despite what he’d decided. “Is he as barbaric as you expected?” He imagined she thought s
o, and yet somehow he could not bring himself to regret the events of the previous night, or her surprising innocence. Which was his now, to cultivate as he chose.

  Color bloomed high on her cheekbones, making Luc toy with the notion that she could read his suddenly graphic thoughts. He rather thought her flush would be significantly more pronounced if she could.

  “I had no such expectation,” she said quietly. Then, with every appearance of serenity save her flushed skin, she adroitly changed the subject.

  “You do that so well,” Luc said. She raised her brows in question. Even that was faultlessly polite. “Divert the conversation from subjects you do not wish to discuss.”

  Genuine humor warmed her face then, making him realize he had not seen it before—which was, he thought, a terrible shame. She was beautiful. Stunning, with that smile—an authentic one, warm and real.

  “A necessary skill for someone in my position, I think,” she said. “It’s often helpful to talk of anything and everything save the one thing the person you’re talking to would most like to discuss.” She swept her eyes down. “I believe that when men excel at it, they call it diplomacy.”

  “Do you enjoy your position?” he asked, not sure where the question came from and ignoring that last little dig. He was trying to merge the different versions of Gabrielle together into one: the perfect bride, nervous and skittish; the runaway paparazzi-baiting liar; the wild, excited woman who had trembled beneath him; and this gracious, elegant woman who laughed on the one hand and yet looked as if a tornado could not ruffle her composure. He was not sure how all of them could be the same woman. She fascinated him.

  Like any other puzzle, he assured himself. He would figure her out, too, and then lose the knife’s-edge intensity of his current interest in her. It was only a matter of time.

  “I have been my father’s hostess since I was quite young,” Gabrielle said. She picked up her coffee cup again, and took a delicate sip. She tilted her head slightly, considering. “I have always been aware that we represent not just ourselves, but our country. I enjoy that.” She looked at him for a moment, then returned her eyes to her coffee. “Do you do a great deal of entertaining? I imagine you must, as head of such a vast empire.”

  “No.” Luc wished he had not spoken so quickly, so matter-of-factly, when he saw her stiffen almost imperceptibly in her chair. “But it is not only your life that has altered with this marriage, Gabrielle. Mine has as well. It is time I recognized some of the responsibilities that I have ignored until now.”

  “I would not have thought you were the sort of man who ignored responsibilities of any kind,” she replied after a moment. He did not know what to do with the odd sensation that gripped him then, at her easy assumption that he was a responsible sort of man—and that she believed this with such casual certainty and so dismissed it.

  “You must understand that when my parents died I was only twenty-three,” Luc said, shrugging. “I had to seize control of my father’s company or allow all that he had worked for to fall into the hands of others.” He had no intention of telling her the truth of that battle—how many had betrayed him, how many lifelong so-called friends he had been forced to jettison. But Luc was not a man who looked back. He smiled. “I became quite focused.”

  “Yes,” she said. “You are known for it. It is impressive. Even threatening, I imagine.” She smiled, as if to lessen the sting of her words.

  “I consider that a compliment,” Luc said, lounging in his chair. “I have worked hard to be considered a threat.”

  “And you have achieved your goal,” she said dryly.

  She reached over to the table, putting her cup down and picking up a bright red strawberry—which drove any thought he might have had of responding to her dry tone out of his head. Luc watched her pop the dark red berry between her decadent lips, and felt himself harden in response. But he had decided that he could not use the powerful sexuality between them as a weapon against her—she was far too innocent for those sorts of sensual games. He had decided, as he fielded the usual barrage of phone calls from his office and enjoyed his morning coffee, that he needed to court his wife. Reel her in. Charm and please her. That had been his initial intention—until she’d run off from the reception. He was resolved that it was still the right thing to do, no matter how desperately, in that moment, he wanted to exchange that strawberry in her mouth for something he would find far more satisfying.

  “No one believed I could manage the company…my father’s holdings,” he continued, trying to bury the urge to turn this breakfast into something far more sensual. “I was just out of university.” His eyes connected with hers, and her obvious interest in what he was saying seemed to collide into his gut with the force of a blow. He shrugged again, expansively. “I do not like being told what I can and cannot do.”

  Only twenty-three back then, Gabrielle thought, and already so formidable. She frowned slightly when he stopped talking.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. She searched his hard face and imagined she saw something there—something that hinted at the pain he must have felt. Though it was entirely possible she was projecting—wanting him to have a softness somewhere that she could relate to, to make it easier for her. There was no visible sign of softness anywhere on the body he maintained at the level of a warrior’s physique. She swallowed, and continued. “Twenty-three is still very young. It must have been devastating to lose your parents like that.”

  “You lost your mother, too, did you not?” he asked, his eyes dark as he looked at her. He was so forbidding, and yet she was not as terrified of him as she had been before. What was this new, strange spell that made her relax slightly around him? She had not the slightest doubt that he was even more dangerous now than he had been before—it was her damned body again, making decisions without consulting her brain. Her body was relaxed—it simply wanted him near. Her brain was far more conflicted.

  “Yes,” she said finally, jerking her gaze away from his. Gabrielle remembered so few things about her mother—the caress of her hand against a cheek, the whisper of her fine gown against the floor as she walked, the faint memory of a sweet scent and a pretty smile. “But I was barely five. I have far fewer memories of her than I’d like. I imagine losing not one parent but both in your twenties must be much worse.”

  A muscle tightened in his jaw and he shifted in his chair. His dark gray eyes became, if possible, even darker. Gabrielle felt the shift in the air around them—the way the sun suddenly seemed cold against her shoulders, the way her stomach clenched in reaction to it. To him. But the difference today was that his ferocity was not directed at her.

  “It was a difficult time,” he said, his voice clipped. He frowned. “But the media frenzy which followed was far worse.” His lips thinned. “Such cowardly dogs! So many veiled suspicions—so much rumor and innuendo. As if the truth were not tragic enough.”

  “That’s terrible,” Gabrielle murmured, careful to keep her voice quiet, soothing—because she had the feeling he would stop talking altogether if she interrupted him, and she was not entirely sure that if that happened he would not resume intimidating her as he had before. Why was she not more worried at the prospect? Or did she imagine that now that she knew exactly how dark and masterful he was, how he could devastate her—and how she would enjoy it—she would no longer be susceptible to him?

  “In truth, there was a part of me that was relieved,” he said after a moment, his gaze fixed somewhere in the distance. “I am not proud of it. My parents were focused entirely on themselves. They were not caretakers. My father was, I think, desperately in love with my mother. With her rages, her affairs, her demands. But she was never satisfied with an audience of only one.”

  Gabrielle had read about his vivacious, famously temperamental mother. Vittoria Garnier had been flamboyant, reckless and luminously beautiful—and, as such, irresistible to the tabloid press, who had fawned over her and skewered her in equal measure. No one ever thought about the child
in these situations, did they? Not then and not now. No one ever thought to question what it might be like to see your parents’ marriage ripped apart in such a public, horrible way. Your paternity questioned, your mother’s lovers cataloged for all the world to see, your privacy up for grabs to the highest bidder with the basest intentions.

  Gabrielle felt a deep pang of pity for the child Luc had been, growing up in the midst of such a circus.

  But she did not dare to express that to him.

  “You have a history with that one man?” she asked then. “The one outside the restaurant last night?”

  “Silvio Domenico,” Luc said, with disgust, his face turning to stone. “And before you ask, yes—he is the same man I was filmed punching in the face at my parents’ funeral. ‘Grieving Garnier Heir in Graveside Brawl’ I believe the headlines screamed.” His mouth twisted. “Such dignity. Such respect for the mourning process.” She wasn’t sure if he meant the tabloids or—worse—himself.

  “What happened?” Gabrielle asked. She didn’t know why he was talking to her like this, but she was fascinated by this glimpse inside of him. He was so intensely guarded, and yet he was sharing his past with her. Of his own volition.

  “He is a piece of filth,” Luc said, his eyes blazing. “He is not fit to be scraped from beneath a shoe!” He muttered something obscene in Italian. “But none of this can matter today. It is all in the past.”

  Not so much in the past, Gabrielle thought with a flash of insight, if the fact that her flight had landed him in the papers again had triggered so much rage. Was it possible that all that fury had not been directed at Gabrielle personally, but at the specter of his mother all those years before?

  “I am so sorry,” she said, then searched his face, wishing she had not heedlessly wandered into the minefield of his past that way. The fact that she hadn’t known made no difference. “I had no idea when I ran that it would affect anyone but me.”