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“I’m pretty sure I did.”
“I’ll have maintenance take a look at it.”
“Thanks,” she said, her eyes already straying back to the computer screen, fingers poised over the keys.
Geoffrey wouldn’t consider it proper etiquette for a guest of the royal family to refuse a dinner invitation and then dine alone at a desk, but even he couldn’t argue that Liv was not the typical royal guest.
She could eat in the bathtub for all Aaron cared, as long as she found a cure for the diseased crops.
“I’ll have Geoffrey bring something right down.”
She nodded vaguely, her attention back on her computer. He opened his mouth to say something else, but realized it would be a waste of breath. Liv was a million miles away, completely engrossed in whatever she was doing.
Doing her job, he reminded himself. They hadn’t flown her in and paid good money so that she could spend her time amusing him.
He wondered if this was a foreshadow of what her time here would amount to. And if it was, it was going to be a challenge to seduce a woman who was never around.
Chapter Five
Liv studied the data that had been compiled so far regarding the diseased crops and compared the characteristics with other documented cases from all over the world. There were similarities, but no definitive matches yet. She wouldn’t know for sure until she compared live samples from other parts of the world, which she would have to order and have shipped with expedited delivery.
She yawned and stretched, thinking maybe it was time for a short break, and heard the door click open.
She dropped her arms and turned to see Prince Aaron walking toward her. At least this time there was actually someone there. Despite a thorough check from a maintenance man, she’d found the door open several times, and once she could swear she’d seen someone peering at her through the window.
“Dinner not to your liking?” he asked.
Dinner? She vaguely remembered Geoffery coming by a while ago.
She followed the direction of his gaze to the table beside her desk and realized a plate had been left for her. Come to think of it, she was a little hungry. “Oh, I’m sure it’s delicious. I was just wrapped up in what I was working on.”
“I guess you were. You haven’t slept, have you?”
“Slept?” She looked at her watch. “It’s only ten.”
“Ten a.m.” he said. “You’ve been down here all night.”
“Have I?” It wouldn’t be the first time she’d been so engrossed in her work that she forgot to sleep. Being in a lab with no windows probably didn’t help. Unless she looked at her computer clock, which she rarely did, it was difficult to keep track of the time, to know if it was day or night. She’d been known to work for days on end, taking catnaps on her desk, and emerge from the lab with no idea what day it was, or the last time she’d eaten.
And now that she’d stopped working long enough to think about it, she realized that her neck ached and her eyes burned with exhaustion. A good sign that it was time for a break.
“When we hired you, we didn’t expect you to work 24/7,” he said, but the playful smile said he was just teasing her.
“It’s just the way I work.” She reached back to knead the ache that was now spreading from her neck into the slope of her shoulders.
“Neck ache?” he asked, and she nodded. “I’m not surprised. Although gripping the muscles like that is only going to make it hurt more.”
“It’s stiff,” she said.
He expelled an exasperated sigh and shook his head. “Why don’t you let me do that.”
Him?
She didn’t think he was serious…until he stepped behind her chair. He was actually going to do it. He was going to rub her neck. He pushed her hands out of the way, then draped her ponytail over her left shoulder.
“Really,” she said. “You don’t have to—”
The words died in her throat as his hands settled on her shoulders.
The warmth of his skin began to seep through the cotton of her shirt and her cheeks exploded with heat. And as if that wasn’t mortifyingly embarrassing and awkward enough, he slipped his fingers underneath the collar of her shirt. She sucked in a surprised breath as his hands touched her bare skin.
“The trick to relax the muscle,” he told her, “is not to pinch the tension out, but to instead apply even pressure.”
Yeah, right. Like there was any way she was going to be able to relax now, with his hands touching her. His skin against her skin.
He pressed his thumbs into the muscle at the base of her neck and, against her will, a sigh of pleasure slipped from her lips. He slid his thumbs slowly upward, applying steady pressure. When he reached the base of her skull, he repeated the motion, until she felt the muscles going limp and soft.
“Feel good?” he asked.
“Mmm.” Good didn’t even begin to describe the way he was making her feel. Her head lolled forward and her eyes drifted shut.
“It would be better with oil,” he said. “Unfortunately I don’t have any handy.”
The sudden image of Prince Aaron rubbing massage oil onto her naked body flashed through her brain.
Oh, no. Don’t even go there, Liv. This was not a sexual come-on. He was just being polite. Although at that moment she would give anything to know what it would feel like. His oily hands sliding across her bare skin…
As if that would ever happen.
He sank his thumbs into the crevice beside her shoulder blades and a gust of breath hissed through her teeth.
“You have a knot here,” he said, gently working it loose with his thumbs.
“You’re really good at this,” she said. “Did you take a class or something?”
“Human anatomy.”
“Why would a prince in an agriculturally based field need a human anatomy class?”
“It might surprise you to learn that there was a time when I was seriously considering medical school.”
Actually that didn’t surprise her at all. She had the feeling there was a lot more to Prince Aaron than he let people see. “What changed your mind?” she asked.
“My family changed it for me. They needed me in the family business, so I majored in agriculture instead. End of story.”
Somehow she doubted it was that simple. There was a tense quality to his voice that belied his true feelings.
“I guess that’s the benefit of not having parents,” she said. “No one to tell you what to do.”
“I guess” was all he said, and she had the distinct impression she’d broached a subject he preferred not to explore. He gave her shoulders one last squeeze, then backed away and asked, “Feel better?”
“Much,” she said, turning toward him. “Thank you.”
“Sure,” he said, but the usual, cheery smile was absent from his face. In fact, he looked almost…sad. Then she realized the inference in what she’d just said. His father was dying, his only hope a risky experimental procedure, and here she was suggesting that not having parents was a good thing.
Here he was being nice to her, and she was probably making him feel terrible.
Way to go, Liv. Open mouth, insert foot.
“Aaron, what I said just then, about not having parents—”
“Forget it,” he said with a shrug.
In other words, drop it.
The lack of sleep, especially after that relaxing massage, was obviously taking its toll on her. She was saying stupid and inappropriate things to a man she knew practically nothing about. A virtual stranger.
A stranger who had the authority to fire her on a whim if it suited him.
“You should get some rest,” he said.
He was right. She was long overdue for a power nap. “Now, if I can just find my way back to my room,” she joked.
“Didn’t Derek bring you a map?”
She looked down at her desk, papers strewn everywhere. “It’s here. Somewhere.”
He smiled and gestured to the door. “Come on, I’ll walk you up.”
“Thank you.” She slipped her laptop in her backpack and slung it over her shoulder, grabbing the plate of uneaten food on her way out.
Even though he was silent, the tension between them seemed to ease as she followed the prince out of the lab and up the stairs. She left the plate in the kitchen and received a distinct look of disapproval from the butler.
“Sorry,” she said lamely, and he answered with a stiff nod. That on top of what she’d said to the prince filled her with a nagging sense of guilt as they walked up to her room. She was obviously way out of her league here. This was going to take a lot of getting used to.
When they reached her door, she turned to him and said, “Thanks for walking me up.”
He smiled. “My pleasure. Get some rest.”
He started to turn away.
“Aaron, wait!”
He stopped and turned back to her.
“Before you go, I wanted to apologize.”
His brow furrowed. “For what?”
“What I said in the lab.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it isn’t. It was really…thoughtless. And I’m sorry if I made you feel bad.”
“Liv, don’t worry about it.”
“I mean, I basically suggested you would be better off without parents, which, considering your father’s health, was totally insensitive of me. My verbal filter must be on the fritz.”
He leaned casually against the doorjamb, a look of amused curiosity on his face. “Verbal filter?”
“Yeah. People’s thoughts go through, and the really dumb and inappropriate stuff gets tossed out before they can become words. Lack of sleep must have mine working at minimum capacity. I know it’s a pretty lame excuse. But I’m really, really sorry. I’m just an employee. I have no right asking you personal questions or talking about your family, anyway.”
For several long, excruciating seconds he just looked at her, and she began to worry that maybe he really was thinking about firing her. Then he asked, “Will you have dinner with me tonight?”
Huh?
She insulted him, and he invited her to share dinner with him? She might have thought he was extending a formal invitation just to be polite, but he looked sincere. Like he really wanted to have dinner with her.
“Um, sure,” she said, more than a touch puzzled.
“Seven sharp.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll warn you that Geoffrey loathes tardiness.”
“I’ll be on time,” she assured him.
He flashed her one last smile, then walked away.
She stepped into her room and shut the door, still not exactly sure what just happened, but way too tired to try to sort it out. She would think about it later, after she’d had some sleep.
As inviting as the bed looked, the draw of a steaming shower was too appealing to resist. The sensation of the hot water jetting against her skin was almost as enjoyable as Aaron’s neck massage had been. After her shower she curled up under the covers, planning to sleep an hour or two before heading back down to the lab.
She let her tired, burning eyes drift shut, and when she opened them again to check the clock on the bedside table, it was six forty-five.
Liv had been so wracked with guilt when Aaron walked her to her room this morning, she hadn’t been paying attention to how they got there. And of course her handy map was in the lab, buried under her research. Which was why, four minutes before she was supposed to be in the dinning room, she was frantically wandering the halls, looking for a familiar landmark. The castle was just so big and quiet. If only she would run into someone who could help. She was going to be late, and she had the feeling she was already in hot water with Geoffrey the butler.
She rounded a corner and ran—literally—into someone.
Plowed into was more like it. But this time it wasn’t a petite maid. This time it was a hulk of man, built like a tank, who stood at least a foot taller than her own five-foot-ten-inch frame. If he hadn’t caught her by the arms, the force of the collision probably would have knocked her on her butt.
He righted and swiftly released her.
“Sorry,” she apologized, wondering how many more royal employees she would collide with while she was here. “It was my fault. I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
“Miss Montgomery, I presume?” he said in a slightly annoyed tone, looking, of all places, at her chest. Then she looked down and realized she’d forgotten to pin on her ID badge. She pulled it from the outer pocket of her backpack and handed it to him. “Yeah, sorry.”
