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“Oh, no, don’t worry. They’re fine.”
She settled in her chair and looked at the tray Prince Thierry placed on the table, noticing he’d also ordered a small bowl of ice. She watched in bemusement as he took a pristine white monogrammed handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped some of the ice inside it.
“Give me your hand,” he commanded.
“Really, it’s not that sore,” Mila protested.
“Your hand?” he repeated, pinning her with that steely gaze and Mila found herself doing as he’d bidden.
He cradled her hand in his while gently applying the makeshift ice pack. Mila tried to ignore the race of her pulse as she watched him in action. Tried and failed.
“I apologize again for my clumsiness,” he continued. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
“Seriously, it’s okay,” she answered with a smile.
“Let me be the judge of that,” he said firmly, smiling to take the edge off his words.
Clearly he was a man used to being in command. The idea sent another thrill of excitement coursing through Mila’s veins. Would he take command in all things? She pressed her thighs together on a wave of need that startled her with its intensity.
He looked up. “I’m Hawk, and you are?”
“A-Angel,” Mila answered, defaulting to the diminutive of the name she was known by here in the United States. If he could use a moniker, then why shouldn’t she also? Why shouldn’t they just be two strangers meeting on the street just like anybody else?
“Are you in New York on business?” she asked, even though she knew full well why he was here.
“Yes, but I return home in the morning,” he replied.
She was surprised. The summit was scheduled to last for four days and only started tomorrow. He had just arrived here yesterday and now he was already returning to Sylvain? She wanted to ask why but knew she couldn’t. Not when he was supposed to simply be a stranger she’d just met on the street.
He lifted the makeshift ice pack from her hand and gave a small nod of satisfaction. “That’s looking better.”
“Thank you.”
The prince let go of her hand and Mila felt an irrational sense of loss. His touch had been thrilling and without it she felt as though she’d been cast adrift.
“And you?” he asked.
Mila looked up and stared at him. “Me, what?”
“Are you in New York on business or do you live here?”
The skin around his eyes crinkled again. He was laughing at her, she was sure of it, but not in an unkind way. For a moment she was struck by the awful and overwhelming sense of ineptitude that had marked her first meeting with the prince. She recalled how embarrassed she’d felt back then. How she’d found herself so unworthy of this incredibly striking, self-assured man.
She wasn’t that girl anymore, Mila told herself firmly. And tonight, incognito, she could be anyone she wanted to be. Even someone who could charm a man like Prince Thierry of Sylvain. The thought empowered her and bolstered her courage. She could do this.
“Oh, sorry,” she laughed, injecting a note of lightheartedness to her voice. “You lost me there for a moment.”
“But I have you now,” he countered.
Warmth flooded her as his words sank in.
“Yes,” she said softly. “You do.”
Three (#u7a4b7c57-f7f6-5967-9709-57393905521e)
The air thickened between them—conversation forgotten for the moment as they stared into one another’s eyes.
Thierry found himself willingly drawn into her gaze. Her brows were perfect dark arches, framing unusual amber eyes fringed by thick dark lashes. Their coloring seemed at odds with her long blond hair, but she was no less beautiful for it. If anything, it made her even more striking. Her cheekbones were high and gently sculpted, her nose short and straight. But it was her lips to which his eyes were most often drawn. They were full and lush and as she parted them on an indrawn breath he felt a deeply responsive punch to his gut. Arousal teased at his groin. It was as if he was in a spell of some kind. A spell from which he had no desire to break free.
It was only as someone walked past their table, bumping it and spilling some of her coffee, that the enchantment between them was broken.
Angel laughed and sopped up the mess with a paper napkin. “Seems I’m destined not to finish my coffee this evening. And in answer to your question, no, I live in Boston. I’m only visiting the city.”
“I didn’t think your accent was from around here,” Thierry commented.
With elegant fingers, she balled the napkin and picked up her cup to take a sip of what was left of her drink. He found himself captivated by her every movement. Enthralled by the flick of her tongue across her lip to taste a remnant of the topping of chocolate and milk foam that lingered there. Thierry swallowed against the sudden obstruction in his throat. It was as if his heart had lodged there, hammering wildly.
He shouldn’t be here with this woman. He was engaged to another—someone he barely knew, even though he would be married to her by the end of the month. And yet, not in all his years of bachelorhood had he felt a compulsion to be with someone as he did with the enchanting female sitting opposite him. It was almost as if he knew her already, or felt as if he should. Whatever the sensation was that he felt, he wanted more of it. Hell, he wanted more of her.
Angel put her cup back down. “Actually, I’m in New York to attend a lecture on sustainability initiatives.”
Thierry felt his interest in her sharpen. “You are? I was scheduled to attend that lecture tomorrow myself.”
“And you can’t delay your return home?”
The dark pull of reality crept through him and with it the reminder of what tomorrow would entail. Eight and a half hours by air to Sylvain’s main airport, then another twenty minutes in his private helicopter to the palace. All of which to be followed by meetings with his household and the heads of government. His time wouldn’t be his own until after his father was buried in the family vault near the palace. Maybe not even then.
“Hawk?” Angel prompted him.
He snapped out of his train of thought and gave her his full attention. “No, I must return home. An urgent matter. But enough of that. Tell me, what takes a beautiful young woman like yourself to a dusty old lecture hall?”
She looked affronted by his question. “That’s a little sexist, don’t you think?”
“Forgive me,” he said quickly. “I did not mean to undermine your intelligence, or to sound quite so chauvinistic.”
He was disappointed in himself. It seemed the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree, after all. Thierry’s father had been nothing but old-fashioned in his view that women were for the begetting of heirs and to be a faithful and adoring ornament by his side. His consort had failed miserably at the second part. Instead of considering that he might have made a mistake in his treatment of her, the king had clung more fiercely to his opinions about a woman’s role in the monarchy and it was obvious in palace appointments that his chauvinism guided his choices.
Thierry had recently begun to wonder if part of the reason for his mother’s infidelity had been a lack of self-worth caused by her husband’s condescending treatment. Maybe his actions had meant that she’d desperately sought meaning for her life anywhere but within her marriage. But that mattered little now. She and her lover had died in a fiery car wreck many years ago. The resulting scandal had almost brought two nations to war and it was one of the reasons Thierry had vowed to remain chaste until marriage and then, after he was wed, to remain faithful to his spouse. He also rightly expected the same in return. While he wouldn’t marry for love, his marriage would last. It had to. He had to turn the tide of generations of marital failure and unhappiness. How hard could it be?
Across the table, Angel inclined her head in acknowledgment of his apology. “I’m glad to hear it. I get quite enough of that from my brother.” She softened her words with another smile. “In answer to your question, my professor recommended the lecture.”
For the next hour they discussed her studies, particularly her interest in developing sustainable living solutions, equal opportunities for all people and renewable energy initiatives. He found her fascinating. Her enthusiasm for her causes made her quite animated and he relished the pinkish tinge of excitement that colored her cheeks. The subjects they discussed were dear to his heart as well, and topics he wished to pursue further with his government. His father had seen little point in breaking away from the methods that had been tried and true in Sylvain for centuries, but Thierry was acutely aware of the need for long-term planning to ensure that future generations would continue to benefit from and enjoy his country’s many resources—rather than plunder them all into oblivion. Their discussion was exhilarating and left him feeling mentally stimulated in a way he hadn’t anticipated.
The clientele of the coffee shop had thinned considerably during their talk and Thierry became aware that the members of his security team were beginning to shift uncomfortably at their tables. Angel appeared to notice it, too.
“Oh, I’m sorry to have taken so much of your time. When I get on my pet subjects I can be a little over-excited,” she apologized.
“Not at all. I enjoyed it. I don’t often get to exchange or argue concepts with someone as articulate and well-versed as you are.”
She looked at her watch, its strap a delicate cuff of platinum and, if he wasn’t wrong, diamonds. The subtle but obvious sign of wealth made him even more intrigued about her background.
“It’s getting late. I guess I’d better head back to my hotel,” she said with obvious reluctance. “This has been really nice. Thank you.”
No. Every cell in his body objected to the prospect of saying goodbye. He wasn’t ready to relinquish her company yet. He reached out and took Angel’s hand.
“Don’t go, not yet.” The words surprised him as much as they appeared to surprise her. “Unless you have to, of course.”
Damn. He hadn’t meant to sound so needy. But in the face of the news he’d received tonight, Angel was a delightful distraction in what was soon to be a turbulent sea of chaos. He looked deep into her eyes, struck again by the beauty of their unusual whiskey-colored hue. He’d seen that color before, he realized, but he couldn’t quite remember where. Thierry looked down to where their hands were joined. She hadn’t pulled away. That had to be a good sign, right? He certainly hoped so. He wasn’t ready yet to relinquish her company.
“No, I don’t have to, exactly...” Her voice trailed away and she looked at her watch again before she said more firmly. “No. I don’t have to go.”
“No boyfriend waiting for you at home?” he probed shamelessly, running his thumb over her bare fingers.
Angel chuckled and his heart warmed at the sound.
“No, no boyfriend.”
“Good. Shall we walk together?” he suggested.
“I’d like that.”
She rose with a fluid grace that mesmerized him, and gathered up her coat and bag. He reached for her coat and helped her into it, his fingertips brushing the nape of her neck. He’d felt a shock of awareness when he’d touched her hand, but that was nothing compared to the jolt that struck him now. It was wrong, he knew, to feel such an overpowering attraction to Angel when he was engaged to another woman. Was he no different than his mother, who had been incapable of observing the boundaries of married life?
Thierry pulled his hands away and, balling them into fists, he shoved them deep into his pockets. A sense of shame filled him. This was madness. In a few weeks’ time he’d be marrying Princess Mila and here he was, in New York, desperate to spend more time with someone whose first name was almost the only thing he knew about her. Well, that and her keen intelligence about topics dear to his heart. Even so, it didn’t justify this behavior, he argued silently.
And then she turned to look at him and smiled, and he knew that whatever else was to come in his life, he had to grasp hold of this moment, this night, and make the most of the oasis of peace she unwittingly offered him.
They headed out of the coffee shop and turned toward Seventh Avenue. His security detail melted into the people around them. There, ever vigilant, but not completely visible. The rain had stopped and Thierry began to feel his spirits lift again. This felt so normal, so unscripted. It was a vast departure from his usual daily life.
“Tell me about yourself,” he prompted his silent companion. “Any family?”
“I have a brother. He’s in Europe right now,” Angel said lightly, but he saw the way she pressed her delectable full lips together as if she was holding something back. “How about you?” she asked, almost as if her question was an afterthought.
“An only child.”
“Was it lonely, growing up?”
“Sometimes, although I always had plenty of people around me.”
Angel gestured to the guard in front and the others nearby. “People like them?” she asked.
“And others,” he admitted.
They stopped at a set of lights and she lifted her chin and stared straight ahead. “Sometimes you can be at your most lonely when you’re surrounded by people.”
Her words struck a chord with him. There was something about the way she’d made her statement that made him think she spoke from personal experience. The thought made something tug inside him. He wished he could remove the haunted, empty tone from her voice and fill it with warmth. And what else, a voice inside him asked. He pushed the thought aside. There could be nothing else. Come morning he would be a different man to the rest of the world. A king. This interlude of normality would be nothing but a memory. One, he realized, he would treasure for a long time to come.
“So what do you do?” Angel asked him after they’d crossed the street.
“Do?”
“Yes, for a living. I assume you do work?”
Yes, he worked, but not in the sense she was probably expecting. “I’m in management,” he said, skirting the truth.
“That’s a very broad statement,” she teased, looking up at him with a glimmer of mischief in her tawny eyes.
“I have a very broad range of responsibilities. And you, what do you plan to do once you have completed your studies?”
Her expression changed in an instant—the humor of before replaced with a look of seriousness. Then she blinked and the solemnity was gone.
“Oh, this and that,” she said airily.
“And you accused me of being vague?” he taunted, enjoying their verbal sparring.
“Well, since you asked—I want to go home and make a difference. I want people to listen to me, to really listen, and to take what I have to say on board—not just dismiss me out of hand because I’m female.”
He raised his brows. “Does that happen a lot?”
“You did it to me,” she challenged.
“Yes, I did, and I apologize again for my prejudice. I hope you get your wish.” He drew to a halt beside a food truck. “Have you eaten this evening?”
“No, but you don’t have to—”
“I’m told you haven’t been to New York until you try one of these rib eye sandwiches.”
She inhaled deeply. “They do smell divine, don’t they?”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
He turned to the head of his security and gave an order in Sylvano. The man grinned in response and lined up at the food-truck window.
They continued to walk as they ate, laughing in between bites as they struggled to contain their food without spilling it.
“I should have taken you to a restaurant,” Thierry said as Angel made a noise of disgust at the mess she had left on her hands when they’d finished.
“Oh, heavens no! Not at all. This is fun...just messy.” She laughed and gingerly extracted a small packet of tissues from her bag so she could wipe her fingers.
Thierry felt his lips pull into a smile again as they had so many times since he’d met her. What was it about her that felt so right when everything else around him felt so wrong?
“I can’t get over this city,” Angel exclaimed. “There’s never a quiet moment. It’s exhilarating.”
“It is,” he agreed and then looked over at her. “Do you dance?”
“Are you asking me if I’m capable of it, or if I want to?” Angel laughed in response.
Thierry shrugged. “Both. Either.” He didn’t care. He suddenly had the urge to hold her in his arms and he figured this would be the only way he could decently do so without compromising his own values.
