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But no.
Five layers of makeup, a dress that displayed every curve and a sign around her neck that said she was willing and wanton. And of course, her identity hidden behind a mask.
That was the only way he would want her apparently.
She swallowed away the disappointment as she always did, tired of her own pathetic longing. There were years of his company’s work still to be done in Drakon. Was she going to spend the next decade mooning over one kiss that meant nothing to him, like she had mourned the last decade over Spiros and his vows of undying devotion, even after he’d disappeared like mist?
“Angelina, for all that she’s been forced to grow up in the past few months, is a little girl. With feelings and emotions. She lost the one person who loved her unconditionally. She’s been thrust into an unfamiliar world with a man—”
“It has been eight months since her mother died.”
“Eight months is an entire lifetime for her. You can’t just...buy her things and expect everything to be all right. You can’t just slot into her life and expect her to love you like she did her mother. Not by leaving her with a string of nannies. Not by engaging her in a battle of wills. And definitely not by demanding her affection and love.”
“Those nannies came highly recommended with years of experience in dealing with kids.”
“But not a single one of them tried to understand her. It was all just schedules and milestones and you can’t just ignore...” She swallowed the lump that rose in her throat.
He tucked a finger under her chin and tilted it up. “I can’t just ignore what?”
She wished she could hide the expression in her eyes. Erase the hurt from that corner of her heart that never seemed to heal. “You can’t fix the loss of her mom by throwing her into the deep end. She’s among strangers in a foreign country and she barely sees you. She...she told me last week that she wanted to run away because of what that ghastly girlfriend of yours told her.”
If he wasn’t holding her chin in his hands, she would have missed his flinch. “She’s not my girlfriend. She’s an ex. She...said she had experience with kids...that she could help me connect with Angelina.”
Now she understood the lineup of exes and “girlfriends” that had been appearing outside his office in the last few weeks. It had taken every ounce of her willpower not to march in there and demand that he send them away. For Angelina’s sake.
“Could you not see that they were just using Angelina like some stepping stone toward you?”
She saw it sink in. His jaw tightened. “And you, Princesa? You do not have any purpose?”
His gaze promptly fell to her mouth, a languid stroke against her senses. “I told you—I have no designs on you.”
“You knew who I was and yet you still kissed me.”
“Because my requirements for that night were to kiss a man. You fit the bill. If you hadn’t ripped my mask off, I’d have been on my way and no one—”
“If I hadn’t ripped the mask off—” his harsh breath purred over her cheeks “—I would have been inside you, right on that balcony, with your brother and half the world watching.”
Gravelly and low, his words rippled over her skin. Places she shouldn’t be thinking of throbbed with need. “Ripping off the mask was the only sensible thing that happened that night.”
“I would have—” she licked her lips as if that could stave off the heat pouring through her “—stopped you. It wouldn’t have gone that far.”
His gaze held hers, amusement and something else glittering there. “Either you’re very naive about men or you just like to lie to yourself.” A rough exhale left his mouth. “And now I find you, of all the people in my life, bonded with my daughter.”
Eleni pushed away from him, needing respite from that overwhelming masculinity. Respite from her own reactions. “Even your conceit can’t be that great to think I befriended Angelina with some...underhanded intentions. Sitting in the stables by herself, she reminded me of myself.”
“A Princess of Drakon, daughter to King Theos and sister to powerful Andreas and Nikandros—and I’m to believe you understand how Angelina feels? That you have to hide beneath a mask to find a man to kiss you?”
She shrugged, the gleam of interest in his eyes making her heart thud faster. If not for Angelina, he wouldn’t have spared her a single glance again, much less a conversation.
“I don’t care what you believe about me. Angelina needs to feel like she’s important to someone, like there’s some constant in her life that won’t desert her. She’s a sweet girl underneath all that bluster.”
“She’s sweet with you,” he bit out, a vein vibrating in his forehead. “The first time I saw my daughter was at her mother’s funeral. It took her a week to understand that I was indeed her father and not some terrifying stranger who was ripping her away from everything familiar. I learned after my ex was in an accident that she had named me as Angelina’s father.
“In three months, she hasn’t stopped looking at me as if I...were the culprit.
“My own daughter looks at me as if I...” He swallowed hard and looked away. “I’ve tried to be gentle with her... I’ve tried gifts. I’ve tried everything under the sun but not a damn thing works.”
Eleni hoped for the little girl’s sake that he would learn to express that concern. To show that he cared. But she’d been around too many thickheaded men, and Gabriel Marquez had proved that night that he was the king of arrogant ruthlessness and wouldn’t recognize tender emotion if it hit him in that all too gorgeous face.
He’d connected with her that night when he’d thought her a stranger. But as soon as he’d learned her identity, as soon as he’d learned that she knew him, he had shut down. Had closed himself off so fast that for days after she’d wondered if she’d imagined their exchange.
She wanted nothing to do with such a hard man, a man who thought showing his emotions was a weakness.
But for Angelina’s sake, she wanted to help. She remembered all too well how alone and frightened she had been growing up in the palace. It was only when her father had married Camille, Nikandros’s mother that Eleni had realized that not everyone in the palace resented the illegitimate child that the King had adopted in a fit of uncharacteristic generosity.
Camille had been so busy with Nik’s frail health, and yet she’d always had a kind word for Eleni.
“Never let him see a weakness, ma chérie,” when Eleni had cowered in the face of her father’s rages. “Never let them make you dispensable,” when Eleni had, in her innocent ignorance, complained that the Crown Prince Andreas, the older brother she loved so much, didn’t care about her either.
So Eleni had taken Camille’s advice to heart and made herself indispensable to her father and brothers. She had never imagined becoming the buffer between the three of them.
As she’d observed this father and daughter over the last three months, she’d assumed Gabriel was the same as her own father: controlling, bloated with arrogance, treating his offspring like pawns in his own personal game.
The glittering frustration in Gabriel’s eyes gave her hope for Angelina.
“She feels that you’ve taken her on as a last resort. With me, she knows I love spending time with her. That I don’t expect anything in return, that it is not a duty.”
Gabriel’s gaze moved over her, searching without seeing her. She’d seen that look on her older brother Andreas’s face—when he saw people only as a means to an end. When he decided on a course and set upon it, no matter what the cost to others. Her heart thumped in her chest.
“Then you’ll teach me how to get through to her,” he added softly, utter resolve in his tone, “and you’ll help the both of us connect.”
“It’s not something I can transfer from my head to yours.”
“I do not care what you call it, Princesa, but you’ll teach me how to connect with my daughter.” Stubborn resolve made his features look harsher than ever. “And you will do it before it’s too late.”
“What you’re suggesting is...not that simple.”
“I will speak to Nikandros about releasing you from all your many unofficial duties. From now on, you’ll spend your entire time with Angelina. And me, whenever I’m available.” His brow cleared, everything falling into place in his world. Even her soft gasp didn’t divert his attention. “I’ll try to clear my schedule for a couple of evenings every week and we will dine together. After a month or so, the three of us can take a trip together. I want to find a good school for her and you can accompany us.”
The man’s nerve! “I’m not your servant to be ordered about. I will not drop everything in my life just for your benefit. I will not...” She couldn’t even get the words out at his arrogance. “You insult me with one breath, and then order me around on the next.”
Spending months in his company, wishing he would take notice of her, comparing herself to his parade of girlfriends—it would be her personal torture device. “What makes you think I would willingly sign up for anything that concerns you?”
“Because you do not have anything going on in your life. I’ve been watching you, Princesa.”
Eleni jerked back, her heart thumping against her rib cage. “Watching me? For what purpose?”
He shrugged, just like she’d done before. And if Eleni hadn’t spent an hour with him on a moonlit terrace sharing the depths of her soul, she wouldn’t have seen the carefully manufactured gesture. She’d have missed that utterly male gleam in his gaze.
“To figure you out.”
“And what have you figured out?”
“You’re illegitimate, so you don’t rank that high with the traditionalists of the country. You have no boyfriend or lover and no options on the horizon, unless you ask your brothers to set you up. And they are smart enough to keep you around because of course you’re sensible and reliable.
“I’ve seen you with your brothers and the staff. You’re a very maternal sort of woman. You know every staff member by name, and you ask after their families. You give hours of your time to children’s charities instead of just throwing money at them. And your reckless actions that night prove how desperate you are for your life to change. For it to be more than it is.”
Shock robbed Eleni of speech as she stared at him. He’d so efficiently reduced her life to a cold, hard summary, a truthful one. “First I was deceiving, now I’m reckless?”
“Imagine if it had been anyone but me. Imagine if it had been one of the media or a man who could have harmed you in some way. You don’t walk around parties advertising you’re available, not when you’re the bloody Princess of Drakon.”
Eleni stared stupefied, the unease in his eyes far too real for her to scoff at. “I... I wouldn’t have just walked off with any man.”
He raised that arrogant brow and she flushed and looked away.
They both knew she’d have done whatever he wanted of her that night. And that awareness stood between them, taunting her.
“Allowing that you truly care for Angelina, what I suggest would not be a hardship at all. All I ask you is that you spend your time in the lap of luxury with Angelina and me.”
“For how long?” she whispered, unable to resist. Unable to walk away from him.
“Until such time as I feel you’re not needed anymore.”
“So you’re offering me a job?”
“Call it whatever you want, Princess. Money, jewels, stocks...you can have whatever you want in return.”
A job description with a tenure and conditions. Just another man demanding his due without giving anything back. Just another role for her to play for a limited time. Like she’d always done, filled with the nauseating hope that it would last.
The reliable, responsible daughter to her father.
The buffer between her brothers.
The woman that the man she’d loved had easily and thoroughly forgotten.
The illegitimate but adopted child of the House of Drakos.
All temporary. All meaningless, in the end.
If she accepted his “offer,” she would lose a bit of her heart to that little girl, and when she’d served her purpose, Gabriel would calmly remove her from his life. And yet, she wanted to do it. She wanted to spend time with him and Angelina, wanted to help them bridge that gap before it came irreparable.
She wanted to see more of the man she’d talked to that night. Heart thudding dangerously, she admitted that she wanted a chance for him to notice that she was a woman, to remember that he’d kissed her with such abandon.
She jerked in place when he cupped her jaw and tilted her face up to meet his gaze. Slumbering heat glittered there, reminding her of what had happened the last time he’d touched her. Tempting her. Her hesitation was ammunition as he cornered her with a predatory gleam. “Admit it, Princess.” Eleni shivered when his hot breath caressed the rim of her ear. “You’re tempted.”
“Whatever I learned about you that night, I... I kept it to myself. I...trusted that man. But you...you play dirty, Gabriel.”
“I play to win, Princesa. I always have.” His brow rose as he searched her gaze. “It is clear that you truly care for Angelina. And if you agree, maybe I can be persuaded to overlook your deception.” His thumb traced the line of her jaw, a featherlight stroke that branded her. The sound of her harsh breaths filled the silence, her body swaying toward him with a will of its own. She raised her gaze, frowning.
“I could even be persuaded to kiss you again, Princesa. I could give you all the excitement you crave, all the daring moments you want. I might even be willing to show you the passion that you desperately want.’
Toes scrunched in her sensible pumps, body thrumming like a tautly stretched string, Eleni stared into his beautiful gray eyes.
His breath caressed her lips, his gaze studying her as if she were the most beautiful woman on earth. She felt drugged, and he hadn’t even touched her. “So you’re offering me—” somehow she spoke “—an affair in return for looking after your child?”
“We want each other, yes? It’s not a big leap from that.”
What would happen when she spent days in his company with just a little girl for buffer? What would happen when he didn’t stop the next time? When she’d be all twisted and tangled into their lives and he decided he didn’t need her anymore?
Where would she land then?
In the same place, with her heart bruised again by another careless man.
Better that she and Angelina cut that cord now before the damage to that young girl was permanent. Before Eleni herself forgot that no man was worth the heartache that she’d already tasted, thanks to Spiros. Thanks to her father.
Love was not for her, whatever silly dreams she wove.
She put her hand on his wrist and pushed it away. Her palm burned at that innocent contact. Her body whimpered silently at the promise in his eyes. “No.”
“No what?”
“No to everything you suggested.”
“Why not?”
Suddenly, the idea she’d been playing with in her head for a while now was the only lifeline. She would go away. Away from this man and his little girl who already owned a part of Eleni’s heart. Away from the unending void that her life had seemed to be lately. “I plan to leave Drakon for a while.”
His jaw tightened. From one breath to the next, his gaze became hard, all the heat gone. “How long is a while?”
“Months. Maybe a year.” She stepped away, needing the distance. “I’ve always wanted to see the world and this is my chance.”
“And what about Drakon and your duties? What about your precious brothers?”
“Nikandros has convinced me that they’ll be here for the rest of our lives. I’ve never once left Drakon. I’ve seen nothing of the world beyond this palace and its walls. It is time for me to step out.”
Time for her to reach for what she wanted.
Spending all this time with Angelina, nurturing their relationship, seeing the joy that came into the young girl’s eyes when she and Eleni spent time together—it gave form to what Eleni herself desperately craved.
She would never love a man. But being a mother to a baby, bringing love into a child’s life—someone unwanted, like she’d been—that she could do. That was in her hands.
“I wish I could help you, at least for her sake. But I just can’t. I can’t put my life on hold for anyone. Not anymore.”
“When do you plan to leave?”
“In a week maybe. At the most, two. I would like to break it to Angelina with you there. I... I don’t care whether you believe me or not, Mr. Marquez, but I do care about her. So much. If you care about her, and it seems like you do, then tell her that. Show it with your actions.
“And please, stop letting your ego get in the way of it.”
