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He didn’t know what angered him more, that she could have hurt herself, or that his body hadn’t got the message his head had spent the better part of ten years telling him. He let the former win the silent mental argument.
‘Are you mad?’ he demanded, his voice cutting through the miles of silence around them. ‘If that had gone off by accident, you would have just shot a prince!’
She peeled herself from his chest as if he were something contagious, muttering under her breath. He was pretty sure she’d just said that it would have been worth it.
He bit back the answering growl that threatened to emerge from his throat. Pushed down a voice that remind
ed him that he had stared down leaders of some of the world’s greatest economies, he had resolved international disputes that could have escalated into all-out warfare, and that he should be able to handle one wayward Aussie jockey. Even if she had once broken his heart.
‘Is there any coffee left? I’ve been travelling for hours to get here.’
‘No coffee. No fire. I put it out before I knew it was you.’ There was a distinct lack of sympathy in her tone. ‘I’ll ask again. What are you doing here, Danyl?’ The sigh that left her lips sounded far too emotional for a simple, polite enquiry.
‘You haven’t replied to my parents’ invitation to the gala.’
In the shards of moonlight peeking through the clouds racing across the night sky, he saw an archly raised eyebrow.
‘You came all this way to find out if I’m attending a party?’
‘Yes,’ he ground out between clenched teeth, aware of just how stupid it sounded.
‘Of course! Silly me. I’ll just pop onto my private jet, fly halfway round the world, deck myself out in a pretty dress, smile for the cameras and then leave. No biggie.’
* * *
Mason could tell that he was surprised by her sarcasm. And perhaps the sting of acidity threaded through her words too. When they had first met, he’d encountered her fire, her youthful joy, her optimism. But Mason didn’t think that she’d met him with the layer of sarcastic self-defence she’d developed in the years since. There were so many reasons she couldn’t go to the palace, but the one she’d given wasn’t any less valid than the others.
She turned back to the remnants of the fire and the large felled tree trunk that lay beside the damp, smoking ash, lowering herself to sit on the bark as delicately as any born princess would take to the throne. That he stayed standing irritated her, but was something she should get used to, she chided herself. She had long ago lost the right to stand beside him.
‘This gala is important to my parents. It is quite likely to be the last that they hold as rulers of Ter’harn.’
‘They’re stepping down?’ Mason asked, looking at Danyl not as the young, rakish playboy she’d once known, nor as the man before her, but as a royal. His image had refracted over the years, reformed into that of a king. It made her feel...sad.
‘They are discussing it. And as such it is absolutely vital that it is perfect,’ he stated, and the hard, determined look in his eyes made him into the powerful man lauded in the press as one of the future ‘Kings to Keep an Eye On’, as one particular paper had remarked. It washed away any memories of the man-child she had once known. Even back then there had been traces of Danyl’s search for perfection. Hints at his need to be the unblemished, practically perfect in every way, figurehead for his parents. For his country.
‘Veranchetti has been brought to the palace in Ter’harn. Even John is coming.’
Mason frowned. ‘Is this what you want, or what your parents what?’
‘Would it matter?’ he asked.
Mason bit back the instinct to answer in the affirmative. It surprised her how much it did matter. Instead she focused between the lines. ‘So even a prince must bend to a queen?’ she asked.
The effect was instantaneous. His shoulders spread as his spine straightened, his head rearing back just slightly to allow him to view her from above his proud nose. ‘No. But I do bend to my mother,’ he conceded, his words muddying the arrogance in his stance just a little.
‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ she said, the words rising unbidden.
‘No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean...’
‘It’s okay. I get it. I’d do anything for Pops. Which is why I can’t come to the gala.’
Finally he took a seat opposite the dark black pit where the fire had once been.
‘There’s too much going on at the farm at the moment,’ she said, trying to explain, reaching for a reason he might understand and not question.
‘It’s just for a couple of days,’ he interjected.
‘And your time is more valuable than mine?’ Mason felt the frustration rise within her, and she grasped it with both hands. It was much better than the pain that was lying just beneath.
