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‘I’m not sure that’s a compliment,’ she said, then gave him a look that went through him like a quarrel from a crossbow, the same look she’d given him that night in her father’s study. Her eyes had been so blue, glowing with a challenge he hadn’t been able to resist...
‘Perhaps you’d like to join me for a drink?’ he murmured, in a very deliberate and conscious echo of her invitation that night.
Lia blinked, an expression he couldn’t quite put his finger on flickering over her delicate features. Colour warmed her cheeks and then, like the sun coming out, she smiled.
His heart kicked hard inside his chest, his breath catching.
She’d been so generous with those smiles, making him feel as though he’d been given the most precious gift whenever she turned them on him. No one else smiled at him like that. No one else smiled at him at all.
He missed them.
‘I’d love to,’ she said, the warmth in her expression making him ache. ‘But make it an orange juice.’
‘And no cigars.’ His voice sounded rough and he couldn’t seem to smooth it over.
‘What a pity.’ Her smile faded, her gaze meeting his with a directness that took his breath away. ‘I miss those nights with you.’
His heart jerked again, the ache inside him spreading out.
‘Prospective queens shouldn’t be drinking whisky and smoking cigars,’ he said, coming into the study and standing in front of Gian’s desk.
‘Perhaps someone should have told King Carlos that.’ Her tone was dry, her blue eyes full of humour and something else, a very definite and most unexpected challenge.
‘King Carlos was not a prospective queen,’ he pointed out. ‘He was a king.’
Amalia lifted her tumbler very pointedly and took a sip. ‘Not a very good one.’
His interest, already caught, deepened. She was not at all the way she’d appeared to him the week before at their first meeting, with her gaze lowered and only speaking when she’d been spoken to.
How...interesting.
‘Agreed.’ Slowly, he sat down in the armchair before the desk and watched as she took her pretty feet off the desktop and began to rummage in one of the drawers. A second later, she’d pulled out another glass, produced the bottle of very good Scotch and poured him a measure.
‘Does your father know who’s drinking his best whisky?’ he asked as she pushed the tumbler across the desktop to him.
‘No.’ She gave him a direct look. ‘And you’re not going to tell him.’
‘Am I not? No one gives orders to the Regent,princesa.’
She pulled a face. ‘I’m not a princess.’
He lifted the tumbler and took a sip. It was indeed very good Scotch. ‘Then give me one good reason why I shouldn’t tell your father right now that I caught you in his office, stealing his good alcohol and smoking his cigars.’
She capped the whisky, leaned back in her chair, picked up her cigar again and took a drag. Then blew a perfect smoke ring. ‘Because I’ll be sad if you do?’
Dull, Matias had said. Yes, the woman sitting at the desk was not dull, not in the slightest. It surprised him and he was so seldom surprised.
‘That is not a convincing argument,’ he said mildly, amused despite himself.
She gave him the sweetest smile. ‘Well, other rebellions aren’t permitted so I have to take mine where I find them. Also, I can hardly advise Matias on the dangers of drinking and smoking if I haven’t tried them myself, can I?’
Women had always fallen into two camps for Rafael. They were either associated with work, in which case they were off limits, or they were prospective sexual partners. It wasn’t a conscious choice on his part, that was just how it had happened. Mainly due to the fact that he never had a shortage of women throwing themselves at him, either for his sexual prowess or for a taste of his power.
But he felt something unfamiliar twist inside him as he looked into Lia’s blue eyes.
She didn’t seem afraid of him and she wasn’t seeking his approval, or jockeying for his attention. And she looked at him as if he was a person, not the Regent. Not the CEO of a multinational company and not a powerful man to seduce. Not the Spanish Bastard, the unwanted mistake of an unpopular king.
But him. Rafael.
