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‘However, if you don’t want to speak about yourself any more you can ask about me,’ he invited. ‘Or perhaps you already know?’
‘I don’t know anything about you,’ Antonietta admitted. ‘Some of the staff have tried to tell me, but I close my ears to gossip and I never pry.’
‘Pry away,’ Rafe said, for although he had done his best to maintain their privacy, there was a chance she would wake up to the tabloids telling her she had dined with a playboy prince.
‘You’ll answer anything?’ Antonietta checked.
‘Not necessarily.’ He would tell her his title, Rafe had decided. Generally, that more than sufficed.
Yet the question she had for Rafe was not about that. ‘Where did you get those bruises?’
His eyebrows rose in surprise at her question. ‘Skiing,’ he said.
‘An accident?’
‘Not really. It was more recklessness on my part.’
‘Oh. So you’re here in Silibri to recover?’
‘I’m here to lie low for a while,’ Rafe said.
‘And you’renotmarried?’
‘I’ve already told you, no.’
‘Or involved with anyone?’
Rafe’s jaw gritted a fraction. Couldn’t she just ask the simple question and be done? Once she knew he was the Crown Prince of Tulano this attempt at a get-to-know-you would end.
For no one really knew the Crown Prince.
‘I’m not serious about anyone.’
‘Have you ever been?’
‘Why all these questions?’
‘You told me I was free to pry!’
So he had. ‘No,’ Rafe said. ‘I have never been serious about anyone.’ He thought back. ‘I tried to be once,’ he said. He glanced up and saw that she sat still and silent. Patiently waiting. ‘Or rather, I tried to make things work. But I was barely in my twenties.’ He looked into her sad treacle-black eyes and appreciated her lack of comment. ‘I disappointed a lot of people when we broke up. Though I guess you would know all about that?’
‘Were you engaged?’
‘God, no!’ Rafe said. ‘If that had been the case there would have been no going back.’
The way he said it made her shiver. That dark note to his tone struck a warning that she had no idea of the power she was dealing with.
As delectable as her pasta was, Antonietta put her silverware down, and as the waiter removed her plate she braced herself to ask the final question.
But when push came to shove she found that she dared not. ‘Rafe, on a couple of occasions I have tried to find out who you are. But the truth is I am a little nervous to know.’
‘Why?’
‘Because...’ She flailed around for an explanation. ‘Because I don’t want to feel any more daunted than I already do.’
‘You feel daunted?’
‘A bit,’ she admitted. ‘A lot.’
