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She thought she saw the flash of his teeth. The gleam in his gaze was brighter, that was a certainty. “If that is how you wish to think of it.”
“Well,” she said, and managed to make herself sound regretful. “We certainly can’t marry if we’re related, can we?”
He actually did laugh then, a bark of a sound that made her breath ache a bit. It was somale. “It would take a lot more than a tiny drop of shared blood, generations behind us now, to put me off marrying you, Delaney.”
“I really think—” she began.
“But no matter how much I might wish to marry you, I won’t,” he told her, smoothly. “Not at this moment.”
That should have been music to Delaney’s ears.
Instead, she found herself scowling at him. She did not choose to ask herself why. “Why not?”
If that amused him, too, he didn’t show it. Instead, he leaned back in his seat, cocked his head to one side, and merely gazed at her. Then, making sure she was aware he was doing it, he took his time looking her up and down.
And despite herself, Delaney found herself sitting up straighter. Her hands moved to her lap, as if to brush off crumbs she knew weren’t there on her favorite pair of jeans. Because she was suddenly much too aware that she was in this make-believe realm of princes and princesses, royal houses and one true kings. And more, she was supposed to belong here by blood.
Maybe, just maybe, her beloved T-shirt that read “MIDWEST IS BEST” was not the appropriate thing to be wearing here.
Cayetano aimed all that burnt gold at her, and looked, if anything, almost sorrowful. Pitying, even, and no one liked to bepitied.
So, really, there was no reason at all that look should make her feel lit up, from the inside out.
“Because I am the true King of Ile d’Montagne,” he told her, in that way he had. As if, were she to look closely, she might find these words stamped into her bones. “That is why not. And you are the true heir to the current throne. And the future Queen of this island might very well be the farm girl you call yourself, Delaney. I like that this is how you see yourself. I like the look of your Kansas all over you.”
What she felt all over her then was him. That look he was giving her. The fire inside her, crackling higher all the time.
As if she’d never heard of Kansas.
“But no matter how much I might like my farm girl as she is,” he said in that same stamped-into-bone way that made her want to sigh and blush and whisper things likeyour farm girl. “I am afraid that here, on this island where you will soon be hailed as the Crown Princess in front of the world, you cannotlooklike one.”
CHAPTER SIX
SHELOOKEDSOaffronted that Cayetano rather thought she might snatch up one of the small plates and throw it at him. Or a great many of the small plates.
He could admit that no small part of him wished that she would. Because an explosion on that level would require an appropriate response from him.
And he would love nothing more than to...respond.
At length.
The hunger in him felt like a fever. Like a calling. He had no idea how he would hold himself back if she burst into a flame of temper before him.
But all Delaney did was glare at him.
“That is very rude,” she admonished him, and to his astonishment he found himself feeling...ever so slightly abashed. Or he assumed that was what the unfamiliar sensation was. “I did not come to you, claiming a throne or whatever it is people do in situations like this. You’re the one who appeared in the middle of my life. And ruined it. If you don’t like how I look, well. That sounds a lot to me like ayouproblem.”
And he liked the way she looked at him as she said that. As if she were prepared to launch herself over the table to make her point and was onlyjustholding herself back.
Just as he was.
Perhaps for the very same reason.
“But you are in my valley now,” he replied, leaning back as if he was perfectly at his ease. He should have been. He had been navigating far more treacherous waters than this for the whole of his life. Why should a girl who didn’t know who she really was get beneath his skin? “My problems are your problems, you will find. My problems are everyone’s problems.”
“You are notmywarlord, Cayetano.”
And she made an emphatic little noise when she said that, like punctuation.
