AllFreeNovel
Share Us
As far as Natalie was concerned, that was permission to come on in, guns blazing. She had nothing to lose by saying the things Valentina wouldn’t. And there was absolutely no reason she should feel that hot, intent look he was giving her low and tight in her belly. No reason at all.
She made a show of looking around the vast room the scrupulously correct butler who had ushered her here had called aparlorin ringing tones. She’d had to work hard not to seem cowed, by the butler or the scale of the private wing he’d led her through, all dizzying chandeliers and astoundingly beautiful rooms clogged with priceless antiques and jaw-dropping art.
“I don’t see any press here,” she said, instead of debating his masculinity. For God’s sake.
“Obviously not.” Was it her imagination or did Rodolfo sound a little less...civilized? “We are on palace grounds. Your father would have them whipped.”
“If you wanted to avoid the press, you could,” Natalie pointed out. With all the authority of a person who had spent five years keeping Achilles Casilieris out of the press’s meaty claws. “You don’t.”
Was it possible this mighty, beautiful prince looked...ill at ease? If only for a moment?
“I never promised you that I would declaw myself, Valentina,” he said, and it took Natalie a moment to remember why he was calling her Valentina. Because that’s who he thought she was, of course. Princess Valentina, who had to marry him in two months. Not mouthy, distressingly common Natalie, who was unlikely to marry anyone since she spent her entire life embroiled in and catering to the needs of a man who likely wouldn’t be able to pick her out of a lineup. “I told you I would consider it after the wedding. For a time.”
Natalie shrugged, and told herself there was no call for her to feel slapped down by his response. He wasn’t going to marryher.She certainly didn’t need to feel wounded by the way he planned to run his relationship. Critical, certainly. But notwounded.
“As will I,” she said mildly.
Rodolfo studied her for a long moment, and Natalie forced herself to hold that seething dark glare while he did it. She even smiled and settled back against the delicate little couch, as if she was utterly relaxed. When she was nothing even remotely like it.
“No,” he said after a long, long time, his voice dark and lazy and something else she felt more than heard. “I think not.”
Natalie held back the little shiver that threatened her then, because she knew, somehow, that he would see it and leap to the worst possible conclusion.
“You mistake me,” she said coolly. “I wasn’t asking your permission. I was stating a fact.”
“I would suggest that you think very carefully about acting on this little scheme of yours, princess,” Rodolfo said in that same dark, stirring tone. “You will not care for my response, I am certain.”
Natalie crossed her legs and forced herself to relax even more against the back of her little couch. Well. To look it, anyway. As if she had never been more at her ease, despite the drumming of her pulse.
She waved a hand the way Valentina had done in London, so nonchalantly. “Respond however you wish. You have my blessing.”
He laughed, then. The sound was rougher than Natalie would have imagined a royal prince’s laugh ought to have been, and silkier than she wanted to admit as it wrapped itself around her. And all of that was a far second to the way amusement danced over his sculpted, elegant face, making him look not only big and surprisingly powerful, but very nearly approachable. Magnetic, even.
Something a whole lot more than magnetic. It lodged itself inside of her, then glowed.
Good lord,Natalie thought in another sort of daze as she gazed back at him.This is the most dangerous man I’ve ever met.
“I take it this is an academic discussion,” Rodolfo said when he was finished laughing like that and using up all the light in the world, so cavalierly. “I had no idea you felt so strongly about what I did or didn’t do, much less with whom. I had no idea you cared what I did at all. In fact, princess, I wasn’t certain you heard a single word I’ve uttered in your presence in all these months.”
He moved from the grand fireplace then, and watching him in motion was not exactly an improvement. Or it was a significant improvement, depending on how she looked at it. He was sleek for such a big man, and moved far too smoothly toward the slightly more substantial chair at a diagonal to where Natalie sat. He tossed himself into the stunningly wrought antique with a carelessness that should have snapped it into kindling, but didn’t.
It occurred to her that he was far more aware of himself and his power than he appeared. That he was something of an iceberg, showing only the slightest bit of himself and containing multitudes beneath the surface. She didn’t want to believe it. She wanted him to be a vapid, repellant playboy who she could slap into place during her time as a make-believe princess. But there was that assessing gleam in his dark gaze that told her that whatever else this prince was, he wasn’t the least bit vapid.
And was rather too genuinelycharmingfor her peace of mind, come to that.
He settled in his chair and stretched out his long, muscled legs so that theyalmostbrushed hers, then smiled.
Natalie kept her own legs where they were, because shifting away from him would show a weakness she refused to let him see. She refused, as if her life depended on that refusal, and she didn’t much care for the hysterical notion that it really, truly did.
“I don’t care at all what you do or don’t do,” she assured him. “But it certainly appears that you can’t say the same, for some reason.”
“I am not the one who started making proclamations about my sexual intentions. I think you’ll find that was you. Here. Today.” That curve of his mouth deepened. “Entirely unprovoked.”
“My mistake. Because a man who has grown up manipulating the press in no way sends a distinct message when he spends the bulk of his very public engagement ‘escorting’ other women to various events.”
His gaze grew warmer, and that sculpted mouth curved. “I am a popular man.”
“What I am suggesting to you is that you are not the only popular person in this arrangement. I’m baffled at your Neanderthal-like response to a simple statement of fact, when you have otherwise been at such pains to present yourself as the very image of modernity in royal affairs.”
