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“No, you are not.” The look he gave her was all male appreciation.
“Don’t look at me like that. You are practically my own brother.” Oh, that was such a lie.
“Again, either you are, or you are not,” he informed her wryly. “You and I share no blood relation, or any legal relation either, for that matter.”
“You are my best friend’s little brother-in-law.” That felt less like the deterrent she’d always told herself it was.
He gave her another heated, purely adult look. “Hardly little.”
“Oh, brother, you are laying it on thick.” And it was working. Jenna’s body was zinging withwantandnowandgive me some. “The question is: Why?”
He shrugged. “Why look at you like you are a beautiful woman? Because you are. Why look at you like I want you? Because I do.”
“What?” She looked around furtively, but no one was paying them any attention. “You can’t just blurt stuff like that out.”
“Why not?”
“Because.”
“You’re strangely lacking in words for a journalist.”
“I shouldn’t have to tell you. Wasn’t Skylar’s reaction earlier enough? Regardless of what either of us said, the rumors we are dating are going to be all over our offices by the time I go home tonight.”
“So?”
“So? We aren’t dating!”
“We could be.”
“What are you saying? You want to date me?”
“Don’t look so horrified. I didn’t say I wanted to court you; I’m fully aware of your aversion to being a princess. We can date...” He paused, letting their eyes meet and hold while the sexual tension between them built. “And other things, if we want. You are single. I have no commitments of that nature. Neither of us is looking for marriage or expecting long-term commitment of any kind.”
“We aren’t?” she asked, thinking he took a lot for granted. “Why? Because I’m not some kind of nobility?”
He didn’t even bother to look worried, just patient. “Because you’ve made it clear over and over again how little desire you have to be an actual part of a royal family,” he spelled out. “No matter how close you are to mine.”
“That’s true.” And he’d been listening.
The waiter approached their table and placed a starter in front of them both.
“I hope you do not mind, but I when I am here, the chef selects my food.”
“I like the adventure of that, but it surprises me you cede the control,” she replied with candor.
The barely there tilt of his lips couldn’t quite be called a smile, but the expression reached his eyes, so Jenna took it as a win.
“Control is an illusion in most things.”
“You did not just say that.” Such a sentiment was not the type expressed by the men in his family.
The women either, for that matter.
“You learn a lot about what you do and do not control when lives are in the balance.” He shrugged. “Besides, who better to select my food than the man who prepared it?”
“You said he was an old friend. You must trust him a lot.”
“I’ve had to trust him with my life.”
