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Realizing her effect on him had set off a chain reaction of bad behavior. She’d always forgive and forget, but that hadn’t been the end of it for him.
He’d felt guilty.
And hated it.
Which had naturally led to even worse behavior and eventually the accident. Five years after the fact, that awful night continued to haunt him. He relived the pain and terror every time he caught a glimpse of his reflection or touched the puckered scars that marred his right arm and the right side of his chest, neck and face. The skin tingled in phantom pain. He could have undergone reconstructive surgery for the damage, but preferred to leave the scars as a reminder of his supreme failure.
Christian shook himself out of his dark thoughts and caught Noelle watching him. Worry, longing and regret raced across her face in rapid succession before she looked away. Christian stared at her as she laughed at something Coomb said to her. Was it possible that she still cared and was fighting desperately not to? Something inside Christian clicked into place like the resetting of a dislocated bone. He hadn’t realized how out of whack his psyche had been until the pain vanished. In the peaceful aftermath, he began to plot.
Noelle might be engaged, but she wasn’t married. The ring she wore represented a promise to wed, and he was notorious for making even the most stubborn, committed individuals change their minds.
* * *
Heart thumping in wild abandonment, Noelle gulped down the beginnings of panic. Despite the heartache and the half decade of separation, Christian continued to fascinate and disturb her like no other man. He’d been back in her life for three days, and her judgment was already lousy. She’d invented a fake fiancé and convinced Geoff to play along. All the while she fought against the longing to rake her fingers through Christian’s thick, wavy hair and pull his mouth to hers.
Nothing good would come of getting caught up in the reckless desire that had hampered her innate common sense during the two years she’d loved him. He’d driven her to the highest peaks of ecstasy one day and left her wallowing in uncertainty and disappointment the next. Even accepting that she was responsible for her own happiness, Noelle hadn’t once barred her door or her heart against him. And in the end, he’d been the one to walk away.
Which was why she needed to be so careful now. There was more at stake than her foolish heart. She couldn’t risk that Christian might hurt her son.
His son.
Noelle lifted her fork and held it suspended over the plate the waiter had placed before her. Her thoughts were too complex to sort out the ingredients of the elegantly plated meal. She saw her dinner as a mass of color: shades of brown from caramel to espresso, a range of greens and a golden sauce.
“Something wrong?” Christian prompted, his deep voice silky and sensual.
She made the mistake of meeting his burnished gold eyes. He looked as if he wanted to devour her right then and there. “It’s too beautiful to eat.”
His slow smile curled her toes. “I assure you it will taste even better.”
Breathless in reaction to his dizzying charisma, Noelle jerked her attention back to the meal and admonished herself for letting him get to her. The cuisine that should have dazzled her palate tasted like sawdust in her dry mouth. When would Christian stop dominating her senses? She would have thought five years apart had dulled her body’s reaction to him.
At least she maintained some control over her mind.
It probably helped that she had very little trouble resisting Prince Christian. Arrogant and confident, the royal persona represented everything that had broken her heart five years earlier. Especially when he’d shown up unannounced at her farmhouse after Nic and Brooke’s wedding and presumed she’d marry him to legitimize Marc.
She gave her head a barely perceptible shake. Of course he’d take the easy way out. Why go to the trouble to win a bride and get her pregnant when his former lover had already produced a potential heir. And then there were the two dozen red roses he’d had sent to her office. While grandly romantic, the gesture had barely aroused a twinge of temptation.
It was the vulnerability she’d infrequently glimpsed in him that destroyed all her self-preservation and led to repeated disappointments. During those moments, when his shoulders hunched and the cocky playboy vanished, her defenses crumbled. Whether or not he could accept it, Christian yearned for someone to believe in him, and until he pushed her out of his life, Noelle had naively thought that someone was her.
And now he was back. And making demands on her once more. Concern that Christian had appeared suspicious of her hasty engagement swept over her. Half acting the part of smitten fiancée, half because she needed reassurance, Noelle reached for Geoff’s hand. He responded with a tender smile that would have made her heart flutter if she was actually in love with him.
