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‘That won’t be necessary,’ a man said. His voice was deep and rough, and as he spoke a summer breeze rustled past them, so Amelia’s hair brushed her cheek and she felt as though his voice had somehow transformed into a caress, the lightest of touches. She shivered, turned without meaning to, bracing herself, though she couldn’t have said why she felt that was necessary.
Electricity flooded the very air around them, the summer breeze morphing into a fierce storm in which Amelia was caught.
She hadn’t expected to meet anyone on board the yacht except perhaps the crew, and she certainly hadn’t expected to meet anyone like this.
Casting about, she tried to rationalise her reaction, to understand what it was about the man that was so immediately unsettling, so threatening. Physically, he was obviously very strong, with broad shoulders and a toned abdomen hinted at by the white business shirt he wore, making her mouth weirdly dry. He wore chinos, a caramel-brown colour, with a dark brown belt, but his feet were bare—an odd discrepancy with the rest of his formal outfit. Amelia tried to swallow but a lump had formed that made it difficult.
Jerking her attention back to his face, she catalogued everything she saw there with what she told herself was a photographer’s interest: the symmetry of his features, strong, harsh, angular yet somehow incredibly compelling, as though he had secrets to tell, and she was suddenly desperate to hear them. His jaw was square, belying an inner strength that was further conveyed by the harsh set of his lips. But it was his eyes that threatened to turn her knees to jelly. They were almost jet-black, and fierce. It was the only word she could think of. They radiated an intense anger, an emotion that made no sense, and yet she was sure he was looking at her as though...
But then he blinked, and his eyes softened, just enough to make her doubt her first, silly interpretations.
How long did they stand there, neither speaking? What was he thinking about her? Had he been looking at her the way she had him? Amelia had been so caught up in her own inspection she hadn’t noticed, but surely one of them needed to say something. The electricity in the air arced and sizzled. Amelia felt parched and over-warm.
‘This is the photographer,’ Cassidy interjected in her cheery Australian voice. ‘Millie, right?’
Grateful to have someone else there to cut through the strange vortex of tension, Amelia cast her glance sideways. Hearing the diminutive version of her name, that she’d used since leaving home, was slightly mollifying. ‘Yes, right. Millie.’
‘This is Ben, and this beautiful thing is his.’ Cassidy ran her hand over the railing of the boat, then turned back to Ben. ‘I was just going to give Millie a tour.’
Ben shook his head. ‘I’ll do it.’
Amelia’s insides clenched. She wasn’t sure if she was happy with that pronouncement, or filled with dread, but her whole body seemed to react to his statement in an alarming way. Heat flooded her veins, and her fingers shook, so she clasped them together in front of herself.
Cassidy left quickly, with one last look in Amelia’s direction—an expression of apology. Had she seen the anger on Ben’s face too? Was he a grumpy person, habitually, and was Cassidy regretting the necessity of leaving them alone together?
Amelia’s mouth pulled to the side, her eyes shifting quickly to the gangplank, wondering how bad it would be for her career if she were to quickly abscond.
Strictly speaking, she didn’t need the money.
She had a trust fund that had come through her mother’s family, nothing to do with the royal lineage. She had accessed it only since leaving the palace, to buy a small apartment, and any of the necessities absolutely required. But the thrill of earning her own money had caught Amelia by surprise. The pay was hardly extravagant, and yet it was all hers, accrued through her hard work and skill, and she’d become addicted to that.
There was no way she could turn her back on this commission, even when there was something about the owner of the boat that set her nerves on edge.
‘Let me show you the entertaining spaces first.’
Amelia’s instincts went into overdrive, but she ignored them with effort.
‘Lead the way.’ She spoke, finally, realising that, apart from confirming her name, she had yet to offer any intelligible words. Her voice sounded prim to her own ears, formal, driven back to the comfort and familiarity of the persona she’d adopted when forced to attend state events. She attempted to soften the words with a smile, but even that felt tight. She looked away instead, giving up.
Impressing him wasn’t part of her job description. She was there to take photos, nothing more.
And yet, as he led the way to a wide set of doors, she was aware of him on a soul-deep level. Every step he took, even his inhalations, seemed almost as though they were her own. The hairs on the back of her neck were standing, and her stomach felt as if it were rolling around in a washing machine.
‘This is one of the lounge areas,’ he said, apparently unaware of the tension eddies assaulting Amelia from the inside out. She did her best to focus on the tour instead, regarding the space with a trained eye. Perhaps if she’d been less exposed to wealth and luxury, she might have been overawed by the sheer opulence of this room, but Amelia had known such extravagance all her life and so barely gave it a second thought. She shifted her backpack from a shoulder to her hand, unzipping it and removing her camera with an easy grace, too focused on her job to notice how he was looking at her, the way his eyes lingered on her bare shoulder with its faint pink line from the backpack.
When she turned to face him, his gaze had returned to her face, his eyes narrowed analytically, as though he was waiting for her to speak, so she nodded. ‘It’s very nice.’
Nice was a bland way to describe the beauty of the room, which was large and expansive, furnished in cream leather, pale Scandinavian-style minimalist decor, with timber floorboards leading the eye towards the enormous wall of windows offering a breathtaking view of the water from this side, and the marina on the other.
It was stunning, and yet, somehow, she wasn’t sure it felt like what she imagined this man would choose. She barely knew him, but her first impression had been of someone quite wild and untamed, someone virile and overtly masculine. So what? she thought, hiding a smile by tilting her head. Had she expected black leather and animal prints?
‘You are amused?’
Damn it. She grimaced inwardly, composed her features, then turned to him with an expression of wide-eyed innocence. ‘Not at all. Shall I start here?’ She lifted her camera, to remind them both of her reason for being in his private space.
‘Let me show you the rest of the boat first, then you can decide.’
‘Okay.’ She shrugged, her mouth drying as his eyes dropped from her face to one of her shoulders, lingering there just long enough for her skin to respond by lifting in goosebumps. Shockingly to Amelia, in addition to that visible response, she experienced the unfamiliar sensation of her nipples tingling almost painfully, hardening against the soft cotton of her dress—she wore no bra. Life in Valencia was warm and free. Besides, Amelia hadn’t been endowed with the kind of figure that required restraint. How often she’d looked at her curvier friends and wished, more than anything, that she’d been the recipient of well-rounded breasts. Alas, it was not her lot in life to set the world on fire with spectacular cleavage. ‘You’re such a clothes horse, you lucky thing,’ her mother had remarked on multiple occasions, probably trying to make Amelia feel good about her naturally slender frame.
