Page 105

‘But I am aware… I know it’s just sex. I’m not falling in love with you, Leandro.’

She was saying exactly what he wanted to hear, which made the kick of angry dissatisfaction he felt utterly irrational.

‘Incredible sex.’

She sketched a quick smile, instinct and hurt making her hit back with a cold, ‘I’ll take your word for it. I have no comparison.’

He glanced around the room and noticed several eyes watching them speculatively.

As he leaned in to murmur warningly in her ear in a move designed to look intimate to anyone watching, she was angry with herself for her body’s helpless response to the warmth of his breath on her skin.

‘I really don’t think this is the right place for our first fight, do you?’

‘Then why, Leandro, did you start it…?’ She watched a shocked look steal across his face. ‘You keep pushing me away.’

The look of discomfiture slid away so quickly that she thought she had imagined it.

‘I can’t keep my hands off you,’ he grated, the tension zapping between them as he reached to cup her chin.

‘Well, it doesn’t seem to make you very happy,’ she blurted.

* * *

‘Your Majesty.’

Leandro swore under his breath, his hand fell away as he turned. ‘Count.’

‘Thank you so much for coming this evening, Princess, and I noticed you enjoyed these earlier. Crab puffs…?’

Elsie was touched as she accepted the palace version of a doggy bag, the pretty box complete with an embossed royal crest.

‘Creepy bastard,’ Leandro muttered as they walked away.

‘He was trying to be nice,’ she protested. ‘People can change.’

‘You think you can win hearts and minds with your smile and your cleavage.’

She wasn’t smiling as they walked down the corridor. They had started the evening as a team and it had felt good, but that had been an illusion, she realised miserably. All it took was the wrong word and they were further apart than ever.

They walked side by side but very separate back to the salon that they, or rather Elsie, used most evenings. By palace standards it was cosy, if anyone could call a cavernous room with a high ceiling and a wall of floor-to-ceiling French windows cosy.

Elsie flung herself on one of the big sofas and crossed one spiky heel over the other.

Leandro had walked across to a sideboard and poured himself a brandy. ‘You want a drink?’

‘I already said I don’t want to drink too much.’

‘Are you thinking ahead?’

She blinked. ‘Ahead—as in?’

‘Children.’

Elsie flinched. She hadn’t been, but now she was. She shook her head, moistening her dry lips with her tongue. There won’t ever be children, she thought bleakly as the guilt that was becoming a constant companion kicked in hard.

It was one thing to trick a stranger, but Leandro was no longer a stranger. He was the man who sent her to heaven several times a day, even if he didn’t seem to feel much need for her outside the bedroom, but considering her own motivation, she was in no position to complain.

He saw her flinch. ‘There is no hurry, we are young. There is plenty of time to make babies, and everything won’t fall on you, there will be nannies.’