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“My inner-most thoughts are definitely not on the table,” she promised, her voice surprising him with its defiance.
“Just the party line?”
“There is no ‘party line’,” she disputed, crossing her legs neatly in the opposite direction. She was dressed all in cream, and it set off the caramel tones of her skin spectacularly. She was very beautiful, in an untouchable-princess sort of way.
“Do you like your brother’s fiancé?”
The question was completely out of left field. Lilah frowned, tilting her head slightly to one side while she marshaled her thoughts together. “Melania is a lovely woman. She will be an excellent Emira for my country and my people.”
He lifted his brows. “There’s no party line?”
Lilah leaned forward a little. Though there was still a marble coffee table between them, she felt a spark of something as her eyes leveled with his. “You are a strange man. I am answering the questions you ask and yet you keep behaving as though my answers are suspect in some way. Why? What is it you would like me to say?”
“What you really feel,” he said simply. “I always want my subjects to be honest.”
“Again you are accusing me of lying?”
“Not lying,” he corrected. “Of being false. Of keeping your true thoughts buried completely beneath a veneer of dispassion.”
“Goodness me, thank you. That is so much better.” Lilah was acutely conscious of her accent thickening as her temper spiked. She took a deep breath in an attempt to still her racing heart. “It is not my true thoughts being bared that I mind.” A small line formed above her nose as she knitted her brows together.
“No? Then what are you afraid of?”
“Why do you think I am afraid of anything?”
He expelled a frustrated sigh. “I’ve been doing this a long time. I can usually tell within the first two minutes of meeting someone how an interview is going to go.”
“Oh? What a gift,” she murmured, despising the easy way sarcasm had flown from her tongue. She clipped her hands together o
n her lap, outwardly projecting an image of calm. “And what did our first two minutes together tell you about me?”
He placed his elbows on his knees and leaned forward, significantly closing the gap between them. Lilah fought the urge to recline back into her chair.
“You are artifice and grace.”
“Artifice and grace?” She swallowed the words bitterly. “Such a beautiful insult.”
His lips quirked. “You asked the question.”
“And you answered it with honesty bordering on cruelty.”
His eyes scanned her face. “Unlike you, I don’t have to worry about what the world thinks of me.”
Lilah’s throat knotted visibly as she swallowed. Will’s eyes dropped to the betraying gesture and he almost felt sorry for her. This woman was not a dictator in a foreign war. She was not a bombastic general dispatching children into the fields to fight. She was a princess by birth and upbringing. Her only crime was having been born into a family of intense political power and importance.
“We can do this your way,” he said gently, regretting the stormy confusion that raged on her pretty features.
“It is not my way,” she surprised him by admitting a minute later. “You are right. There is artifice in who I must be. If I were speaking to you as an equal – as one person to another – I could perhaps speak more freely on the subjects you raise.”
“You think we’re not equal?” It fascinated him, the class system that Delani still clung to.
“I think your job is to report on my family. That I am responsible for giving you an insight into my life. And that if I do not carefully guard what I say, you may misrepresent things in your articles.”
He was very still. “You know your brother trusts me.”
“Yes.” She toyed with her fingers distractedly.
“But you don’t.”
