CHAPTER EIGHT
Nikolai
I MUST GIVE credit to Kate’s skillful matchmaker profiling. The Countess of Wynberry fits my usual physical type to a T. Platinum blond hair, come-hither bedroom eyes and ripe breasts that she proudly displays in a low-cut black silk dress offset by a necklace of glittering rubies. Hell, I don’t know a guy who wouldn’t describe the countess as his type. She could be a sister to that American actress Scarlett Johansson.
We meet in my private room at La Coeur, a three-star Michelin restaurant set in an eighteenth-century manor. The view of the Alps through the wide windows is unparalleled, and the gorgeous woman lounging across the table looks like she’d rather take a bite out of me than the raspberry-and-chocolate confection on her gilded plate. Yet I feel nothing but faint boredom.
Dinner went well enough. The filet was perfectly cooked and the cabernet an excellent vintage. She chattered on and on about her family’s approval of our union and then of all the filthy things she planned on doing to me once we left the restaurant. I should have been hard just from her depraved words. Instead all I want is to be in my Rolls beside an auburn-haired woman in jeans who makes me feel like something I haven’t felt in years.
Myself.
“You don’t talk much, do you?” the countess purrs, taking her time licking her spoon clean. Her bare foot caresses my shin under the table, and I curse my unresponsive cock. The countess could douse the fire inside, the embers burning for a woman who arranged this date, but she’d fail at snuffing out the blaze.
“I do if I have something to say,” I answer blandly. Her dessert does look delightful. Too bad I ordered nothing to eat for our final course, just a scotch neat. She needs to stop playing seductive games and enjoy it. But then, I’ve made my decision, which means she won’t have time to finish, so perhaps it is for the best.
She looks curious, missing the warning in my voice. “And do you have something to say?” she asks.
Enough time wasting. “I do.” I crumple my napkin on my lap and get down to business.
I say what I must in short, clipped sentences. Her eyes grow slowly wider until the whites are perfectly visible around her nearly violet irises.
Within a minute she throws a glass of champagne in my face. She has more restraint than I credited her with. I expected her to last thirty seconds max.
“You are as they say.” She gathers her fur stole and rises in a huff. “A twisted monster of a man.”
I blow her a kiss, and she squeals with outrage before storming for the exit.
Kate arrives in less than a minute, exactly as I expected, disheveled from sprinting to my table.
“What happened?” She gasps for air. “I thought I was here to help you to not cause a scene!”
I wave my hand in the air. “Trust me when I tell you that what just transpired was not a scene. You have read the tabloids, yes? I’m capable of so much worse. Don’t you think?”
She must have run the whole way and not bothered using the restaurant’s elevator. Her cheeks are flushed to a rosy red, and her chest rises and falls, heaving her breasts against the thin cotton of her T-shirt. The sight captivates me more than all the silk in Spain.
“The countess left in a rage,” Kate continues. “She threatened to kick X in the parking lot if he didn’t get out of her way. I’m pretty sure that counts as a scene.”
I chuckle at the thought of anyone accosting X. I’ve seen him pin a paparazzo against a wall with one hand while dismantling his camera with the other, the action as simple as flossing his teeth. I have no idea who the hell X was before he came to the palace, but one thing is for certain: he’s survived worse than the Countess of Wynberry.
“We weren’t a good fit,” I say lazily, sitting back in my chair. “And because no photographers are allowed inside—”
Kate lets out a breathy laugh. “Oh, there were photographers outside. I can attest to that.” She shakes her head. “I have to admit my surprise... On paper you and the countess were a perfect match.” Her tone is disappointed even as the relief is plain on her face. Strange how I am in tune to the subtleties of her emotion when we’ve barely been acquainted for the span of a week.
“She had a hard time hearing key truths,” I say.
“Truths?” She crosses her arms and lowers her chin. A wayward auburn strand falls across her forehead. “Nikolai, what on earth did you tell that poor woman?”
Poor woman? Perhaps that was the perfect term for her. While the countess was rich in material wealth, she lacked human qualities like warmth, companionship and kindness, characteristics I can usually dismiss. But for some reason, tonight I cannot.
“Take a seat, Kate.” I gesture to the chair opposite me. “I’ll tell you exactly what I said if you allow me to feed you bite by bite.”
Kate
I cross my arms. “I’m quite stuffed,” I say, not daring to glance at the dessert on the table. Even out of the corner of my eye it looks heavenly. “Beatrice fed me well with yet another back-seat feast, and I will under no circumstances let you be seen in public feeding a palace employee.” Never mind that we are in a private room.
He reaches over and takes a bite of the rich-looking confection, his tongue slowly stroking the spoon, and I swallow. Then I narrow my eyes at him.
“Oh, fine,” he says. “Have it your way. I simply told her what we both already know, that whoever my bride will be, it will be nothing more than a business arrangement. There will be no physical obligation other than her providing me with my own heir—however long that may take. And I will be free to satisfy my needs with whomever suits my fancy. Oh, I may have also mentioned that she will under no circumstances have any say in how I rule this country.”
I throw my hand over my mouth, but it doesn’t stifle my gasp. “Nikolai!” I shout, not caring that his private room is not exactly soundproof.
He shrugs. “Oh, come now,” he says. “I explained she’d want for nothing—that she’d be free to dally with anyone she pleased, so long as she was discreet.”
I clench my teeth. “I know you don’t plan on taking your marriage seriously, but no woman deserves to be spoken to like that. You could have been more—more delicate, and you know it. But you care nothing for anyone other than yourself, so you did it the Nikolai way. I should have known this job would be impossible. That you’d be impossible. You didn’t want me here to help. Did you? You wanted me here so I’d have a front-row seat to the Nikolai Lorentz show.”
My cheeks burn as I bunch my fists at my sides. One minute I’m taken aback by how beautiful he is—how he can level me with his gaze. The next I am reminded all too clearly of who he is. He is my prince—and soon, my king. He has the power to behave as he does, and I am nothing more than a subject.
I push back my chair. “I’ll call for a taxi,” I say, trying to keep my voice even. Anger will get me nowhere. It won’t get the countess the respect he should have paid her, and it certainly won’t earn any for me. He owes me nothing.
He lets me get as far as the door before he speaks.
“Kate,” he says, all pretense gone from his voice. “Wait.” Then I hear him let out a breath. “Please.”
I turn to face him, and he’s standing, too. But I don’t dare move any closer. Even across the table he feels too near now. Because if there’s one word I never expected to hear directed at me from him, it is that last one. Please.
“What?” I ask, the fight draining from me as he holds me with his steely, intent stare.
He runs a hand through his perfectly styled hair, loosening it so he looks more as he did on the bridge—or after he’d dived into the river to save me.
“You’re right,” he says. “About most of it, but you’re missing one important detail.”
I cross my arms and raise my brows but say nothing.
“Of course I didn’t need any help,” he says, palms resting on his chair. “I care nothing for my reputation. I leave that to my father, my stepmother, to all those paid to give a fuck. I suppose I’ll have to clean up my act a bit once I’m king, though.”
He flashes that irresistible grin, but I don’t let myself fall prey to it, not this time.
“I know you don’t care what others think of you,” I say. “But you put my reputation on the line tonight, too, Your Highness.” He winces, and the sight is something so wholly unexpected, my heart tugs involuntarily. “You may have nothing to lose, but I do. My sister does. Her business supports our family. We have responsibilities. This whole marriage thing that you see as a joke is how we put a roof over our heads. It’s how we—”
He steps around from the chair and nearer to where I stand, the movement stealing the words from my mouth. I suck in a breath as he takes a step closer and then hold it as he rests a palm on my cheek.
“I’m an ass,” he says, and I nod. “One royal prick,” he adds, and I don’t disagree. “Perhaps I could have been more civil to the countess. But where I truly fucked up was that I wasn’t thinking of how this would affect you.”
I clear my throat. “Wh-what important detail?” I stammer. His brows pull together. “Before, you said I was missing one important detail.” I can smell the sweet scotch in the warmth of his breath. I bite my lip to keep from reacting.
He rests his forehead against mine, the gesture far too intimate, and my breath hitches.
“I asked you to come tonight, Kate, because in the span of six days, I seem to have gone from wanting nothing to do with you and what you’ve been hired for to not wanting you out of my sight.”
He braces a palm against the door behind me, and I take a step back so I’m flush against it.
“Nikolai,” I whisper. “We can’t.” My insistence is different than the other day at the bridge. I could take his teasing—could even pretend that we might continue our encounters and leave it at just sex. But now? What he is suggesting now is beyond possibility.
“What if there was a way?” he asks, his lips dangerously close to my own. “What if I could make you truly mine?”
My throat tightens at the thought. “But I was hired to—”
“I know,” he says. “And I will continue to see the women with whom you match me. I will even be civil. But I make you this promise. I’ll marry none of them.”
As much as the idea of him touching another woman, let alone marrying one, already hurts in a way it should not be able to, I need him to do it because my family depends on it. Irony, you’re a cruel bitch.
“When do you need to be married by?” I’m playing with him because I already know. Maybe if I smile the pain will ebb. One can always hope.
“My twenty-ninth birthday.”
“Which is...” As if the heir’s birthday isn’t a national holiday.
His lids narrow as he tries to figure out what game I’m playing. “Ninety days from now.”
I close my eyes and take in a long breath. Then I press my palm to his chest. “I’ll make you a wager.”
He laughs softly. “Go on.”
“I’ll see you married by your birthday,” I say, my fingers already itching to grab at his tie.
He surprises me with a soft kiss before he answers. “I look forward to disappointing you.”
I grip his tie and pull him as close as he can get. “And what’s more, I promise you will be happy with the woman.” After all, I know exactly what His Highness likes. Who better to find him not just a queen but happiness as well?
I swallow the pang of regret, the one that has me wishing for what cannot be. I do not want for him a life of misery, but I cannot let my own family fall into ruin. I will succeed. For both of us.
“You’d have to be one hell of a matchmaker, sweetheart,” he says.
“Trust me.” I fight to keep the tremor from my voice. “I’m the best.”