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He let out another husky laugh, knowing he had won, despite the adorably belligerent expression on her face—which he would take any day over hurt and vulnerability.
Grasping her neck again, he dragged her back for a swift kiss. ‘Good,’ he said, releasing her to get out of the car and announce their departure to the flight attendant.
As he escorted her across the tarmac to the private jet, he placed his palm on the small of her back and felt another delicious shudder. The triumphant feeling surged. Leaning close, he whispered in her ear, ‘And please don’t feel you have to spare my ego,’ he teased, ‘by implying my company isn’t enough to persuade you.’
She scoffed, the tart sound a balm to his soul. ‘Don’t worry, Your Majesty’ she said, throwing the words over her shoulder as she mounted the plane’s stairs ahead of him, ‘I won’t.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MEL FLOPPED ONTOthe lounger by the pool. She sighed and stretched, letting the sun relax tired muscles, and breathed in the sea air, scented with the fragrance of the nearby Ginger Thomas tree, its bright yellow blossoms out in force today.
It had been three days since they’d arrived at Rene’s estate on Mermaid Cay—a private island of rocky hills and mangrove swamps and a shoreline of secret coves and stretches of soft white sand gently lapped by the translucent blue of the Caribbean Sea.
The five-bedroom main house—which, according to the estate’s manager Marcia, had been constructed by Rene’s grandfather in the nineteen-fifties, not long after he’d purchased the uninhabited island—perched on a rocky ledge with an infinity pool and was surrounded by several equally well-appointed guest cottages. The villa’s commanding position overlooked a wide sandy beach edged by rock pools and the verdant beauty of the island’s interior, which included an abundance of frangipani, bay rum, tamarind and mango trees as well as the ubiquitous Ginger Thomas and a host of other flora and fauna which Marcia had identified.
The clean, elegant style of all the buildings was a mix of Colonial and European design made up of wide stone verandas, wooden walkways and bright airy rooms featuring all the mod cons while also having the ability to blend seamlessly into the landscape. Mel’s guest bedroom suite featured an outdoor rainfall shower, a luxury bathroom, a four-poster bed and an open terrace with a view of the pool.
No wonder she felt so relaxed after three days in this paradise.
Most of the journey here—which had included twenty hours of flying with a brief stopover in New York’s JFK to refuel and a forty-minute speedboat ride from St Thomas—had gone by in a blur of snatched sleep and panic after being swept up in their desperate attempt to escape the press storm. But in the days since, her anxiety over the photos and the future of her career—because how exactly was she supposed to be a benefit to Isabelle’s monarchy if she was now notorious as Rene’s ‘snowbound lover’—had settled. Surely, given enough time, the furore would die down and the press—and public opinion—would move on.
Isabelle had been in touch and Mel had even managed to do some remote working yesterday from the house’s study, negotiating an itinerary for the Queen’s upcoming trade tour in the US with her new husband.
She’d slept like the dead over the last two nights too, recovering after their snowbound ordeal, not to mention the long night in Rene’s arms when neither of them had done much sleeping.
The tranquillity of her surroundings and the easy-going way of life, far away from the publicity storm, had all helped her to relax and get things into perspective. That and the fact she hadn’t seen Rene since they had arrived.
Not once.
But what had been a welcome relief at first—because panicking about her response to him and their complicated, often antagonistic relationship had never been good for her stress levels—was becoming less welcome as each day passed.
When she’d woken up yesterday morning to another breakfast alone, she’d realised she missed him. If nothing else, his company had always been exhilarating. But she hadn’t been able to track him down all day, nor could she figure out what he was spending his time doing.
According to Marcia—and Fred, the villa’s gardener—the Prince was ‘busy working’. But because she hadn’t seen him yesterday evening either—when the resident chef had laid out another incredible meal for her on the table overlooking the beach—she had no idea what exactly he had been ‘busy working’ on. After all, Rene was famous, or rather infamous, for not taking his work as Saltzaland’s Prince that seriously, far too interested in his own pursuit of pleasure and beautiful women…
Except…
‘If it helps, I haven’t been able to take another woman to bed since the first time we made love either.’
She squinted into the sun, the bombshell he’d dropped en route to the airport four days ago making her heart clench and release—and the butterflies in her belly do backflips. She hadn’t wanted to believe him, had tried to convince herself in the days since that he had to have been lying.
But the more she thought about it—and she had thought about ita lot—the more she couldn’t figure out why he would lie.
Of course, he’d tried to qualify his abstinence as some kind of physical aberration, an inconvenient side-effect of their sexual chemistry and, by implication therefore, definitely not evidence of any kind of emotional connection. An emotional connection she’d spent four years trying to convince herself too couldn’t exist.
But what if it could?
What if she reallywasthe first woman to ever have made a lasting impression on him? Because something else—another throwaway comment he’d made during their drive into the storm—had come back to her too during the last forty-eight hours while she’d had far too much time to overthink every aspect of their relationship.
‘I haven’t had an alcoholic drink in four years.’
She hadn’t registered the possible significance of that timing either when he’d said it.
But now she couldn’t stop obsessing about that, too. And tying herself in knots about what it might mean.
What if Rene wasn’t the man she had always dismissed him as—reckless, shallow, entitled, and impulsive—but someone else?
She’d spent the last three days trying not to dwell on that disturbing possibility—and how much she was starting to miss his company—doing everything from going for long hikes to learning how to cook conch fritters with their chef Jevon, or jogging to the next cove for a swim. But it was becoming harder and harder for her to keep her desire to discover therealRene while she was here on hold. Or to stop all the questions piling up in her head which had always remained unanswered.