The Royal House Of Karedes: Two Kingdoms

CHAPTER THREE

MARIA sighed, peeled off her dressed-for-success suit jacket, tossed it over the back of a chair and automatically reached for the phone to return her mother’s call.

Her hand stilled.

What was she doing? A ten-minute litany of aches and pains, followed by a lecture about how she needed to get a real job, were the last things she wanted right now.

Get out of her clothes. Run a hot bath. Eat something. Then she’d make the call.

Maria looked at her shoes, made a face and heaved them into the big trash can beside her work table. Gorgeous but impractical. She should have known better than to have bought them. Gorgeous but impractical was not for her. It never had been.

And she hadn’t bought the shoes for today, she’d bought them for the weekend she’d gone to Aristo. She’d wanted to look sophisticated, but the shoes hadn’t done her much good then, either. Even if she’d looked sophisticated, she’d behaved like a—like a—

No. She wasn’t going there. Not tonight. Rejected by a phony Frenchman today, rejected by an arrogant Aristan two months ago.

That was more than enough.

She stepped out of her skirt and padded, barefoot, to the end of the loft that served as a sleeping area. She tossed the skirt on the futon, peeled off her bra and pantyhose, yanked the clasp from her hair, bent forward and ran her hands briskly through the now-wildly curling strands. Then she tossed her head back, grabbed a pair of old, scruffy sweats, and put them on.

Time for supper, though the thought of eating made her feel vaguely queasy.

Nothing new in that. On top of everything else, she’d felt vaguely ill for the past week or so. No big surprise, considering that half the city was down with the flu. She probably had it, too, but she couldn’t afford to give in to it right now, not with half a dozen pieces to complete by the end of the month.

Her buyers expected her to be prompt. And she needed the money they’d owe her on delivery.

So, no, she wouldn’t even admit to the possibility that she might be sick. Absolutely not. She was under stress, she was working hard. The fatigue, the heaviness in her limbs, the faint sense of nausea that came and went…

Stress, was what it was.

Something to eat, something bland, would make her feel better. Nerves had made her bypass breakfast; lunch had been a joke. Definitely, she had to put something in her stomach.

Soup? Scrambled eggs? Grilled cheese? Better still, she could order in from Lo Ming’s, down on the corner. Egg drop soup. Steamed dumplings. Forget the calories. Forget the cost. An order of Chinese comfort food, then she’d turn on the TV, curl up on the sofa, get lost in something mindless while—

The doorbell rang.

Now what? It was late. Who would come here at this hour?

Of course. Joaquin. He knew what a setback today had been. He’d probably gone half a block, phoned Sela on his cell phone and she’d ordered him to go back and insist Maria come for supper.

The bell rang again. Maria pinned a smile to her lips, went to the heavy door, undid the lock and pulled it open.

“Joaquin,” she said, “honestly, you have to learn to take ‘no’ for an ans …”

Alexandros Karedes, snow dusting the shoulders of his leather jacket and glittering like jewels in his dark hair, stood at the door. Maria felt the blood drain from her head.

“Good evening, Ms. Santos.”

His voice was as she remembered it. Deep. Husky. Perfect English, but with the faintest hint of a Greek accent. And cold, as cold as it had been that awful morning she would never forget, when he’d accused her of horrible things, called her terrible names…

“Aren’t you going to ask me in?”

She fought for composure. Last time they’d faced each other, they’d been on his turf. Now they were on hers. She was in command here, and that meant everything.

“There’s a sign on the door downstairs,” she said, her tone every bit as frigid as his. “It says, ‘No soliciting or vagrants.’”

His lips drew back in a wolfish grin. “Very amusing.”

“What do you want, Prince Alexandros?”

A tight smile eased across his mouth and it killed her that even now, knowing he was a vicious, arrogant man, she couldn’t help but notice what a handsome mouth it was. Chiseled. Generous. Beautiful, like the rest of him, which made him living proof that beauty could, indeed, be only skin deep.

“Such formality, Maria. You were hardly so proper the last time we were together.”

She knew his choice of words was deliberate. She felt her face heat; she couldn’t help that but she damned well didn’t have to let him lure her into a verbal sparring match.

“I’ll ask you once more, Your Highness. What do you want?”

“Ask me in and I’ll tell you.”

“I have no intention of asking you in. Tell me why you’re here or don’t. It’s your choice, just as it will be my choice to shut the door in your face.”

He laughed. It infuriated her but she could hardly blame him. He was tall—six two, six three—and though he stood with one shoulder leaning against the door frame, hands tucked casually into the pockets of the jacket, his pose was deceptive. He was strong, with the leanly muscled body of a well-trained athlete.

She remembered his body with painful clarity. The feel of him under her hands. The power of him moving over her. The taste of him on her tongue.

Suddenly, he straightened, his laughter gone. “I have not come this distance to stand in your doorway,” he said coldly, “and I am not going to leave until I am ready to do so. I suggest you stand aside and stop behaving like a petulant child.”

A petulant child? Was that what he thought? This man who had spent hours making love to her and had then accused her of—of trading her body for profit?

Except, it had not been love, it had been sex. And the sooner she got rid of him, the better.

She let go of the door knob and stepped aside. “You have five minutes.”

He strolled past her, bringing cold air and the scent of the night with him. She swung toward him, arms folded. He reached past her, pushed the door closed, then folded his arms, too. She wanted to open the door again but she’d be damned if she was going to get into a who’s-in-charge-here argument with him. She was in charge, and he would surely see a tussle over the ground rules as a sign of weakness.

Instead, she looked past him at the big clock above her work table.

“Ten seconds gone,” she said briskly. “You’re wasting time, Your Highness.”

“What I have to say will take longer than five minutes.”

“Then you’ll just have to learn to economize. More than five minutes, I’ll call the police.”

Instantly, his hand was wrapped around her wrist. He tugged her toward him, his dark chocolate eyes almost black with anger.

“You do that. And I’ll tell every tabloid shark I can contact about how Maria Santos tried to buy a five-hundred-thousand-dollar commission by seducing a prince.” He smiled thinly. “They’ll lap it up.”

She blanched, but she kept her chin up and her eyes on his.

“Don’t try to scare me with lies! You can’t afford that kind of gossip.”

“I’ve learned to endure that kind of gossip, Ms. Santos. It’s part of my life. Besides, I’m the righteous prince who discovered what you wanted and tossed you out on your backside.” Another of those cold smiles twisted his lips. “They’ll eat you alive. How do you think that will go over with the handful of reputable clients you’ve somehow managed to snare?”

Maria yanked her hand free. “!Usted es un cochon!” she hissed. “!Un cochon malnacido!”

“I think not. If I truly were an ill-bred pig, I would have told you exactly what I thought of you eight weeks ago instead of just throwing you out of my apartment.”

Color rushed to her cheeks. She hadn’t figured he understood Spanish but, then, she’d been wrong in every judgment she’d made about this man from the start.

“You did tell me,” she snapped, “and now it’s my pleasure to return the favor. You’re down to four minutes before I call the cops. Dealing with the media will be worth it, if I can just get rid of you.”

“What’s the problem, Maria? Expecting your lover to return?”

“What?”

“Your lover. What did you call him that morning? Joaquin?”

Joaquin. The idea was so ludicrous she almost laughed, but laughter would take more energy than she could spare. Besides, she didn’t have to explain anything.

“Joaquin is none of your business.”

“You’re right, of course.” Alex strolled across the room to the front window and peered out at his limo, waiting at the curb across the street. “But I had a front-row seat for your little welcome home this evening. You can’t blame me for being curious.”

Maria rushed to the window. A front-row seat? Impossible. The Prince of Arrogance would surely not have stood in the cold and the snow, watching her window…

The big car. It was his. Furious, she swung toward her unwelcome guest.

“You were sitting out there, spying on me?”

“You might want to consider curtains,” he said with lazy self-assurance.

“You—you …” She pointed a finger at the door. “Get out of my home!”

Alex didn’t move. Instead, he tucked his hands in the slash pockets of his jacket and gave her a long look, starting at her feet and working slowly up to her face. She certainly wasn’t dressed like a woman waiting for her lover to come back. Not in a pair of baggy sweats that had seen better days. There was a hole in one knee, what looked like a burn in the shirt just below her collarbone. Her feet were bare, her hair a wild mass of curls.

His belly knotted.

Her hair had been like that the last time he’d seen her, a tumble of long, glorious curls falling around her heart-shaped face. She’d been wearing his robe; she’d been lost in it and somehow that had made her look even sexier, maybe because he’d known, intimately, what was beneath that robe. The delicate, golden-hued skin. The small, uptilted breasts. The slim curve of her waist, the surprisingly feminine richness of her hips.

Her face had been sexy, too. Glowing eyes. Dewy skin. No make-up, not even lipstick, though her mouth had been rosy and softly swollen from his kisses.

She had looked—what did the French call it? Déshabillé. As if she had just come from bed.

Which she had. His bed. His bed and his possession, and that memory was enough to do more than make his belly knot. It sent a bolt of pure lust straight to his loins.

He still wanted her.

It had taken the sight of her in a scruffy sweatshirt and baggy sweatpants before he’d permitted himself to admit it. What man wanted to acknowledge he still desired a woman who’d tried to use him?

One who was a fool, he told himself. And then he thought, no. Hell, no. That wasn’t it at all. Maria Santos owed him and that was her fault, not his. She had lured him into bed. Seduced him, though he’d thought he was the one doing the seducing.

She’d plotted everything, from that supposedly accidental meeting on the street to the moment he’d first kissed her. The only thing surprising about that night was that she’d been able to keep from smirking triumphantly when he’d asked her to come home with him.

She’d made a fool of him, and she still owed him for that. Owed him big time, as the Americans said. And until that debt was paid, the memory of his humiliation would continue to haunt him.

He had no doubt what it would take to expunge that memory.

Her, in his bed again. Moving beneath him. Coming on a long, explosive cry as he watched her with clinical detachment. There’d be no phony little cries. No subterfuge. He would make her want him, make her react to him.

And then he’d send her packing for the second, and last, time.

“Your five minutes are up, Prince Alexandros.”

Alex looked at her. Her expression, her body language, were defiant. She thought she was in charge.

That made him smile.

“You find this amusing?”

“Indeed.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I’m going to count to ten. It’s your last chance. If you’re not out the door by then—”

“Safir et Fils is on the verge of collapse.”

She blinked. “Who?”

“Safir et Fils,” he repeated impatiently. “The French firm that was awarded the commission.” She was staring at him blankly. “Come on, Ms. Santos,” he said silkily. “Don’t try and tell me the name of the company that won a commission you were willing to prostitute yourself to get has slipped your—”

Her hand flew through the air but he was quicker than she was. He caught her wrist, dragged her forward and hauled her to her toes.

“Do not,” he said with quiet menace, “ever raise your hand to me again!”

“Let go of me!”

“Did you hear what I said?—”

“What a bastard you are!”

Her voice shook; tears glittered in her eyes and she was breathing hard. So what? He was unimpressed.

“Playing the righteous innocent will get you nowhere, agapi mou. You made a fool of me once but I promise you, it will never happen again. And do not call me names. I am a prince. I urge you to remember that.”

He almost winced. He sounded like an ass but how could he think while hot rage pumped through his blood? She was an excellent actress; he knew that. And this was another stellar performance. The damp eyes. The trembling voice. The patches of crimson on her face.

Her face. Beautiful, even now.

“Did you think you could get away with what you did, Maria? Letting me think you’d been carried away by passion when what carried you away was the greedy hope that sleeping with me would give you an advantage in the design competition?”

He paused. Maria stared at him.

Was he waiting for her to answer? What was the point? If she said he was wrong, he wouldn’t believe her. He hadn’t, that awful morning.

“Liar,” he’d said, in a voice cold as death, and then he’d hurled words at her in Greek that she hadn’t understood, though their meaning had been painfully clear.

Trying to make him listen now would not only be pointless, it would be demeaning.

The truth was, she hadn’t even known who he was that night. A prince? The son of Queen Tia and King Aegeus? As far as she’d known, he was just a man. A gorgeous, incredibly sexy, fascinating stranger whose smile, whose touch had made her breathless.

When he’d kissed her and the kisses hadn’t been enough, when he’d touched her and those touches weren’t enough, she’d forgotten everything—that they were in a public place, that she was a moral woman, that she had never been with a man before.

And when he’d whispered, Come with me, she had gone with him. How could she have done anything else?

Her world had been reduced to him. To his mouth. His hands. His hard, flagrantly aroused masculinity. She still couldn’t believe she’d let such a thing happen. You didn’t sleep with a stranger. She didn’t, anyway.

“What’s the matter, sweetheart? Is that busy little brain of yours trying to come up with an answer that will satisfy me?”

His voice roughened. “Don’t waste your time. There’s only one thing that will satisfy me, and you know what that is.”

What he meant was in his eyes.

She saw it and stumbled back. He could see the beat of her pulse in the hollow of her throat. Good, he thought coldly. This time, at least, he had the advantage. Command had slipped from her hands to his and she hadn’t even heard the worst of what he’d come to tell her.

“Get out.”

She spoke in a papery whisper that he ignored. Instead, he turned his back and walked to her work table. Sketches were tacked to an enormous corkboard on the wall above it. Something that looked as if it had been molded from wax stood on a shelf.

“Didn’t you hear me? I said—”

“Didn’t you hear me?” He swung toward her, arms folded, feet crossed at the ankles. “Safir et Fils are going under.”

“Do you expect me to weep for them?”

“They will not be able to make the gift for my mother’s birthday.”

Her smile was pure saccharine. “Stop at Wal-Mart before you fly home.”

“I know you find this amusing, Maria, but it’s deadly serious. March the seventh will be an important day. My father has declared it a national holiday.”

Again, that glittery smile. She had her composure back—but not for long.

“There will be a ball attended by dignitaries from around the world.”

“Yes, well if you can’t find anything you like at Wal-Mart—”

“My parents have chosen you to execute the commission.”

Her jaw dropped. She was speechless. Twice in one evening.

He had the feeling it was some kind of record.

“Me?”

“You.” His mouth twisted. “You see, despite what I told you that night, I never mentioned your little game to either the king or the queen. I didn’t have to. My father had chosen the French jewelers. He preferred their submission.”

Maria swallowed hard. She wanted to shriek with delight but she’d be damned if she gave him that.

“How—how nice. To be second-best.”

“Please. Sarcasm doesn’t become you.” Why mention that the queen had preferred her design all along? “We both know that this is the chance of a lifetime for a woman like you.”

Her cheeks flushed again. “What, exactly, is that supposed to mean?”

“Why, only that your name, your career will be made when word gets out, Maria. What else could it possibly mean?”

She was sure that hadn’t been his meaning but why argue about it? The fact was, he had it right. Orders would double. They’d triple! Tiffany would give her a window display; so would Barney’s. Vogue, Vanity Fair, Allure, Elle, Marie Claire… every fashion magazine in the world would camp on her doorstep and the noxious pseudo-Frenchman would be on his knees, begging her to design for L’Orangerie.

If only the court hadn’t sent the prince to give her the news.

“They sent me,” Alex said, as if he’d read her mind, “because they wanted to be sure you understood the full importance of this commission.”

“You mean,” Maria countered sweetly, “because the king thought your illustrious royal presence would impress me.” He grinned. Her gaze on him narrowed. “Too bad your father doesn’t know you as well as I do.”

All at once, Alex was weary of the game. Why in hell had he ever thought he needed to settle scores? He was not a man who enjoyed revenge; God knew there was plenty of opportunity for it in business but he had always seen vengeance-seeking as a low sport. And payback against a woman, even one who really needed to be taught a lesson, suddenly held no appeal.

“What’s your answer?” he said brusquely. He pushed back his sleeve, shot an impatient glance at his watch. “My pilot is standing by. Weather permitting, I want to fly home tonight.”

Maria chewed on her lip. God, the man was arrogant. If only she could tell him what he could do with his offer, but he was right. This would jump-start her career. Nothing she could ever do would match its importance. She had to say ‘yes’, but surely there was a way to do it so she could regain her authority.

“Very well,” she said. “I’ll accept the commission.”

He nodded and reached into the inside breast pocket of his leather jacket.

“Good. I have some papers here …”

“There are certain conditions to be met,” she said as she took the documents from him.

His dark eyebrows rose. “There are, indeed. Dates of approval. A date of completion. An agreement as to what you may and may not discuss with the media—”

“One,” Maria said, “I work alone. If I need an assistant, that person will be of my choosing.”

“I don’t think you understand. This agreement concerns the demands of the—”

“Two, I’ll need some new equipment.” She smiled thinly. “Aristo’s cost. Not mine.”

Alex’s mouth flattened. “You’re fortunate to be getting this commission, Ms. Santos. Perhaps you’ve forgotten that.”

“Three. I do not work well with anyone watching over my shoulder. In other words, I’ll be happy to show my work, as it progresses, to the king and queen at their request—but no one else.”

The muscle in Alex’s jaw jumped to attention. “Is that last directed at me?”

“Four,” Maria said, raising her hand and ticking the point off on her finger, but he had stopped listening.

Who did she think she was, this snippet of a female? He was not of the old school; nobody had to bow to him or bend a knee in a deep curtsy, well, except, of course, on formal occasions of the court, but he was entitled to the respect he had been born to as a prince, the respect he had won as a man—

“If all those conditions are agreeable, I’ll sign your document.”

Alex didn’t answer. He stood watching her from dark, unreadable eyes and felt the tension inside him growing.

He had left Aristo knowing he had to deal with Maria Santos and keep his composure. Nothing more.

Then another thought had come to him. He would bed her again. Right here. Tonight. It was he who would do the seducing this time, if not with his body then with the commission she’d so willingly sold her soul to get. He’d strip her naked, touch her everywhere, kneel between her thighs and take her again and again and again, until she was out of his system.

A moment ago, he’d come full circle. Told himself that plan was crazy. It was not him. Taking a woman out of revenge was beneath him. It was, he’d told himself, enough that she’d know she was getting the commission only because the true winner of the competition was out of the picture.

There’d been that instant of pleasure.

Then she’d taken that instant and crushed it.

Who did she think she was, to make demands of him? Of the royal court? Did she think she had the right to treat him as if he were an errand boy?

“Are you listening to me, Your Highness?”

Alex looked at her. Her eyes glittered with contempt; her very posture confirmed it. Oh yes. She saw him as an errand boy. Not her mark this time. The court’s errand boy.

“I take it you heard my last stipulation,” she said. “I will not deal with you after tonight. Is that clear?”

He could feel his body humming with anger. He wanted to haul her into his arms and shake her. Humiliate her. Conquer her. Strip her of that ridiculous pair of sweats, bare her to his eyes, his hands, his mouth…

He took a step forward. Something of what he felt must have shown in his face because she paled and took a step back. That’s right, he thought coldly. Be afraid of me, Maria. Be afraid of what I’m going to do …

The phone rang. She grabbed it as if it were a lifeline.

“Hello?” She listened, then cleared her throat. “Yes, sí, I know. Yes, I know that, too. I’m sorry you had to wait for my call.” Her eyes swept to Alex; she turned her back as if that would give her the privacy she needed. “Could we discuss this another time?” she said in a low voice.

Alex had moved with her; his eyes, fixed on her, still held that dangerous glitter. Didn’t he understand she needed privacy? Who did he think she was talking to? Joaquin, probably. That almost made her laugh. The voice whining in her ear was her mother’s.