He knew he wasn’t serious, and it made him smile to think about it.
But his smile died as he came face-to-face with Abby in the hallway. She stared at him and he stared at her and neither of them said a word, as though both were judging what to make of the other after their unusual meeting earlier that morning.
He studied her, trying to place her in a category for more comfortable judgment. She was pretty, but very young, her body nicely rounded but slender. Her long blond hair hung straight as a silk banner down her back, reaching almost to her cute little derriere. She looked like a university coed, or a throwback to the Summer of Love. He could picture her dancing to psychedelic music, spinning with a dreamy look on her face and her hair flying behind her.
“So you weren’t just a midnight fantasy after all,” he said at last.
Her dark eyes flashed and suddenly she didn’t look so young. “Of course not,” she said, her voice ripe with disdain.
“Still, that leaves us with a question hanging in the air,” he noted cynically. “What the hell are you doing here?”
CHAPTER TWO
ABBY stared into Prince Mychale’s mocking gaze for a long moment without even trying to answer his question. Something told her that, if she wasn’t careful, this could turn out very differently from her fantasy picture of a few moments ago. Drawing in a quick breath, she turned on her heel and began to walk down the hall.
“Come this way,” she said crisply over her shoulder. “I made you some breakfast.”
He had to grin at her high-handed manner. It was so obviously bravado, but why not? She needed to maintain a sense of herself and she’d come up against royalty. This was certainly better than the cringing tone some took around him. He had to admire her nerve.
So he followed, enjoying the way the length of her hair teased the rounded seat of her snug designer jeans, though he was a little too jaded to have his head turned by such simple pleasures. At least, that was what he was telling himself as he walked along with his gaze glued to the pertinent part of her anatomy.
She opened the door to the breakfast room. Floor-to-ceiling windows brought in a flood of light despite the rain. When he was young, this had been his favorite room in the house, the place where he’d read voraciously from the chalet library while the kitchen staff supplied him with drinks and snacks, along with the occasional lecture from Milly, the family cook, in the proper food etiquette for princes. She had a few helpful words for his choice of reading material a time or two as well. He remembered when she’d found a risqué magazine he’d hidden between the pages of his history book. The place had erupted like Vesuvius that day. Even his eyebrows had felt singed.
Memories flooded him for a moment, bringing on a certain melancholy. Where were all those servants now? They’d been like family back then, closer to him than his father and brothers who were off fighting while he was still in school. The house seemed an empty echo chamber without them.
But never mind. He had this lovely young woman instead, much as she tended to puzzle him, especially as he looked at the breakfast she’d prepared.
“Why?” he asked, his tone appropriately bemused.
She glanced back as she went into the kitchen to get the coffee urn. “You have to eat.”
She was right. That still didn’t explain why she should be the one to feed him, but she was right. He surveyed the room narrowly, but he was ravenous. He hadn’t had anything for over twenty-four hours. And the things she’d laid out on the table looked great.
“You didn’t put knockout drops in the coffee, did you?” he asked as he sat down at the table and watched her pour the dark liquid into his porcelain cup.
She grunted, flashing him a sideways glance. “You’ve already slept long enough.”
As though she resented it! He looked up at her and shook his head. If she really was as young as he’d presumed, she didn’t seem to know it. She was acting like a stern school- teacher, or even dear old Milly.
He frowned, remembering how she’d felt in his bed just a few hours before. That lithe body writhing beneath him hadn’t given a hint of her autocratic side. And just the thought of it made him want to study her rather delicious form more closely. He glanced in her direction, admiring the way her light sweater clung to the generous swell of her breasts. One look and he was reacting like a teenager. Clearing his throat, he carefully reined in his libido and regained control of his incorrigible imagination.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” he noted dryly, taking a sip of the hot coffee and wincing at the sting. “But I’m the homeowner, aren’t I? And you’re the housebreaker? Or do I have that switched somehow?”
“I haven’t broken a thing,” she countered indignantly. “And I’m being very nice to you. Don’t forget about not biting the hand that feeds you.”
“With ingredients from my own pantry, no doubt,” he muttered as he savored a bite of the cinnamon roll. It was melt-in-your-mouth great, he had to admit. The woman could bake, at least. “Unless you brought along some supplies of your own?” He looked up in an ironic bit of challenge.
She had the grace to color slightly. “No, not really. Except for the eggs.”
She’d brought along her own eggs. Somehow that didn’t sound like your average housebreaker. More like a squatter, perhaps. That thought gave him a second of pause, but he dismissed it out of hand. She was no squatter. She was here for a reason. He had no doubt he would find out what that reason was, eventually.
“If you’re not a housebreaker, how did you get in?” he asked curiously.
For the first time, a look of pure guilt flashed in her eyes. She hesitated and he could almost see the decision-making process as it took place and she tossed out the excuses that first came to her in order to tell the truth.
“When I was young, we would come up here when the Royal family left. We…well, we figured out how to get in.”
He stared, appalled at the nerve. “You little thieves!”
“No! Oh, no, we never took anything.” Her eyes radiated complete honesty and despite his usually cynical nature, he reluctantly bought it fairly quickly. Still, that was a danger signal and he knew it.
“We just…absorbed the atmosphere.” She hugged herself, looking around the room, letting memories creep back. The war had seemed far away, but they were all aware of it looming off in the distance, like a dark cloud menacing the horizon. Larona, the village, was divided, just as the country was, but most there backed the royal family. After all, they had lived among them for generations. “We tried to imagine what it would be like to be princesses,” she added softly.
“Who’s ‘we’?” he asked gruffly, breaking off another piece of roll and savoring it.
She looked surprised. “My sister and I.” And a very young Gregor Narna. But she didn’t need to bring him into this. Memories of her sister were troubling enough.
Gregor had been the instigator of the break- ins. His father was the village veterinarian so he’d accompanied him here to the château many times to care for one or another of the horses that had been kept here in those days. Gregor himself was on a fast track to medical school, even then.
“Someday I’ll have a house like this,” he would tell his wide-eyed audience of two as they wandered through the rooms and spoke in whispers, just in case. “Just wait and see.”
How Julienne had laughed at him.