To her credit, she didn’t try to contest that he’d pegged her strategy right. Now she’d no doubt swerve into new territory.
But she said nothing. Stood silent. Still. Waiting for him to launch into more unchecked responses, to compromise himself more?
He quirked an eyebrow at her. “No more admonishments? Shall I wait until you think of something concise and annihilating? Something to devolve me from worthless to nonexistent?”
Her gaze remained steady. Vacant. It filled him with urgency. He took a step, farther into her aura, struggled not to breathe deeply of her freshness. He stopped before he touched, gathered, crushed. Her stillness and silence sent his senses haywire. He’d had enough unresponsiveness from her to fill ten lifetimes. He’d take no more.
He opened his mouth, not knowing what he’d say. Only she had ever been able to strip him of coherence.
What came out was, “Nothing more to say?”
Memory flooded him of when he’d said those very words to her before, in this very room. Of what had followed them. And…Dio.
He watched as a jolt emptied her lungs and vulnerability flooded her eyes. Had the memory hit her as hard as it had him? Why would it, if that encounter hadn’t meant much to her, if her emotions had never truly been involved? Could it be there had always been another explanation, one he’d hoped for all these years?
Temptation became an ache, to demand she put him out of his misery once and for all, to reenact the rest.
Exhaling, hoping to purge the irrationality her nearness always afflicted him with, he gestured toward the sitting arrangement behind them.
She didn’t move. After seconds of her ignoring his unspoken invitation, he exhaled again, walked around her. With all he had, he refrained from brushing against her. He still felt as if her essence followed him, enveloped him, its crisp sweetness filling his lungs, the charge of attraction sparking over his skin. Setting his teeth, he snatched a remote off the coffee table, pushed a button as he descended heavily onto the two-seater.
Ernesto appeared at the door in seconds.
The older man’s shrewd gaze took in the situation before turning disapproving eyes on…him? What the…?
Tamping down the ridiculous urge to protest that this tense scene was her fault—past and present—furious that the man who’d practically raised him, who’d seen him at his worst after her desertion should have the temerity to have any doubt of that, he glared back. “See what Phoebe would like, Ernesto. She might talk to you. She seems to be on a speech strike with me.”
Ernesto’s hawklike face grew harsher with displeasure and disappointment, throwing daggers at Leandro’s confused outrage, before softening into fondness and indulgence as he turned to Phoebe. “What would you like, cara mia?”
Cara mia? His dear? Since when? What was going on here?
Before more questions could form, Leandro’s mouth dropped open wider as Phoebe turned a face transformed by affection into the heart-melting one he remembered, and gave Ernesto a tremulous smile that would shake the foundations of a metropolis. “Grazie, Ernesto. Anything. You always know what I like better than I do.”
After the two people who had—had had, in Phoebe’s case—the most emotional influence on his life exchanged one more glance that left Leandro feeling like an outcast, Ernesto walked out.
As soon as the door closed, Leandro’s gaze swung to Phoebe, eager to see softness still possessing her face. But her features had settled back into that mask of impassiveness.
Disappointment roared through him. “Very touching. The affection feels very established and ongoing, too. Are you going to tell me what’s been happening behind my back? Or should I take it up with Ernesto?”
He’d bet lesser men had shriveled up under the brunt of such a look as the one she gave him in answer.
He leaned forward, the better for his resentment to collide with her disdain. “Come here, Phoebe.”
He counted three booming heartbeats, during which she remained unmoving before he ground out, “If you insist on testing the limits of my patience, do remain standing there. And if you insist on playing the prim and proper emissary, do call me ex-Prince D’Agostino. I’ve earned the title the hard way, after all.”
“And you want to earn the removal of the ex part in an even harder way?”
“Ah, there you are. I knew you had plenty more to say.”
He’d thought she’d clam up again when she murmured, “Not if you don’t start behaving in a civilized and professional manner.”
His mouth twisted with a jumble of irritation and stimulation. “There’s another thing I have to warn you about. My severe allergic reaction to conditions and ultimatums.”
Just when he thought she might turn on her heel and walk out, she moved. Forward. Nearer. One prowling stride after the other.
By the time she was standing about two steps away, his mind had hurtled into wish fulfillment, dreaming of bringing her down to straddle him, grinding her heat against his hardness…
Before he dragged her down himself, he bit out, “Sit down, Phoebe.”
She finally did, in one downward sweep of grace and self-possession. On the far side of the couch, on its very edge. As if preparing to spring up and away at his least movement.
“Sit back, Phoebe, relax. Anyone would think you’re afraid I’ll pounce on you. Which is strange when you come to think of it, since you once wanted nothing more than for me to do so.”
She turned on him, and…Dio. A tigress baring her fangs before slashing a tormentor’s head off wouldn’t have been more magnificent, more stunning. More effective.
He didn’t know how he didn’t pounce on her.
“Okay,” she hissed. “Let’s get it all out in the open and out of the way and be done with these juvenile, infringing, lascivious allusions. We had a sexual liaison a lifetime ago. It ended. We moved on. Eight years later, we’re different people, and not only doesn’t today have anything to do with the past, this has nothing to do with us as individuals. I’m not Phoebe to your Leandro here. I’m Ms. Alexander, international law consultant and diplomatic troubleshooter for the Kingdom of Castaldini, present in my professional capacity to negotiate the acceptance of crown-prince status with ex-Prince D’Agostino.”
He stared at her. He’d wanted hot and harsh? He should have prayed he didn’t get what he wished for. He was so engorged now, his jeans might be causing him permanent damage.
Act or no act, the verdict was in. Whatever he remembered of her effect on him had been diluted by time. Or she’d grown a hundred times more potent with maturity. He’d bet on the latter.
Which was weird. He’d thought the malleable, eventempered Phoebe his ideal woman. So why was he finding the guns-blazing, machete-tongued Phoebe far more attractive? He’d never found anything to tolerate in cold, cutting women, let alone something to arouse him to the point of pain. So why did he find her sub-zero bluntness the epitome of overpowering femininity? Especially when she’d just finished confirming everything he’d tormented himself with since she’d walked out on him: That he’d been no more than a sexual liaison to her? That she’d moved on, no problem?
And she wasn’t even finished yet.
He watched as she drew in a breath, the exquisiteness of her face preparing for the next salvo.
He couldn’t wait to be blasted to pieces.
Phoebe felt her heart stumbling in her chest like a panicked horse trying to gallop on slippery ice.