She blew out a sharp blast of air. “I’m sorry. I guess it was all too much. I’m not cut out to be relaxed. It freaks me out.”
Sebastian’s look of concern eased into a grin. “You’re a real New Yorker. You’d rather resist than relax.”
“I’m from Connecticut,” she protested.
“Same thing.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“See, you want to fight me already.”
“I do not!” She shifted her grip on the ring. How had this man managed to so thoroughly unhinge her?
“Oh, yeah?” He shoved his hand in the water and splashed her. Hard.
She splashed back and kicked with her feet, showering him completely with water until he ducked below the surface.
He rose up, laughing. “See what I mean?”
She shoved another wave of water at him. Damn. He was right. She felt better already.
She could even stare right at his handsome face with the water streaming over its hard lines and feel…almost normal.
“Do you surrender?” she challenged.
“Caspians never surrender.”
“Honor Omnia Vincit, and all that.” Her eyes wandered to the tattoo circling his thick bicep.
“Exactly. And since I am a man of honor, I’ll help you out of the water. I think we’ve both had enough hydrotherapy for one afternoon.” His black hair hung in his eyes, dripping with water.
He looked very unroyal.
And devastatingly handsome.
“It’s okay. I can swim. I grew up in a coastal town. In Connecticut.” She dodged his offered hand and darted around him, diving under and pulling hard for the stone steps twenty feet along the dock.
As she climbed out of the water she sensed his eyes on her. She adjusted her scanty bikini, not that it made much difference. His steady dark gaze threatened to evaporate the water right off her.
This was so wrong.
A strange noise pierced the air. It took her a full five seconds to realize it was her cell phone. She dived for it, dragging her sarong over her bare legs.
Patrick. His work number. He’d called three times this morning just to “see how she was.”
How could she talk to him now, while her inside pulsed with desire for another man?
Guilt speared through her as she pushed the button to send him straight to voice mail.
“Now can we see the files? I’m kind of a workaholic, so I get neurotic if I’m not allowed to work.”
“You are working. You are my assistant and you are assisting me in enjoying my day.” His arrogant expression dared her to argue.
She fought the urge to laugh. Obnoxious jerk!
And he was right, too, which made it worse.
She sucked in a deep breath and tried to compose herself. All she had to do was survive her two weeks’ notice without doing anything stupid, then she could get on with the rest of her life.
“Do you have jeans?” His question yanked her back to the present.
“Yes.”
“Great.”
He shrugged his white linen shirt back on, right over his wet skin. It clung to his ripped chest in a very disturbing way. She was still attempting to tear her gaze from the sight when he looked up. “What are you waiting for?”
“What am I supposed to be doing?”
“Getting your jeans.”
“Oh.”
Sebastian looked at her as if she’d lost a cog or two. He was right. Of course, it was all his fault.
“I’ll, uh, be right back.” She strode into the palace, hoping she could find her way to her room.
In the wide, colonnaded hallway she passed the queen, who was talking at top speed on a cell phone. Despite her damp and seminaked appearance, Tessa prepared her brightest smile. Her Royal Majesty glanced up but didn’t make any acknowledgment.
Ouch.
What did she expect? She was Sebastian’s assistant, not a visiting princess. Get over yourself already.
Six
Sebastian drove through the gates that kept the rest of Caspia outside the palace walls. He negotiated his Land Rover through the narrow cobbled streets with expert ease, pausing for an occasional chat through the window.
“I think it’s really nice that the royal family is so intimate with the people,” Tessa remarked. She thought, too, that Sebastian seemed more relaxed here than in New York. There he often looked tense and rushed.
“Ha. It drives my mother crazy. She prefers to maintain a majestic distance. But my dad and I like people too much. We couldn’t be cool and distant if we tried.”
He leaned out the window to beckon a flower seller, then exchanged one of Caspia’s large, colorful banknotes for a ribbon-tied bunch of pink, bell-shaped flowers.
He handed it to Tessa.
Now he was giving her flowers?
“Smell them.”
She wanted to laugh. Typical of Sebastian to buy her flowers then order her to smell them.
She buried her nose in the soft petals. “Mmm. They smell like honey.”
“Our Caspian honey smells like these flowers. It’s the most delicious honey in the world.”
“Of course it is.” She grinned. “Is there anything in Caspia that isn’t the best in the world?”
Sebastian turned to her—while continuing to speed along a windy, narrow stretch of road—and gave her an incredulous look. “You’ve spent a day here. Surely you know the answer to that already.” He faced front again and she loosened her grip on the door handle. “We’re headed for the place where these flowers grow, in the cool and shady crevices of our mountains.”
“Let me guess, they’re the most beautiful mountains in the world?”
Sebastian stared straight ahead as he drove. “You’re catching on.”
The Land Rover climbed toward the sky, bumping along a narrow, unpaved track. Grasses and wildflowers grew sparser as they rose through the rugged terrain, past the occasional grazing goat.
When it seemed as if surely they’d scrape the roof of the car on the hovering white clouds, he screeched to a stop in a cloud of dust.
“Jump out.”
She did. And it was quite a jump, onto loose shale. She skidded then got her footing on the desolate crag they’d ascended. She was about to make a crack along the lines of “where’s the royal pavilion?” when she looked up and the view made words shrivel on her tongue.
The land descended right from her toes in a sweeping cascade of rock, grass and flowers still brilliant in the dusk. A wide plain of grazed meadows punctuated the dramatic slope, then the land descended again to the city, where the red clay roofs of the ancient buildings hugged the hillside as it ringed the harbor.
“We’re two thousand feet above sea level.”
The ocean, far below, crinkled and twinkled in the setting sun. She could make out the dots of bright colored fishing boats returning to the harbor, and others setting out for the night’s catch.
Smoke