“So that’s it then, you’re an open book?”
“I have nothing to hide. More to the point, I can’t have anything to hide. If I did, it would be put out in the public eye. I’m a public commodity,” he ground out, a bitterness tingeing his words. “I exercise discretion in certain areas of my life, naturally. I don’t announce when I take a lover, for example, though all tabloids will imply it. You, on the other hand—you have secrets.”
“You think you have me figured out?”
A smile curved his lips. Wicked. Dangerous. “No. Not at all.”
“Well, that’s good. I would hate to be thought of as predictable.”
“You aren’t predictable in the least. Not down to what you’ll wear on a given day,” he said, his eyes on her hat.
“That makes you interesting. It makes me wonder.” His eyes met hers and she felt a jolt in her system. “It makes me want to discover all of your secrets.”
His made goose bumps break out on her arms. Low and husky, with the kind of accent usually only found in her late-night fantasies. And his eyes … dark and rich, like chocolate. A bitter, intense sort of chocolate.
Her favorite.
She swallowed and tried to slow the beating of her heart. “I live in North Dakota when I’m not traveling, as you already know. I don’t own pets. I like clothes. And I do a really dorky celebration dance when I beat my own high scores on computer games.” She tried to smile. “Open book.”
“I would like to see the dance. But I also don’t believe you.”
“I do the dance. But I won’t do it for you.”
“No, I believe you do it.” His eyes locked with hers, the perception in them, the sudden seriousness, unnerving her. “I just don’t believe you’re an open book.”
“And I can’t believe you care. You don’t have time to worry about me or my idiosyncrasies, Prince Stavros, you have a wife to find.”
“No, you have a wife to find. Deliver her to me when you do.”
She laughed, trying to dispel the tension. “That’s the plan. Although, I have to do a bit more than deliver. You have to agree with my selection.”
“I admit I liked the look of … Victoria, was that her name?”
“Um … yes.” She bent down and picked her purse up, hunting for her iPad.
“It’s fine. You don’t need to get her picture out. I remember.”
Was that jealousy? That hot, burning sensation in her stomach? Yes. It very likely was. Ridiculous. She wanted him to like Victoria. Victoria was a fabulous candidate. “Victoria would probably like to meet you here in Greece. She was disappointed that work conflicted with the wedding.”
“What happened to your speed-dating idea?”
“I’ll get a couple of other girls out as well, just to keep the pressure off. But if I—and by I, I mean you—fly them to Greece they deserve more than fifteen minutes of your time.”
“Agreed.”
“When will you have time?” She looked back down at her bag.
“Get it out if you have to,” he said, his tone grudging.
She leaned down and took her tablet out of her purse and opened the flap on the cover. She opened up the calendar and sat poised with her finger at the ready.
“In the evenings. Dinner dates will do.”
She typed in a quick note. “Would you like to see photographs of the other women I’ll be asking?”
“Not especially.”
She let out an exasperated breath. “If I don’t show them to you, you’ll only accuse me of picking women who aren’t attractive again.”
“You can’t hear a laugh in a picture. And that laugh was unforgivable.”
The look she shot him would have been fatal to a lesser man. “You really are being unkind about the laugh.”
“She sounded like a nervous mouse. And she even lifted her hands up and wiggled her fingers. Like she was waiting for cheese.”
Jessica tried, and failed to suppress a laugh. “That … you … well.”
“I’m right.”
“You’re mean!”
“I’m not mean. It’s one of those things that would eat at me. Day in and day out until one day I divorced her over her laugh and that would be a much bigger unkindness than just not pursuing things from the get go.”
She expelled a breath. “Fine. I won’t push the laugh issue again. You’re entitled to your judgmental opinion.”
“I am,” he said, lowering his hands so that they were gripping the armrests on his chair. He had such big hands. Very big. Oh … dear. What was her problem?
She lowered her head and focused on her computer. “Anyway, I was thinking of asking Cherry Carlisle and Amy Sutton over.” She looked at Stavros, who was affecting a bored expression and staring out the window. “Cherry is a brunette. Amy is a redhead. And Victoria’s a blonde.” He kept his gaze off of her. “It’s actually pretty good because it’s like the setup to your own, personal joke. A blonde, a brunette and a redhead go to Greece.”
He looked at her, the corners of his mouth tipped upward. “To marry the prince. You really are selling this well.”
“I try. Once we land in Greece I’ll coordinate with them and hopefully we can get them there ASAP.”
“You like speaking in acronyms, don’t you?”
She shrugged. “It’s faster.”
“Speaking of, by my very fast math, you’ll be involving six women in this so far. And while I’m under no illusion that we’ll keep the press out of this entirely, I wonder what might happen if one of them ends up feeling … jilted.”
“Oh, they’ve signed a gag order.”
“A gag order?”
“I take my business very seriously and yes, this is tabloid bait. Serious, serious tabloid bait. And I have no interest in feeding you, or me, to the wolves. So I’ve taken pretty big precautions.”
He leaned forward, his interest obviously piqued now. “And what are the consequences if they break the gag order?”
“Their firstborn child. All right, not quite but there are some monetary fees.”
“You are quite deceptive, Ms. Carter.”
“Am I?” she asked, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms beneath her breasts.
“Yes. You seem so sunny. Soft,” he said, his dark eyes settling on her breasts. “And yet … you are cynical. More so even than I am, I think. Which is really quite something.”
She swallowed and angled her face away from him. She could still feel him looking at her. “Call it cynical if you like, I call it realism. Human nature is what human nature is. No matter how much someone thinks they love you, if being with you starts to conflict with their ultimate goals … well, it won’t take much for them to start believing that they don’t love you anymore. That’s why I work to find people who have united goals and interests. Things that are concrete. Much more concrete than love. Whatever that is. I’m a realist, that’s all.”
“Cynic. Realist. Whatever the case, you certainly aren’t soft.”
She shook her head. “No. Being soft hurts too much.”