He stopped only a few feet away from her. He was so close he could smell the soft scent of whatever fragrance she wore. It wasn’t the powerful come-get-me scent that he’d smelled on so many women he’d met. No, this was lighter, with a sweet, musky aroma instead of a heavy floral one. He liked it. A lot. He also liked how she was looking up at his six-foot-two-inch frame now.
“Sam will be attending the press conference as well. The two of you can leave afterward,” he stated.
Then Kris did something he rarely ever did while in someone’s company. He slipped both hands into his front pant pockets. It was a casual stance, one that did not equate to the role of a leader.
“I wouldn’t want to impose,” she said.
Her voice had changed. It was subtle and he doubted even she realized it, but Kris did. There was a smoky tinge to her words and just as he made that realization, she licked her lips. His body tensed.
“She’s the president of the tourism board—it’s her duty to welcome all tourists to the island,” Kris told her and instinctively took another step closer.
“Why?” she asked and he paused. “Why did you ask her to show me around? You know I’m not technically a tourist. I’m here to work for Malayka.”
“I know why you’re here.”
“Then why did you insist I come to dinner? You did that, didn’t you? The housekeeper—”
“Ingrid,” he interrupted.
She nodded. “Ingrid said I was supposed to be ready at six, that I was expected at dinner. She was in the hall waiting when I left your office earlier today, as if she knew I would be coming out. Why didn’t you invite Malayka’s hair stylist and makeup artist? Why only me?”
Kris did not have the answers to any of her questions. Another first for him. He had instructed Ingrid to tell her about dinner. All he’d known at that time was that he’d wanted to see her again. Just as he hadn’t been able to stop looking at her pictures all week, Kris now couldn’t keep his eyes off her. While his more official thought had been that he wanted to know everything there was to know about Malayka’s staff, it was Landry, in particular, who had awakened something in him.
“You don’t care for dinner? Is that why you’re questioning me?” he asked.
She smiled then, a slow and deliberate action.
“You don’t want to answer my question,” she said. “That’s fine. Still, I don’t want to impose on anyone. I’ll do some sightseeing whenever I’m not working, but I don’t think I need a guide.”
“What do you need?”
The question was quick and impulsive. Her response was even quicker and bold. Yes, Kris thought as he sucked in a quick breath when she’d taken that step closing the distance between them, it was damn bold.
“Why?” she asked. “What do you need, Prince Kristian?”
He stared at her for much longer than he figured a smooth and charismatic man should. Then again, those had never been traits Kris possessed. He was the mature prince, the serious one who was all business, all the time. But he’d never done business with a woman who looked and smiled like Landry Norris. None of his dealings were filled with the scent she wore, or the sound of Landry Norris’s voice. And nobody, not even the women he’d dated over the years, whether for convenience or for political reasons, had ever made him lose track of what he should be doing.
Yet, his response to her was simple and came as naturally as his next breath. Kris touched a finger to her chin, tilting her head up farther. Her lips parted slightly as her hazel eyes stared back at him. He leaned in closer, wanting desperately to see those eyes filled with lust. Wanting, even more hungrily, to touch his lips to hers, to taste the sweetness of her.
He shouldn’t.
He couldn’t.
He was a breath away. She leaned into him, her arms remaining straight by her side. Her lips were still parted, her tongue beyond them, teasing and tempting him.
He was the crown prince. She worked for the woman who planned to marry his father.
He couldn’t.
Kris closed his eyes and leaned in just another inch or so, until her warm breath smelling of the sweet crêpes they’d just had for dessert fanned over his face. He inhaled the aroma, feeling the heat of desire swelling in the pit of his stomach.
* * *
What was she doing? Was she completely out of her mind?
Why on earth had she thought the crown prince of this beautiful island would want to kiss her? They’d only met hours earlier. It was ridiculous. Presumptuous and possibly career ending if she were to be kicked off the island. Malayka was exactly the type to spread vicious rumors. And since this one would have a great amount of truth to it, Malayka would happily report back to everyone she knew in the United States.
Landry sighed, letting her head lull back against the door to her room, which she’d slammed closed and locked a few minutes after she’d left Prince Kristian and run all the way to her temporary sanctuary.
She was such a screwup.
Impulsive. Headstrong. Opinionated. Mouthy.
All words Landry had heard before in reference to her personality.
“Men don’t want women who push too hard, Landry. They want someone agreeable and calm spirited.”
Those were Astelle Norris’s famous words to her daughter. They were famous because she’d spoken them more times than Landry could count.
“Wives are submissive to their husbands,” Astelle would continue as she sat at the kitchen table doing some chore she thought wifely. Like snapping green beans for dinner or sewing socks so that her husband Heinz Norris’s toes wouldn’t poke through as he stood in the pulpit of the Baptist church where he pastored.
Landry could feel her eyes rolling back in her head as she recalled one of the more popular disagreements she’d had over the years with her mother.
“I’m not doing any man’s bidding. He can cook just like I can and he can go out and buy himself a new pair of socks if his have holes in them. I don’t have to be subservient to get and keep a man,” was Landry’s typical response.
Astelle, with her thinning, but still long silver-gray hair, only shook her head. “It doesn’t make you less of a woman, Landry. It makes you a good woman.”
“To who?” Landry had asked. “If I give a man that much control over me, who am I any good to? My future daughters will only see that their mother is so fragile and clueless that she can’t do anything without permission from a man? My future sons will grow up believing they rule the world, not for their brains or intuition, but because they have a penis so it should be so?”
In a rare display of anger, Astelle had stood quickly, dropping the beans she’d held into a large yellow bowl as she glared at her daughter through tired gray eyes. “I’ve never been clueless, Landry Diane Norris. I graduated at the top of my class at Brighton Business School and I worked in a law office for the first five years of my marriage until my husband finished school and received his PhD. I came home and started a family where I took care of my children and the head of my household. Six productive and intelligent people were brought into this world because of me and all the lessons I’ve taught them. My husband is a pillar of this community. He’s a teacher and a confidant and a good provider. I’m just as proud of him as I am of our children. So don’t you stand there after another failed relationship and pretend to know what my life has been like or what may have been better for me. I won’t stand for your disrespect.”