‘Rafe,’ she said, her fingers flying to the base of her throat where he could see a small pulse hammering.
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ he said, with a disdainful curl of his lips. ‘I haven’t come here for sex.’
‘Oh? Then why have you come here?’
She tilted her chin in a defiant gesture and suddenly Rafe wondered how he could have been so dense. Of course she was someone—hadn’t that been apparent from the start? A diamond in the rough—that had been his initial reaction on seeing her and he had been right. And when he stopped to think about it, her high-born status had been apparent in every gesture she made. It had been there in the way she moved and the way she walked. In her flawless skin and heart-shaped face and the thick, lustrous bounce of her hair. She was a princess. Of course she was. A runaway virgin princess who had chosen him as her first lover.
Why?
‘I’m still trying to get my head around what happened last night,’ he said. ‘About the fact that you let a virtual stranger take your virginity. And wondering if there’s anything else you’ve omitted to tell me?’
Sophie went very still, because something in his eyes told her the game was up—but still she clung to her fake freedom for a few last, precious seconds. She tried to convince herself it was her own guilty conscience making her think he’d found out who she really was—but that was impossible. Just because he’d been deep inside her body the night before, didn’t mean he’d suddenly developed the ability to read her mind, did it? How could he possibly know?
‘Like what?’ she questioned nonchalantly.
Her words seemed to make something inside him snap and he took a step towards her. ‘Oh, sweetheart,’ he said softly. ‘Why do women find it impossible to give a straight answer? Why is deceit always their default setting? I gave you the chance to tell me the truth, but surprise surprise—you chose not to take it. I’m talking about the fact that you’re a princess—and that the world’s press know you’re here.’
‘No,’ she whispered, her fingers moving from her neck to her lips.
‘Yes,’ he said grimly.
She shook her head. ‘They can’t know. I’ve been here for months and been left in peace. How...how did they find out?’
‘Apparently, the woman who runs the store at Corksville recognised you.’
And Sophie could have wept. How could she have been so stupid? Why hadn’t she just behaved the same way she’d always behaved with her nondescript clothes and her hair hidden beneath a big hat? But, no. Rafe Carter had returned and the lure of feminine pride had been too strong to resist. For once she’d worn a dress. For once she’d applied mascara and left her hair loose. Vanity and desire had been her downfall. She had discarded her habitual disguise and someone had identified her. She had nobody to blame but herself.
But her regret was fleeting. There was no time for regrets. No time for anything except to work out what she did next.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘It’s a bit late for that,’ he snapped.
‘What else do you expect me to say?’ she said, and walked back inside her bedroom. ‘Excuse me. I have a lot to do.’
But Rafe had followed her and was reaching out to catch hold of her wrist, and even in the middle of all her confusion and fear—even in the middle of all that—she could still feel her hotly instinctive response to his touch. She wanted him to pull her close. To kiss her again. To put his tongue inside her mouth and his erection deep inside her body and make her feel all those things he’d made her feel last night.
‘What I can’t work out is how you got here,’ he bit out. ‘A royal princess travelling all the way from Isolaverde to the east coast of Australia without anyone knowing.’
Sophie snatched her hand away and stared at the faint imprint his fingers had left on her wrist. Her journey here seemed like a dream now. Like something out of an adventure film. But why not tell him? Surely it would reinforce the fact that she had been brave and resilient—and she could be those things all over again if only she believed in herself.
‘The man I was meant to marry made another woman pregnant.’
‘So my assistant just informed me.’
Sophie’s mouth pleated in dismay as she experienced that old familiar feeling of people talking about her behind her back. ‘It was the biggest outrage to happen in years and everyone seemed to have an opinion about it,’ she continued. ‘It was claustrophobic on the island and I knew I had to get away. No bodyguards or ladies-in-waiting, or people fussing round me. I just wanted to be on my own for the first time in my life, to lick my wounds and decide what I wanted to do next. But more than that, I wanted to feel like a normal person for once. To shake off all the royal trappings and do something on my own.’
‘I’m not interested in the pop psychology behind your actions,’ he said coldly. ‘More the practicalities.’
‘My brother was away on a hunting trip,’ she said slowly. ‘So I left him a note saying I was leaving and not to try to find me. And then I persuaded one of the palace pilots to fly me to the west coast of the USA.’
He frowned. ‘How the hell did you persuade him to do that?’
She shrugged. ‘It shouldn’t take too much of a stretch of your imagination to work it out. I made it worth his while.’
‘Of course you did. And you would have needed to pay him a lot of money,’ he said cynically. ‘Since presumably smuggling you out of there meant the end of his flying career at the palace?’
‘I didn’t force him to agree!’ She felt a sudden flicker of rebellion. ‘He was happy to do it.’
‘So what happened next?’ he said, in a hard voice.
‘He took me to one of the smaller Californian ports and introduced me to a friend of his—a man named Travis Matthews—who had a boat big enough to cross the Pacific. And that’s what I did.’
Now he was staring at her in disbelief. ‘You crossed the Pacific?’
‘I’m a good sailor,’ she said defensively. ‘I love boats more than anything. And there was a crew of six, so I was just an extra. It took us weeks. It was...’
As her voice faltered he frowned. ‘It was what?’
Sophie swallowed. This had been the bit she hadn’t counted on. The bit which had soothed her wounded ego and hurt pride and put it all in perspective. The sheer beauty of being that far out at sea—the ever-changing ocean and the bright stars at night. And a sense of freedom she’d never known before. It had been a heady experience and one she would never forget.
She looked at the sculpted lines of Rafe’s hard face, at the steely grey eyes, which last night had darkened with hunger, yet today were glittering with fury. Why tell him things which would bore him rigid? Stick to the facts, she told herself fiercely. The practicalities.
‘It was an interesting experience,’ she said.
‘And when you got to Australia? What then?’
She shrugged. ‘We docked at Cairns where Travis had a contact of his pick me up and drive me out this way. En route I stopped off at a store and bought an entire new wardrobe.’
‘Discount clothes?’ he questioned