“Such formality, Maria. You were hardly so proper the last time we were together.”
She knew his choice of words was deliberate. She felt her face heat; she couldn’t help that but she damned well didn’t have to let him lure her into a verbal sparring match.
“I’ll ask you once more, Your Highness. What do you want?”
“Ask me in and I’ll tell you.”
“I have no intention of asking you in. Tell me why you’re here or don’t. It’s your choice, just as it will be my choice to shut the door in your face.”
He laughed. It infuriated her but she could hardly blame him. He was tall—six two, six three—and though he stood with one shoulder leaning against the door frame, hands tucked casually into the pockets of the jacket, his pose was deceptive. He was strong, with the leanly muscled body of a well-trained athlete.
She remembered his body with painful clarity. The feel of him under her hands. The power of him moving over her. The taste of him on her tongue.
Suddenly, he straightened, his laughter gone. “I have not come this distance to stand in your doorway,” he said coldly, “and I am not going to leave until I am ready to do so. I suggest you stand aside and stop behaving like a petulant child.”
A petulant child? Was that what he thought? This man who had spent hours making love to her and had then accused her of—of trading her body for profit?
Except, it had not been love, it had been sex. And the sooner she got rid of him, the better.
She let go of the door knob and stepped aside. “You have five minutes.”
He strolled past her, bringing cold air and the scent of the night with him. She swung toward him, arms folded. He reached past her, pushed the door closed, then folded his arms, too. She wanted to open the door again but she’d be damned if she was going to get into a who’s-in-charge-here argument with him. She was in charge, and he would surely see a tussle over the ground rules as a sign of weakness.
Instead, she looked past him at the big clock above her work table.
“Ten seconds gone,” she said briskly. “You’re wasting time, Your Highness.”
“What I have to say will take longer than five minutes.”
“Then you’ll just have to learn to economize. More than five minutes, I’ll call the police.”
Instantly, his hand was wrapped around her wrist. He tugged her toward him, his dark chocolate eyes almost black with anger.
“You do that. And I’ll tell every tabloid shark I can contact about how Maria Santos tried to buy a five-hundred-thousand-dollar commission by seducing a prince.” He smiled thinly. “They’ll lap it up.”
She blanched, but she kept her chin up and her eyes on his.
“Don’t try to scare me with lies! You can’t afford that kind of gossip.”
“I’ve learned to endure that kind of gossip, Ms. Santos. It’s part of my life. Besides, I’m the righteous prince who discovered what you wanted and tossed you out on your backside.” Another of those cold smiles twisted his lips. “They’ll eat you alive. How do you think that will go over with the handful of reputable clients you’ve somehow managed to snare?”
Maria yanked her hand free. “!Usted es un cochon!” she hissed. “!Un cochon malnacido!”
“I think not. If I truly were an ill-bred pig, I would have told you exactly what I thought of you eight weeks ago instead of just throwing you out of my apartment.”
Color rushed to her cheeks. She hadn’t figured he understood Spanish but, then, she’d been wrong in every judgment she’d made about this man from the start.
“You did tell me,” she snapped, “and now it’s my pleasure to return the favor. You’re down to four minutes before I call the cops. Dealing with the media will be worth it, if I can just get rid of you.”
“What’s the problem, Maria? Expecting your lover to return?”
“What?”
“Your lover. What did you call him that morning? Joaquin?”
Joaquin. The idea was so ludicrous she almost laughed, but laughter would take more energy than she could spare. Besides, she didn’t have to explain anything.
“Joaquin is none of your business.”
“You’re right, of course.” Alex strolled across the room to the front window and peered out at his limo, waiting at the curb across the street. “But I had a front-row seat for your little welcome home this evening. You can’t blame me for being curious.”
Maria rushed to the window. A front-row seat? Impossible. The Prince of Arrogance would surely not have stood in the cold and the snow, watching her window…
The big car. It was his. Furious, she swung toward her unwelcome guest.
“You were sitting out there, spying on me?”
“You might want to consider curtains,” he said with lazy self-assurance.
“You—you …” She pointed a finger at the door. “Get out of my home!”
Alex didn’t move. Instead, he tucked his hands in the slash pockets of his jacket and gave her a long look, starting at her feet and working slowly up to her face. She certainly wasn’t dressed like a woman waiting for her lover to come back. Not in a pair of baggy sweats that had seen better days. There was a hole in one knee, what looked like a burn in the shirt just below her collarbone. Her feet were bare, her hair a wild mass of curls.
His belly knotted.
Her hair had been like that the last time he’d seen her, a tumble of long, glorious curls falling around her heart-shaped face. She’d been wearing his robe; she’d been lost in it and somehow that had made her look even sexier, maybe because he’d known, intimately, what was beneath that robe. The delicate, golden-hued skin. The small, uptilted breasts. The slim curve of her waist, the surprisingly feminine richness of her hips.
Her face had been sexy, too. Glowing eyes. Dewy skin. No make-up, not even lipstick, though her mouth had been rosy and softly swollen from his kisses.
She had looked—what did the French call it? Déshabillé. As if she had just come from bed.
Which she had. His bed. His bed and his possession, and that memory was enough to do more than make his belly knot. It sent a bolt of pure lust straight to his loins.
He still wanted her.
It had taken the sight of her in a scruffy sweatshirt and baggy sweatpants before he’d permitted himself to admit it. What man wanted to acknowledge he still desired a woman who’d tried to use him?
One who was a fool, he told himself. And then he thought, no. Hell, no. That wasn’t it at all. Maria Santos owed him and that was her fault, not his. She had lured him into bed. Seduced him, though he’d thought he was the one doing the seducing.
She’d plotted everything, from that supposedly accidental meeting on the street to the moment he’d first kissed her. The only thing surprising about that night was that she’d been able to keep from smirking triumphantly when he’d asked her to come home with him.
She’d made a fool of him, and she still owed him for that. Owed him big time, as the Americans said. And until that debt was paid, the memory of his humiliation would continue to haunt him.
He had no doubt what it would take to expunge that memory.
Her,