Page 39 of Claimed By the Crown Prince
She gathered up the plates and said brightly, ‘Coffee?’
‘I think I’ll have a digestif...a little whisky.’
Dax got up and helped clear the table, before going over to the drinks cabinet and pouring himself a measure of whisky.
Laia made coffee and went out to the deck to see if some air might help her regain some composure. There was a full moon casting a milky glow over the dark forest and the sea beyond. The lights of the fishermen shone in the distance.
She sensed Dax coming to stand near her. After that conversation Laia felt as if her skin had been peeled back to reveal a tender under-layer. She felt even more acutely aware of him, felt her blood humming under sensitive skin.
The intense heat of the day was gone, and in its place was the night-time cloak of tropical warmth. Laia turned around and rested back against the wooden railing. She looked at Dax and her heart tripped.
She said, ‘You aren’t at all what I expected.’
He turned towards her and hitched a hip onto the thick wood. ‘What did you expect?’
‘A petulant spoiled playboy with the attention span of a gnat.’
Dax made a face. ‘A little unfair.’
Laia was indignant. ‘You’ve admitted that you cultivated that reputation.’
He had the grace to look a little sheepish.
‘Except now I get the impression that you’re at a fork in the road,’ she went on. ‘You can’t keep up the playboy façade...you’ve already started to retire it. People are wondering what’s going on. What’s next for Prince Dax?’
Laia could see that he didn’t like being questioned.
He took a sip of whisky. Looked at her. ‘Maybe I’m ready to out myself as a serious businessman?’
But not a husband and father.
Before she could quiz him any more he said, ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you...what was going on with you that night in the club in Monte Carlo? You were on your own, lost to the world...you’d obviously stayed up past your bedtime.’
Laia felt a little jolt. The fact that he’d noticed her in that moment made her feel a little emotional.
She gave a little shrug. ‘I guess I wanted to not be me for a moment. To pretend that I was someone else. Someone without duty and obligations and every second of my life mapped out. Right down to the man I’m supposed to marry, whether I like it or not. I was fantasising that I was just a normal girl...out for the night with endless possibilities in front of me. And then I opened my eyes and there you were.’
‘You didn’t know who I was at first.’
Laia hated it that he’d noticed that. Noticed her little moment of exposure. ‘But then I did.’
‘And you realised I was the Big Bad Wolf so you ran.’
Laia looked at Dax. The man in front of her was the same man who’d been in front of her that night, but this time everything was different.
Very carefully she said, ‘I don’t want to run now.’
‘What did you say?’
But Dax had heard Laia perfectly well, and his body had heard her too. Every muscle was tense with need. His pulse was racing and his blood was hot.
She was looking at him very directly. ‘I said, I don’t want to run now.’
Dax knew he should be cutting this off, walking away, but a devil inside him made him say, ‘Why don’t you want to run?’
Her cheeks went pink, and in the midst of this heightening tension between them Dax had the urge to reach out and run his knuckles down her cheeks. He clenched his hand by his side. His other hand was tight around the glass.
He wasn’t sure how he’d managed to eat and converse like a normal person over dinner, when all he’d been aware of was that slip of a dress and how it draped forward to expose the upper slopes of Laia’s breasts every time she moved.