A Prince's Ransom: Kidnapped by the Billionaire (18 page)

“No. I am done playing your little games. It’s all too much for me to deal with and I’m not giving you another chance. I’ve already given you too many.”

“Allow me to take you and your friend to our countryside villa,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoke, and she glared at him. “Where I will prove to you, once and for all, that I care deeply for you and that I genuinely want you to marry me.”

Tara dropped the sheets of her bed immediately, astounded by his suggestion. “The
royal villa
?!”

“No,” Katherine answered without hesitation. “Get out.” Her friend scrambled from her bed.

“Kat, Kat,
please
—you have no idea what sort of opportunity this is! It’ll just be for a few days, right?”

“Of course,” Eric agreed, amused again.

“And… and I’ve been so worried. Do it for me! Just a few days!”

Katherine looked at her suspiciously. “You were glad when you thought I went back to school sick, weren’t you?”

Tara’s cheeks colored. “Of course not! How could you say that, I was worried sick! So please do this for me! You know how hard I worked to save for this trip, how hard my mom had to work…please, I’ll never ask you for anything. But I’ll never have another chance like this in my life.”

Kat broke at the pleading look in her friend’s eyes. She knew what Tara really couldn’t say, would
never
say because she was such a good person with a kind heart. But the connections Tara could make at the royal family’s villa—heck, the photos alone of Tara and Katherine and Eric all sitting on the royal terrace—those would open doors for Tara that her life back in Pennsylvania could never give her. For Tara, this trip was about furthering her career, something Katherine hadn’t even given a second thought to in all the time she’d been at college. She had to admit that Tara had been a far better friend to her than she had been in return. If spending a little more time with Eric—and hopefully Élise to serve as a buffer—could help Tara down the road, then she could suffer through it.

She sighed angrily, then glared back at Eric. Just because she could do it for Tara didn’t mean she had to make it pleasant for Eric. “You get three days. And if I’m not convinced, then you leave me alone.”

“Accepted.”

“YAY! Thank you, Katherine!”

“Damn it, Tara.”

Whoever had founded Montavian had gotten its territories marked in just such a way that, even though it was by no means a coastal country, there was still a sliver of land that made it all the way to the sea. A train outside the capital ran all the way from one end of the country to that coast on the Bay of Biscay, to a small city that very few tourists apparently knew about. It was home to the royal villa that Eric had bribed her and Tara with. Well, mostly just Tara. Katherine still wasn’t pleased in the slightest with how all of this was turning out.

With the warm, damp weather of mid-autumn hanging in the air, the train ride itself had been spectacular. The prince had once again wormed his way out of actually explaining anything, and no questions were answered with anything more than a vague promise that they would be pleased. Tara did manage to get answers to her questions about the history of the villa, or details about its structure and grounds, but that was the extent of it. Katherine didn’t know what Eric had told anyone else about their trip, and some part of her didn’t want to know.

The train included several private cars for the royal family, complete with a kitchen, dining car, and sleeping cars, even though the trip was only the better part of four hours. Eric spent the entire time entertaining Tara—who laughed and flirted without probably being aware of it—while Katherine sulked and stared out the window. Élise was with them, thank goodness, looking very contrite that she hadn’t succeeded in freeing Kat from a situation that made her so unhappy. There wasn’t anything to be done about that now, so Katherine spent the entire trip staring at trees and the bright blue skies and the river they rolled along beside. Anything to ignore Eric, she decided, who was very clearly trying to get her engaged in their conversation.

The only time Katherine spoke was during their meal, and even that was the briefest conversation that politeness to the staff dictated. As for Eric, she pointedly refused to allow herself to pay him any attention. She was well within her rights to be angry at him, after everything she had learned. He wasn’t going to convince her to change her mind, to convince her that he could be trusted. No matter how much Eric batted those lovely blue eyes at her and tried to make her laugh, he was permanently on her “not a chance” list.

When they arrived at the villa, a car had picked them up from the train station and taken them to a massive mansion nestled on a hillside. Katherine had never really been sure what the difference between a palace and a mansion was, beyond the stereotypical parapets, but she was beginning to see the difference now. The villa was obviously much more modern, built into the hill in multiple layers so that it was a sprawling, almost vertical masterpiece that offered direct access to a private beach on one side and a quick route to the little city nearby on the other. City was probably an overstatement, it was just more of a village. The bluffs of the hills were white, with bright green trees and grass that were just starting to turn into the richer colors of fall. Scents of countless flowers filled the air with an indescribable perfume, and a glance into a guarded tunnel near the main stairs told Katherine that there was an elevator. Inside the hill. To get to the top floor. She made a face; they were either really that rich, or that self-indulgent.

Tara wasted no time in making for the beach, though; the water wasn’t really warm enough to go swimming in this time of year, or so Eric had told them, but they didn’t get a lot of beach in Pennsylvania so Tara didn’t really care. Élise went with her after stealing one last glance at Katherine and her brother, and determining it was unsafe—and unwise—to be around them right now.

Katherine was still ignoring him, of course. She mounted the stairs two at a time until she stepped out onto a terrace that overlooked the beach and offered a spectacular view of the bay seeping into the Atlantic far in the distance. Below, Tara was absolutely over the moon with enthusiasm, and Élise seemed amused by this, though she hung back with her bodyguards. Katherine sorta guessed that they’d been given a rather thorough tongue-lashing for their part in her escape attempt when Eric and she had gone back to the palace. At least she had her luggage this time.

With Tara finally entertained by something other than Eric, Katherine knew he would take the opportunity to follow her to the terrace. Even though his footsteps were entirely silent, she knew he had to be close. She took a chance and called out without looking back, “So, how
did
you find me at the hotel so easily? You have the night manager on payroll to call you if I’m spotted or something?”

Her hunch had been right. He laughed softly, then answered, “Nothing so crude, Katherine—”

“Stop right there,” she said, whirling around angrily. “Stop it with the ‘Katherine’ nonsense. My name is Kat. My friends call me Kat. Even my professors call me Kat. And I will not be morphed into some haughty ‘Katherine’ for you or for anyone else. If Kat isn’t good enough for the loyal subjects of Montavian—or you, for that matter—just remember that it’s perfectly good enough for the people back home in Pennsylvania.”

“Very well then,” Eric conceded with a slight bow. “Kat, it is. But to answer your question, I was actually informed because Élise had left the palace. A guard came to inform me that she had left because she is my responsibility and priority with my parents currently gone. It is my duty to make sure that I know where she is at all times. I couldn’t imagine the reason for her being out at that hour by her own volition, and so I imagined that you had convinced her to take her out. I was at the hotel a good twenty minutes before you got there, Kather…I mean, Kat, waiting for you to arrive—or rather not to, if I had been wrong.”

“Clever,” she muttered, and then her brow furrowed, thinking about what he’d just said. “You left your ball to come after me?”

“You are my guest, and another of my priorities, it would be unforgivably rude of me not to take care with you,” he answered easily. She scoffed, finally turning to look at him again.

“Okay, quit it with the goodie-goodie benevolent prince crap. We both know that isn’t who you actually are, and I’m getting really sick of it.” Katherine made a face, which he returned with a smirk.

“You are so very convinced that every word out of my mouth is a lie of some sort—I cannot simply express my opinion with you and expect it to be heard. Why is that?”

“You know why!” she answered sharply, exasperated. “Your opinions tend to be things that make me do things your way. For example, trying to make me feel guilty for not wanting to wear the frilly dress you picked out for brunch. You wanted the ‘wild foreign’ girl, but then you try to change her into something she’s not every time you open your mouth. That’s not exactly honesty at work.”

He shrugged. “But you must admit that your reactions are often a little bit childish, ma chérie. You cut up a perfectly good—and very expensive—dress just to spite me. It wasn’t because it didn’t suit you or look beautiful, it was because I had ordered it sent to your room without deigning to consult you. I had wanted you to meet some dignitaries, as you did that day, so that you might have an actual understand of the sorts of people you will meet in this life. Then our unexpected guest arrived…tell me, how would you feel about yourself if you had met Lady Brigitte in your hacked-up temper tantrum fiasco instead of the one loaned to you by a princess? You would have looked ridiculous and felt humiliated, instead of looking high-class and formidable, as you did.”

“That’s what you don’t understand,” she protested intently. “This life of yours is somewhere between a nightmare and a fantasy, and it’s not for me. I’m ready to return to reality, a place where
you’re
the one who doesn’t belong, not me.”

Eric sighed again and looked away from her, out over to the beach to watch Tara sloshing barefoot through the tide, kicking up foam while Élise stood by, watching and laughing.

“I had not thought I’d made such a poor impression on you, Kat,” he mused idly, and he shrugged a little bit. “But perhaps that is my own fault. I admit it, I’m unaccustomed to being around those of your background, particularly from America.” She lifted a brow at him, glowering at him a bit from the corner of her eye, which he quickly looked toward her for. “I don’t mean it in that manner! I mean only that I have very little contact with university students who are not also already intimate with the particular politics I have known for my entire life. You must admit that much.”

“I think I’ve admitted that much from day one, in fact, if I remember it correctly, I kind of mentioned it from the moment you proposed this ridiculous plan,” she pointed out, wrinkling her nose at him. “But you weren’t really concerned about that.”

“Day two, anyway,” he countered with a smirk at her. “I don’t remember that topic of conversation coming up at all during day one.”

“Oh no, it did. Just in the form of me pointing out that I’m not going to behave like all of those girls from
that
world because it’s completely new to me.”

“Ah.”

He looked away again, and silence descended over them both—until at last, Eric sighed and shook his head. “I must apologize for what happened last night, however. What you overheard… there was no reason for you to know those things. They are in the past and they are things I must continue to deal with, but Brigitte speaking of them merely to upset you was absolutely unnecessary.”

“I can’t agree with you. There’s every reason for me to know them, to hear them out in the open instead of whispered behind my back and hinted at when I walk into a room,” she mumbled. “But yeah, I’m getting it now why you didn’t want to marry Brigitte. I have to know…what did you do with Isabella, after that entire thing?”

Katherine thought she saw him wince from the corner of her eye before he shook his head. “Isabella wanted nothing to do with me. She believed I was being unfaithful and immediately returned to Italy. That was ultimately for the best, as I cannot deny that she caused quite a scene once she became intoxicated. No one would have ever forgotten it if she had stayed around, and that likely would have only hurt her more,” he explained quietly.

“And you just let her go? You didn’t try to make things better, or—”

“Isabella was a sweet girl. She was kind and charming, but I cannot honestly say that I believed there was going to be a happy ending to that relationship, regardless of Brigitte’s schemes. I would have preferred a cleaner, less painful break for both of us, but I was denied a chance for that. When Isabella made it clear that she was done with me, I allowed her to deny me the chance of smoothing things over. Besides, her ugly scene is understandable to many people, if not entirely appropriate, as they thought she’d found evidence of my playboy antics. In time, I knew they would forgive her behavior if they believed I was a cad. The only way to spare her a lifetime of embarrassment was to play the part of the wealthy, entitled, cheating prince.”

Katherine grew silent again, mulling over his words. As much as she felt the fight still in her and wanted to argue with him, it made sense for him to be the scapegoat, even if he’d been wronged by the accusation as he claimed. And at least he hadn’t let something like that happen with her. She’d made it clear that she wanted nothing more to do with him, but he had still come back—did he really see more between them than he had seen with Isabella?

“Kat?” Eric caught her attention gently, and she realized belatedly that he had come closer to her, his fingertips lingering near her arm without quite touching her. “Might I ask you… what it is you actually feel for me? I’ve angered and hurt you, and it is fair enough that you aren’t in the most forgiving mood. But there are other times, even in the midst of that, and before, that I had thought I had…” Katherine’s brows shot into her hairline. He sounded genuinely—like, genuine Eric genuinely, not a covertly hidden feint—uncertain, and her throat tightened.