“You brought it up.” The next song was a slower one. He effortlessly adjusted to the change in tempo, all the while gazing down at her, watching her mouth. As if he planned to kiss her—a bold move he had better not try.
She accused, “I brought it up as an example of the way that you lied to me. Not with words, maybe. But by implication. By action. The first time I saw you, you were sweeping the stable floor. Gilbert seemed to know you. What else was I to assume but that he’d hired you?”
“Gilbert was joking with me. He saw me sweeping and asked me if I needed a job. Your brother Damien had introduced us the day before. Dami knows I love horses and wanted me to have a chance to ride while I was here. And I had told him I was hoping to buy one of your stallions. He said I would have to talk to you about that.”
“You’re great friends, then, you and my brother?”
“Yes. I consider Damien a friend.”
She thought again of the blonde and the redhead at dinner. He’d seemed to take their fawning attentions as his due. “You’re a player. Like Dami.”
“I’m single. I enjoy a good life and I like the company of beautiful women.”
“You’re a player.”
“I am not playing you, Alice.” He held her gaze. Steadily. Somehow the very steadiness of his regard excited her.
She did not wish to be excited. “You’ve been playing me from the moment you picked up that broom and pretended to be someone you’re not.”
“Everything I told you was true. Everything. Yes, I’ve got all I’ll ever need now, but I started out in L.A. with nothing. My parents were both dead by the time I was twenty-one. I have one sister, Lucy.”
“And you went to work on a ranch when you were eighteen?”
“No. I visited that ranch. Often. My boss took a liking to me. He flipped houses in Los Angeles for a living and he hired me as a day laborer to start. I learned the business from the ground up, beginning on his low-end properties in East L.A.”
“You’re saying you learned fast?” She wasn’t surprised.
“Before the crash, I was buying and selling in all the major markets. I got out ahead of the collapse with a nice nest egg. Now I manage my investments and I do what I want with the rest of my time. Oh, and that second cousin you mentioned, the one who lives in Bel Air?”
“Jonas.”
He nodded. “I know him. Jonas Bravo and I have done business on a couple of occasions. He’s a good man.” He pulled her a little closer again. She allowed that, though she knew that she probably shouldn’t. They danced without talking for a minute or two.
Finally, she muttered grudgingly, “You should have told me all of this at the first.”
“I can see that now.” He sounded so...sincere. As though he truly regretted misleading her.
She tried not to soften. “Why didn’t you, then?”
“Alice, I...” The words trailed off.
“At a loss? I don’t believe it. Just tell me. Why weren’t you honest with me from the first?”
“I don’t know, exactly. Because it was fun. Exciting. To tease you.”
She started to smile and caught herself. “That’s not a satisfactory answer.”
“Look. I came early to ride and I saw you there, saddling that beautiful mare. It was still dark out and there was no one else around. I didn’t want to scare you. I picked up the broom and started sweeping, because what’s more nonthreatening than some guy sweeping the floor? And then... I don’t know. You thought I was a groom and you talked to me anyway. I liked that. I got into it, that’s all. In a way, the Noah you met in the stables really is me. Just...another possible me. The one who didn’t make a fortune in real estate. I thought it would be something we would laugh over later.”
The dance ended. For a moment they swayed together at the edge of the floor. She should have pulled away.
She stayed right where she was.
He was getting to her. She was liking him again. Believing the things he told her....
Yet another song started.
He pulled her even closer and whispered, his breath warm across her skin, “I screwed up, okay?” He whirled her around. They danced in a circle along the outer rim of the floor.
“You knew who I was from the first. Before we met. Right?”
He pulled back enough to give her a look. Patient. Ironic. “Please. I’m friends with your brother. He’s told me about you—and your sisters and brothers. Also, I want one of your stallions and I know you’re quite a horse trader, not only brutal when striking a bargain but particular about whom you’ll sell to. I’ve made it my business to learn everything I can about you.”
Which meant he would have seen the Glasgow pictures.
Well, so what? She’d done what she’d done. She’d gone over the top and she’d suffered for it. She was tired of being ashamed. “You know all about me? That sounds vaguely stalkerish.”
He shrugged, his muscular shoulder lifting and then settling under her hand. “You could look at it that way, I suppose. Or you could admit that it’s just good sense to find out what you can about the people you’ll be dealing with.”
“So of course you won’t mind if I track you down online the next chance I get.”
“I would expect nothing less.” And he smiled, rueful. And somehow hopeful, too. He was way too charming when he smiled. “And when you find out I’ve told the truth, do I get another chance with you?”
All at once she was too sharply aware of his hand holding hers, his warm fingers and firm palm at her back, his big body brushing hers. Little arrows of sensation seemed to zip around beneath her skin. “A chance with me? I thought we were talking about your buying Orion.”
He eased her closer. His breath touched her hair and his body burned into hers. Her skin felt electrified. And he whispered, “You know we’re talking about more than the horse. Who’s lying now? Ma’am?”
She liked it too much, dancing so close to him. She liked
him
too much. “Please don’t hold me so tightly.”
He instantly obeyed, loosening his hold so he embraced her easily, lightly, again. “Better?”
She nodded, thinking that this particular Noah, self-assured and sophisticated in evening dress, was every bit as brash and manly as the one she’d assumed was a groom. And smooth, too. She hadn’t planned to forgive him for pretending to be a penniless stable hand—but somehow she already had.
And not only had she forgiven him, she was actually considering letting him have Orion after all. Because she did like him and she’d seen him with her horses. Orion would thrive in Noah’s care.
He pulled her closer again. She allowed that. It felt good and she wasn’t really afraid of him. She was afraid of
herself,
of her too-powerful response to him. And then there was her basic problem: it had always been so easy for her to get carried away. She would have to watch herself.
Then again, her goal tonight had been to get out and have a little fun.
So all right. It shouldn’t be too difficult to do both—to have a little fun and yet not get carried away.
They danced the rest of that dance without talking. When it ended, they swayed together until the next dance began and then danced some more.
“Walk in the garden with me,” he said when that song was over.
“Yes. I would like that.”
He took her hand and led her from the dance floor.
* * *
It was going pretty well, Noah thought as he walked with her down the stone stairway that led to the big tent and the palace gardens beyond. She seemed to have gotten past her fury with him for pretending to be someone he wasn’t. But he sensed a certain residual wariness in her. Which was fine. Few things worth winning came easily.
“Something to drink?” he asked.
“I would like that.”
So they stopped in the tent, where waiters offered wine and cocktails and soft drinks, too. They both took flutes of champagne and went out the back exit behind the dais into the moonlit garden strung with party lights.
She said, “You implied when we talked in the stables that you were staying in Montedoro indefinitely....”
“Not anymore. It turns out there are a couple of meetings I have to get back for. I’ll be leaving Thursday.”
“Is your sister visiting with you?”
“No, she’s at home in California.”
“I assume Dami has you staying here at the palace?”
He shook his head. “Lots of guests at the palace this weekend. I went ahead and took a suite at the Belle Époque.” The five-star hotel was across from Casino d’Ambre.
Another couple came toward them. They nodded in greeting as they passed. When it was just the two of them again, Alice said, “I love the Belle Époque. We used to go for afternoon tea there now and then when I was a girl, my sisters and I. We would get our favorite table—on the mezzanine of the winter garden, with that amazing dome of stained glass and steel overhead. I would stuff myself with tea cakes, and the governess, Miss Severly, would have to reprimand me.”
“Governess? I thought your brother said you all went to Montedoran schools.”
“We did. But after we grew out of our nanny, Gerta, we also had Miss Severly. She tutored us between school terms and tried to drum good manners into us.”
“Were you scared of your governess?”
“Not in the least. Once reprimanded, I only grew more determined. At tea I would wait until Miss Severly looked the other way and then try to stuff down as many cakes as I could before she glanced at me again.”
“Did you make yourself sick?”
She slanted him a glance. “How did you know?”
He thought of all the tabloid stories he’d read about her. Of course she’d been a girl who gobbled cakes when the governess wasn’t looking. “Just a guess.”
They came out on a point overlooking the sea. An iron bench waited beneath a twisted cypress tree and an iron railing marked the cliff’s edge. Alice went to the railing. She sipped her champagne and stared out over the water at the distant three-quarter moon.
As he watched her, he had the oddest feeling of unreality. It was like a dream, really, being there with her. She was a vision in lustrous red, her bare shoulders so smooth, her arms beautifully shaped, muscular in a way that was uniquely feminine.
Eventually, she turned to him. Her eyes were very dark at that moment. Full of shadows and secrets. “I’ve never been as well behaved as I should be. It’s a problem for me. I’m too eager for excitement and adventure. But I’m working on that.”
He moved to stand beside her, and leaned back against the railing. “There’s nothing wrong with a little adventure now and then.”
She laughed, turning toward him, holding her champagne glass up so he could tap his against it. “I agree. But as you said,
now and then.
For me it’s like the tea cakes. I just
have
to eat them all.” She sighed. And then she drained the glass. “So I’m trying to slow down a little, to think before I jump, to be less...excitable.”
“It’s a shame to curb all that natural enthusiasm.” He wanted to touch her—to smooth her shining hair or run the back of a finger along the sleek curve of her neck. But he held himself in check. He didn’t want to spook her.
“Everybody has to grow up sometime.” She leaned in closer. Her perfume came to him: like lilies and leather and a hint of the ocean. He could stand there and smell her all night. But she was on the move again. In a rustle of red skirts, she went to the bench and sat down. “Tell me about your sister.” She bent to set her empty glass beneath the bench.
“She’s much younger than I am. We’re twelve years apart. She’s been homeschooled for most of her life. She’s sensitive and artistic. She could always draw, from when she was very little, and she carries a sketch pad around with her all the time. And she loves to sew. She’s better with a thread and needle than any tailor I’ve ever used. She makes all her own clothes. And now she’s suddenly decided that she wants to study fashion design in New York City.”
Alice patted the space next to her. “And you don’t want her to do what she wants?”
He went to her. She swept her skirt out of the way and he sat beside her. “Lucy was homeschooled because she was sick a lot. She almost died more than once. She had asthma and a problem with a heart valve.”
“Had?” She took his empty champagne flute and put it under the bench with hers. “You mean she’s better now?”
“The asthma’s in remission. And after several surgeries that didn’t do much good, two years ago she finally had the one that actually worked.”
“So she’s well? She can lead a normal life.”
“She has to be careful.”
Alice was studying him again, and much too closely. “You’re overprotective.”
“I’m not.” He sounded defensive and he knew it.
“But Lucy thinks so....”
He grumbled, “You’re too damn smart.” He could almost regret not choosing a stupid princess. But then all he had to do was look at her, smell her perfume, hear her laugh, watch her with her horses—and he knew that no silly, malleable princess would do for him. Alice was the one. No doubt about it.
“I certainly am smart,” she said. “So you’d better be honest with me from now on. Tell me lies and I’ll find you out.”
“I
have
been honest.” Mostly.
She shook her head. “Do I have to remind you of your alter ego, the stable hand—again?”
“Please. No.” He held up both hands palms out in surrender.
“Oh, my.” She pretended to fan herself. “You’re begging. I think I like that.”
He set her straight. “It was a simple request.”
“No, no, no.” She laughed. She had a great laugh, full-out and all in. “You were definitely begging.” Smiling smugly, showing off the dimples that made her almost as cute as she was beautiful, she asked, “You said Lucy is twenty-three, right?”
He kept catching himself watching her mouth. It was plump and pretty and very tempting. But he wasn’t going to kiss her, not tonight. He’d just barely salvaged the situation with her and he couldn’t afford to push his luck by moving too fast. “Why are we talking about Lucy, anyway?”
“Because she’s important to you.” She said it simply. Openly.
And all at once he wanted to be...better somehow. It was bewildering. She stirred him, more than he’d ever intended to be stirred. He started talking, started saying
real
things. “When our mom died, we had nothing. Lucy was nine and sick all the time. I was twenty-one, just starting out, working days for that guy with the horse ranch I told you about, taking business classes at night. Our mom died and Child Protective Services showed up the next day to take Lucy away.”