getting ahead on everything. He’d taken meds for the motion sickness he got flying when he was too tired, and then forgotten he’d taken them and had a glass of wine with his dinner and a neat Scotch whiskey an hour later.
He’d never been drunk in his entire thirty years, but he thought this graceless fumbling was as close as he had come to doing so.
Nevertheless, he scaled the stairs with a sense of anticipation and relief he had not felt in a very long time. Tomorrow Maggie would learn she was working for him. He had no idea how she would react to that news, but now that she was bonded with the children, he did not believe her first reaction would be to quit her job.
He had planned it that way of course, doing his best to stack the odds in his favor, like he did with any business deal. Unlike his first marriage, where he had allowed lust and foolish emotion to cloud his judgment, he planned to approach the situation with Maggie from the same perspective he did business. With cool, calculated reason and an intent to win.
Regardless of how she reacted to learning she was working for Tom Prince again, or that he was really Principe Tomasso Scorsolini of Isole dei Re, he had no intention of letting her walk away from him a second time.
He dropped his briefcase in the study connected to his bedroom and his carryall in the room beyond. He pressed a small button on the panel beside the door and low-level recessed lighting came on. Even so, it felt glaring to his bloodshot eyes. He was never taking that antinausea medication again.
He was loosening his tie as his gaze landed on the pile of pillows on the floor. His foggy brain could not work out why they would be there. His staff was impeccable and his children far too respectful to have had a pillow fight in his bedroom, even assuming the new nanny would let them.
Frowning over that mystery, he peeled off his jacket and hung it over the suit valet while his gaze skimmed the rest of his room. As it landed on his bed, he stopped still in his tracks.
The bed was occupied.
Who would have the temerity to invade his sanctuary? No woman he knew could make it past his security and his staff were too loyal to help any woman intent on snagging a royal lover and/or husband.
And no one, man or woman, would have been expecting him to sleep in his bed tonight. As far as anyone but his personal security team and pilot was concerned, Tomasso was still out of the country on business.
He moved closer to the bed to get a closer look. He had to brush back the mass of curling blond hair to reveal the woman’s features. He did it carefully, so as not to wake her.
Disbelief warred with a feral sense of purpose as his brain identified the intruder.
Maggie.
What was she doing in his bed?
Memories of another bed, another time washed over him.
They’d shared a scorching kiss and he had come very close to making love to her. But she’d been a virgin and she’d hesitated at the last step. He’d wanted her so badly, he was shaking with it, but she had chosen her job over him.
His ego had taken a blow and he’d been both disappointed and angry, but he’d told her he wouldn’t fire her if she changed her mind. Then he’d spent the next week avoiding her and trying to get his libido back under control.
He’d seen their passion as a mistake and was acutely grateful she’d refused to go all the way once he cooled down. Maggie hadn’t been his type back then. She was too ordinary, too innocent and sweet. He went for gorgeous women with sophisticated tastes and a similar outlook on life. He’d thought that was what he wanted, but he’d learned that kind of woman came with a cost.
It was one he would not pay again.
He wanted the simplicity and kindness the woman in his bed had once represented in his life.
One night, six years ago, she had climbed into his bed by way of invitation, but he’d brought Liana home with him and in doing so lost any chance he’d ever had with Maggie.
She was in his bed again. A wholly unlooked-for second chance to rectify the mistakes of the past.
His brain told him there was something wrong with that scenario, that she didn’t even know she was working for him, so she could not be extending any kind of invitation here. Her presence in his bed was no doubt explained by something as prosaic as the excuse he had made up to tell Liana six years ago.
But he didn’t like that logical conclusion.
Okay, so his brain was a bit fuzzy, but even he could see that Maggie Thomson’s presence in his bed was fate. She belonged to him. He should have seen it before. She even bore his name, or a derivative of it, but it meant she was his. Of course it did.
No. Wait. He was supposed to test her out…to see if she fit his life as well as she had before.
But how better to test her than to share her bed? That was important. It was key, even. He already knew from Therese that Maggie and his children were a good fit.
His mind worked sluggishly with arguments for and against sharing the bed with his new nanny while he finished undressing, but in the end it was physical exhaustion that decided him. He was too tired and muddled to worry about finding another place to sleep. She’d opted to use his bed. She could share it.
He slid naked between the sheets. He’d never worn pajamas. He wasn’t about to start tonight. Yet as tired as he was, he did not immediately go to sleep, but turned to watch Maggie’s soft features in repose. Her lips were slightly parted, perfect for kissing.
Would she mind if he kissed her good night? He was a prince. Of course she wouldn’t mind. He’d never had a woman deny him a kiss, not once.
He slid toward her, his tired body reacting to her sweet feminine fragrance with surprising strength. By the time he was close enough to kiss her sleep-relaxed mouth, he was hard and aching, his body taut with need.
He pressed his lips to hers in a chaste kiss.
Her eyes opened and she looked at him as if he were an apparition. “Tom?”
“Yes, little Maggie.” Tomorrow would be soon enough to explain who he was.
She relaxed again, as if his presence did not bother her at all. Her eyes slid shut. “That was nice,” she whispered.
So he kissed her again, and this time she responded with drowsy generosity, parting her lips further so he could find his way inside.
He kissed her with his tongue, tasting the mouth that had haunted his dreams for far too long. She moaned softly against his lips and her small hands began exploring his body the way they had that night six years ago. He deepened the kiss with passion he hadn’t felt for too damn long. She tasted perfect, she felt perfect, and he craved her like he’d never craved culmination with a woman before.
But even as confused as his brain was with exhaustion and the combined effects of the alcohol and the meds, he knew there was something not right about this.
Calling on the last vestiges of his sanity and self-control, he broke the kiss. She made a sound of protest and pressed kisses along his jaw, searching for reconnection to his mouth. His body jerked with need as her hand drifted down his stomach and brushed
