Herself.
Yet did she really even know who that was any more? ‘Natalia?’ Ben touched her shoulder, his eyes shadowed with concern. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, of course.’ She forced herself to give him one of her usual flirty smiles. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘Because you’re looking like you’re about to face your own execution,’ Ben said drily. ‘I thought this kind of thing was right up your alley.’
Of course he did. And it was. Hadn’t she made sure it was? Hadn’t she made that choice years ago, when she realised she could be enslaved to the press and their vicious mockery or embrace it? She’d had a choice. She’d made it. Surely it was far too late for regrets. It was far too late to want to be someone else—or want someone to believe you were someone else. Someone real.
‘I’m fine,’ Natalia said firmly, and with a coolly challenging smile she swept past Ben into the dining room. She hadn’t been sure what to expect of Ben’s clients, but they were all charming, urbane men who treated Natalia with both deference and respect. She saw one or two eye her speculatively on occasion, obviously wondering just how much of what they’d read was true. Natalia didn’t give them a chance to find out. She listened when they spoke, laughed when they told jokes and behaved with gracious aplomb throughout the entire evening. She played the princess, and it was exhausting.
Life had always been a performance; she understood and accepted that. Act like you know the answer. Act like you don’t care. Act like you think someone is interesting or attractive or funny. Act. Act. Act.
What happened when she didn’t want to act any more? When the curtain came down, and the mask came off? What happened, Natalia thought even as she smiled and listened and laughed, when she stopped acting?
She didn’t have an answer, and the not knowing exhausted her as much as anything else. Scared her too. As their main courses were cleared, she excused herself from the table and went to find a few minutes’ solitude in the ladies’.
The room was blessedly empty and Natalia powdered her nose and refreshed her lipstick, touching up her hair and makeup with easy expertise. She was adding some mascara to her eyelash when she caught an unguarded glimpse of herself in the mirror from the corner of her eye, and she felt as if she’d just seen a stranger, someone she’d never met. Herself.
Slowly she lowered the mascara wand and stared at her own face. On the surface it was, of course, completely recognisable. She looked good. Pretty, maybe even beautiful. Her eyes glinted and her mouth curved in her trademark, mocking smile. Princess Natalia. The Party Princess. Then she blinked, and her smile disappeared, and she was left with a face she didn’t know. A face with wide, sad eyes and a mouth that trembled with uncertainty. The face of the person she really was … whomever that woman turned out to be.
Did anyone really want to find out? Did she? Did Ben?
Two women, chatting loudly in Italian, came into the room and quickly Natalia capped her mascara, gave them a fleeting smile and hurried out.
In the narrow corridor that led back to the main restaurant a man was leaning against the wall. Natalia assumed he was talking on his mobile, and she murmured her excuse as she brushed past him. He grabbed her elbow.
She stiffened, turned and recognised one of the men from this evening. Brian, the one who had eyed her so speculatively. She felt a twist of disappointment; this evening wasn’t going to be any different. She wasn’t different. She couldn’t be.
‘Your Highness …’
She gave him a freezing stare. ‘Excuse me,’ she said with haughty politeness, ‘but I believe you are holding my elbow.’
He looked both startled and apologetic and to Natalia’s relief he let go, but he didn’t move and she couldn’t get by without squeezing past him. She stared him down as coldly as she could.
‘I just wondered, Your Highness …’ he slurred, clearly more than a little drunk. ‘I heard you like sailing and I have a sweet little yacht you might like to see … if you know what I mean.’
‘Don’t believe everything you read in the papers, Brian,’ Natalia said coolly. She knew he was referring to a ridiculous article about a three-day orgy she’d supposedly indulged in on a yacht last summer. The reality had been far tamer, and frankly rather boring.
‘I just thought …’ he mumbled, starting to blush. Natalia almost took pity on him.
‘Don’t embarrass yourself any further,’ she advised, and started to move past him. Her hip nudged his and yet something else caused a bolt of awareness to electrify her like lightning, rooting her to the spot, freezing her senses. She looked up and saw Ben blocking the entrance to the corridor, his expression completely and dangerously unreadable.
BEN wasn’t prepared for the blaze of jealousy that fired through him at the sight of Natalia standing so close to his client, their heads bent together, their lips mere inches apart. Clearly they were having a cozy tête-à-tête, he thought savagely. Perhaps they were planning to meet up later for a drink—or more. A lot more. Natalia would give Ben one of her sly smiles and slip away from him, as insubstantial as smoke, as trustworthy as a broken promise. And then she’d leave with Brian. The thoughts raced through his mind, exploded like fireworks, obliterating all rational thought.
Then Natalia looked up and he saw her eyes widen, her body freeze, as tense as a bowstring, and his doubts disappeared in an instant. He was being ridiculous. He knew this woman too well. He knew her. And she wasn’t flirting. Not with Brian anyway.
Yet the realisation that came on the heels of the first was far more alarming, far more frightening. Why the hell was he so jealous? Why did he care what Natalia did—or with whom? And how could he really know someone like Natalia, even if he wanted to?
‘Ben …’ she said, her voice little more than a whisper.
‘Brian,’ Ben said coolly, inclining his head in acknowledgement. He knew what Brian had been doing, loitering by the ladies’ room. He bet Natalia did too.
Brian hurried past with some mumbled apology, and Ben was left alone with Natalia. His heart was pounding, adrenalin racing through him from both the assumptions and unwelcome discoveries he’d made. They stared at each other, unmoving, transfixed, and the moment stretched into something taut and focused, as if they were balanced on a pinpoint, a knife’s edge.
‘I wasn’t—’ she began.
‘I know,’ Ben said, closing the space between them in a few long strides. Then he did what he’d been aching to do for far too long.
He kissed her.
It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t sweet or thoughtful; he didn’t ask permission. He kissed her with all the raw pent-up fury he’d felt and had been feeling for far too long for wanting this woman at all.
And she kissed him back the same way.
This woman gave as good as she got, Ben thought, always. And then he stopped
