“Exchange shirts.” She took a few steps and stopped immediately before him, close enough to touch the copper surface of his bare skin. “Unless you need something else from me?”
He released a frustrated sound, somewhere between a growl and a groan. “I prefer you stop making offers I cannot accept.”
Determined to keep his attention, she ran a fingertip down his sternum along the stream of dark hair, and paused at his navel. “You can’t accept them or you won’t?”
“We’ve been through this, Andrea. I am not able to accept.”
She sent a quick glance at the proof that he was still willing to play along. “You seem more than able to me.”
He held her hand against his belly and kept his gaze fixed on hers as he exhaled slowly, his muscles tightening beneath her palm. Andi held her breath, wondering if this time he might decide to accept her offer. Maybe this time he would give up and give in, knowing this was what they both wanted. Even though he tried to deny that he did want her, she wasn’t too dumb to read the signs. His eyes were dark, almost desperate, warring with indecision and desire. A slight sheen of perspiration covered his chest and forehead. His respiration sounded unsteady.
No, she wasn’t too dumb to recognize that he wasn’t at all unaffected, either here in the kitchen, or earlier in the barn. As affected as he had been seven years ago.
“Is this really all you want from me, Andrea?” he asked in a low, controlled voice as his fingertips stroked her knuckles. “This and nothing more? And afterward, will you then be satisfied?”
“Yes, I will,” she said in a voice she didn’t recognize.
He pushed her hand away and took a step back. “Perhaps you will, but I will not. If I have you, I promise I would want you more than once, and often, until I again must leave. Ask yourself truthfully if you would want to make love knowing nothing more will ever exist between us.”
With that he tossed her wet shirt onto the table and strode out of the room, leaving Andi to ponder his words, the raw truth she heard in them. If she did have him once again—all of him—would it ever be enough?
There would never be enough time now.
Sam tossed his cell phone onto the sofa next to him and sent a string of mild curses directed at his duties. According to his father, the current situation in Barak demanded Sam return home immediately. Sam had bargained for two more weeks instead of four, on the pretense that he still had investments he needed to oversee. Only one week to spend with his son upon his return. Never enough time.
He shoved the newspaper’s financial section off his lap, then scolded himself for acting like a child in the throes of a tantrum. Anger wouldn’t serve him well at this time. He could only make the best of a situation beyond his control.
“Problems, Sam?”
Sam watched as Andrea strolled into the room and dropped down onto the sofa next to him, wearing a guarded expression and a pair of silk pajamas the color of fine champagne. The scent of orchids filtering into his nostrils served to make him forget his current troubles as did the sight of her dressed in feminine attire. Yet he refused to let her distract him. Now that he’d learned he would have to leave sooner, he had much to discuss with her.
“I’m afraid I must cut my visit short. I have been summoned home.”
Her blue eyes widened. “Tonight?”
“No, but I will not be able to stay as long as I’d intended. I must return in two weeks.”
Seeming to relax somewhat, she tucked her legs beneath her and sipped a glass of iced tea. “Was that Rashid on the phone calling to deliver the good news?”
“I spoke with my father. It is his wish that I return.”
She frowned. “Do you always do what he tells you to do?”
Sam had expected her disapproval, but he hadn’t expected her forthright query. “I have obligations, Andrea. Surely you understand, now that you have a child.”
“I don’t see Chance as an obligation,” she said, ire in her tone. “I see him as a joy, not as a chore or a servant.”
Sam lowered his eyes to his hands, clasped tightly in his lap, biting back the sudden surge of anger. “Would you expect me to ignore my responsibilities?”
“I’d expect that being a prince might make you a little happier.”
His gaze snapped to hers. “On what do you base this assumption, that I’m not happy with what I am?”
She shrugged. “You don’t look happy, not like before. I’ve rarely seen you smile, much less laugh. In fact, most of the time you look way too serious. That’s not the Sam I remember.”
Sheikh Samir Yaman had replaced the Sam she remembered. The Sam she had known had yet to be tainted by the responsibility placed on his shoulders as the eldest son of a king. “That carefree college student you knew no longer exists.”
“Oh, I think he’s still in there just dying to get out.”
“Unfortunately, that is not the case.”
She set her glass on the coffee table before them and hugged her knees to her chest. “I’d hate to think that’s true, Sam. I’d also hate to think that Chance would ever be subjected to the kind of pressure that would make him lose his spirit and his love of life.”
If the truth were known, so would Sam. “I doubt that he will ever lose those attributes considering his mother.”
Andrea’s smile curled the corners of her beautiful mouth. “I suppose that’s a compliment.”
“Yes, very much so. I greatly appreciated your free spirit, your passion for living.”
“And I appreciated your passion, too.”
Sam was inclined to believe that she meant the passion they had experienced in each other’s arms. He refused to travel that road of regret tonight, not with her so near, looking like temptation incarnate. He wasn’t that strong.
He cleared his throat and leaned back against the sofa, hoping to seem relaxed when in fact he was anything but. “I have learned to deal with the demands of my station. It is who I am.”
“It’s a title, Sam, not who you are. My father never tried to make me something I’m not. Neither did Paul. They just let me be myself.”
“If my memory serves me, Paul once said that it would take a front-end hauler, a steel cable and an ancient oak to tie you down.”
Andrea tossed back her head and laughed, filling Sam with joy over the sound. “That’s a front-end loader, and yes, he did say that, and I’ve heard you say worse. You guys were always teasing me. You lived to drive me nuts.”
“You were an easy target.”
She smiled. “A moving target most of the time, you mean. Especially when you both came at me and threatened to tickle me senseless.”
Sam
