she could have sworn he’d been looking at her picture.
The interested look he turned on her now suggested she was right. But why? Unless…A cold fist of apprehension gripped her heart. Unless he had discovered who she was and decided at long last to claim his son.
It wouldn’t be so easy, she told herself firmly. Soon after Jeffrey was born, Natalie had drawn up a will—one of the few responsible things she had done for her child—naming Kirsten as his guardian in the event of anything happening to her. Rowe could only come between them by challenging her guardianship in a court of law.
The prospect sent a chill through Kirsten. She was careful with her money and had no real worries about everyday expenses, but a drawn-out legal battle could drain anyone’s resources. Any ordinary person, that is. With his royal connections and personal fortune, Rowe was far from ordinary.
Not in any respect, her inner voice insisted. The reaction she’d had to him during the tour threatened to overwhelm her anew until she quelled it determinedly. She couldn’t do much about her susceptibility to his physical attractions, but her own family history, quite apart from Rowe’s role in her sister’s life, should be enough to warn her away from a man like him.
Self-centered, footloose, fickle when it came to women. Mentally she ticked off Rowe’s well-publicized attributes and compared them with her father’s. Felix Bond, an artist, had also possessed good looks and abundant charm, qualities he had frequently employed in the pursuit of younger women. At first Kirsten thought her mother had tolerated his affairs because of her and Natalie, but that didn’t explain why she stayed with him once her daughters were well into their teens. Surely she hadn’t believed Felix when he swore that she was the only woman he really loved?
It was possible. Felix always could charm the birds from the trees. For years Kirsten herself had believed her father’s paintings were ahead of their time, agreeing that he couldn’t possibly waste his talents working at a menial job. The scales had fallen from her eyes when, at sixteen, she’d been expected to leave school and take a job. Her dream of becoming a writer had crumbled before the need to help support her family.
She had been lucky to be hired as a receptionist for an auction house specializing in fine arts, and the idea of a career as a curator had been born. Her boss had encouraged her to return to school in the evenings and had allowed her to study the works coming up for auction.
Her plan to move into her own place had been frustrated because her mother insisted she couldn’t manage without her, so Kirsten was still living at home the afternoon a violent thunderstorm was brewing. Her father had wanted her mother to drive him to a gallery some miles away to enter one of his paintings in a contest that was about to close. Her mother hadn’t wanted to go, Kirsten recalled. But as usual, her father got his way, and the two of them went. On the drive home, a tree uprooted by the storm fell on their car, leaving Kirsten and Natalie on their own with no relatives in the world.
After her parents died, the experience at the gallery had enabled her to enter university as a mature student and establish herself in the art world as a curator. She didn’t need another man like her father complicating her life.
The reminder didn’t stop her pulse from beating ridiculously fast when Rowe turned the full brunt of his dazzling smile on her. That he was smiling struck her as odd, considering how she had singled him out during the tour. “I owe you an apology,” he said.
Surprise brought her head up. “You do?”
“I shouldn’t have joined your group without warning. My arrival obviously threw you off.”
In ways you can’t imagine, she thought. “No harm done,” she said more calmly than she felt. “The visitors enjoyed meeting a real live royal.”
“As much as you enjoyed seeing me get my comeuppance?”
“It wasn’t personal, Your Lordship,” she insisted.
He lowered long lashes over glittering eyes. “Wasn’t it? When I arrived, you gave me the distinct feeling that you’d have been happier to see Jack the Ripper.”
Since she couldn’t argue the truth of this, she linked her hands in her lap and looked down at them. “This is the first time we’ve met. I really know very little about you.” All of which was true. Unable to resist, she lifted her head and met his gaze full on. “You could be Jack the Ripper for all I know.”
To her amazement, he threw back his head and laughed, the warm sound of it rolling over her like a caress. “You’re a breath of fresh air, Kirsten,” he said at last. “I know very little about you, too, but I already know I want you.”
Kirsten felt herself blush. She’d never been so blatantly propositioned in her life. Other women might fall into his arms because of his royal status, but she didn’t intend to be one of them. “Whatever you think you know about me, I assure you you’re wrong,” she snapped.
If she had expected him to be cowed by her response, she was disappointed. He looked infuriatingly amused as he raised a dark eyebrow. “Really? Then those come-hither looks you were giving me during the tour are part of your normal repertoire?”
“I was not giving you come-hither looks.” She hadn’t, had she? Then she saw the upward tilt of his mouth and realized he was teasing her.
“What you gave me was the gift of your passion, your enthusiasm for the castle and its treasures,” he said on a soft outpouring of breath. “That’s what I want from you, Kirsten.”
Confusion made her brain freeze. “I’m not sure…I don’t…”
“Relax,” he said. “We both seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot. Me for thinking I should reacquaint myself with the castle through listening to your talk, and you for getting the wrong idea about my interest in you. Can we start over?”
She didn’t know why they needed to, but she nodded. “As you wish, Your Lordship.”
He frowned. “You can begin by dropping the title. My name is Rowe.”
Did he suspect her use of his title was a deliberate attempt to keep some distance between them? Since he wasn’t going to permit it, she said, “Very well, Rowe.”
He nodded in satisfaction. “From your reaction, I assume that Max hasn’t told you why I’m here?”
Rowe was referring to his cousin, Prince Maxim, who held the joint positions of keeper of the castle, and administrator of the Merrisand Trust, the castle’s charitable arm. “The prince probably intended to tell me at our weekly meeting, which isn’t until tomorrow,” she said. “I’m filling in for my boss, Lea Landon.”
“Who is in Europe touring with the collection,” Rowe said, evidently well informed. “No wonder you found my arrival so off-putting. You didn’t know I would be taking over her office until she returns.”
Kirsten felt the beginnings of a headache gather behind her eyes. “You’re to be the head curator in Lea’s absence?”
He gave a self-deprecating grin. “That will be the day. You could write what I know about the Merrisand collection on the head of a pin.”
She seriously doubted that was true, but she felt relieved that he wasn’t to be her boss even temporarily. Some aggravations she just didn’t need. “I’m still not sure where I fit in.”
