It wouldn’t have gone that far.”
His gaze held hers, amusement and something else glittering there. “Either you’re very naive about men or you just like to lie to yourself.” A rough exhale left his mouth. “And now I find you, of all the people in my life, bonded with my daughter.”
Eleni pushed away from him, needing respite from that overwhelming masculinity. Respite from her own reactions. “Even your conceit can’t be that great to think I befriended Angelina with some...underhanded intentions. Sitting in the stables by herself, she reminded me of myself.”
“A Princess of Drakon, daughter to King Theos and sister to powerful Andreas and Nikandros—and I’m to believe you understand how Angelina feels? That you have to hide beneath a mask to find a man to kiss you?”
She shrugged, the gleam of interest in his eyes making her heart thud faster. If not for Angelina, he wouldn’t have spared her a single glance again, much less a conversation.
“I don’t care what you believe about me. Angelina needs to feel like she’s important to someone, like there’s some constant in her life that won’t desert her. She’s a sweet girl underneath all that bluster.”
“She’s sweet with you,” he bit out, a vein vibrating in his forehead. “The first time I saw my daughter was at her mother’s funeral. It took her a week to understand that I was indeed her father and not some terrifying stranger who was ripping her away from everything familiar. I learned after my ex was in an accident that she had named me as Angelina’s father.
“In three months, she hasn’t stopped looking at me as if I...were the culprit.
“My own daughter looks at me as if I...” He swallowed hard and looked away. “I’ve tried to be gentle with her... I’ve tried gifts. I’ve tried everything under the sun but not a damn thing works.”
Eleni hoped for the little girl’s sake that he would learn to express that concern. To show that he cared. But she’d been around too many thickheaded men, and Gabriel Marquez had proved that night that he was the king of arrogant ruthlessness and wouldn’t recognize tender emotion if it hit him in that all too gorgeous face.
He’d connected with her that night when he’d thought her a stranger. But as soon as he’d learned her identity, as soon as he’d learned that she knew him, he had shut down. Had closed himself off so fast that for days after she’d wondered if she’d imagined their exchange.
She wanted nothing to do with such a hard man, a man who thought showing his emotions was a weakness.
But for Angelina’s sake, she wanted to help. She remembered all too well how alone and frightened she had been growing up in the palace. It was only when her father had married Camille, Nikandros’s mother that Eleni had realized that not everyone in the palace resented the illegitimate child that the King had adopted in a fit of uncharacteristic generosity.
Camille had been so busy with Nik’s frail health, and yet she’d always had a kind word for Eleni.
“Never let him see a weakness, ma chérie,” when Eleni had cowered in the face of her father’s rages. “Never let them make you dispensable,” when Eleni had, in her innocent ignorance, complained that the Crown Prince Andreas, the older brother she loved so much, didn’t care about her either.
So Eleni had taken Camille’s advice to heart and made herself indispensable to her father and brothers. She had never imagined becoming the buffer between the three of them.
As she’d observed this father and daughter over the last three months, she’d assumed Gabriel was the same as her own father: controlling, bloated with arrogance, treating his offspring like pawns in his own personal game.
The glittering frustration in Gabriel’s eyes gave her hope for Angelina.
“She feels that you’ve taken her on as a last resort. With me, she knows I love spending time with her. That I don’t expect anything in return, that it is not a duty.”
Gabriel’s gaze moved over her, searching without seeing her. She’d seen that look on her older brother Andreas’s face—when he saw people only as a means to an end. When he decided on a course and set upon it, no matter what the cost to others. Her heart thumped in her chest.
“Then you’ll teach me how to get through to her,” he added softly, utter resolve in his tone, “and you’ll help the both of us connect.”
“It’s not something I can transfer from my head to yours.”
“I do not care what you call it, Princesa, but you’ll teach me how to connect with my daughter.” Stubborn resolve made his features look harsher than ever. “And you will do it before it’s too late.”
“What you’re suggesting is...not that simple.”
“I will speak to Nikandros about releasing you from all your many unofficial duties. From now on, you’ll spend your entire time with Angelina. And me, whenever I’m available.” His brow cleared, everything falling into place in his world. Even her soft gasp didn’t divert his attention. “I’ll try to clear my schedule for a couple of evenings every week and we will dine together. After a month or so, the three of us can take a trip together. I want to find a good school for her and you can accompany us.”
The man’s nerve! “I’m not your servant to be ordered about. I will not drop everything in my life just for your benefit. I will not...” She couldn’t even get the words out at his arrogance. “You insult me with one breath, and then order me around on the next.”
Spending months in his company, wishing he would take notice of her, comparing herself to his parade of girlfriends—it would be her personal torture device. “What makes you think I would willingly sign up for anything that concerns you?”
“Because you do not have anything going on in your life. I’ve been watching you, Princesa.”
Eleni jerked back, her heart thumping against her rib cage. “Watching me? For what purpose?”
He shrugged, just like she’d done before. And if Eleni hadn’t spent an hour with him on a moonlit terrace sharing the depths of her soul, she wouldn’t have seen the carefully manufactured gesture. She’d have missed that utterly male gleam in his gaze.
“To figure you out.”
“And what have you figured out?”
“You’re illegitimate, so you don’t rank that high with the traditionalists of the country. You have no boyfriend or lover and no options on the horizon, unless you ask your brothers to set you up. And they are smart enough to keep you around because of course you’re sensible and reliable.
“I’ve seen you with your brothers and the staff. You’re a very maternal sort of woman. You know every staff member by name, and you ask after their families. You give hours of your time to children’s charities instead of just throwing money at them. And your reckless actions that night prove how desperate you are for your life to change. For it to be more than it is.”
Shock robbed Eleni of speech as she stared at him. He’d so efficiently reduced her life to a cold, hard summary, a truthful one. “First I was deceiving, now I’m reckless?”
“Imagine if it had been anyone but me. Imagine
