changed in the world since you fell asleep while trying to convince me that honey was better than peanut butter?”
Her hand dropped, just a fraction. Then she regrouped, pointing her finger towards the door with renewed conviction. “Nothing has changed. Not a single thing. Apart from the fact that I now know who you really are.”
Time stood still for the merest fraction of a second, but when it resumed, everything seemed to sit a little off from where it had before.
He nodded, dropped the sheet back onto the bed and ambled over to the metal chair in the corner to gather his clothes. His underwear was nowhere to be seen, and, not about to go searching, he went commando, pulling on his jeans, taking care with the fly.
He’d known their liaison would end. They both had. That had been the underlying beauty of it.
In the first few days it had been diverting, watching things unfold from a safe mental distance. Distance was his usual state of being and Amber had seemed glad of it. The guiltless pleasure, the ease of transaction, the lack of desire on both sides to pry deeper than what the other might like for lunch had led to a beautifully contained affair.
Somehow, in all the hazy sunshine, with the cicadas a constant background hum, the clear edges of their association had begun to blur...until he’d found reasons to come to her earlier, to stay longer. They’d fallen into a rhythm of days lit bright and nights lost to exquisite, immoderate pleasure and murmured nothings in the dark.
As he pushed one arm through his shirt, then the other, he no longer felt distant. The dissatisfaction he felt was real.
But only a fool would have expected the halcyon days to remain that way—like a bug trapped in amber. So to speak. And Hugo was no fool.
“Is that it?” Amber’s words hit his back like bullets. “You don’t have anything to say for yourself?”
He patted his jeans pockets in search of his wallet, phone, keys—then remembered he didn’t carry any. Not here. So he snapped the top button before looking up at her. “What would you like me to say, Amber?”
“I don’t know, that I’m acting crazy? That I’ve been duped—by someone other than you, I mean. That it’s not true.”
She looked so incorruptible, like a force of nature. But something he’d learned in his month in this part of the world—nobody came to Serenity without a good reason. Or a bad one.
He opened his mouth to call her on it, but he stopped himself in time.
He’d never known someone to wear their absoluteness like a badge of honour the way she did. The moment she’d decided to let him into her house she’d decided to let him into her bed. No coquettish equivocation. Only firm decision.
This was the first time he’d seen it waver. Enough for him to take heed. To hold out his hands in conciliation. “I never lied to you, Amber. I am Hugo to my friends, my closest family.”
“To everyone else?”
“I am Prince Alessandro Hugo Giordano, sixth in line to the principality of Vallemont.”
The quiet that followed his statement wasn’t new. The rare times Hugo found himself in a conversation with someone who wasn’t aware of who he was, what he was worth, and who his relatives were, it was clear when the penny dropped.
Though this might have been the first time he was half-dressed when that realisation occurred, he thought ruefully.
A hippy beekeeper on the Central Coast of Australia had not been in the plan, meaning it was taking him a little longer to decide upon the appropriate protocol with which to navigate this moment.
Meanwhile, Amber’s nostrils flared, fury dancing behind her bedroom eyes. He imagined she was finding it hard not to climb over the bed and tackle him. As unmoved by convention as she was, she could do it too.
For a man whose entire life had been ruled by ritual, no wonder she’d been impossible to resist.
“Wait,” he said. “Fifth. I’m fifth in line. My uncle’s recently abdicated all rights and moved to California to produce movies. Not that it matters. I am a prince in name only. I will never rule.”
She blinked and it was enough to snap her from her red haze. “I don’t give a flying hoot if you are set to be Master of the Universe. Don’t even think about turning us out on our ears.”
“Excuse me?”
“These people are special. The community needs this place. The commune is Serenity’s heart. If you mess with that you will kill it dead.”
That was what had her so het up? Not who he was, but the plans he had for this land?
What the hell had she found out? And how? This wasn’t his first rodeo. He’d been discreet. Painstakingly so. Who had talked?
He did up a couple of quick buttons on his shirt before re-rolling the sleeves to his elbows. Then he moved slowly around the bed, hands out, palms up.
“Amber, until this point in time, we have been having a nice time together. I’d go so far as to say very nice. With that in mind, I suggest we sit down, have a cup of coffee and discuss any concerns you might have.”
He could still fix this.
“I don’t want to discuss anything with you. I just want you to tell me, right here, right now, if the rumours are true.”
“Which rumours might they be, exactly?”
“That you have been meeting with the local town council. Discussing plans...development plans that may or may not put the commune in danger.”
“Would that be such a bad thing?”
Emotion flickered behind her eyes. Deep, frantic, fierce. “Yes,” she managed. “It would be a terrible thing.”
“Look at this place, Amber. It’s falling down around your ears.”
“Not every home has to be a castle.”
Touché. “And yet if you have the chance to sleep somewhere that doesn’t whistle, drip, or threaten to fall down the hill every time you step onto the porch, it’s worth considering.”
“My sleeping arrangements are none of your business.”
“They became my business when I began sleeping here too.”
“Lucky for you that is not a problem you’ll have to face again.”
Hugo breathed out hard, while emotion darted and flashed behind her big brown eyes. With the tension sparking in the air between them, it was all he could do to keep from going to her and letting the slow burn of her fill the empty places inside.
“Tell me, right now, if we have made incorrect assumptions. Are you planning on developing the land? Should we be concerned?”
A muscle ticked beneath his eye. And she took it for the admission it was.
Amber slumped onto the corner
