was no way she could have engineered her body’s response to him, and no reason for her to do so.
But if she needed to put up a pretense of morality by insisting she couldn’t sleep with a man she didn’t know, she was welcome to do it. Although he doubted that she would hold on to that stance. The attraction between them was far too strong for that. It was certainly beyond anything he’d ever known in his experience.
She licked her lips and his body ached with the need to taste her sweet mouth again, to move his tongue over hers. He was instantly hard, his body raging with his need.
If she felt half of what he did, and based on that explosive kiss they’d shared in the corridor he was certain that she did, her play at resistance wasn’t going to last for very long. It simply wasn’t possible.
“Are you feeling up to dining with my parents?”
She sucked that sweet lower lip into her mouth and chewed on it thoughtfully. When she released it there were little dents left by her teeth, and he wanted to soothe them with his thumb, his tongue.
“I don’t suppose it’s acceptable to cancel dinner with the king and queen. What would Miss Manners say?”
His lips twitched and she felt an odd sense of gratification over having amused him. “If you’re not feeling well we will cancel.”
Selena would have canceled. His wife had frequently felt under the weather. She had been very delicate, emotionally and physically, and he had looked on it as his duty to protect her, shield her. It would be his duty to do the same for Alison. She was under his protection now. And he wouldn’t fail her.
The look of steely determination that lit Alison’s copper gaze surprised him. “I’ll be fine. I’ve been going to work, cooking my own meals, functioning just fine without being coddled. I’m more than able to meet with your parents.”
A brief spark of vulnerability shadowed her eyes. “What are they going to think about all of this?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know that the nature of our relationship is any of their business.”
“You mean you don’t want them to know how the baby was conceived.”
“They didn’t know about Selena’s fertility problems.”
“I see.” She looked at him, her expression searching. “And you don’t want them to know.”
“It was important to her that no one knew about her infertility. I have honored that.” She had seen it as a failure, one she couldn’t face sharing with the public, or his parents.
“Then I don’t think it’s important for them to know how we conceived the baby.” Alison didn’t really relish having to keep up any kind of facade, but neither did she want to be a part of damaging his late-wife’s memory.
It made her heart break a little to know that she was going to have the dream Selena had been denied, having a baby with Maximo. As much as she would have rather been honest about the nature of her relationship, or lack of it, with Max, she felt she owed the other woman some protection.
“I’ll leave you to shower and get ready. I’ll be back in an hour.”
She watched Maximo, her fiancé, turn and leave the room. A feeling of longing, so intense she felt it physically, filled her. Part of her wanted him, impossibly, irresponsibly, almost as much as the sensible part of her craved distance and protection from him. It was like a tug-of-war, each desire pulling at her from opposite sides. And the sensible part of her had to win. It had to.
The dining room at the castillo was extremely formal. The high ceilings and ornately framed artwork gave the room a museumlike quality. The long banquet-style table could easily have seated thirty or forty people, and added to the wholly impersonal feel of the room. It made stupid, emotional tears prick at her eyes.
A child couldn’t sit and color at this table. They certainly couldn’t eat milk and cookies and peanut butter and jelly at this table. Finger painting was probably out, too, since it was likely a priceless antique.
Of course, she knew there were other tables in a place this big. Maximo’s quarters likely housed its own dining room. But what this room represented was everything she feared. Not for the first time since she’d said yes to Maximo’s proposal she wondered if she’d made the right choice. It had seemed like it then. His logic had made so much sense. But now … it seemed impossible standing at the entryway to this formal, forbidding room with two equally formal, forbidding people staring at her and Max, his arm clamped tightly around her waist, looming over her.
“Come in and sit down, son.” The king gestured to a place at his right at the head of the table. “We’re both very interested in why you’ve asked to have dinner with us tonight.”
The king was obviously a man of advanced years, but there was nothing frail about him. His hair was silver-gray, his skin tanned and healthy-looking, wrinkles almost entirely absent from his face. The queen was beautiful, years younger than her husband, her dark hair drawn back into a tight bun, her face also free of lines. They were both terribly intimidating and neither one of them offered a smile as she and Max moved into the room to sit down at the table.
The only friendly smile on offer came from a young woman who was sitting to the left of Queen Elisabetta. Her full lips stretched into a grin that showed her bright white teeth. With her golden skin, dark hair and shockingly blue eyes, she was one of the most beautiful women Alison had ever seen. A strange feeling settled in the pit of her stomach.
The woman jumped up from her seat when they approached and ran to throw her arms around Maximo. “Max!” she cried. “I’m so happy you’ve come home early!”
“It’s good to see you too, Bella.” He dropped a kiss on the younger woman’s head. “Alison,” he said, tightening his hold on her waist, “this is my younger sister Isabella.”
The suspicious knot that had been tightening in her stomach released its hold on her as soon as he announced his relationship to the very beautiful Isabella. She was relieved, she realized, to find out that she was his sister and not …
She cut off that train of thought before it could go any further. It wouldn’t have mattered if she were a lover or a former lover. It wasn’t her business. And there was no reason for her to care.
“Nice to meet you.” Isabella dropped a light kiss on Alison’s cheek. “I’m so pleased that Max brought a friend with him.” She cast her brother a sly look that seemed to say she had guessed that there was more to the relationship than he’d admitted.
“And these are my parents, King Luciano and Queen Elisabetta.” Maximo gestured to his parents who were still sitting, rigid as stone, at the head of the table.
“It’s nice to meet you, too,” Alison said, grateful at least for Isabella’s enthusiastic greeting. “All of you.”
Maximo pulled a chair out for her and she sat gingerly, feeling unbearably self-conscious. It was one thing to stand in front of people in a courtroom—that was her domain. She was confident there. She was in control. Here, she was very much the colloquial fish out of water, and she felt as if she was gasping for air.
Isabella offered Maximo an impish smile. “You didn’t tell me you had a girlfriend, Max.”
Maximo
