like royalty, though. Eventually. It had been years since she’d torn through the palace halls, since she’d danced with abandon. She’d become the model princess. Proper. Polite. Demure.
But since the awful meeting with the Reigning Prince and his advisors a month ago, her carefully constructed façade had begun to crack. She couldn’t keep pretending, no matter how hard she tried.
What do I want? She couldn’t say, but she’d know it when she found it.
Dalton glowered at Aurélie.
She inhaled a breath of frigid air and felt as if she might freeze from the inside out. “Are you always this cranky?”
He arched a single, accusatory brow. “Are you always this irresponsible?”
“Irresponsible?” The nerve. He didn’t know a thing about her life in Delamotte. “Did I just hear you correctly?”
People jostled past them on the sidewalk. Skyscrapers towered on either side of the street. The snow was coming down harder now, like they were inside a snow globe that had been given a good, hard shake.
“You certainly did,” he said.
God, he was rude. Particularly for a man who wanted something from her. “You do realize who you’re speaking to, don’t you, Mr. Drake?”
He looked pointedly at the puppy in Aurélie’s arms.
The little dog whimpered, and she gave him a comforting squeeze.
If she put herself in Dalton’s shoes, she could understand how adopting a dog on a whim might appear a tad irresponsible. But it wasn’t a whim. Not exactly. And anyway, she shouldn’t have to explain herself. They had a deal.
He crossed his arms. Aurélie tried not to think about the biceps that appeared to be straining the fabric of his suit jacket. How did a man who so obviously spent most of his time at work get muscles like that? It was hardly fair. “You said you wanted a hot dog, not a French bulldog.”
What was he even talking about? Oh, that’s right—her grand speech. “The hot dog was a metaphor, Mr. Drake.”
“And what about the pretzel? Was that a metaphor, as well?”
“No. I mean, yes. I mean...” Merde. Why did she get so flustered every time she tried to talk to him? “What do you have against dogs, anyway?”
“Nothing.” He frowned. How anyone could frown in the presence of a puppy was a mystery Aurélie couldn’t begin to fathom. “I do, however, have a problem with your little disappearing act.”
“And I have a problem with your patronizing attitude.”
She needed to put an end to this ridiculous standoff and get them both inside, preferably somewhere other than Dalton’s boring office. “I could very easily pack up my egg and go home, if you like.”
“Fine.” He shrugged, and to her utter astonishment, he began walking away.
“I beg your pardon?” she sputtered.
He turned back around. “Fine. Go back to your castle. And take the mutt with you.”
A slap to the face wouldn’t have been more painful. She squared her shoulders and did her best to ignore the panicked beating of her heart. “He has a name.”
“Since when? Five minutes ago?”
“It’s Jacques.” She ran a hand over the dog’s smooth little head. “In case you were wondering.”
A hint of a smile passed through his gaze. “Very French. I’m sure the palace will love it.”
She wasn’t sure if his praise was genuine or sarcastic. Either way, it sent a pleasant thrill skittering through Aurélie. A pleasant thrill that irritated her to no end.
Why should she care what he thought about anything? Clearly he considered her spoiled. Foolish. Irresponsible. He’d said as much, right to her face. When he looked at her, he saw one thing. A princess.
She wondered what it would be like to be seen. Really seen. Every move she made back home was watched and reported. Not a day passed when her face wasn’t on the front page of the Delamotte papers.
“Let’s be serious, Mr. Drake. We both know I’m not going anywhere. You want that egg.”
He took a few steps nearer, until she could feel the angry heat of his body. Too close. Much too close. “Yes, I do. But not as much as you wish to escape whatever it is you’re running from. You’re not going anywhere. I, on the other hand, won’t hesitate to call the palace. Tell me, Princess, what is it that’s got you so frightened?”
As if she would share any part of herself with someone like him. She hadn’t crossed an ocean in an effort to get away from one overbearing man, only to throw herself into the path of another.
She leveled her gaze at him. “Nothing scares me, Mr. Drake. Least of all, your empty threats. If you’re not prepared to uphold your end of our bargain, then I will, in fact, leave. Only I won’t take my egg back to Delamotte. I’ll take it right down the street to Harry Winston.”
She pasted a sweet smile on her face. Dalton gave her a long look, and as the silence stretched between them, she feared he might actually call her bluff.
Finally, he placed a hand on the small of her back and said, “Come. Let’s go home.”
The next morning, Dalton woke to the sensation of a warm body pressed against his. For a moment—just an aching, bittersweet instant—he allowed himself to believe he’d somehow traveled back to the past. Back to a time when there’d been more to life than work. And his office. And yet more work.
Then an unpleasant snuffling sound came from the body beside him, followed by a sneeze that sprayed his entire forearm with a hot, breathy mist. Dalton opened one eye. Sure enough, the beast he found staring back at him was most definitely not a woman. It was the damned dog.
He sighed. “What are you doing in here? I thought we agreed the bedroom was off-limits?”
The puppy’s head tilted at the sound of his voice, a gesture that would have probably been adorable if the dog weren’t so ridiculous-looking. And if he weren’t currently situated in Dalton’s bed, with his comically oversized head nestled right beside Dalton’s on his pillow—eiderdown, imported from Geneva.
Dalton’s gaze landed on a dark puddle of drool in the center of the pillowcase. Eiderdown or not, the pillow had just become a dog bed.
He rolled his eyes as he strode naked to the marble bathroom at the far end of the master suite and turned on the shower. Perhaps a soggy pillow was his penance for allowing a royal princess to sleep on his sofa rather than giving up his bed. Not that he hadn’t tried. But at 1 a.m., she’d still been perched cross-legged on the oversized tufted ottoman in the living room, flipping through the hundreds of channels his satellite dish company offered, like a giddy child on holiday. Dalton hadn’t even known
