I should have it finished in a few more months. A nice manageable project.” Both men smiled.
Not long after Danni and her father’s return to San Philippe when she was five, he’d inherited the almost unrecognizable remnants of a Type 49 Bugatti.
For years the Bugatti had been an ongoing project occupying all of his spare time. It had been therapy for him following the end of his marriage to Danni’s mother.
There had been nothing awful about her parents’ marriage, aside from the fact that their love for each other wasn’t enough to overcome their love for their respective home countries. Her father was miserable in America and her mother was miserable in San Philippe.
And for a few years, after his mother’s death, Adam had helped her father on the car. Danni too had joined them, her primary role being to sit on the workbench and watch and pass tools. And to remind them when it was time to stop and eat. Building the car had been therapy, and a distraction for all of them. She had an early memory of sitting in the car with Adam after her father had finished for the evening. Adam, probably no more than eleven, had entertained her by pretending to drive her, complete with sound effects, to imaginary destinations.
By the time Danni was fifteen none of them needed the therapy so much anymore. Adam, busy with schooling and life, had long since stopped calling around. Her father sold the still unfinished car to a collector. Parts had been a nightmare to either source or make and time had been scarce. Though Danni had later come to suspect, guiltily, that the timing of the sale may have had something to do with the fact that her mother had been lobbying for her to go to college in the States. And fees weren’t cheap.
Her father shut the door behind him and she and Adam turned to face one another. Adam’s gaze swept over her, a frown creasing his brow. She looked down at her jeans and sweater, her normal casual wear. Definitely not palace standard but she wasn’t at the palace.
Silence loomed.
“Sit down.” Danni gestured through to the living room and the couch recently vacated by her father.
“No, that’s … okay.” The uncertainty was uncharacteristic. Seeming to change his mind, Adam walked through to the living room and sat.
Danni followed and sat on the armchair, watching, wary.
“I have to apologize.”
Not this again. “You did that.”
Adam suddenly stood and crossed to the fireplace. “Not for … that. Though I am still sorry. And I do still maintain that I didn’t mean it the way you took it. You’re obviously—”
“Then what for?” She cut him off before he could damn her femininity with faint praise.
“For sacking you.”
She almost laughed. “It’s not my real job, Adam. I have the Grand Prix work. I was covering for Dad as a favor. The loss is no hardship.”
“But I need to apologize because I want you to drive for me again.”
This time the silence was all hers as she stared at him.
Finally she found her voice. “Thanks, but no thanks. Like I said, the loss was no hardship. I think I demonstrated why I’m the last person you want as your driver.”
“Yes, you are the last person I want as my driver because you’re so perceptive and so blunt you make me uncomfortable. But unfortunately I think I need you.”
She made him uncomfortable? And he needed her? Curious as she was she wasn’t going to ask. His statements, designed to draw her in, to lower her defenses, had all the makings of a trap. Warning bells clamored. She just wanted Adam to leave. “I don’t know what you’re playing at.” She stood up and crossed to him, looking into his face, trying to read the thoughts he kept hidden behind indecipherable eyes. “You don’t need me. There are any number of palace drivers, and I don’t need the job. Seems pretty clear-cut to me.”
“I could ask Wrightson,” he said with obvious reluctance.
The younger man her father saw as his chief rival. “Or Dad,” she suggested.
He shook his head. “I try not to use your father for the nighttime work.”
She knew he did that in deference to her father’s age and seniority. But her father wouldn’t necessarily see it as a favor. He didn’t like to think he was getting older.
“Besides, it’s not just driving that I need.” Adam studied her for several seconds longer and she could see him fighting some kind of internal battle. Finally he spoke again. “I called Clara this morning to ask her out again.”
“You don’t think that was too soon?”
“Maybe that’s what it was. But I don’t have time, or the inclination, for games.”
“Oh.” Danni’s stomach sank in sympathy. This wasn’t going to be good. She just knew it.
Adam rested his elbow on the mantel and stared into the fire. “She said she valued my friendship.”
“Ouch.”
“But that there had been no romance.” A frown creased his brow. “No spark.”
“Ahh.” Danni didn’t dare say anything more.
“That I hadn’t even looked into her eyes when I was speaking to her. Not properly. That I was too uptight.” He looked into Danni’s eyes now, as though probing for answers.
“Mmm.” She tried desperately to shield her thoughts—that he just had to look at someone with a portion of the intensity he was directing at her, and if that intensity was transformed into something like, oh say, desire, the woman at the receiving end would have only two choices, melt into a puddle or jump his bones. Danni glanced away.
“So—” he took a deep breath and blew it out “—you were right. Everything you said.”
“Anyone could have seen it,” she said gently.
“Sadly, you’re probably right about that, too. The thing is, not anyone would have pointed it out to me. I don’t know who else I can trust to be that honest with me and I can’t think who else I’d trust enough to let as close as I’m going to have to let you. I can admit my weaknesses to you and you alone because you already seem to know them.”
She knew being who he was had to be lonely and undoubtedly more so since Rafe, his closest confidante, had married. The fact that Rafe had married the woman intended as Adam’s bride might not have helped either. But he brought much of his isolation on himself. He didn’t let people close. And she shouldn’t let his problems be hers. But somewhere in there, in the fact that he had a level of trust for her, was a compliment. Or maybe not. Maybe she was the next best thing to another brother.
She didn’t know what to say. Her head warned her to just say no.
He was staring at the fire again. “It’s imperative that I marry a woman who’ll make a good princess, someone who can lead the country with me. And I know what I’m looking for in that regard. I know my requirements.”
“Your
