he reminded himself as his pulse ratcheted higher. Keep it light. “All right, then. We are…as we were.” He dared to hold out his hand to her.
She frowned. He waited, arm outstretched, arching a brow, trying to appear hopeful and harmless. Her gaze darted from his face to his offered hand, and back to his face again. Just when he was certain he would have to drop his hand, she left the table and came and took it. His fingers closed over hers. He reveled in the thrill that shivered up his arm at her touch.
Too soon, she eased her hand free and snatched up her book. “Now, will you let me go?”
No. He cast about for a way to keep her there. If she wouldn’t let him kiss her or hold her or smooth her shining hair, all right. He accepted that. But couldn’t they at least talk for a while the way they used to do?
“Max?” A slight frown creased her brow.
He was fresh out of new tactics and had no clue how to get her to let down her guard. Plus he had a very strong feeling that he’d pushed her as far as she would go for now. This was looking to be an extended campaign. He didn’t like that, but if it was the only way to finally reach her, so be it. “I’ll be seeing you in the library—where you will no longer scuttle away every time I get near you.”
A hint of the old humor flashed in her eyes. “I never scuttle.”
“Scamper? Dart? Dash?”
“Stop it.” Her mouth twitched. A good sign, he told himself.
“Promise me you won’t run off the next time we meet.”
The spark of humor winked out. “I just don’t like this.”
“You’ve already said that. I’m going to show you there’s nothing to be afraid of. Do we have an understanding?”
“Oh, Max…”
“Say yes.”
And finally, she gave in and said the words he needed to hear. “Yes. I’ll, um, look forward to seeing you.”
He didn’t believe her. How could he believe her when she sounded so grim, when that mouth he wanted beneath his own was twisted with resignation? He didn’t believe her, and he almost wished he could give her what she said she wanted, let her go, say goodbye. He almost wished he could not care.
But he’d had years of not caring—long, empty years when he’d told himself that not caring was for the best.
And then the small, dark-haired woman in front of him changed everything.
She turned for the door.
He was out of ways to keep her there, and he needed to accept that. “Lani, wait…”
She stopped, shoulders tensing, head slightly bowed. “What now?” But she didn’t turn back to him.
“Let me.” He eased around her and pulled the door wide. She nodded, barely glancing at him, and went through, passing beneath the rough-hewn trellis into the cool winter sunlight. He lingered in the open doorway, watching her as she walked away from him.
“What is going on in that head of yours?” Sydney O’Shea Bravo-Calabretti, formerly kick-ass corporate lawyer and currently Princess of Montedoro, demanded. “Something’s bugging you.” The women sat in kid-size chairs at the round table in the playroom of the villa Sydney and Rule had bought and remodeled shortly after their marriage two years before.
Lani, holding Sydney’s one-year-old, Ellie, kissed the little one’s silky strawberry curls and lied without shame. “Nothing’s bugging me. Not a thing.”
“Yes, there is. You’ve got this weird, worried, faraway look in your eye.”
Okay, yeah. Yesterday’s confrontation with Max in the little stone house had seriously unnerved her. She’d thought about little else since then. She’d told no one what had happened on New Year’s, not even Sydney. And she never would. But she had to give Syd something, some reason she might be distracted—anything but the truth that, while Sydney and Rule and the kids were here at the family’s villa, Lani had led His Highness up to her room at the palace and done any number of un-nannylike things to his magnificent body.
Limply, she offered, “Well, the current book is giving me fits.” That should fly. She was in the middle of writing the final book in a trilogy of historical novels set in Montedoro. Syd had been her best friend for seven years and knew that she could get pretty stressed out while struggling with the middle of a book where the story had a tendency to drag.
Syd was so not buying. “The current book is always giving you fits. There’s something else.”
Crap. Lani frowned and pretended to think it over for a minute. “No, really. It’s the book. That’s all. There’s nothing else.”
“Yolanda Vasquez, you are lying through your teeth.”
So much for the sagging-middle excuse. What to try next?
No way was Lani busting herself. Syd had her back, always. But it was just too tacky to get into, the nanny-slash-wannabe-writer getting naked at New Year’s with the widowed heir to the throne—whom the whole world knew was still hopelessly in love with his lost wife. “Lying through your teeth,” she echoed brightly. “What does that mean, really? Some expressions are not only overused, they make no real sense. I mean, everything we say, we say through our teeth, right? I mean, unless we have no teeth.”
Syd didn’t even crack a smile. “You think you’re distracting me from asking what’s up with you. You’re not.”
“Nani, Nani…” Ellie squirmed around until she was facing Lani. Then she reached up her plump right hand and tried to stick her fingers into Lani’s mouth.
Lani gummed them. “Mmm. Yummy, tasty little fingers…” Ellie giggled and bounced up and down. Lani kissed her again, that time on her button of a nose, after which she started squirming again and Lani hoisted her high. Ellie laughed in delight as Lani swung her to the floor.
The little sweetheart was only thirteen months and already walking. For a moment, she wobbled, steadying herself on her fat little feet. And then she toddled to her brother’s open toy box and started rooting around in it.
Syd’s phone chirped. A text. She took it out and read the message. “Rule. He won’t be home till after seven.” She started composing a reply. Lani breathed a cautious sigh of relief that the subject of what could be bothering her was closed.
Over at the toy box, Ellie pulled out a soft green rubber turtle, which she carried across the playroom to four-year-old Trevor, who sat quietly building a slightly tilted Lego tower.
“Turt,” she said, beaming proudly, and held it out to him as Syd chuckled and texted.
Trev gave Ellie his usual so-patient big-brother look, took the toy from her and set it down on his other side. Ellie frowned and toddled carefully around to reach the turtle again. She bent with great concentration and picked it
