reason. He wanted her to stay, so she stayed.
A month after the stalker was caught, Mathiaz had arranged a moonlit picnic in a secluded area of the garden at Château Valmont, instructing palace security to allow them their privacy. The champagne and excellent food, moonlight and the perfume of roses had bewitched her into forgetting that she shouldn’t let him kiss her, far less caress her so intimately that her eyes blurred just thinking of that night.
Afterward they had gone for a midnight stroll along the private beach and he had told her that he was in love with her.
He hadn’t understood when she pulled away from him in panic. How could he, when she barely understood herself? Like Cinderella fleeing the ball on the stroke of midnight, she’d gone back to her suite in the guest wing, and started packing. Her resignation had been on his desk next morning.
He had asked her to explain, plainly hurt by her apparent change of heart. Her job at the château was done, she informed him, the finality of it echoing in her soul. Time she moved on. She knew she sounded uncaring, when it was the last thing she felt. Better he thought she didn’t care, than discover how much she did, when her every instinct rejected the feeling.
She hadn’t wanted him to know about the panic attack his declaration of love had brought on, ashamed to admit how the thought of loving anyone paralyzed her. If he knew, he would want more from her than she was capable of giving. So she told herself she was doing the right thing leaving now before she hurt him more than she had already. For herself, it was already too late.
No one else had ever held her so tenderly, or made her feel such intense emotions. She put them into her response now, blindly, hungrily, the long months of deprivation overriding the inner voice that warned her she was playing with fire.
How had she found the strength to walk away from him, and live without him for ten of the longest months of her life? How was she going to find the strength to walk away a second time?
“Jacinta,” he murmured, his lips moving against her mouth. “While I was unconscious, I dreamed of you, and this was exactly how I imagined kissing you would feel.”
She turned her head away, trying to sound unaffected, when it was the last thing she felt. “In my experience, reality rarely measures up to our dreams.”
He dropped his hands to his sides and moved back a few paces. “I wanted to know, all the same.”
She kept the disappointment out of her voice. “And now?”
“Now we practice those falls.”
She should be glad he had the strength to stop when he did, but regret pulsed through her as she went to the dressing room and changed. Close combat was probably the last exercise she should contemplate with Mathiaz, but since she couldn’t risk any other kind of intimacy, she decided to take what comfort she could in this kind.
When she emerged from the dressing room, he was waiting for her at the padded floor area. His loose-fitting white pants and tunic matched hers. The sash around his waist was also black.
“You sure you want to go through with this?” she asked more cheerfully than she felt.
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Regretting accepting my challenge already? I’ll try not to do too much damage.”
“I was more concerned about hurting your leg.”
“Let me worry about the leg. You worry about surviving.”
She was already worried about survival, but knew he didn’t mean the same kind she did. Emotional survival worried her more than dealing with his greater physical strength. She was trained to handle opponents twice her size, but her training hadn’t included what to do when your opponent kissed you and left your mind so fogged you could hardly think straight.
She forced her mind to clear and bowed ceremonially to him. He returned the bow, then began to circle around her, warming up.
The first couple of times he threw her easily, and let her throw him once out of courtesy. Then she managed to throw him once without his cooperation. She saw the look of surprise on his face as he landed, slapping the mat to absorb the impact of his fall.
Rolling to his feet, he began to react with more strength, demanding more from her to keep up. “You’re good at this,” he said as she rolled to her feet, after another fall.
“For a woman of my size,” she added, tongue firmly in cheek.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to. I’m used to being underestimated.”
“I have the feeling I’m doing it now.” He sounded as if he meant something more than the friendly bout.
“Are you remembering something?”
He frowned. “Not sure. I have the feeling we’ve done this before, or something very like it. Have we?”
“This is the first time we’ve practiced martial arts together,” she said with scrupulous honesty.
He circled again, looking for an opening. “But not the first time I’ve kissed you.”
Apprehension prickled along her spine. “You said you dreamed about it. Sometimes the mind can’t tell the difference between a real experience and one that’s strongly imagined.”
“Now you sound like Pascale.” Mathiaz said in annoyance, as if her evasiveness bothered him more than her fast footwork.
She was bothered, too, for different reasons. She didn’t like lying to him even by omission, but how else could she describe her refusal to tell him what had gone on between them in the year he had lost?
Why didn’t she simply tell him that she was the one who couldn’t deal with the closeness blossoming between them?
Mathiaz lunged at her with a speed that surprised her, given his injury. When he grasped her and pulled her down to the floor with him, her mind whirled back to when she was eighteen, returning from a date with her first love, the man she had fully expected to marry when they were old enough.
They had blown a tire on a back road on the way home from a dance. She had been helping Colin change the tire when a group of teenagers pulled up beside them, making lewd, drunken comments.
They had ignored the catcalling, but the four drunken youths piled out of the car and encircled her. She had tried talking to them, hoping to defuse the situation, but they began pawing her. When Colin tried to stop them, one of the youths struck him from behind with the tire lever. Colin slumped to the ground. Never had Jacinta felt more helpless.
She tried to reach Colin but two of the men pulled her to the ground. A third dragged her dress up around her waist. Her attempts to kick and bite her assailants proved useless. She knew what would have happened next if a police car hadn’t cruised to a halt beside them, lights blazing. After a scuffle, the youths were arrested. She had been vindicated to see them convicted of Colin’s murder.
She had made up her mind never to be helpless again, learning every self-defense move she could, and finding that she had an unerring eye with a gun. Perhaps because she now projected an air of being able to take care of herself, she had never needed to use any of her skills other than
