style="font-size:15px;"> ‘Would you show me the Sydney the tourists don’t see? I would very much like your company.’
The lovely food director’s eyes widened. She hesitated. ‘I...I wonder if—’
He was waiting for her reply, when a slender, dark-haired young woman swept into the room. Tristan silently cursed under his breath in his own language at the interruption. She immediately held out her hand to him.
‘You must be Mr Marco? I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting—the traffic was a nightmare. I’m Eliza Dunne.’
For a moment he made no acknowledgment of the newcomer’s greeting—and then he remembered. He was using Marco as a surname when it was in fact his second given name. He didn’t actually have a surname, as such. Not when he was always known simply as Tristan, Crown Prince of Montovia.
GEMMA CLOSED HER eyes in sheer relief at Eliza’s well-timed entrance. What a lucky escape. Despite all her resolve not to act on impulse when it came to men, she’d been just about to agree to show Tristan around Sydney.
And that would have been a big mistake.
First, Party Queens had a rule of staff not dating clients. The fact that Andie had broken the rule in spectacular fashion by falling in love with and marrying their billionaire client Dominic Hunt was beside the point. She, Gemma, did not intend to make any exceptions. The business was too important to her for her to make messy mistakes.
But it wasn’t just about the company rules. If she’d said yes to Tristan she could have told herself she was simply being hospitable to a foreign visitor—but she would have been lying. And lying to herself about men was a bad habit she was trying to break. She found Tristan way too appealing to pretend that being hospitable was all it would be.
‘Thank you for taking care of Mr Marco for me, Gemma,’ Eliza said. ‘The traffic was crazy—insane.’
‘Gemma has looked after me very well,’ Tristan said, again with that faint hint of a bow in her direction.
Her heart stepped up a beat at the awareness that shimmered through her.
‘She hasn’t plied you with cake or muffins or cookies?’ asked Eliza with a teasing smile.
‘The cake isn’t baked yet,’ Gemma said. ‘But I have cookies and—’
‘Perhaps another cake, another time,’ Tristan said with a shrug of those broad shoulders, that charming smile. ‘And I could give you chocolate in return.’
The shrug. The accent. Those blue, blue eyes. The Montovian chocolate.
Yes! her body urged her to shout.
No! urged her common sense.
‘Perhaps...’ she echoed, the word dwindling away irresolutely.
Thankfully, Eliza diverted Tristan’s attention from her as she engaged him in a discussion about final guest numbers for his party.
Gemma was grateful for some breathing space. Some deep breathing to let her get to grips with the pulse-raising presence of this gorgeous man.
‘I’ll let you guys chat while I check on my cake,’ she said as she went back around the countertop.
She slipped into the pink oven mitts and carefully opened the oven door. As she turned the pan around, she inhaled the sweet-sharp aroma of the cake. Over the years she had learned to gauge the progress of her baking by smell. Its scent told her this cake had a way to go. This kind of solid mud cake needed slow, even cooking.
That was what she’d be looking for in a man in future. A slow burn. Not instant flames. No exhilarating infatuation. No hopping into bed too soon. Rather a long, slow getting to know each other before any kind of commitment—physical or otherwise—was made. The old-fashioned word courtship sprang to mind.
She’d managed six months on her own. She was in no rush for the next man. There was no urgency. Next time she wanted to get it right.
Still, no matter what she told herself, Gemma was superaware of Tristan’s presence in her kitchen. And, even though he seemed engrossed in his conversation with Eliza, the tension in the way he held himself let her know that he was aware of her, too. The knowledge was a secret pleasure she hugged to herself. It was reassuring that she could still attract a hot guy. Even if there was no way she should do anything about it.
She scraped clean her mixing bowl and spoon and put them in the dishwasher while keeping an ear on Tristan and Eliza’s conversation about the party on Friday and an eye on Tristan himself. On those broad shoulders tapering to narrow hips, on the long legs she imagined would be lean and hard with muscle.
Catching her eye, he smiled. Her first instinct was to blush, then smile back. For a long moment their gazes held before she reluctantly dragged hers away and went back to the tricky task of finely slicing strips of candied lemon peel.
Okay, she wasn’t in dating exile any more. There was no law to say she couldn’t flirt just a little. But she had spent six months fine-tuning her antennae to detect potential heartbreak. And there was something about this handsome Montovian that had those antennae waving wildly with a message of caution. They detected a mystery behind his formal way of speaking and courteous good manners. It wasn’t what he’d said but what he hadn’t said.
Then there was the fact Tristan was only here for a few days. To be a good-looking tourist’s vacation fling was not what she needed in order to launch herself back into the dating pool. She had to be totally on guard, so she wouldn’t fall for the first gorgeous guy who strolled into her life.
She’d learned such painful lessons from her relationship with Alistair. It had been love at first sight for both of them—or so she’d thought. Followed by an emotional rollercoaster that had lasted for eighteen months. Too blinded by desire, love—whatever that turbulent mix of emotions had been—she’d only seen the Alistair she’d wanted to see. She had missed all the cues that would have alerted her he wasn’t what he’d sworn he was.
She’d heard the rumours before she’d started to date him. But he’d assured her that he’d kicked his cocaine habit—and his reputation as a player. When time after time he’d lapsed, she’d always forgiven him, given him the one more chance he’d begged for. And then another. After all, she’d loved him and he’d loved her—hadn’t he?
Then had come the final hurt and humiliation of finding him in the bathroom at a party with a so-called ‘mutual friend’. Doing her as well as the drugs. Gemma doubted she’d ever be able to scour that image from her eyes.
After that there’d been no more chances, no more Alistair. She’d spent the last six months trying to sort out why she always seemed to fall for the wrong type of man. Her dating history was littered with misfires—though none as heart-wrenchingly painful as Alistair’s betrayal.
On her first day back in the dating world she wasn’t going to backtrack. Tristan was still a mystery man. He had perhaps not been completely honest about himself and was on vacation from a faraway country. How many more strikes against him could there be?
But, oh, he was handsome.
Eliza
