their own. They’d toyed with the name for a while, but they kept coming back around to the Winners’ Circle. Only they couldn’t decide where to put the apostrophe.
They should have been here with him. The two students he’d met nearly four years ago at the beginning of their studies had soon become the brothers he’d never had. Having been thrust into the American lifestyle of university, they had been drawn together by the determination to succeed not only in their studies, but also in their pleasures. And the bond of friendship born from similar interests had become something more...vital. Never before had Danyl had such close friendships, the palace being a lonely place for an only child. An only royal child.
This evening was supposed to have been it! Been amazing. It was the last New Year’s Eve he would spend in New York before he went back to Ter’harn and the life of duty that awaited him. And he’d wanted to make it count, wanted it to be the last, greatest chance to let loose, to be...free. But Antonio had been forced to visit his parents and sister, and Dimitri was rescuing his half-brother from some scandal back in Greece.
So here he was, alone at the Langsford, where it seemed he couldn’t escape his royal reputation and the conversation had turned to him instead of horses and racing. For a moment, he thought he might have found something else in the eyes of a dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty, but she had disappeared and instead some brash American was making a pass at him. In front of everyone.
She laughed again and that was it.
Forgoing the usual diplomatic politeness that felt as if it had been forced, rather than bred, into him, he walked out of the human circle, leaving one of the men mid-sentence. They’d forgive him. He was royalty after all.
Heading for the exit, he spied the evening’s patrons and knew that he would be waylaid if they saw him. He veered off to a glass doorway leading to the balcony, where, if he was lucky, there might just be a door back in at the other end of it. He ducked out onto the large wrap-around balcony and the sting of the frigid wintry air bit at him, but even that was nothing compared to the shock he’d felt when he’d locked eyes with that girl. It was a shame to leave without seeing what that could have led to, but safer. Yes, definitely safer.
The sounds of hushed angry voices were thrown against him by the whipping wind. He frowned, looking out into the shadows to see two figures just before the bend in the building. A man and...that woman. Before his body could react, he saw her pull her hand away from the man’s clutches, only to be pinned against the brick wall behind her.
‘Get off me, Scott.’
‘Don’t give me that, Mase...’ The man’s slurred voice was muffled by the way his head was buried in her neck.
‘You’re making a fool of yourself. Just stop it.’ The woman’s words were firm rather than angry as she tried to push him away.
‘Oh, come on, Mason, you’ve been making eyes at me for nearly three months now.’
‘I’ve done nothing of the sort, Scott. I’m going back inside.’
‘No, you’re not.’ The man reached out to grab her arm again in the time that it took Danyl to cover the distance between them.
‘Get off me!’
‘The lady told you to stop.’ Danyl’s loud voice was toned with barely leashed control. He hated men like that. Hated when a man couldn’t take the word no.
‘Go away. This is none of your business.’
Danyl peered at the brunette in the darkness. There was nothing about her that suggested she was faking her distress. Her eyes were large, deep brown pools marred by frustration and even a little fear. Her body was held tight, retreating on itself as if to reduce the physical contact between her and this guy as much as possible.
The man spun round to face Danyl, squaring up to him with arrogance and inebriation.
‘If anyone’s leaving, it’s—’
Danyl had seen the move coming from a mile away, the man’s whole body thrown into a wide, arcing punch that held more bravado than power. It really took very little effort for Danyl to block the man’s punch with his forearm and thrust up his free hand into the man’s nose.
A rather unpleasant crunching sound cut into the night, seemingly worse for the woman’s gasp of shock and the subsequent howl let out by the man now bent double, clutching his nose.
The man scuttled over to the door to the balcony, casting a furious glance at Danyl and the woman whose name he still didn’t know, before re-entering the building, dropping curses like litter in his wake.
Danyl looked back at the woman who had stepped away from the wall, a delicate shiver running across her skin. Her eyes, almost as dark as the night, stared up at him, any trace of fear vanished, and instead he was surprised to find anger.
‘Are you—?’
‘What the hell did you do that for?’ she demanded, husky Australian accents heavy on her words.
‘What?’
‘I had it under control,’ she muttered under her breath, pushing past Danyl. He tried to ignore the spark her touch brought, and focus on the reaction he hadn’t expected.
‘Like hell you did,’ he replied, spinning around to face her. ‘That guy was—’
‘Drunk and harmless. I could have handled him myself,’ she dismissed.
‘Of course you could have. Look at you. You can’t be taller than five feet and two inches!’
‘Size doesn’t matter,’ she responded indignantly.
He narrowed his gaze, desperately fighting back the instinctive retort to the contrary. But it seemed she had read his thoughts as clearly as if he’d said them.
‘Really?’ she demanded, and the scorn in her voice was a little too much for Danyl to bear. Perhaps he should have just stayed out of it. Facing the event’s patrons would have been better than this.
She huffed out an impressively delicate puff of air and disappeared through the door to the reception.
* * *
Mason shook out her hands, a slight trembling the only outward sign of what had happened on the balcony she would allow herself to show. What had Scott been thinking? He had taken her completely by surprise, never having shown any interest in her other than that of a friend. Until now. And contrary to what that stranger had thought, she did have it under control. If she could wrangle an unstable stock horse, she could handle Scott. She willed the adrenaline coursing through her veins from her fight—rather than flight—reaction to leave her body, more angry than scared that she had found herself in that situation. No. That Scott had put her in that situation. She hadn’t seen or heard anything about Scott that indicated he was...like that, and Mason could have handled it herself. But someone else might not. So, she’d be speaking to Harry about it in the morning.
What she hadn’t been able to handle was her reaction to the man who had driven her out to the balcony in the first place. The man who had broken Scott’s nose. She had tried to avoid his gaze and the intense, searing heat she felt every time they locked eyes. As the shivers from just the memory of it wracked her body,
