slopes of her father’s horse farm back in New South Wales.
As she stood in the small hallway that either led back to the reception, or to the bank of lifts that might take her away from the Langsford, the muffled sound of the party reached her ears and she knew she didn’t want to go back in there. She quickly retrieved her long, thick coat from the cloakroom, changed out of the painfully high heels into warmer and much more comfortable black boots and slipped into the lift before anyone could see her leave.
As Mason descended nearly thirty flights, she calculated how long she’d have until the bus came back to pick them up. Two, maybe three hours. She looked at herself in the gold-tinted mirrored panels, and instead saw two hazel eyes in a chiselled marble image of male perfection staring at her as if he knew something about her she didn’t know.
‘I had it under control,’ she whispered angrily to the image of a man she feared she might never forget.
The doors to the lift opened and she strode across the black and white chessboard foyer, her eyes cast down as she held a stern conversation with herself. She’d definitely had it under control, she assured herself as she pushed, too heavily, on the spinning circular doorway, the resulting force shoving her out onto the pavement beyond and straight into the back of...
Oof.
The air was knocked from her lungs the moment her chest met a deliciously muscled back, even if it was a bit painful. She reached out a hand to steady herself, only to find that her fingers had wrapped around a forearm, also disturbingly muscular.
‘I’m so—’
Her apology was cut short as the stranger from the balcony turned, pushing her off balance, and she would have fallen if he hadn’t pulled back the arm she was still clinging to. Instead, she found herself chest to chest with her apparent rescuer.
‘We must stop—’
‘Don’t finish that cliché,’ she warned.
‘Are you always this angry?’ he asked, the half-laughing, half-genuine curiosity dancing in his eyes.
‘No, I’m just...’ She shook her head to loosen the thoughts that were churned up by the very sight of him. ‘Usually more coherent,’ she added ruefully, an answering smile pulling at her lips.
She stepped back, away from the heat of him, the smell...something she wanted to take a little longer to discern. If she’d thought there was power in the man from across the room, being this close, being held by him, was overwhelming. Casting a glance upwards, she could see golden flecks in his impossibly dark eyes, flecks that sparkled with mischief. His lips, curved into an almost irresistible smile, were full and indiscreetly sensual, and Mason found herself responding in a way that was wholly unexpected and inappropriate.
She turned away from the sheer magnetism of the man and looked up and down the street, surprised to find it so quiet. Everyone must either be at their own party, or in Times Square, she mused as breath streamed like smoke into the night air about them.
This was silly. She had to get over him. Over herself, more like.
‘Thank you,’ she said, the words white on the air in front of them, neither, it seemed, willing to look at the other. ‘For...’ She used a hand to gesture up and behind her back towards the balcony.
From the corner of her eye, she saw his powerful shoulder shrug, and felt rather than watched his lips curve into an ironic smile. ‘You had it under control.’ A heartbeat later, ‘You’re leaving?’ his accented voice asked. She couldn’t place it. Somewhere from the Arab states, clearly. But not one she’d encountered at her father’s horse farm before.
She frowned at his question. ‘No,’ she said, once more looking up and down the strangely quiet street. She offered her own shrugged shoulder. ‘The bus coming to take us back to our accommodation isn’t arriving until one a.m.’
‘Our accommodation,’ he mused. ‘Our being you and...’
‘The other trainee jockeys,’ she said, deliberately ignoring his leading question.
‘One of whom would be...’
‘Scott. Yes. He is one of the other trainee jockeys.’
‘And you don’t want to go back to the party.’ It was a statement and a warning, all in one.
Mason pursed her lips into a pout and shook her head, still looking out into the street before her, rather than see—or feel—his eyes on her.
‘I’m hungry,’ he announced in a way that seemed to involve her somehow. ‘With absolutely no ulterior motive, would you like to go and get some food?’
She willed him silently not to hear the rumble of her stomach. The mention of food was enough to set her mouth watering. ‘Weren’t you waiting on Francesca?’ the question was out of her mouth before she could stop it, knowing that it would betray more than a passing interest in him.
‘Who?’
‘The girl you were talking to...’
‘The brash American?’
‘Yes, the brash American,’ Mason replied with a laugh at the apt description of her friend.
‘No, she turned her attentions to a duke when she realised I wasn’t interested.’
He’d moved slightly, subtly, without her noticing, so that he was now clearly within her line of sight. His eyes grazed a little too long over her features, but not in an unpleasant way. It sent sparkles spreading across her skin, and down into a stomach that was now past the ‘growling’ stage, and quickly moving on to the ‘eating itself’ stage.
‘Food would be good. Though we’re not going to find anywhere open. It’s nearly midnight on New Year’s Eve.’
‘They’ll open for me,’ he said confidently.
‘Why? What’s so special about you?’
‘I’m a prince,’ he said with all the arrogance the title implied.
* * *
The sound of her laughter still rang in Danyl’s ears as they picked their way through silent, snow-covered streets, his personal bodyguard hanging a suitably invisible distance behind. It wasn’t that no one else had ever laughed at him before, at least not since he’d met Antonio and Dimitri. It was the laugh itself. A sound so pure, so unbridled, that the only thing that matched it was the joy expanding in his chest. There was something about the fiery young woman. She was like a present that he wanted to unwrap. Slowly.
Even bundled up in the thick winter wool coat she wore, she seemed impossibly small. Something that clearly suited her chosen occupation. How on earth she was able to wrestle control over a powerful thoroughbred, he couldn’t fathom, but somehow he relished the chance to discover. The thought fired the blood in his veins and he silently cursed himself. He should know better. But as a stray tendril of that honey-brown hair escaped the confines of where she’d pushed it into the collar of her coat, he desperately wanted to sweep it back, just to feel the silken smoothness of it.
He let her lead him through the streets, almost sure she didn’t
