“My mistake, Carly,” I say easily, staring her down. That haughtiness really gets under my skin. And to think that people call me arrogant. “Looks like I’m just a dumb American. You’re my first princess. I don’t know how to behave.”
Her nostrils flare. Her face floods with vivid color. For a second, I wonder if she plans to lunge for my throat—a possibility that thrills me somewhat, to be honest—but a new distraction arrives.
“Percy, can I borrow you for a second?” One of tonight’s hostesses, a silver-haired woman wearing her body weight in diamonds, appears and puts a hand on Percy’s arm, startling the three of us. “My husband is asking about your new polo pony.”
“I see.” Old Percy divides his speculative and suspicious glance between me and Carly. “Absolutely. Excuse me, darling.”
The use of the D-word scrapes my nerves. Renews my anger at Carly.
The hostess and Percy walk off, leaving me alone with Carly and my flaring temper.
I remind myself that we’re in the middle of a cocktail reception. Now is not the time for me to lose my shit. But that battle has evidently been lost since the first second I laid eyes on Carly Montgomery here.
I ease closer, taking care to lower my voice.
“Your full of surprises, aren’t you, Your Royal Highness?” Ready to pick this fight, I give her a lingering once-over that makes her stiffen. “Where should we start? With your disappearing act, your title or your wannabe fiancé?”
6
Carly
Fuming, I stare into Damon’s stony face and gleaming eyes, wondering about my own sanity and trying to decide exactly why I’m so glad to see this arrogant and troublesome prick again. Is the captain of an eighteenth-century merchant vessel glad to see a pirate climb aboard with a cutlass clamped in his teeth? No, he is not. Yet here I am, in all my hormone-drenched foolishness, happy to see Damon again and to realize that he hasn’t forgotten me. That maybe our time together meant something to him. Actually, happy isn’t the word. Thrilled is a better choice. Ecstatic is probably the best choice. I feel as though an unintended side effect of my walking out of his hotel suite was that he kept control of my ability to breathe and think clearly. Not that I’m thinking clearly now as I take an aggressive step forward and hike up my chin, the better to meet his challenge.
But now, finally, I can breathe again.
“Let’s start with the fact that I’m not engaged. As I believe I just mentioned, had you been paying attention. Not that it’s any of your business. And thank you for trying to put me on the hot seat in front of Percy. Charming.”
“But you were engaged,” he says with the shrewdness of a solicitor questioning someone in the witness box.
“Yes,” I reluctantly admit.
He hesitates, his gaze hard and searching while he digests this information.
“You cheated on him with me?”
The implication rubs me the wrong way. I resent needing to explain myself to anyone, but the idea that he thinks I’m a cheater—when I grew up witnessing the excruciating implosion of my parents’ marriage due to my father’s shenanigans—is worse.
“Does it matter?” I snap.
A longer pause this time.
“Yes.” His entire body tenses. Even a muscle pulses in his jaw. “Much to my surprise.”
Something about the unmistakable turbulence in his expression makes my chest ache.
“We were on a break to evaluate things. If you must know. Now I’ve ended things.”
“You sure about that?”
“Have I become re-engaged without my knowledge?” I frown. “I’m almost positive I haven’t.”
A glimmer of amusement from Damon. “Old Percy seems confused.”
“I can’t help that,” I say, shrugging.
“Maybe you’re sending him mixed messages.”
The idea that Damon Black, in all his tall, dark and handsome glory, might be jealous gives me an unreasonable thrill. I’m not proud about it, but there’s no denying it.
Still, we’re near complete strangers to each other. Boundaries must be set and maintained.
“I’m sorry, but how is this any of your business?”
Crooked smile from Damon. “Sweetheart, if you didn’t make it my business the first time you smiled at me, it sure as hell became my business when you fucked me.”
It’s hard to decide what excites me more about him. His crudeness or his possessiveness. It’s startling to discover this secret part of me that loves being challenged. And it will be interesting to discover how well matched we are in this battle of wills.
“I wasn’t aware that our little interlude together had that sort of significance,” I say, knowing it will infuriate him.
Sure enough, his lips pull back in a lopsided grimace that would be right at home on an alligator in the second before it chomped me into oblivion.
“You’ve been brutally clear on how little it meant to you.”
The note of hurt in his deep voice catches me off guard. If anything, I’d told myself my disappearing routine would have pinched his ego. It never occurred to me that he may have been upset.
This human side of Damon Black reminds me of one of the reasons why I’m so glad to see him again. He’s a very intriguing man. At times like this, there seems to be so much more to him than just his innate sexiness. And uncovering those characteristics seems so much more important than my vow to remain unattached and above the dating fray.
I open my mouth, determined to ask him if we could get a private drink later. To offer an apology. To admit that I may have jumped to conclusions and handled things badly that night.
But my father’s voice intrudes before I can get any of that out.
“I didn’t know you knew Damon Black, Charlotte,” he says, appearing beside us and beaming as though he just got word that my grandmother amended her will to make him the sole heir. His high color and red nose indicate that he’s enjoyed another drink or two since our arrival. The knowledge does not thrill me. Nor does his obvious interest in Damon. “Care to make the introductions?”
No, I wouldn’t care. Not with that speculative light in my father’s eye. Nevertheless, I revert to the crisp manners that have been drummed into me since birth.
“Daddy, this is Damon Black. Real estate magnate. We met briefly at Bemelmans several weeks ago.” I pause to shoot Damon a veiled warning look, which he ignores as he shakes my father’s hand. “Damon, this is my father, Prince Edmund. Duke of Montgomery.”
“Delighted,” my father says, pumping his hand.
“Pleased to meet you, sir. I understand that you have quite the personal collection of art.”
My father’s smile now threatens to swallow his entire head and perhaps eat into his neck. “As do you. I’d love to see your Picasso sketches. I’m sure they’re stunning.”
As an art lover, I try not to gasp.
“That could be arranged. They’re out at my family home on Long Island.”
“I look forward to it. And while I have you to myself for the moment, I’d hoped to make some discreet inquiries about selling some of my Baroque pieces.”