Читать книгу The Royal House of Niroli: Secret Heirs: Bride by Royal Appointment / A Royal Bride at the Sheikh's Command - Пенни Джордан, Raye Morgan - Страница 7

THE kid was going to fall right over the edge.

Adam Ryder’s anger at his son was barely leashed and he was fighting to hold it back. They’d come here for sightseeing, like all the other tourists strolling around them, but Adam wasn’t thinking much about history as he climbed into the ruins of an ancient Roman villa on a site overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. The island of Niroli seemed to be crammed with castles and old crumbling walls and all sorts of antique relics but that wasn’t what he’d come for.

Actually, he’d come to this particular location because it wasn’t too far from the hotel and looked to be a good place to let his six-year old son, Jeremy, loose to run off some of the excess energy that was making him such a pain to be around.

But his reason for being on Niroli, a destination he’d avoided all his life? Ah, that was harder to explain.

Still, even he had to admit the island had a magic quality. He’d felt it right away as they’d stepped off the flight from NewYork. The air seemed softer. The sunlight seemed to make things sparkle with possibilities. All of which immediately made him wary. He couldn’t let things like that seduce him away from his goal.

After all, to put it plainly, he’d come to Niroli to do a little fund-raising. He needed money to save his company—big money—and he was willing to do almost anything to get it, including accepting an unusual offer that had been made to him—the crown of this little island country. And there was nothing magical about that.

Meanwhile, he had to deal with Jeremy. He’d brought the boy along hoping to create a few bonding opportunities, but his interest in that project was waning fast. The thing was, the nanny he’d hired to come along and take care of his son had quit right there in the airport, loudly declaring she couldn’t stand the boy just moments before boarding the plane.

Adam kept remembering the odd, slightly triumphant smile on Jeremy’s face as she had stormed away. He’d faced off grown men in bar fights in his younger days with hardly a quiver of fear, but the look on his son’s face, just before departing all known civilization with only him in tow, still sent shivers down his spine. He knew how to handle adults, both male and female. But what was he going to do with this kid?

“Take him out and let him run,” the woman at the concierge desk at the hotel had suggested.

So here he was, letting Jeremy run. And the boy certainly ran. Up and down and all over the ruins, his blond hair flying in the breeze. At least he seemed interested in the ruins. That was something. He’d spent the entire plane ride asking, “Are we there yet?” until Adam had had to bite down on his own hand to keep from yelling at him.

Now Jeremy was balancing on the viaduct that had once brought water to the villa, a portion of which came perilously close to the edge of the cliff. Adam frowned. He supposed he should do the parental thing and warn him about falling.

“Jeremy, don’t go out on the edge like that,” he called out. “It’s dangerous.”

The boy looked back at him and laughed. Adam shook his head. What six-year-old boy laughed like that, with that wicked tone, as though he relished torturing adults? The only thing he could think was that he’d better hire another, tougher nanny, and do it fast.

“Stay away from the edge.”

Jeremy turned from the viaduct, but he began to climb the crumbling exterior wall of the old villa instead. Adam started toward him. This was getting ridiculous. The kid was going to kill himself.

“Jeremy! Damn it, get down from there right now!”

Jeremy turned to climb higher—and fell right over the edge.

The shout that came from Adam seemed to rip through the walls of his chest. Shock and then sharp fear jolted through him and he began to run, cursing and praying at the same time. Oh, God! What if …?

He threw himself into the ruin and began to scramble up the steep wall, heading for the spot where Jeremy had gone over the edge. The Roman bricks crumbled under his feet, making for impossible climbing, but then he gained the harder ledge and vaulted up into position. Looking down, he braced himself for the sight of his son’s shattered body lying on the rocks, thirty feet below.

Instead, he saw Jeremy kneeling at the feet of a slender woman, petting what looked like a golden retriever, and from his new vantage point he could see that there was a shelf, a sort of patio area, that jutted out over the sea, not far beneath him.

He took a deep breath and let his shoulders sag, but relief was followed quickly by raw anger. Now he realized that Jeremy hadn’t fallen. He’d jumped. Adam let out an angry shout, then turned and made his way to the stone steps he noticed along the side. By the time he reached where the young woman was sitting on an old stone wall, Jeremy and the dog had gone on down to the rocky shore beneath and were now frolicking at the water’s edge.

His anger at his son was only made worse by his sense of frustration, and he swore, then turned grudgingly toward the woman.

“Sorry,” he muttered, just in case she was the type to take offense.

And then he stopped and looked again. She was quite striking. Her body was slim and graceful, her dark brown hair sleek and shining in the sunlight and braided with a silk scarf the color of spring leaves. Her neck seemed unusually long and slender, making him think of ballet dancers. He couldn’t see her eyes as she wore a pair of very dark and stylish Gucci sunglasses, but the features he could see could have been classically cut in fine porcelain. In direct contrast, her mouth was full and lush and sensual, and her chin tilted impudently.

“I hope my son didn’t bother you,” he said, his gaze sliding over the creamy skin of her bare arms.

Her blouse was lacy, her skirt a wide swath of emerald-green gauze. Her feet looked delicate in leather sandals, the toenails painted a pearly pink. There was an elf-like air of the forest sprite about her, though she was too tall and well rounded to be a fairy. Altogether, she was very much the most enchanting creature he’d seen in a long time. He turned toward her the way plants responded to sunlight—as though he had to have her in his life.

“Oh, no,” she responded pleasantly. “I enjoyed meeting him. He seems like a wonderful boy.”

“Wonderful? Hah.” That almost startled a laugh from him, but he liked her musical speaking voice with its faint accent adding a certain lilting charm. “I guess you didn’t really have time to get to know him,” he noted dryly.

A frown appeared between her neat eyebrows. “Is that supposed to be a joke?” she asked bluntly. “Why would you say such a thing about your own son?”

He hesitated. It probably did sound cold to someone who hadn’t been thoroughly annoyed by Jeremy yet. He had a pang of remorse. Maybe she was right and he was getting too cynical about the boy.

“Frustration, I guess,” he said, rubbing a hand through his sand-colored hair and giving her the up-from-under-his-eyebrows look that had been known to make grown women swoon like teenagers. “It’s been a long, wearing day.”

She didn’t swoon. In fact, her mouth thinned a bit. “Oh?” she said in a tone that bespoke impending boredom. It was obvious she hadn’t been charmed.

“We just flew in from New York,” he explained.

“I see.”

She turned her face and looked out over the ocean. He was feeling dismissed. That surprised him. In his Hollywood milieu he was considered a very attractive, not to mention very powerful, man. The production company he’d founded and ran to this day was one of the most important in the business, despite the takeover nightmare it was going through right now.

And beside that, he didn’t suffer dismissal lightly. If there was any dismissing to be done, he liked to be the one doing it. An impulse to confront her reaction rose in him right away.

But he fought it. For once he wasn’t getting the admiring female response he was used to taking as his due. So what? He had more important things to take care of.

Looking down at the shoreline, he saw that Jeremy was still playing with the dog. He supposed he should go down and join them. But at that moment, the dog shook water from his wet fur all over Jeremy, and Adam grimaced.

Between rolling in the wet sand with a boy and a dog and hanging around on the ledge trying to get a beautiful woman to admit he was worth getting to know, the choice was an easy one. It was the challenge, he told himself. He glanced at the stone wall she was sitting on.

“Mind if I join you?” he asked, moving to do just that without waiting for her answer.

She hesitated just long enough to let him know this wasn’t her preference, but she was polite.

“Please do,” she said coolly, but she was gracious, shifting a little to be sure there was room for him and moving a huge canvas bag that looked big enough to contain all her earthly possessions.

He sat close enough to get a hint of her scent. It was fresh and spicy and not very sweet. For some reason, that gave him a frisson of excitement for just a moment, and immediately he was flooded with an urge to kiss those full lips.

He drew himself up, startled. He hadn’t reacted so viscerally to a woman in years—and he was used to being around a lot of beautiful women. Maybe it was the magic of the place, the soft, seductive breeze, the sound of the gentle waves on the beach below. He turned quickly, looking out at the ocean, thrown off a bit and not sure whether he wanted her to see how he was responding to her or not. If there was one thing he hated it was revealing any sort of vulnerability.

And that was a reaction he was noticing in himself more and more lately. He didn’t trust anyone much, but experience had taught him that beautiful women were the most likely to betray you in a purely personal way.

What was the expression? Once bitten, twice shy? He’d been bitten all right. He’d practically had his arm chewed off a few times. And, yeah, he was shy. Damn shy. He was going to require big-time proof before he could be convinced trust was worth the cost.

Still, that didn’t mean he didn’t enjoy the game. He just didn’t expect to win any prizes or take home the game pieces when he won.

“Nice view,” he said gruffly, looking out over the huge expanse of sparkling Mediterranean water. “Do you come here often?”

“All the time. It’s my favorite place to come when I have big decisions to make,” she told him candidly. “Or when I feel the need to get away from it all.”

Turning toward him, she smiled and her small white teeth gleamed in the golden sunlight. “Or when I just want to commune with my ancient ancestors.”

“Ancestors, huh?”

He smiled back at her, ready to flirt if she was going loosen up a bit. Flirting didn’t cost much. You didn’t have to lay yourself open for it to work, and it could be fun. It could also lead to some quality bed time. You just never did know. And she was the most appealing potential bed partner he’d seen in a long, long time. It might be worth wading through her prickly attitude to get to the good stuff.

“This place is crawling with my ancestors,” she said, waving a hand in the air as though there were groups of them hanging around all up and down the cliffs and caves.

“No kidding?” He looked around at the rock wall behind them, willing to join in her conceit if she would let him play. “Why don’t you introduce me?”

She laughed softly. “What do you care about my musty old Nirolian ancestors?”

“You’d be surprised. I’ve got a few of my own.”

She cocked a sleek eyebrow. “Do you?”

“So they tell me.”

At last there was a spark of interest in her manner. He supposed she’d be even more interested if he told her he was King Giorgio of Niroli’s illegitimate grandson.

But it had never been a point of pride with him. In fact, he’d been raised with the vague feeling that it was really something to be ashamed of. There was no doubt that his maternal grandparents thought it was something his mother should be ashamed of. But then, they had always thought just about everything his mother did should be hushed up. And since they’d pretty much raised him on their Kansas farm, it was an attitude that lingered stubbornly in his psyche, no matter how hard he tried to deny it.

“But I thought you just came from New York,” the graceful woman was saying.

“That’s right. I’ve never been here to Niroli before. But my father was … Nirolian.”

“Ah.”

She stretched the syllable out as though that explained everything—and not in a good way. He frowned. Her attitude was beginning to get on his nerves. But before he could probe it further, Jeremy shrieked and the dog barked. He rose, looking down to see what was going on.

“Jeremy, leave that dog alone,” he called down. He didn’t know if his son had actually done anything to the animal, but he thought he might as well cover all bases.

“His name is Fabio,” she said coolly.

“Who? Oh, the dog?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” He turned and called down again. “Jeremy, leave Fabio alone.”

“You aren’t very good at it, are you?” she said dryly as he sat down again.

He looked at her, startled. “At what?”

“Parenting. You don’t seem to have the knack for it.”

He stared at her. Now he was sure of it. She hated him. What right did she have to decide to hate him at first sight anyway? He was a decent guy. And she was damn annoying.

“What do you know about my parenting skills?”

“I can hear it in the way you talk to him. You shouldn’t talk to a boy that age the way you do. You can’t order him about as though he were a soldier.”

He couldn’t believe this. She actually thought she could tell him how to raise his kid. “He needs some discipline,” he said, pointing out what was obvious to the rest of the world.

“Why aren’t you disciplining him, then?”

He stared at her. Was she purposefully goading him? “That’s what I’m trying to do!”

She shook her head. “There you go, raising your voice again.”

And he thought he’d been frustrated before? “What do you prefer?” he shot back, making a Herculean effort not to let his voice get harsher. “Do you think I should hit him?”

“Of course not. I think you should give him some structure.” She sighed. “I’ll bet you don’t know him very well, no matter how often you have him around.”

She turned toward him in that odd way she had. He wished she would take off those dark glasses so he could read more in her eyes.

“But it’s not often, is it? And you came to Niroli thinking you could get closer to your son just by being here with him.”

She had certainly hit the nail on the head with that guess. In fact, she seemed almost eerily clairvoyant. But he hated to admit she was right about anything. “What if I did?”

She shrugged her slender shoulders. “Well, I don’t think it’s working. And if you don’t improve your technique, it’s not going to work, no matter how loud you get.” She looked at him with pity. “You need help.”

He stifled the angry answer that sprang to his lips. She was just plain wrong, but arguing about it wasn’t going to get him anywhere. “Okay,” he said instead, opting with difficulty for sweet reason—giving charm one last chance to make a difference. “Help me, then.”

Her smile was meant as a reaction and not a way to draw him in. “I think not.”

Her superior tone was maddening. She was dismissing him again. Well, if she was such a damn expert …

“So how many children do you have?” he asked pointedly.

She raised her head, amused at how angry he was getting, and at how hard he was trying to hide it.

“Not one.” She said it without a hint of embarrassment. “I don’t even have a husband at this point.”

“Then why the hell should I listen to you?”

She tossed her head. “You’d better listen to someone. Your intuition doesn’t seem to be doing you any good at all.”

There, Elena Valerio thought coolly. That ought to do it. Now he would get up and storm off and she would be rid of him. And that was exactly what she wanted. wasn’t it?

She wished she could see him. That didn’t happen often these days. She’d accepted her blindness years ago and she had worked out so many ways to compensate, she almost felt it an advantage at times. But from the first, his brusque voice and his cocky manner had triggered something in her she couldn’t explain, and she wished she could put a face to the image she was getting.

She heard impatience and a world-weary cynicism that she didn’t like. He was a user—that was what she heard. His arrogance was only exceeded by his need to control those around him. At the same time he seemed to want to charm her, she sensed a strange coldness inside him that chilled her. He was everything she disliked in a man.

But he was still here. What was he waiting for? She sighed.

“Okay, mister. Here’s a free tip. Relax.”

“Relax? Why should I relax?”

“Didn’t you come to Niroli to refresh yourself?”

“No. I came on business.”

“Ah, that explains it. You should let that tension go. It’s tying you in knots. Your son can sense that, so he doesn’t trust you. It’s no wonder he defies you.”

Adam bit his tongue to keep from giving back to her as good as he was getting. He was sure there were a few home truths he could aim in her direction if he gave it some thought. But that would get them nowhere. He decided to take a new tack instead.

“You have beautiful hair,” he said, looking at how it gleamed in the sunlight and resisting the urge to reach out and touch it.

“Do I?” She seemed surprised. “I must say I like the way it feels on my back.” She swished it against the skin exposed by the low-cut blouse.

“You have a beautiful back, too,” he added for good measure.

She stiffened. “That’s getting a little personal, don’t you think?”

“Sorry,” he said unconvincingly.

“No, you’re not.”

He’d just about had it with her. “Would you explain why you took an instant dislike to me?” he asked.

“Does it come through that clearly?” She pressed her lips together, then smiled. “Good.”

He stared at her. He knew he should get up and leave. She didn’t want him here. And yet, he couldn’t seem to tear himself away. He wanted her to like him. Or maybe he just wanted her to admit he wasn’t that bad so he could be the one to dismiss her. He wasn’t sure which it was.

“Maybe I can explain my … less-than-friendly reaction to you this way. You think women should fall for you like … like apples in a tree, right into your arms. Don’t you?”

“So what are you saying?” he quipped back. “That you’re not ripe yet?”

She gave him a baleful look from behind the glasses.

“Or maybe, it’s this. That you’re forbidden fruit?”

She couldn’t help but laugh at that one. “Bingo,” she said, then sobered. “Now if you don’t mind …”

“But I do mind.” He breathed in her scent again and knew that was part of the reason he didn’t want to leave her. She smelled like exotic fruit—forbidden or not. And he was rapidly developing a taste for it. He stayed right where he was and began to talk about simple, banal things around them, just to try to lower the unease between them.

Listening to him, Elena began to tap her foot nervously. He put her on edge and she didn’t like that. She came to this place for peace and resuscitation, not to be the object of a verbal joust.

She wondered for a moment if she should call Fabio back. She’d been told when he first came to work for her that she wasn’t to let him play with children. He was a professional with tasks to perform and it would confuse him to treat him like a house pet. At first she’d been very rigid about it, making sure he toed the line in all aspects of their relationship. But the more she’d grown to depend upon him, the more she’d relaxed. He was enjoying the boy. She could hear them both. That told her he was still close enough so that she didn’t need to worry. And they were having such a good time. She smiled. She would let him play awhile longer.

The man’s arm brushed hers and she almost gasped. Luckily, she controlled the impulse, but she bit into her lower lip to do it. He didn’t seem to notice. He was talking about the sunlight on the ocean and the quality of the water below them. Ordinary things. Things anyone might talk about. And though he hadn’t left, he wasn’t being so obnoxious anymore. She sighed. Maybe he wasn’t so bad. She shouldn’t be so judgmental. He was probably a decent enough fellow.

And yet.

There was something there that bothered her, something she could hear in his voice. An underlying unhappiness, perhaps—an old wound that still festered. Something that ate at him deep inside.

But she had no intention of trying to help this man. He wasn’t a friend and he was never going to be. She moved impatiently, about to call Fabio back to her side, but her foot struck the side of her canvas bag and she felt it overturn and spill its contents onto the ground.

“Oh, bother,” she muttered, leaning down to collect her belongings.

But he did it for her. “Here you go,” he said, but then he hesitated and she waited, wondering what he’d found that interested him among her things.

“So you’re an artist,” he said at last.

She frowned, surprised. “Of sorts,” she replied, thinking of her musicianship. She’d been extremely musical from the beginning, and once she’d lost her sight, at age four, she’d plunged into music as a way of communicating with a world that didn’t know what to do with people like her. “How did you know?”

“I can see you’ve been sketching.”

She went very still. What on earth was the man talking about? “Have I?” she said carefully.

“Yes. Here’s your sketchbook. It fell out of your bag.”

My sketchbook? What sketchbook?

Then her mind cleared. Ah, Gino. Her very gay, very artistic friend who often came along when she climbed out here in the ruins. He’d come along today, but had gone back to the house to make a phone call. The sketchbook had to be his.

“Mind if I look at these?” the man was asking.

“Oh, why not?” She laughed softly, wondering what else Gino had left in her bag.

She heard pages rustling, but there was dead silence from her companion.

“Wow,” he said at last, his voice somewhat strangled. “Michelangelo’s got nothing on you.”

She frowned, wondering what on earth that meant. “It’s nice to have one’s work appreciated,” she said ambiguously.

“You do have a way with …” he cleared his throat “ … uh, the nude male form.”

She choked back a laugh. Oh, Gino, what have you been up to? From the nuances she sensed in this man’s voice, whatever he’d found on the pages was pretty darn provocative. She could just imagine—Gino unleashed!

Good heavens. And just how did he suppose that a blind woman managed that sort of thing? But he still didn’t realize she was blind. People often didn’t catch on at first. She’d trained herself to move and express herself just as a sighted person would. Fate had played a very large, serious joke on her and she enjoyed playing her little joke on the world in return. Still, most people got clued in relatively quickly. Usually seeing her with Fabio and putting two and two together was what did it. But then, he hadn’t really seen her with her dog, had he? He’d seen his son with Fabio, not her, and the connection hadn’t been made. Interesting.

“So you like the style?” she asked, having a hard time holding back a chuckle. “Tell me. Which is your favorite?”

He choked for just a moment, and his voice was a bit ragged when he responded. “Why don’t you tell me which is yours?”

“Hmm.” She put her head to the side. “I think I love them all.”

“Right.” He drew in a sharp breath and didn’t seem to have a good response to that one.

He didn’t know what to make of her. It was obvious. Finding nude sketches in her bag presented a whole new side of her from his point of view. He was probably trying to decide whether to take it as an earthy invitation to intimacy—or to run for cover. The laughter bubble was coming up her throat and she didn’t know how long she would be able to hold it back.

“So. Do you hire models for this kind of thing?” he asked carefully.

She shook her head. She knew it was time to stop this. She could hear the intensity building in his voice. The thought of her sketching these nude male images was turning him on in a big way. And an aroused, aggressive man whom she didn’t really know was something she didn’t want to deal with. But she couldn’t resist one last needling.

“Why? Are you offering your services?” She raised an eyebrow and waited to see what he would say.

“That would depend on the compensation,” he said, moving closer, his voice deepening.

She moved a little away, but still asked, “What would you consider a fair price?”

He paused, and for some reason her pulse began to quicken.

“I always say the kindness of a beautiful woman is worth more than gold.”

His voice was low and seductive now and he was moving even closer to her. If his son hadn’t been romping nearby, she was sure he would have made some sort of move by now. Surprisingly, she felt a quick shiver of apprehension. The joke was played out. She had let this go on too long as it was. Once again, as her friends always warned her, she was playing with fire and she was going to get burned if she didn’t put out the flames right away.