CHAPTER THREE
LOTTIE MARCHED INTO the ballroom with her cheeks still glowing hot enough to cook a couple of eggs on. He was playing with her like a mean-spirited cat does with a hapless little mouse. Teasing her, toying with her, making sport of her to pass the time. He was mocking her for her gaucheness, laughing at her. He wasn’t interested in her. He was playing a game. He was here under sufferance so what better way to amuse himself than to have a little flirtation just for the heck of it?
Softly-softly indeed! Nothing about him was subtle. He was blatant. Flagrant. Shameless.
And oh-so-tempting.
She knew what he was up to. She was a challenge he hadn’t encountered before, but she would show him that there was at least one woman in the world that wasn’t taken in by sexy chocolate-dark eyes, a silver tongue and a body built for sin.
She had to get him out of her hair before he tempted her to let it down...and she knew just the way to do it.
The grand ballroom was as wide as it was long, and decorated in a Venetian palazzo style with a high ceiling painted a soft shade of grey with ornate crown mouldings of white and inlaid with gold. A series of archways lined three of the walls with plush crimson velvet curtains, and crystal chandeliers hung like giant handfuls of glittering diamonds, sending prisms of light over the highly polished parquetry floor. It was a perfect setting for a wedding reception. It had the signature Chatsfield style, glamour and sophistication about it that would make any gathering a memorable occasion.
‘Not bad, huh?’ Lucca said.
‘It needs flowers.’ Lottie walked across the floor, turning in circles as she checked out the corbels where she envisaged vases of flowers festooning like floral fountains. ‘Lots and lots of flowers.’
He took out his phone and started scrolling through his messages, presumably from all of his female followers on Twitter. ‘Flowers aren’t my thing. I’ll leave that to your expertise.’
Lottie didn’t tell him she had already discussed at length with the royal florist every placement of every bloom and petal. Instead she gave him a pert look. ‘No, you won’t. I need male input. I might make it too girlie or something. We can’t have all the male guests feeling intimidated, can we?’
His eyes gave a little roll. ‘God forbid.’
‘Come on.’ She turned sharply on her heel. ‘We have work to do.’
‘Where are you taking me?’ To her delight his voice sounded a little pained as he put his phone away.
‘To the palace gardens. I want to pick a selection to see what would work best.’ She gave him a sugar-sweet smile over her shoulder. ‘You can fetch and carry for me. Won’t that be fun?’
* * *
The palace gardens were pretty spectacular even for someone who couldn’t tell a rose from a ranunculus, Lucca thought. And early June was a fabulous time for any garden in the Mediterranean. Roses were in abundance everywhere, glorious fragrant bunches of them hanging in a sweet-scented arras over archways and trellises in a kaleidoscope of vivid colour. There were other beds of colourful blooms, old-fashioned cottage flowers such as sweet peas with a border of alyssum and lobelia, stately foxgloves and pink and blue larkspur, carnations and Canterbury bells and Queen Anne’s lace.
Princess Charlotte was moving between the garden beds, stopping every now and again to pick a bloom with a pair of secateurs she had taken from one of the gardeners. She laid each bloom carefully in the flower basket she had hanging over her arm, and every artistic cell of his wanted to capture the vision of her on a canvas.
The late-afternoon sunlight cast her alabaster skin in a golden glow. Her eyes were as mossy green as the clipped box hedges she was leaning over as she snipped a blood-red rose from a bush against a stone wall. Some strands of her hair had worked loose from her tight chignon and were bouncing in tiny corkscrews about her ears. With the abundance of flowers in the foreground and the ancient castle in the background, she looked like she had stepped out of the pages of a fairy tale.
He took out his phone and selected the camera option. Click.
She suddenly turned and glared at him. ‘Did you just take a picture of me?’
‘Yes. It was a beauty. The light was amazing.’
She put the flower basket down on the flagstones and stalked over to him with her hand outstretched. ‘Give me your phone.’
Lucca held the phone just out of her reach. ‘What’s the problem? It’s just a photo.’
Her eyes glittered and burned with resentment. ‘You had no right to photograph me without my permission.’ She made a grab for the phone by doing a series of little leaps. ‘Give it to me, damn you!’
‘Whoa there, sweetheart.’ He wrapped his fingers around her flailing arm to hold her steady on the uneven flagstones. ‘You’ll do yourself an injury bouncing about like that.’
She stamped her foot like a three-year-old child, making those cute little curls beside her ears bob up and down like springs. ‘You are an odious brute!’
‘I know, but that’s part of my endearing charm.’ He loosened his hold a fraction. ‘Now be a good girl and I’ll show you how cool the photo is.’ He brought the picture up and repositioned himself so she was standing shoulder to shoulder with him. ‘See?’
She looked at the picture for a moment and then glanced up at him with a frown puckering her brow. ‘Why did you take it?’
He slipped the phone in his pocket. ‘No special reason.’
‘I don’t like being photographed.’ She gave his fingers around her wrist a scowling look. ‘And I don’t like being manhandled either.’
He turned her wrist over and slowly raised it to his mouth so he could access the sensitive underside with his lips. He held her gaze as he brushed his lips against her delicately scented skin, watching as her eyes widened and her pupils flared like twin spills of black ink.
Lust heated his blood, set it moving, thundering, roaring to his groin as the tip of her small pink tongue darted out and swept over her lips, making them glisten invitingly. Her slim throat rose and fell as she swallowed; he even heard the tiny gulping sound in spite of the background chirruping of birds and the light whistle of the breeze moving through the cypress pines in the distance.
He lowered his head until he was barely a breath away from connecting with her lips, pausing there to give her the chance to pull back if she wanted to. He breathed in the sweet vanilla-milkshake scent of her breath as it danced over his lips as her mouth softly parted.
Come on, little princess, you know you want to....
* * *
The sound of the gravel being shifted by the tread of approaching footsteps made Lottie spring back from Lucca as if someone had fired a cannon from the battlements. She whipped around to see Madeleine coming towards them arm in arm with her fiancé, Edward Trowbridge. If the loved-up couple had seen anything untoward they were showing no sign of it; they were too engrossed in each other with their heads bent close together as they ambled along the pathway.
A tiny pang of envy twisted her insides. It would be so wonderful to have a man look at her with nothing but love and adoration in his eyes. No one would ever think she had romance running with wild hopes in her veins, but she secretly longed for a man to look at her as if his world began and ended with her. Would she ever find that sort of happiness? Or would she always be left on the sidelines, the spare part no one needed. The wallflower. The not-pretty-enough, not-smart-enough princess everyone either mocked or pitied.
Madeleine looked up and smiled. ‘Ah, Mr Chatsfield, at last I get the chance to meet you and to personally thank you for stepping in at the last minute to help Lottie with the wedding arrangements.’
‘It’s my very great pleasure, Your Royal Highness,’ Lucca said.
He was so charming, so adaptable to every situation, Lottie thought with growing annoyance. No wonder he had the reputation of being irresistible. That smile would melt through steel and leave it in a little silver puddle at his feet.
‘How is she behaving?’ Madeleine asked him once formal introductions were out of the way. ‘She can be a little headstrong and overcontrolling at times.’
‘Princess Charlotte is a delight in every way imaginable,’ he replied with consummate charm.
Lottie shot him a narrow-eyed little glare while the others weren’t looking.
‘Oh, you don’t have to address her so formally,’ Madeleine said. ‘Family and friends call her Lottie. I’m sure she doesn’t mind, do you, Lottie?’
‘Not at all.’ She stretched her mouth in a rictus smile.
Lucca’s dark brown eyes gleamed with a wick of wickedness. ‘Your sister was just consulting me about the flowers for the ballroom.’
‘Oh, really?’ Madeleine looked a little surprised. ‘But I thought—’
‘He’s great at flowers,’ Lottie said. ‘A natural. Born to it. Should have been a florist. Missed his calling if you ask me.’
Edward Trowbridge’s brows lifted ever so slightly. ‘How...nice...’
‘I thought she would’ve had you working on the entertainment program for my bachelorette party?’ Madeleine said, swinging her gaze back to Lottie. ‘What are you up to, Lottie? You’re not up to mischief, are you?’
Lottie smiled innocently. ‘You know me better than that.’
Madeleine swung her gaze back to Lucca. ‘I’m afraid Lottie wasn’t too happy about having any help with the planning at this late stage. She’s a bit of a control freak. But this team effort will be really good for her. I’m sure you’ll do a splendid job helping her to learn to let go a bit.’
‘I’m putting in my very best effort,’ Lucca said with a smile that would have charmed a seagull away from a food scrap.
Madeleine and Edward made their goodbyes and wandered off towards the grotto at the far end of the palace gardens.
‘Nice couple.’
Lottie snatched up the flower basket. ‘Just for the record, I would’ve slapped your face if you’d kissed me back then.’
‘What makes you think I was going to kiss you?’
She stopped marching and rounded her gaze on him. Had she imagined his intentions? Was she so out of touch she couldn’t tell when a man was interested in her or not? But whether he wanted to kiss her or not, she had been alarmingly close to pressing her mouth to his. Caught up in the moment she had been entranced, mesmerised by the thought of feeling his lips against hers. Her body had thrummed with the need to taste him. The teasing breeze of his breath against her lips, the way his breath had mingled with hers in that erotic way, had almost been her undoing.
‘You...you weren’t?’
He flashed a sudden grin. ‘I was tempted, but I don’t want to swing from the tower for breeching palace protocol. There are probably CCTV cameras behind every rose petal out here.’
She gave him a speaking look. ‘I’m quite sure you wouldn’t let the inconvenience of a centuries-old rule book get in the way of your base interests.’
He took the flower basket off her, somehow making the most of the opportunity to brush his hand against hers as he did so. The nerves beneath her skin leapt to attention, her stomach pitching in delight at the warm thrill that coursed through her body. ‘So what’s the penalty for stealing a kiss from a princess?’
She held his gaze with a spark of challenge in hers. ‘Why don’t you try it and find out?’
His eyes went to her mouth and then back to her eyes. Back and forth. Back and forth. Will I or won’t I? he seemed to be asking himself. ‘Are you flirting with me, little princess?’
‘Of course not!’
He smiled again, a smug, self-congratulatory smile, as he flicked her cheek with an idle finger. ‘You want me so bad.’
Lottie jerked back with a roll of her eyes, which she hoped would in some way cancel out her betraying blush but she wasn’t putting any money on it. ‘Tell me something...does your ego have its own zip code?’
He laughed as he fell into step beside her. ‘Cute.’ His shoulder brushed against hers as they went through one of the rose-covered archways and a shower of shell-pink petals fell around them like confetti. ‘So...tell me why this wedding is so important to you.’
She gave him a sideways glance. ‘It’s my sister’s wedding. Why wouldn’t it be important to me?’
‘Fair point.’
They walked a little farther in silence.
‘I want it to be just as Madeleine wants,’ Lottie said. ‘I want everything to be perfect for her.’
‘Seems to me everything already is perfect for her.’
She glanced at him again but his expression was unreadable. ‘Yes, well, some people are lucky in life and in love.’
‘And you?’ He’d stopped walking and looked down at her. ‘Have you been lucky?’
‘I could hardly complain given all this.’ She waved a hand to encompass the palace and its surrounds. ‘I never have to worry about having enough money for food or rent. I don’t even have to wash my own clothes or cook my own meals.’
‘What about love?’
She gave him an ironic glance before she resumed walking. ‘That’s a funny question from you.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘You’re a notorious playboy.’
‘So?’
She stopped and looked up at him again. ‘Are you saying you’ve been in love?’
‘No.’
‘Are you saying there is a possibility you might fall in love one day?’
‘No.’
Lottie tilted her head at him quizzically. ‘What, are you really saying you have no capacity at all to fall in love? None at all?’
‘I thought we were talking about you?’
‘I’d like to unpick this a little further first.’ She put her hands on her hips. ‘What is it about loving someone that is so terribly threatening to you?’
His dark brown eyes locked her out as surely as a shutter coming down. ‘I didn’t say it was threatening. I just don’t think it’s likely.’
‘But why?’
‘I’m not wired that way.’
‘You’re human, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘We’re all wired that way.’
‘So when was the last time you were in love?’
Lottie had to give him points for outmanoeuvring her. She considered not answering but figured he would press her until she did. It was easier to be truthful and get it over with. She dropped her hands from her hips. ‘When I was eighteen. But don’t they say the first fall is the hardest?’
He shrugged noncommittally. ‘Maybe.’
‘I don’t think I was really in love.’ She fell into step beside him again. ‘I thought I was at the time. I’d had a lot of boys interested in me but I chose the one I thought was the most genuine. In hindsight I could have chosen a little better. But that’s teenage hormones for you.’
‘It ended badly?’
‘Don’t all break-ups?’
He gave her another quick inscrutable glance. ‘It depends.’
‘How do you do it? How do you move from one relationship to the next without amassing collateral damage?’
A corner of his mouth lifted wryly as if he found the thought of it so remote it was amusing. ‘I don’t believe in hurting people unnecessarily. I think it’s important to be honest from the get-go. I’m always straight about what I can and can’t give. That way no one gets their expectations up. No promises are made so none are broken. No rings, no strings is my motto. I don’t even hand out jewellery as a consolation prize. Waste of money.’
‘I suppose that limitless charm you’re so renowned for comes in rather handy when you’re wriggling your way out of a tricky hook-up.’
He gave her a sardonic look. ‘I thought you didn’t read unedifying gossip?’
Lottie looked away from that devilish glint. ‘Don’t bother trying your charm with me because it won’t work. I’m immune.’
She felt his gaze rest on her thoughtfully. She had a feeling that in spite of his layabout ne’er-do-well personality he projected, there was very little that escaped those intelligent dark brown eyes. ‘How long since you had a lover?’ he asked.
She turned swiftly to continue walking along the pathway. ‘I’m not going to answer that.’
‘You just did.’
Lottie tried to ignore him walking beside her but her body wouldn’t allow it. Her arm tingled every time his shirtsleeve brushed against her and her heart would go off on another excited gallop. His tall warm presence so close to her made her aware of her body in a way she had never been before. She was livid with herself for being so easily unravelled by the first man who had showed an interest in her in years.
Gullible fool!
She had always prided herself on her cool inner reserve. She wasn’t called the Ice Princess for nothing. She had taught herself not to wear her emotions on the surface, to let no one see what she was feeling, even though at times it made her appear much more formidable and starchy than she really was.
But something about this incorrigible rake made every nerve in her body come vibrantly alive. Every feeling she had locked so tightly away kept tapping on the door of its prison to be released.
Desire—a thing she had forgotten she even had the capacity to feel—was elbowing the other emotions out of the way, hammering with both fists, a hammering so hard it reverberated through her body, echoing the loudest in the secret cave of her femininity. She could feel it now—the slow ache of need beating with a primal pulse she could not ignore even if she tried.
She sent him a haughty look that belied the sensual tumult that was going on in her body. ‘I don’t mind you calling me Lottie in private but please desist in calling me those ridiculous endearments. I have no time for such falsity.’
He threw his head back and laughed his deep melodious laugh. ‘You are such a cutie pie. I feel like I’ve time travelled or something. It’s like spending time with a character out of a Jane Austen novel. Did you go to Prim and Proper School or something to learn to talk like that?’
She gave him a gimlet glare. ‘Must you be so...so annoying?’
‘All part of the service, milady.’ He swept her a Regency bow before returning his glinting gaze to hers.
Lottie felt a reluctant smile twitch at her mouth. ‘You are quite possibly the most immature and shallowest man I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet. Do you take anything in life seriously?’
He leapt up and gave a victory punch to the air. ‘Yes! I did it! I made the prickly little princess smile.’ He turned towards the palace, cupping his hands around his mouth as if to make an important announcement. ‘Hey, everybody—’
‘Stop it!’ Lottie grabbed at his wrists but somehow he ended up wrapping his fingers around hers. She glanced down at the dark tan of his fingers overlapping one another around her wrists and her insides shifted like books being toppled off a shelf. Heat seared through every layer of her skin like a red-hot brand, igniting those glowing embers deep in her core.
His fingers tightened almost imperceptibly, as if he was countering any attempt on her part to escape the gentle handcuffing of his fingers. She drew in a scratchy breath as he closed the gap between their bodies without even seeming to take a step.
His eyes were heavily lidded, sleepy and unbelievably sexy. Bedroom eyes. I-want-to-have-sex-with-you eyes. His mouth came down and, with a whisper-soft press, briefly touched hers. It left her lips aching and tingling for more but he didn’t prolong the contact.
He pulled back and smiled down at her, his eyes dancing with devilry. ‘If I let go of your hands, are you going to slap me?’
Her chin went up again. ‘Why don’t you try it and see?’
His gaze went back to her mouth. ‘If I’m going to get slapped, then I might as well make sure it’s worth it, don’t you think?’
If he wanted an answer he didn’t give her time to give one. Instead he swooped down and covered her mouth in a kiss that tasted of hot-blooded man and primal want with a generous garnish of ruthlessness.
The brazen thrust of his tongue as he entered her mouth made her heart rate skyrocket. But while that first thrust had been bold, he followed it up with cajoling sweeps and subtle dives that made her skin tighten and then pull away from her bones as it rose up in goose bumps.
He explored her mouth as if it were a dish he had never tried before and wanted to savour every moment of the experience. He took a gentle nip of her lower lip, pulling at it with his teeth in a playful tug that melted her resolve like a knob of butter on a barbecue. He stroked his tongue over her top lip, intricately tracing its curve, before entering her mouth again with a spine-tingling stab of purely sexual intent.
Her body was pressed so firmly against his she could feel every powerful throb of his erection against her belly. It seemed to resonate in perfect time with that pulsing ache in her womb. Her senses weren’t just reeling; they were spinning out of control. Desire was a blazing fire inside her flesh, racing through the network of her veins, firing up every nerve and cell with combustible force. Her breasts felt acutely sensitive where they were crushed against the hard wall of his chest, her nipples tightly budded in response to her arousal. Her inner core was already damp and humid with want. She could feel the warm satin silkiness of it when she moved her body against the deliciously tempting friction of his.
His hands left her wrists and splayed through her hair, which somehow was now tousled about her shoulders instead of restrained behind her head. He captured a thick handful of it as he deepened the kiss. There was something almost primitive about his hold, like an alpha male ruthlessly taking control of the mate he had selected for his pleasure. It unleashed something equally primal in her. She nipped at his lower lip with kittenish bites, sweeping her tongue over it each time she released it.
He groaned deep in his throat and his hand tightened in her hair almost to the point of pain. He took control of her mouth by covering it again with his, crushing her lips beneath the hot firm pressure of his. His tongue mated with hers in a sexy coupling that made her stomach drop like a desk drawer pulled out too quickly.
Her hands were around his neck, her fingers delving into the thick pelt of his hair, her mouth held captive by the mesmerising magic of his. I want this. I want you. I want to be wanted. It was like a silent mantra inside her head in perfect time with every thudding heartbeat that was sending her blood through her veins at a dizzying speed.
He suddenly pulled back and glinted at her with those sinfully dark eyes. ‘Let’s find a room. Your palace or mine?’
Lottie was jolted out of the sensual spell he had woven around her like a fist thrusting through a cobweb. What was she doing? Where was her poise and self-control? One kiss and she was his for the asking?
Not going to happen.
Did he really think she was going to dive headfirst into his bed just like every other woman he made a play for, only to have him dismiss her like a toy that no longer held its initial appeal? He looked so assured, so supremely confident. Arrogant. She would be just another notch on his bedpost; no doubt her royal status would be of particular appeal to such a shallow celebrity trophy hunter. She had learned that lesson before—the hard way.
She wasn’t naive enough to fall for it again.
Not any more.
But rather than give him the satisfaction to know he had got so far under her skin she decided to go along with it...to a point. It would be fun to have the last laugh, to score a few points against him.
Lottie put on a worldly look, even managing a coquettish smile. ‘Your place. Shall we say in half an hour?’
‘Make it an hour.’ His dark eyes glinted again. ‘I want to slip into something more comfortable.’