Twice a Princess. Susan Meier

tucked it behind her ears. “What do you mean, private pool?”

      “This is my villa. This is my pool,” he said, slowly, because he couldn’t stop his eyes from taking in the scenery she provided. As he looked at her, she watched his pale irises heat to a blue flame, confirmation of what she believed she had seen that afternoon. He found her as attractive as she found him.

      Shivering with a combination of nervousness and her own desire, Merry swallowed hard before she said, “My villa doesn’t have a pool.”

      “You,” he reminded her, raising his gaze away from her taut body until it angled with hers, “are the help.” She could tell from his tone that he was trying very hard to remain righteously indignant, but nothing he said dimmed the fire in his eyes. “I’m the owner. I get one of the deluxe villas. You get a darned good one, but not deluxe.”

      From the tone of his voice, it was clear he wanted to be furious with her, but the way his gaze continually fell to her body proved other emotions warred with his anger. Still, that was a good sign. A battle had to be fought and won. His eyes were supposed to stray to her body. His feet were supposed to remain rooted to the spot, as if he couldn’t turn away. He was supposed to try to walk away and fail. He was doing exactly what needed to be done.

      So why didn’t she feel triumphant?

      Watching his gaze fall again to her breasts, Merry suddenly knew why she didn’t feel any sense of victory. This was a purely sexual encounter. Even her own responses were physical, not emotional. But theirs was supposed to be a romantic relationship. A time of great love that they both could remember forever. And right now there was nothing romantic about the way he was looking at her.

      She stepped in front of him, not so close as to be inappropriate, but near enough that he was forced to look at her face. In a deliberate effort to shift the mood, she softly said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude on your privacy.”

      He drew a long breath and quickly averted his eyes, but not before she saw the look of discomfiture in them. And she knew why everything had gone awry. Being with a nearly naked stranger embarrassed him.

      “Just get back to your own quarters.”

      With that he turned and all but ran to his sliding glass door, which he closed so hard the glass rattled. Then he snapped the vertical blind closed.

      Merry blinked rapidly. Her hope melted into the realization that she hadn’t just failed, she’d embarrassed Alexander enough that he might never speak to her again.

      She grabbed her cover-up, then turned and scrambled away from his villa, before anyone could see she’d been in the boss’s private quarters. But her steps slowed as the soothing sounds of the night calmed her. The whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of the waves lulled her into thinking clearly, and she began to understand not just Alexander’s reaction but why she’d had her own odd feeling about her plan right from the start.

      It wasn’t the suit. The suit was merely a symptom of her bigger misjudgment. Seven long years had passed since she’d been flirty Princess Merry. The tricks she’d used to entice men didn’t work anymore…or maybe those tricks didn’t work with mature men.

      Alexander was certainly a mature man. That was part of the attraction. She didn’t want to have the romance of her life with a silly boy. She wanted a man. And a man didn’t respond to a girl’s tricks.

      And now he would be wary of her. She had three short weeks to share a romance with him and she’d put him so much on the defensive that she would probably spend most of that time convincing him she was harmless.

      That is, if he stayed in the same room long enough for her to speak to him again!

      She’d blown it.