She feigned a gasp, pretending she didn’t know he had a private pool since this was her “first day” as manager, and hoisted herself up on the ladder. Water sensuously trickled from her hair to her shoulders, from her shoulders to her breasts, from her breasts down her flat-as-a-pancake stomach to the string that perched on her hip bones. She shook her hair off her face and 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.
Chapter Three
After the blind on his sliding glass door closed with a satisfying snap, Alexander turned and marched across the corner of the Oriental rug that sat beneath the black leather sofa and matching chair of his living room. Without stopping, he strode through the dining room, which was furnished with only a long oak table and ladder-back chairs arranged atop a bright red area rug on sand-colored ceramic tile, and bounded into the galley kitchen he never used.
He didn’t know what the devil was going on with Princess Meredith Bessart, but from her behavior by his pool it was abundantly clear that the woman who had once told him she found him repulsive had just thrown herself at him.
He knew he’d matured in the past seven years. He wasn’t the ugly duckling prince she had insulted at her coming-out ball. So it wasn’t inappropriate to assume that she might not find him repulsive anymore. He’d also grown accustomed to women hitting on him. Most wanted his money. The few in Europe who knew his real identity wanted a piece of his royal stature. But Princess Meredith had her own money. She had her own royal position. He didn’t have anything she might want. Her making a pass at him didn’t make any sense.
That was why he tossed his hardly touched Scotch into the sink and rinsed it down the drain with a quick splash from the faucet. He needed a clear head to think this through. The princess had almost bested him out there by his pool. Not because he couldn’t resist her, but because he hadn’t realized he’d have to resist her. He assumed that while she was here, she’d play at resort manager, boss around the staff and flirt with the guests. He hadn’t expected her to flirt with him. Caught off guard as he had been, every male instinct he possessed had burst to life.
And why not? Spoiled or not, selfish or not, Princess Meredith was one gorgeous, sexy woman. A cloistered monk would have trouble resisting her.
Of course, the easy answer to this dilemma was never to be in the position of having to resist her again. All he had to do was stay away from her. If she were here looking for fun and she’d decided to make chasing him the sport of the day, his avoiding her actually suited two purposes. He would not only save himself from her flirting, but also Aunt Merry might return more quickly when the princess got bored and called her aunt to complain. It was such a clever yet uncomplicated plan that Alexander relaxed.
He easily ignored her for two whole days. Until Princess Meredith called a meeting of the executive staff that Alexander couldn’t miss. But given that all department heads were required to attend, he wasn’t worried.
Unfortunately, when he arrived at the first-floor conference room before anyone else and found himself alone with his betrothed, he stopped dead in his tracks.
Dressed in a very covering apricot-colored suit and strappy brown sandals, Princess Meredith wasn’t intending to be sexy, but she was nonetheless. Her suit jacket and little skirt fit her as if both were made to accent the attributes of her perfect figure. But more than that, she couldn’t hide her sensual red-brown hair or her bedroom eyes.
Still, Alexander didn’t panic. He said good morning and took his seat at the far end of the table—giving Merry the place at the head, the same as he had with her aunt— and diverted his attention to the meeting handouts.
After only a cursory review of the week’s registry, which reported that three single men and two single women had opted out of the final two days of their resort stays, Alexander’s entire demeanor changed, and he forgot all about Merry’s curves. With a pampered princess at the helm of his resort for only three days, the business was in trouble. Left to her own devices, she was tanking his resort!
The time for ignoring Princess Meredith was over. He wanted Merry Montrose back. Now.
Without looking up from the spreadsheet, Alexander said, “The early departure figures are distressing.”
Merry cleared her throat. “Well, sometimes little things like this happen in a transition.”
“Little