‘You think my caution is idle?’ he mused coolly, his stance relaxed in a way that said he found her in no way threatening.
She shook her head, smiling with more than a little relief when the limo pulled into her street.
‘Not at all. I meant good luck finding anything of value to sue me for.’
The moment the words left her lips she wanted to snatch them back. But it was too late.
Eyes like laser beams latched onto the truth. ‘You’re destitute,’ he declared after a taut pause.
Shame crawled over Maddie’s skin. Followed instantaneously by searing anger. ‘What I am is none of your business. We’re strangers to one another. So I won’t jump to the conclusion that you’re a rich, pompous royal bastard who looks down his aristocratic nose at the less fortunate, if you don’t assume I’m some worthless gold-digger who’s just itching to jump straight out of your car and into a paparazzo’s pocket.’
‘I don’t have proof that you’re a worthless gold-digger, but I’m growing certain that you’re a shameless exhibitionist,’ he replied in that charismatically accented voice that threw her for a second before his meaning sank in.
‘Excuse me? What gives you the right—?’ She glanced down sharply and gasped as flames of embarrassment shot into her face.
Oh, God.
The hem of her dress had crept up almost to her crotch, and somehow one creamy slope of a breast was exposed in the gaping neckline of her halter top. The wardrobe Jules had provided for their outings was one of the many things she’d baulked at. One of the many things he’d stated were deal-breakers.
‘I suggest you pull yourself together before that notion becomes concrete,’ he advised, with a new husk in his voice and a banked blaze in his eyes that directed the flamed inward, singeing low in her belly and then lower, in places she didn’t want to acknowledge.
She hurriedly pulled down her hem and adjusted her neckline, aware that his gaze tracked her every movement. Aware she’d been judged and found severely lacking.
When she was as adequately covered as she could be, she fixed her eyes on the door handle. ‘Are we done here?’
He sat back, master of everything he surveyed—which eerily felt as if it included her—and crossed one leg over the other. ‘That depends,’ he drawled.
‘On what?’ she asked, still unable to look him in the eye.
He didn’t respond.
More than a little unnerved at the racing of her heart, she lifted her gaze to his. ‘On what?’ she repeated.
A slow, predatory smile lifted the corners of his lips. Beneath the light his eyes gleamed, taking on an unnerving, hypnotising colour that made her believe he could see right to the heart of her. To the sensual vibrations stroking her nerve-endings. To the unsettling licks of fire in her belly.
Her fingers tightened around her bag, and she was about to demand he answer her when he gave a brisk nod to someone out of sight. The door immediately sprang open.
‘You’ll find out in due course. Goodnight, Miss Myers.’
* * *
Maddie’s nights since she had been forced to abandon her child psychology courses at university and return home to care for her father had been plagued with worrying about finding a way to keep the roof over their heads and her father from the pit of addiction. Sleeplessness had become the norm, the creaking of the cheap slats beneath her mattress the discordant accompaniment to her anxiety.
Tonight, however, other thoughts and images reeled through her mind, and agitation drove her fingers into her worn duvet as a plethora of emotions eroded any hope of sleep.
Disbelief—she’d met a true-life, drop-dead gorgeous crown prince who might have stepped off the silver screen.
Anger—he’d blatantly stated that he was threatening her because he suspected she was after something from his brother. Technically true, but still...
Arousal? No, she wasn’t going to touch that.
And anxiety—‘You will find out in due course.’
Did he mean the agreement she’d made with Jules? If so, how?
It was clear he held a great deal of sway over his younger half-brother, despite Jules’s defiant attitude. Would he stoop to denying her what Jules had promised her?
That last thought kept her awake for the rest of the night until, giving up on sleep, she dragged herself out of bed just before her alarm went off at six.
Her father was already up, although not dressed, when she reached the kitchen. Maddie paused in the doorway, breath held, and examined him. His gauntness was even more pronounced than it had been a month ago—the result of his failing kidneys on top of the strong painkillers he’d become addicted to when his thriving property business had failed in the crash a decade ago.
He’d hidden his addiction for years, in a misguided attempt to keep up appearances and hang on to a wife who had made no bones about the fact that she expected to live a certain lifestyle and demanded her husband provide it.
A near overdose had brought everything to light three years ago, showing the shocking damage Henry Myers had done to his body. It had also been the start of many promises to get clean that had resulted time and again in relapse, and the raiding of their meagre finances to seek help for him that had pulled them deeper into destitution.
Eventually the fall from affluent lifestyle to nursing an addict in a tiny flat in one of the poorest neighbourhoods in London had become too much for her mother.
Once upon a time her father had been healthy, outgoing, a pillar of a man his peers had looked up to. Maddie’s childhood had been pampered and carefree, if a little emotionally unrewarding. She’d learned not to complain early on, when she’d realised her father loved her but was always busy and her mother was more preoccupied with retail therapy than her daughter’s emotional well-being. Even when the distance between her and her mother had widened, Maddie had been secure in her father’s abstract affection.
All of that had ended with Priscilla Myers’s three-minute phone call to Maddie at university. She’d had enough. Maddie needed to come home and take care of her father because she wasn’t prepared to live in poverty and disgrace. Any guilt about abandoning the husband she’d promised to stand by in sickness and in health hadn’t been reflected in her voice. She’d walked away without a backward glance or a forwarding address.
Maddie bottled up the still ravaging anguish now as she fully entered the kitchen. ‘You’re up early.’ She kept her voice light and airy.
Her father shrugged half-heartedly. ‘Couldn’t sleep,’ he muttered.
‘Do you want breakfast? Toast and tea?’ she asked hopefully.
He shook his head. ‘I’m not hungry. Maybe later.’
He was avoiding her gaze—a sure sign that the demons of addiction were snapping at his heels again. Her heart dropped. Had she owned more than the couple of hundred pounds she kept for emergencies in her bank account she would have taken the day off and stayed home to offer the support he baulked at but clearly needed.
Pushing back the despair, she pinned a smile on her face. ‘Mrs Jennings will look in on you later. She’ll fix you lunch if you’re hungry. There’s food in the fridge.’
His mouth compressed but he didn’t reply. Maddie pushed past the bite of guilt. Although her father suspected it, she hadn’t confirmed that desperation had driven her to pay their next-door neighbour a small sum to look in on him a few times a day.
After he had been bumped from the transplant list twice after relapsing, she’d resorted to desperate ways of keeping an eye on him. The last barrage of tests