Verinians spoke all of those countries’ languages and, having overcome an uprising twenty years ago that had had their neighbors sniffing and circling, trying to extend their borders to encompass Verina for the next fifteen years, were fiercely patriotic to the flag they still flew.
“I find people from North America to have very conservative views about sex and nudity,” he clarified.
She nodded her forgiveness of his faux pas and explained, “We’re not that prudish in Canada. We keep our clothes on because we’re cold.” She pointed at the lazy drift of tiny flakes hitting the steam off the pool and dissolving. Strangely, she wasn’t feeling the chill nearly as much as she usually would, standing out here in the predawn frost. Heat radiated from her middle. Her joints were melting and growing loose.
“You must be in this pool often, though. You’ve never swum naked in it?”
“Never.” She couldn’t recall when she had last had a chance to swim at all. She vacuumed and scoured and restocked and never enjoyed the luxury she provided to everyone else.
If I can just get Maude and the girls out of here was her mantra. If she could take control of the books and balance them, quit financing trips and clothing for women who brought no value to the spa, only drama, she could relax instead of burning out.
“It’s very freeing. You should try it.”
“I’m sure it is.” He had no idea of the constraints she was under, though.
“No time like the present.”
As she met his gaze with a rueful smile, certain he was mocking her for her modesty, something in his gaze made her heart judder to a stop in her chest then kick into a different rhythm.
He was looking at her with consideration, as though he’d suddenly noticed something about her that had snagged one hundred percent of his attention. As though he was serious about wanting her to strip naked and jump in the pool with him.
More insistent tugs and pulls accosted her midsection. A flush of sensual heat streaked up from her tense stomach, warming her chest and throat and cheeks. Her breasts grew heavy and tight.
She never reacted to men—not like this, all receptive and intrigued. Her last date had been in high school and ended with a wet kiss that hadn’t affected her nearly as strongly as this man’s steady gaze. The dating pool in Lonely Lake was very small unless she wanted to get together with guests, and she didn’t do that because they didn’t stick around.
That’s what this is, she realized, clunking back from a brief, floaty fantasy of a prince taking an interest in a nobody like her. This wasn’t real flirty banter. He wasn’t genuinely interested in her. He was only inviting her to join him in the way male guests occasionally did because she was here, not because he found her particularly attractive. How could he? She looked especially hellish this morning. She was frazzled and exhausted, no makeup, clothes rumpled as though she’d slept in them. Joke was on him. She hadn’t slept.
Maybe this wasn’t even happening. Maybe she would wake after being dragged from the igloo room and defrosted from a hypothermia-induced delirium.
“I’m sure you’ll have plenty of company soon enough,” she said in a strangled voice. She nodded upward at the windows lighting behind curtains as guests began to stir. “I’ll check the saunas. They’re banked at night, but I’ll make sure they’re up to temperature for you.”
As the owner, Sopi could have asked that he wear a towel around the resort, but she didn’t want to introduce herself. She was too embarrassed at thinking, even for a second, that he might genuinely be interested in her.
Besides, if he climbed out to shake her hand, buck naked, she would die.
Rhys watched her walk away with a surprising clench of dismay, even though he knew better than to flirt with the help.
He hadn’t even realized anyone had been on the pool deck until he’d surfaced after swimming the length underwater. But there she was, face buried in a stack of towels like an ostrich, her dark hair gathered into a fraying knot, her uniform mostly shapeless except where it clung lovingly to a really nice ass.
Arrogant as he innately was, he didn’t expect servants to turn their face to the wall as his father had once told him his great-grandmother had demanded of palace staff.
This young woman had obviously recognized him. Nearly every woman of any age reacted to him—which he made a habit of ignoring. His reputation as a playboy was greatly exaggerated. Affairs complicated an already complex life. When he did entangle himself, he stuck with a long-term arrangement with a sophisticated partner, one who had a busy life herself. He kept ties loose until the woman in question began to suggest marriage would improve their relationship, invariably claiming it would “give us more time together” or “draw us closer”—two assumptions he knew would prove false.
Sometimes they brought up a desire for children, and he had had good reasons for putting that off, too. Until recently.
But until very recently, Rhys hadn’t believed he’d have to marry at all. Staying single had been his greatest luxury and one of the few genuine freedoms available to him. Occasionally, he had thought a wife might be the best way to stave off the fortune hunters who constantly stalked him, but marriage and family were yet more responsibilities on top of an already heavy mantle. He had thought to indefinitely postpone both.
Besides, he didn’t deserve the sort of happily-ever-after his brother was striving for.
A shrieking giggle from a balcony above had him glancing up to see a pair of women in negligees exhibiting all the excitement of children spotting a monkey at the zoo. Their bare legs and cleavage flashed as they posed against the rail and waved.
And so it starts, he thought tiredly.
He looked for the young woman who had seemed so charmingly real, planning to ask her to lock out the masses for another thirty minutes.
He couldn’t see her, and his irritation ratcheted up several notches. It had little to do with the looming interruption of his peaceful swim. She was gone, and he was uncomfortable with how annoyed that made him. He hadn’t even asked her name.
She worked here, he reminded himself. He would see her again, but the knowledge did nothing to ease his impatience.
He shouldn’t want to see her again. He wouldn’t be able to approach her when he did. A guest coming on to an employee was a hard limit. There was an entire hotel brimming with beautiful, available, appropriate women if he wanted to get laid.
His nether regions weren’t twitching for the silk-draped knockouts hurrying to throw on robes and rush down here, though. He was recollecting a face clean of makeup and eyes like melted chocolate framed in thick lashes. She’d had a tiny beauty spot below one corner of her mouth and what had looked like a man’s wedding band on a thin chain in the hollow of her throat. Whose? A father, he imagined. She was too young to be a widow.
She could be married, though. She was very pretty, neither voluptuous nor catwalk slender, but pert with small, firm breasts, narrow shoulders and that valentine of a derriere. He had wondered how tall she would be if he stood beside her. He might get a crick in his neck when he leaned down to taste her pillowy lips—
No.
With a muttered curse, he caught his breath and dived to the bottom of the pool, using the pressure and exertion to work out his animal urges.
It didn’t work. She stayed on his mind all day.
Sopi remained emotionally wired until she heard the prince had left the building. She watched the helicopter veer across the valley, climb above the tree line and wheel to the far side