Meanwhile, Amber’s nostrils flared, fury dancing behind her bedroom eyes. He imagined she was finding it hard not to climb over the bed and tackle him. As unmoved by convention as she was, she could do it too.
For a man whose entire life had been ruled by ritual, no wonder she’d been impossible to resist.
“Wait,” he said. “Fifth. I’m fifth in line. My uncle’s recently abdicated all rights and moved to California to produce movies. Not that it matters. I am a prince in name only. I will never rule.”
She blinked and it was enough to snap her from her red haze. “I don’t give a flying hoot if you are set to be Master of the Universe. Don’t even think about turning us out on our ears.”
“Excuse me?”
“These people are special. The community needs this place. The commune is Serenity’s heart. If you mess with that you will kill it dead.”
That was what had her so het up? Not who he was, but the plans he had for this land?
What the hell had she found out? And how? This wasn’t his first rodeo. He’d been discreet. Painstakingly so. Who had talked?
He did up a couple of quick buttons on his shirt before re-rolling the sleeves to his elbows. Then he moved slowly around the bed, hands out, palms up.
“Amber, until this point in time, we have been having a nice time together. I’d go so far as to say very nice. With that in mind, I suggest we sit down, have a cup of coffee and discuss any concerns you might have.”
He could still fix this.
“I don’t want to discuss anything with you. I just want you to tell me, right here, right now, if the rumours are true.”
“Which rumours might they be, exactly?”
“That you have been meeting with the local town council. Discussing plans...development plans that may or may not put the commune in danger.”
“Would that be such a bad thing?”
Emotion flickered behind her eyes. Deep, frantic, fierce. “Yes,” she managed. “It would be a terrible thing.”
“Look at this place, Amber. It’s falling down around your ears.”
“Not every home has to be a castle.”
Touché. “And yet if you have the chance to sleep somewhere that doesn’t whistle, drip, or threaten to fall down the hill every time you step onto the porch, it’s worth considering.”
“My sleeping arrangements are none of your business.”
“They became my business when I began sleeping here too.”
“Lucky for you that is not a problem you’ll have to face again.”
Hugo breathed out hard, while emotion darted and flashed behind her big brown eyes. With the tension sparking in the air between them, it was all he could do to keep from going to her and letting the slow burn of her fill the empty places inside.
“Tell me, right now, if we have made incorrect assumptions. Are you planning on developing the land? Should we be concerned?”
A muscle ticked beneath his eye. And she took it for the admission it was.
Amber slumped onto the corner of the bed, her face falling into her hands. “This can’t be happening.”
“I hope you understand that until anything is concrete I can’t discuss the details.”
She looked up at him, beseeching. “Understand? I don’t understand any of this. Like why, if you are so offended by my home, you kept coming back. Was I reconnaissance? Were you hoping to create an ally in your devious plans?”
“Of course not, Amber.” Hugo’s stomach dropped and he came around the bed, crouching before her. “Amber, you know why I came back. And back. And back. For the same reason you took me in.”
He lifted a hand and closed it around hers. Her soft brown eyes begged him to stop. Heat sat high and pink on her cheeks. Her wild waves of hair caught on a breeze coming through one of the many cracks in the woebegone shack in which she lived.
Then her fingers softened as she curled them into his.
A moment later, she whipped her hand away and gave him a shove that had him rocking onto his backside with a thump that shook the foundations, raining dust over his head as she scrambled over him and into clear space.
As he cleared the dust from his hair, his eyes, Hugo wondered how his life had come to this.
The downward spiral had begun several months earlier when he’d agreed to his uncle’s sovereign command to enter into a marriage of convenience. His former fiancée—and long-time best friend—Sadie, had come to her senses and fled before they’d said I do, bringing about a PR nightmare for the royal family...and freedom for Hugo. The fact that he would likely have gone through with it had been a wake-up call. What had he been thinking? Where was his moral compass? Not that that should be much of a shock—he was his father’s son after all.
Afterwards he’d needed to get away. Clear his head. Recalibrate. He’d never have imagined that would lead him away from a life of luxury to camping out in a small, lumpy bed in a country town in the middle of nowhere, Australia, tangled up with a woman he barely knew.
He’d not hidden his position on purpose, she’d simply never asked. Their affair had been lived in the moment, fulfilling basic needs of hunger and sleep and sex while talking about everything from Game of Thrones to Eastern philosophy...but nothing truly personal. His family had not come up. Nor, for that matter, had hers. He’d been so grateful to avoid talking about his own that he had given no thought as to why she might also be glad of it. Perhaps he was not the only one for whom that question opened Pandora’s box. Either way, after a while, the privacy had felt like a true luxury.
“I need you to leave, Hugo,” said Amber, yanking him back to the present, only this time she added, “Please.”
It was enough for Hugo to push to standing. He looked around the small, dilapidated room, but he’d left nothing behind bar the impression of his head on the pillow. It didn’t seem like enough.
Too late to rectify that now, he turned to walk out.
“Wait,” she called, grabbing him by the arm. Before he even had the chance to feel relief she pressed past him and headed out onto her wonky porch, causing the area around her shack to tremble in response.
Ned nuzzled against his hand. And Hugo lost his fingers in the dog’s soft fur, taking a moment to work out a burr.
“All clear,” Amber called.
“Wouldn’t want your friends to know you’ve been harbouring the enemy.”
She glanced back at him, the morning sun turning her hair to gold, her eyes to fire. When she saw Ned at his side her mouth pursed. “Away,” she called. But Ned didn’t move, whether because of his deafness or his obstinacy. She clicked her fingers and with a harumph the dog jogged to her side.
He joined them on the porch. The old wood creaked and groaned. A handmade wooden wind chime pealed prettily in the morning breeze.
“Is that why you came to Serenity?”
Now, there was a question. One she might have thought to ask at any point during the last few weeks if she’d had a care to know anything at all about the man she’d been sleeping with. “You really want to know what I came to Serenity hoping to find?”
She only nodded mutely.
“Absolution. How about you?”
She snapped her mouth shut tight.
He raised an eyebrow. Now, what do you have to say about that?
Nothing, it seemed.