every tabloid shark I can contact about how Maria Santos tried to buy a five-hundred-thousand-dollar commission by seducing a prince.” He smiled thinly. “They’ll lap it up.”
She blanched, but she kept her chin up and her eyes on his.
“Don’t try to scare me with lies! You can’t afford that kind of gossip.”
“I’ve learned to endure that kind of gossip, Ms. Santos. It’s part of my life. Besides, I’m the righteous prince who discovered what you wanted and tossed you out on your backside.” Another of those cold smiles twisted his lips. “They’ll eat you alive. How do you think that will go over with the handful of reputable clients you’ve somehow managed to snare?”
Maria yanked her hand free. “!Usted es un cochon!” she hissed. “!Un cochon malnacido!”
“I think not. If I truly were an ill-bred pig, I would have told you exactly what I thought of you eight weeks ago instead of just throwing you out of my apartment.”
Color rushed to her cheeks. She hadn’t figured he understood Spanish but, then, she’d been wrong in every judgment she’d made about this man from the start.
“You did tell me,” she snapped, “and now it’s my pleasure to return the favor. You’re down to four minutes before I call the cops. Dealing with the media will be worth it, if I can just get rid of you.”
“What’s the problem, Maria? Expecting your lover to return?”
“What?”
“Your lover. What did you call him that morning? Joaquin?”
Joaquin. The idea was so ludicrous she almost laughed, but laughter would take more energy than she could spare. Besides, she didn’t have to explain anything.
“Joaquin is none of your business.”
“You’re right, of course.” Alex strolled across the room to the front window and peered out at his limo, waiting at the curb across the street. “But I had a front-row seat for your little welcome home this evening. You can’t blame me for being curious.”
Maria rushed to the window. A front-row seat? Impossible. The Prince of Arrogance would surely not have stood in the cold and the snow, watching her window…
The big car. It was his. Furious, she swung toward her unwelcome guest.
“You were sitting out there, spying on me?”
“You might want to consider curtains,” he said with lazy self-assurance.
“You—you …” She pointed a finger at the door. “Get out of my home!”
Alex didn’t move. Instead, he tucked his hands in the slash pockets of his jacket and gave her a long look, starting at her feet and working slowly up to her face. She certainly wasn’t dressed like a woman waiting for her lover to come back. Not in a pair of baggy sweats that had seen better days. There was a hole in one knee, what looked like a burn in the shirt just below her collarbone. Her feet were bare, her hair a wild mass of curls.
His belly knotted.
Her hair had been like that the last time he’d seen her, a tumble of long, glorious curls falling around her heart-shaped face. She’d been wearing his robe; she’d been lost in it and somehow that had made her look even sexier, maybe because he’d known, intimately, what was beneath that robe. The delicate, golden-hued skin. The small, uptilted breasts. The slim curve of her waist, the surprisingly feminine richness of her hips.
Her face had been sexy, too. Glowing eyes. Dewy skin. No make-up, not even lipstick, though her mouth had been rosy and softly swollen from his kisses.
She had looked—what did the French call it? Déshabillé. As if she had just come from bed.
Which she had. His bed. His bed and his possession, and that memory was enough to do more than make his belly knot. It sent a bolt of pure lust straight to his loins.
He still wanted her.
It had taken the sight of her in a scruffy sweatshirt and baggy sweatpants before he’d permitted himself to admit it. What man wanted to acknowledge he still desired a woman who’d tried to use him?
One who was a fool, he told himself. And then he thought, no. Hell, no. That wasn’t it at all. Maria Santos owed him and that was her fault, not his. She had lured him into bed. Seduced him, though he’d thought he was the one doing the seducing.
She’d plotted everything, from that supposedly accidental meeting on the street to the moment he’d first kissed her. The only thing surprising about that night was that she’d been able to keep from smirking triumphantly when he’d asked her to come home with him.
She’d made a fool of him, and she still owed him for that. Owed him big time, as the Americans said. And until that debt was paid, the memory of his humiliation would continue to haunt him.
He had no doubt what it would take to expunge that memory.
Her, in his bed again. Moving beneath him. Coming on a long, explosive cry as he watched her with clinical detachment. There’d be no phony little cries. No subterfuge. He would make her want him, make her react to him.
And then he’d send her packing for the second, and last, time.
“Your five minutes are up, Prince Alexandros.”
Alex looked at her. Her expression, her body language, were defiant. She thought she was in charge.
That made him smile.
“You find this amusing?”
“Indeed.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’m going to count to ten. It’s your last chance. If you’re not out the door by then—”
“Safir et Fils is on the verge of collapse.”
She blinked. “Who?”
“Safir et Fils,” he repeated impatiently. “The French firm that was awarded the commission.” She was staring at him blankly. “Come on, Ms. Santos,” he said silkily. “Don’t try and tell me the name of the company that won a commission you were willing to prostitute yourself to get has slipped your—”
Her hand flew through the air but he was quicker than she was. He caught her wrist, dragged her forward and hauled her to her toes.
“Do not,” he said with quiet menace, “ever raise your hand to me again!”
“Let go of me!”
“Did you hear what I said?—”
“What a bastard you are!”
Her voice shook; tears glittered in her eyes and she was breathing hard. So what? He was unimpressed.
“Playing the righteous innocent will get you nowhere, agapi mou. You made a fool of me once but I promise you, it will never happen again. And do not call me names. I am a prince. I urge you to remember that.”
He almost winced. He sounded like an ass but how could he think while hot rage pumped through his blood? She was an excellent actress; he knew that. And this was another stellar performance. The damp eyes. The trembling voice. The patches of crimson on her face.
Her face. Beautiful, even now.
“Did you think you could get away with what you did, Maria? Letting me think you’d been carried away by passion when what carried you away was the greedy hope that sleeping with me would give you an advantage in the design competition?”
He paused. Maria stared at him.
Was he waiting for her to answer? What was the point? If she said he was wrong, he wouldn’t believe her. He hadn’t, that awful morning.
“Liar,” he’d said, in a voice cold as death, and then he’d hurled words at her in Greek that she hadn’t