He had set out to win her after her initial resistance to his invitation to dinner and succeeded. Not a fair game, really, when she’d discovered the reckless, rebel prince had far more layers than anyone thought. Brilliant and deep with a philosophical side few knew about, he was undeniably fascinating.
She leaned her head back against the seat and eyed him. “What happens when winning isn’t enough anymore?”
His lashes lowered in that sleepy, half-awake big cat look he did so well, when he was anything but. “I think I’m in the process of finding that out.”
She blinked. It was the first deeply personal insight he’d given her. To have it come tonight of all nights was confusing. Tangled her up in a knot.
Carlos dropped them off. They rode the elevator, reserved exclusively for the penthouses, to the fifty-seventh floor and Nik’s palatial abode.
Sofía kicked off her shoes while Nik opened a bottle of Prosecco and walked through to the salon with its magnificent views of the park, the floor-to-ceiling windows encasing the luxurious space offering a bird’s-eye view of the Empire State Building and the sweep of the city with its breathtaking 360-degree perspective.
A light throb pulsed at her temples as she stood in front of the windows and took in the view. Lights blazed across the smoky, steamy New York skyline, as if a million falling stars had been embraced by the sweeping skyscrapers.
Nik’s spicy aftershave filled her senses just before he materialized by her side with two glasses of sparkling wine. Tipping her glass toward him in the European-style version of the toast he preferred, her eyes on his, she drank.
Finding Nik’s seeking gaze far too perceptive, she looked back at the view, following a jet as it made its way across the sky, silhouetted against the skyscrapers. It reminded her of what tomorrow was. Had her wondering if that was why she had chosen tonight to end this. Because it had reminded her of her priorities.
“You’re thinking about your father.”
“Yes. Tomorrow is the twentieth anniversary of his death.”
“Has it gotten any easier?”
Did it ever get any easier when your father’s plane dropped from the air into the Atlantic Ocean because of faulty mechanics that, properly addressed, could have saved his life? When it had cost her the guiding force of her life?
“You learn to let it go,” she said huskily. “Accept that things don’t always make sense in life. Sometimes they just happen. If I had allowed my anger, my sadness, my bitterness at the unfairness of it all to rule me, it’s I who would have lost.”
“An inherently philosophical way to look at it. But you were only eight when it happened, Sofía. It must have affected you deeply.”
That seemed too slight a description for what had unraveled after that phone call in the middle of the night—her mother in her grief—her childhood ripped away in the space of a few hours with one parent gone and the other so emotionally vacant she might as well have been, too.
“I have an understanding of what it’s like to lose something precious.” She moved her gaze back to his. “It makes you aware of how easily it can all fall apart.”
“And yet sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you go on to make something of yourself. Create and run a successful business...”
Her mouth twisted. “Which could also fall apart if the market changes.”
“Any business could fall apart if the market changes. It’s the reality of being in the game. You don’t anticipate failure, you believe in your vision.”
She absorbed the verbal hand slap.
“How did you fund the business?” he asked. “You never did tell me.”
“The airline was at fault for my father’s accident. Faulty mechanics. The settlement was held in trust for me until I turned twenty-one. I put myself through design school on a scholarship in the meantime.”
“What was the ultimate intention? The business or the designing?”
“Both. My first love is designing, but I put that on hold when we started the business. We needed to get the store in the black, pay off some investments. Now I finally feel like we’re getting to the point where we can hire some staff and I can work on a line for the store.”
“How many years have you been open now?”
“Six.”
“Six years is a long time to wait on a dream, Sofía.”
Heat singed her cheeks. “These things don’t happen overnight. Interviewing is time-consuming, not to mention finding someone I can trust my baby with.”
“Perhaps it’s you you don’t trust.” Nik’s softly worded challenge brought her chin up. “When you want something badly enough, you make it happen. There are no can’ts in life, only barriers we create for ourselves.”
“I’m getting there.” She hated the defensive note in her voice. “We don’t all cut a swath through our lives like you do, Nik, impervious to anything or anyone but the end goal.”
His gaze sharpened on her face. “Is that how you see me?”
“Isn’t it true?”
He studied her silently for a moment. She looked away, his criticisms broaching an uncomfortable truth, one she’d been avoiding examining too closely. Putting off the designing had been practicality in the beginning when establishing Carlotta and finding a steady clientele had been a matter of survival. The problem was the longer she put it off, the harder it was to pick up her sketch pad again. Doubt had crept in as to whether she had what it took.
“You know what I think?” Nik said finally. “I think you’re scared. I think you talk a good game, Sofía, but you aren’t nearly as tough as you make yourself out to be. I think you’re scared of investing yourself in something you care so much about because there’s a chance you might fail. And it’s personal, isn’t it, designing for you? You’re putting yourself out there. What if you do and New York rejects you? What if it all falls apart?”
She blinked at how scarily accurate that was. “I think that’s a bit of a stretch.”
“I don’t.” He stepped closer and reached up to trace a finger down her cheek, an electric charge zigzagging its way through her. “I know how easily it can all fall apart. Your words, not mine.”
“Philosophical musings,” she denied.
His fingers dropped to her mouth, tracing the line of her bottom lip. “I think my first impression of you at that benefit that night was right. You don’t fully engage with life, you hold a part of yourself back so you won’t get hurt. So there’s no chance it will fall apart. But that’s a delusion you feed yourself. Nothing can prevent a tragedy or a failure or someone walking away because it isn’t right. To reap the reward you have to take the risk.”
She had no answer for that because she was afraid it was true. All of it. But if it was true about her, it was equally, if not more so, true about him.
“And what about you?” she countered. “You hide yourself under this smooth veneer, Nik. No one ever really gets to know the real you. What you dream of. What you hope for. Tonight, what you said about winning, about not knowing what happens when it isn’t enough anymore, it was the first time you’ve admitted anything truly intimate about yourself to me. And soon, my time will be up, won’t it? You’ll decide I’m getting too close, your attention span will wane and I’ll receive a very nice piece of jewelry to kiss off and fade into the sunset.”
His gaze darkened. “I never promised you more, Sofía. It’s the way I am. You knew that.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “I did. We are two birds of a feather. Unwilling or unable to be intimate with someone else. Which is why I think we should end it now while it’s still good. While