an act. One he’d fallen for.
So why had she dropped the facade now, when she was here to insinuate herself into his favor?
A scoff almost burst from his lips. Favor? That she now hoped to win by telling him how worthless she thought him?
Which was a strange declaration. As one of the most powerful men in the world, he epitomized worth. She herself must have plotted to ensnare him the moment she’d recognized his potential.
She’d read him, played him like a virtuoso. The endlessly loving sister, the innocent who’d gone up in flames at his first touch, the one presence in his life that had been undemanding and soothing during conflicted times. She’d projected everything that had captivated him with unerring consistency.
She’d moved on after he’d been wiped out of the picture, looking for a replacement prince. And she’d found one—and lost him. To this day, Leandro had been unable to find out the true circumstances of her broken engagement to one of his second cousins, Prince Armando D’Agostino.
But she’d had a contingency plan. She’d become the indispensable presence that connected the über-traditional monarchy to the modern world. The one the kingdom relied on in its hours of need. The one they’d sent to him.
And she wanted to “start the negotiations.” Wanted to get it over with so he could “get on with the rest of his day.”
Not the words or attitude of someone who cared one way or the other if those negotiations bore fruit.
So what was she up to now?
She must have a plan. A new act. She must have decided to walk in here, pretend antagonism, condescension, and before he interpreted any level of emotional involvement in either, she would switch to indifference. Keep him guessing. Keep him off-balance and enmeshed in the game, trying to anticipate her next move and how to counteract it.
Masterful. A resounding success.
And why not? He’d let her perform this new scenario. Watching her execute it should be therapeutic.
He advanced on her with steps that he hoped looked measured. His resolve to purge her wasn’t lessening her impact. He stopped two steps away, and it hit him two hundred times harder.
He made another split-second decision, to give in to it rather than fight it and lose more to its sway. He let her aura flood over him, took another step closer.
“And hello to you, too, Phoebe.”
Her eyes swung up to his. Blood grew thicker, demanding harder contractions from his heart to push it through his arteries.
She took half a step back. Slow. Smooth. Dancing with him already? They’d once danced so…exquisitely together.
“There’s no need to pretend we owe each other hellos.”
The matter-of-factness of her tone was like an intravenous stimulant, riding his circulation’s rapids to his fingertips, his toes, his scalp, his erection. He made up for the half step she’d gained. “Don’t we? You keep saying the most interesting things.”
“I’m stating facts. Now, if we can move on?”
“So, me not being a prize worth winning, and us not owing each other hellos are ‘facts.’ Because you say so, of course.”
Her gaze shifted downward. He felt it scrape down his body, as inflammatory as her nails had once been.
But what was the stirring he saw in her eyes? Irritation? At him? Or at herself? Because she hadn’t intended to look? To notice? To become as inflamed?
Before he could make sure, her gaze moved back up to his, smothering whatever it had been in blandness. “Prince D’Agostino…”
The title—what he hadn’t heard in eight years and the formality that had never before passed her lips were like a swipe of claws across raw tissue.
“Leandro.” He couldn’t temper his anger and affront, stop them from making his growl a predator’s. “You remember my name, don’t you, Phoebe? Yalla, say it. You once moaned it, sobbed it, screamed it. I’m sure you can now pay me the courtesy of using it.”
Those eyes wavered before they hardened, those lips twitched before they thinned. “I see no reason to. ‘Prince D’Agostino’ is what’s proper in this situation. And I demand you pay me the courtesy of not bringing up our past liaison again.”
He gave a rough huff. “You’d better realize and fast that I don’t respond well to demands, Phoebe. I’m also notorious for being impossible to steer. So quit wasting your breath trying to maneuver this ‘negotiation’according to your preset plans.”
To her credit, she didn’t try to contest that he’d pegged her strategy right. Now she’d no doubt swerve into new territory.
But she said nothing. Stood silent. Still. Waiting for him to launch into more unchecked responses, to compromise himself more?
He quirked an eyebrow at her. “No more admonish-ments? Shall I wait until you think of something concise and annihilating? Something to devolve me from worthless to nonexistent?”
Her gaze remained steady. Vacant. It filled him with urgency. He took a step, farther into her aura, struggled not to breathe deeply of her freshness. He stopped before he touched, gathered, crushed. Her stillness and silence sent his senses haywire. He’d had enough unresponsiveness from her to fill ten lifetimes. He’d take no more.
He opened his mouth, not knowing what he’d say. Only she had ever been able to strip him of coherence.
What came out was, “Nothing more to say?”
Memory flooded him of when he’d said those very words to her before, in this very room. Of what had followed them. And…Dio.
He watched as a jolt emptied her lungs and vulnerability flooded her eyes. Had the memory hit her as hard as it had him? Why would it, if that encounter hadn’t meant much to her, if her emotions had never truly been involved? Could it be there had always been another explanation, one he’d hoped for all these years?
Temptation became an ache, to demand she put him out of his misery once and for all, to reenact the rest.
Exhaling, hoping to purge the irrationality her nearness always afflicted him with, he gestured toward the sitting arrangement behind them.
She didn’t move.After seconds of her ignoring his unspoken invitation, he exhaled again, walked around her. With all he had, he refrained from brushing against her. He still felt as if her essence followed him, enveloped him, its crisp sweetness filling his lungs, the charge of attraction sparking over his skin. Setting his teeth, he snatched a remote off the coffee table, pushed a button as he descended heavily onto the two-seater.
Ernesto appeared at the door in seconds.
The older man’s shrewd gaze took in the situation before turning disapproving eyes on…him? What the…?
Tamping down the ridiculous urge to protest that this tense scene was her fault—past and present—furious that the man who’d practically raised him, who’d seen him at his worst after her desertion should have the temerity to have any doubt of that, he glared back. “See what Phoebe would like, Ernesto. She might talk to you. She seems to be on a speech strike with me.”
Ernesto’s hawklike face grew harsher with displeasure and disappointment, throwing daggers at Leandro’s confused outrage, before softening into fondness and indulgence as he turned to Phoebe. “What would you like, cara mia?”
Cara mia? His dear? Since when? What was going on here?
Before more questions could form, Leandro’s mouth dropped open wider as Phoebe turned a face transformed by affection into the heart-melting one he remembered, and gave Ernesto a tremulous smile that would shake the foundations of a metropolis. “Grazie, Ernesto. Anything. You always know what I