And Theo’s senses were stretched piano-wire tight. He ached to get up and wrap his arms around her and comfort her—but that was because it provided him with the perfect excuse to do so. To do exactly what he wanted to do. But he couldn’t reach out. He couldn’t afford to make a move.
Her story might be compelling. Heart-rending, even. But convincing? And did it even matter? She was a rescue. He was a bodyguard. She was his mission. No matter what he felt right now, emotions didn’t come into it. His job was to get her home, no matter the sob stories along the way.
No matter how hard it might feel.
Nothing was working. Izzy rose from her chair to pace the suite. She didn’t know how to break through the walls that Theo had erected around him, walls that seemed to offer a crack, a crevice, a mere promise every now and then to let her in to get a glimpse of the man and let him see her, only to have him plaster over those walls, raise the drawbridge and withdraw into the inner sanctum.
One night. One more night was all she had to convince him not to take her home. She took a deep breath as she looked out the window at the grey skies, the swirling clouds around the tops of the mountains and the swaying palm trees of the rainforest below.
But she wasn’t done with trying yet. Maybe she just needed to try a different tack…
‘So,’ she said, turning, ‘you were married.’
He looked up from the messages he was reading on his phone that the trickle of internet had finally allowed through. There was a crisis developing in a recovery happening in Istanbul, a complication with another in Athens, and he was still waiting on information he’d urgently requested about Prince Rafael, but his attention was now one hundred per cent focused on the question this woman had just asked.
Where the hell had that come from? Unless this was another tilt at the fifty-year-old fiancé thing. He half expected her next question to be,‘How old was she?’
‘I think we’ve established that I was married, Princess.’
‘And you’ve made love with a woman.’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘You’re right. Silly question. You were married and of course you would have made love with your wife, and probably a bunch of women besides.’
‘Not while I was married to my wife.’Not since, for that matter.‘Now where is this going, Princess?’
She shrugged. ‘Only that you’re a man. And you look like someone who would know how all the bits might work.’
There was no preventing his eyebrows shooting north. ‘I doubt there are many adults alive on this planet who don’t know how “all the bits might work”. I’m equally sure your education, not to mention your recent experiences, will have filled you in on the necessary details.’
‘Well, of course it did, I just wondered what it felt like from the male point of view.’
‘Didn’t Mateo or Luke or whoever else there was bother to share that information with you?’
Isabella’s interest spiked. Theo remembered their names? Thatwasinteresting.
She shrugged. ‘I guess I was too caught up in the moment. I didn’t think to ask. So now I’m asking you.’
He bristled on his chair. ‘I wish you wouldn’t. I’m not comfortable talking about this with you, Princess. It’s not appropriate.’
‘Not even in general? I’m not asking for specifics. I’m not asking for a blow-by-blow analysis.’
He shook his head. ‘Believe me, that’s the last thing you’re going to get.’
‘Right. So, what can you tell me?’
‘Nothing,’ he said. He slammed his laptop shut. Twenty-four hours had never seemed so long. ‘I can’t stand another moment of this.’
‘So, you agree, we’re going out?’
It wasn’t his first choice. His first choice would be to lock her in her room where she couldn’t constantly needle him with her perfect body and her smart words. But locking her in her room, even if it was possible, was crossing a line he’d never expected to want to cross.
What was it with this woman?
‘Well?’ she said, looking decidedly more sheepish but not giving up, her hands clasped innocently before her. ‘It has to be better than staying here with you getting on my nerves and me getting on yours.’
It was ridiculous. Going out in this wild weather was ridiculous. But maybe she had a point. Staying here with this woman in this apartment for however long the storm was going to last was impossible. He might not be attracted to her—he refused to admit the truth that he was attracted to her—but just being in her proximity was on his mind—and her nerves—one hundred per cent of the time.
