Lessons in Seduction
Adam drew himself taller. The barrier of remoteness shuttered his face, hardened his jaw. “I apologize, Danielle. Unreservedly. Thank you for your services tonight. They won’t be required in future.”
Sacked. He’d sacked her again.
Danni was still stung by her run-in with Adam the next night as she and her father ate their minestrone in front of the fire. Soup and a movie was their Sunday night tradition.
They finished the first half of the tradition and settled in for the movie. A big bowl of buttery popcorn sat on the coffee table and an action adventure comedy was ready to go in the DVD player, just waiting for her press of the button.
Usually, when she was in San Philippe she came round from her apartment for the evening. But her place was being redecorated so she’d been staying with her father for the last week. She had yet to tell him about the fiasco last night. Tonight would be the perfect opportunity.
But she hadn’t fully recovered from the experience.
Although she pretended to herself that she was indifferent, at odd moments the latter part of the evening resurfaced and replayed itself in her head. She should have done everything so differently. Starting with keeping her mouth shut in the first place.
As head driver, her father had a right to know what had happened. Would expect to know. But she hadn’t been able to tell him. Because more than head driver, he was her father and he’d be so disappointed in her. And she hated disappointing the man who’d done so much for her and who asked so little of her.
It had occurred to her that if she just kept quiet, he need never know. It’s not as if she’d ever be driving for Adam again.
Besides, her silence was justified because her father was still so saddened by the visit to his friend. She wanted to alleviate, not add, to that sorrow. At least that was her excuse. The movie they were about to watch would be the perfect tonic. The fact that it featured an awesome and realistic car chase scene would be an added bonus. And they’d both once met the main stunt driver.
It didn’t matter, she told herself, if she never drove for Adam again. It was such a rare occurrence in the first place it was hardly going to make any difference. And she knew Adam wouldn’t let it have any bearing on her father’s position within the palace staff. No. Their exchange had been personal. He’d keep it so. That was part of his code.
She’d just found the television remote when three sharp knocks sounded at the door. Her father looked at her, his curiosity matching hers. He moved to stand but Danni held up her hand. “Stay there. I’ll get it.”
Visitors were rare, particularly without notice. Because her father lived on the palace grounds, in what had once been the gatehouse, friends couldn’t just drop by on a whim.
Danni opened the door.
This was no friend.
Two
“Adam.” Danni couldn’t quite keep the shock from her voice. Was this about last night or was there some further trouble she had gotten into?
“Danielle.” His face was unreadable. “I’d like to talk to you. May I come in?”
After the briefest hesitation she stepped back, giving him access. Much as instinct and pride screamed to do otherwise, you didn’t refuse the heir to the throne when he asked to come in. But to her knowledge, the last time Adam had been on this doorstep looking for her was fifteen years ago when he and Rafe had turned up to invite her to join in the game of baseball they were organizing. She couldn’t quite remember the reason for the game—something to do with a leadership project Rafe had been doing for school. What she remembered with absolute clarity was how badly that endeavor had ended.
Adam stepped into the small entranceway, dominating the space. He smelled good. Reminding her of last night. By rights she should loathe the scent linked with her mortification rather than want to savor it. She heard her father standing up from the couch in the living room behind her.
“St. Claire.” Adam smiled at her father. “Nothing important. I wanted a word with Danielle if I may.”
“Of course. I’ll just pop out to the workshop.”
Danni didn’t want her father to hear whatever it was Adam was about to say because despite his apparent efforts at geniality it couldn’t possibly be good. Nor did she want her father to go because while he was here Adam might actually have to refrain from saying whatever it was that had brought him here.
“Working on another project?” Adam asked.
A smile lit her father’s face as he came to join them in the foyer. “A model airplane. Tiger Moth. I should have it finished in a few more months. A nice manageable project.” Both men smiled.
Not long after Danni and her father’s return to San Philippe when she was five, he’d inherited the almost unrecognizable remnants of a Type 49 Bugatti.
For years the Bugatti had been an ongoing project occupying all of his spare time. It had been therapy for him following the end of his marriage to Danni’s mother.
There had been nothing awful about her parents’ marriage, aside from the fact that their love for each other wasn’t enough to overcome their love for their respective home countries. Her father was miserable in America and her mother was miserable in San Philippe.
And for a few years, after his mother’s death, Adam had helped her father on the car. Danni too had joined them, her primary role being to sit on the workbench and watch and pass tools. And to remind them when it was time to stop and eat. Building the car had been therapy, and a distraction for all of them. She had an early memory of sitting in the car with Adam after her father had finished for the evening. Adam, probably no more than eleven, had entertained her by pretending to drive her, complete with sound effects, to imaginary destinations.
By the time Danni was fifteen none of them needed the therapy so much anymore. Adam, busy with schooling and life, had long since stopped calling around. Her father sold the still unfinished car to a collector. Parts had been a nightmare to either source or make and time had been scarce. Though Danni had later come to suspect, guiltily, that the timing of the sale may have had something to do with the fact that her mother had been lobbying for her to go to college in the States. And fees weren’t cheap.
Her father shut the door behind him and she and Adam turned to face one another. Adam’s gaze swept over her, a frown creasing his brow. She looked down at her jeans and sweater, her normal casual wear. Definitely not palace standard but she wasn’t at the palace.
Silence loomed.
“Sit down.” Danni gestured through to the living room and the couch recently vacated by her father.
“No, that’s … okay.” The uncertainty was uncharacteristic. Seeming to change his mind, Adam walked through to the living room and sat.
Danni followed and sat on the armchair, watching, wary.
“I have to apologize.”
Not this again. “You did that.”
Adam suddenly stood and crossed to the fireplace. “Not for … that. Though I am still sorry. And I do still maintain that I didn’t mean it the way you took it. You’re obviously—”
“Then what for?” She cut him off before he could damn her femininity with faint praise.
“For sacking you.”
She almost laughed. “It’s not my real job, Adam. I have the Grand Prix work. I was covering for Dad as a favor. The loss is no hardship.”
“But I need to apologize because I want you to drive for me again.”
This time the silence was all hers as she stared at him.
Finally she found her voice. “Thanks, but no thanks. Like I said, the loss was no hardship. I think I demonstrated why I’m the last person you want as your driver.”
“Yes, you are the last person I want as my driver because you’re so perceptive and so blunt you make me uncomfortable. But unfortunately I think I need you.”
She made him uncomfortable? And he needed her? Curious as she was she wasn’t going to ask. His statements, designed to draw her in, to lower her defenses, had all the makings of a trap. Warning bells clamored. She just wanted Adam to leave. “I don’t know what you’re playing at.” She stood up and crossed to him, looking into his face, trying to read the thoughts he kept hidden behind indecipherable eyes. “You don’t need me. There are any number of palace drivers, and I don’t need the job. Seems pretty clear-cut to me.”
“I could ask Wrightson,” he said with obvious reluctance.
The younger man her father saw as his chief rival. “Or Dad,” she suggested.
He shook his head. “I try not to use your father for the nighttime work.”
She knew he did that in deference to her father’s age and seniority. But her father wouldn’t necessarily see it as a favor. He didn’t like to think he was getting older.
“Besides, it’s not just driving that I need.” Adam studied her for several seconds longer and she could see him fighting some kind of internal battle. Finally he spoke again. “I called Clara this morning to ask her out again.”
“You don’t think that was too soon?”
“Maybe that’s what it was. But I don’t have time, or the inclination, for games.”
“Oh.” Danni’s stomach sank in sympathy. This wasn’t going to be good. She just knew it.
Adam rested his elbow on the mantel and stared into the fire. “She said she valued my friendship.”
“Ouch.”
“But that there had been no romance.” A frown creased his brow. “No spark.”
“Ahh.” Danni didn’t dare say anything more.
“That I hadn’t even looked into her eyes when I was speaking to her. Not properly. That I was too uptight.” He looked into Danni’s eyes now, as though probing for answers.
“Mmm.” She tried desperately to shield her thoughts—that he just had to look at someone with a portion of the intensity he was directing at her, and if that intensity was transformed into something like, oh say, desire, the woman at the receiving end would have only two choices, melt into a puddle or jump his bones. Danni glanced away.
“So—” he took a deep breath and blew it out “—you were right. Everything you said.”
“Anyone could have seen it,” she said gently.
“Sadly, you’re probably right about that, too. The thing is, not anyone would have pointed it out to me. I don’t know who else I can trust to be that honest with me and I can’t think who else I’d trust enough to let as close as I’m going to have to let you. I can admit my weaknesses to you and you alone because you already seem to know them.”
She knew being who he was had to be lonely and undoubtedly more so since Rafe, his closest confidante, had married. The fact that Rafe had married the woman intended as Adam’s bride might not have helped either. But he brought much of his isolation on himself. He didn’t let people close. And she shouldn’t let his problems be hers. But somewhere in there, in the fact that he had a level of trust for her, was a compliment. Or maybe not. Maybe she was the next best thing to another brother.
She didn’t know what to say. Her head warned her to just say no.
He was staring at the fire again. “It’s imperative that I marry a woman who’ll make a good princess, someone who can lead the country with me. And I know what I’m looking for in that regard. I know my requirements.”
“Your requirements?” Wasn’t that just like him. “Please don’t tell me you have a prioritized list somewhere on your laptop.”
He looked sharply at her, but spoke slowly. “All right, I won’t tell you that.”
Danni slapped her head. “You do, don’t you?”
“I said I wouldn’t tell you.”
“For pity’s sake, Adam.”
A wry smile touched his lips.
“You do need help.”
“Not with my list or what’s on it. That’s nonnegotiable. I just need help with being a better me and a much better date.”
She shook her head. “You don’t need help being a better you. You just have to let people see the real you, not the you that you think you have to be.”
He hesitated. “So you’ll help me?”
Had she just put her foot into a trap that was starting to close? “I haven’t said that. I’d like to, Adam, really I would. But I don’t have time. I’m only staying with Dad for a couple more weeks while I’m on leave and my apartment’s being redecorated.”
He raised his eyebrows. “It’s that big a job? Making me into a better date? It’s going to require more than a couple weeks?”
“No. I’m sure it’s not.”
“Then it won’t take up much of your time, will it?”
She chewed her lip as she shook her head. When she was ten, Adam, who’d had a broken leg at the time, had taught her to play chess. Over the next few years when he came back on summer vacation he always made time to play her at least once or twice. But no matter how much she’d studied and practiced he’d always been able to maneuver her unawares into a corner and into checkmate.
“For so long I haven’t really had to try with women and … after Michelle I didn’t really want to. I’ve almost forgotten how.”
Michelle, whom he’d dated several years ago, well before the advent of Rafe’s wife Lexie, was the last woman he’d been linked seriously with. They’d looked like the perfect couple, well matched in so many respects. An engagement had been widely expected. Then suddenly they’d broken up, and Michelle was now engaged to another member of Adam’s polo team.
“What about your mystery woman?”
He frowned. Not annoyed, but perplexed. “What mystery woman?”
“Palace gossip has it that …”
“Go on.” The frown deepened.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Danni? What palace gossip?”
She took a deep breath. “Rumor has it that whenever you get free time, you disappear for an hour or two. When you come back you’re generally in a good mood and you’ve often showered.”
The frown cleared from his face and he threw back his head and laughed like she hadn’t heard him laugh in years. The sound pleased and warmed her inordinately. “Does this mean there’s no mystery woman?” she asked when he stopped laughing.
He was still doing his best to quell his amusement. “There’s no woman, mysterious or otherwise.”
“Then where—”
“Let’s get back on track. Because there does need to be a woman, the right one, and I think you can help. This is important, Danni. All I really want is your insight and a few pointers. It won’t take a lot of your time.”
Danni hesitated.
“Is there something or … someone you need that time for?”
She didn’t want to admit there wasn’t. There had been no someone since the rally driver she’d been dating dropped her as soon as he started winning and realized that with success came women—beautiful, glamorous women.
“You’ll be compensated.”
He correctly interpreted her silence as admission that there wasn’t anyone. But the offer of remuneration was insulting. “I wouldn’t want that. You wouldn’t have to pay me.”
“So you’ll do it?”
“But you think finding the right woman is about lists and boxes you can check off, and it’s not.”
“That’s why I need you. Lists and tickable boxes are part of it and you’ll have to accept that, but I know there’s more. I want more.” He paused. “I want what Rafe has.”
Danni stifled a gasp. “You want Lexie?”
“No.” The word was vehement and a look of disbelief and disappointment crossed his face. “I just meant he found someone to marry. Someone he could be happy with.”
“She was supposed to be yours,” Danni said quietly, daring to voice the suspicion she’d harbored.
“Only according to my father. We, Lexie and I, never had anything.” As far as Danni could tell, Adam seemed to be telling the truth and she wanted to believe him. But it was common knowledge that Crown Prince Henri had at one point intended that the American heiress with a distant claim to the throne herself would be the perfect partner, politically, for Adam. “And to be honest,” Adam continued, “I’m inclined to believe my father’s later assertion that he’d always intended for Lexie and Rafe to be together. He wanted Rafe to settle down and rein in his ways, but he knew Rafe would rebel against any overt matchmaking.”
Rafe had been charged with escorting Lexie to San Philippe to meet Adam. By all accounts the two had fought falling in love almost from the time they laid eyes on one another. When Rafe and Lexie finally gave in to their feelings, they utterly derailed the Crown Prince’s perceived plans and Rafe’s carefree bachelor existence. They’d since married and now had a beautiful baby girl. Rafe had never looked happier. And while to all outward appearances Adam had also seemed more than happy with the arrangement, Danni had always wondered. A little.
He shook his head as he watched her. “You don’t believe it?”
She shrugged.
“I like Lexie.” He sighed heavily as though this wasn’t the first time he’d had to explain himself. “In fact, I love her. But as a sister. It was obvious from the start that it was never going to work for us. We just didn’t connect.”
“She’s beautiful. And vivacious.”
“She’s both those things. But she wasn’t for me. And I wasn’t for her.”
Danni nodded, almost, but not quite, buying it.
He must have read that shred of doubt in her eyes. “I’ll tell you something on pain of death and only because it will help you believe me.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I think I do.” Adam glanced away looking almost embarrassed. “On our first date …”
A log shifted and settled in the fire as she waited for him to continue.
“I fell asleep.”
She covered her mouth. “No.”
“I’d been working hard, putting in some long hours. The timing was off. Dad never should have had her brought out then.” He reeled off his excuses. “But anyway, we went to dinner at the same place I went with Clara, we had a lovely meal and on the drive home …” He shrugged. “It was inexcusable. But it happened.”
“Was my father driving?”
Adam nodded.
“That explains why he’s always been adamant that you were okay with Rafe and Lexie.”
“I’m more than okay with it. But I’ve seen how happy they are, and Rebecca and Logan, as well.”
Hard on the heels of his brother finding love his sister, Rebecca, had, as well. Her wedding to Logan, a self-made millionaire from Chicago, would be in two months. “And I wonder …”
“If you can have it, too?” Probably every single person in country had wondered the same thing, the fairy tale come true. Danni certainly had.
He sighed. “It’s not realistic though. Not with the life I lead. The constraints on it, constraints that whoever marries me will have to put up with.”
He’d deny himself love? Deny himself even the chance at it? And for someone as smart as he was, his reasoning was screwy. “Don’t you see? That’s why it’s more important than ever that there’s love. That she knows, whatever the constraints, that you, the real you—” She touched her fingertips just above his heart and the room seemed to shrink. She snatched her hand away. “—are worth it.”
Adam’s gaze followed her hand. “So, you’ll help me?”
Danni hesitated.
A fatal mistake.
“I have a date on Friday.” He spoke into the silence of her hesitation. “If you could drive for me then you’ll be doing me and my father and the country a favor.”
“So it’s my patriotic duty?”
“I wouldn’t quite put it like that but …” He shrugged. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the doctors have told Dad to ease up on work and watch his stress levels. This is one way I can help. So, I need to expedite this process. I want a date for Rebecca and Logan’s wedding, and I can’t take just anyone. It has to be someone I’m seeing seriously. So that means I need to be working on it now. We’ve only got two months.”
Danni sighed heavily. “See? Your whole approach is wrong. It’s not a transaction that you can expedite. You can’t put time limits on things like this.”
“This is why I need your help. As a friend.”
“You might think you want my help, but I remember you well enough to know that you don’t take advice or criticism well. Especially not from me.”
“No,” he agreed. “But I’m not looking for criticism as such, just pointers.”
“You might see my pointers as criticism.”
“I’ll try not to.” Sincere, with the merest hint of a smile.
There was a time when she practically hero-worshipped Adam and would have done anything he asked of her. So she had to fight the unquestioning instinct to agree to his request. Just because it wasn’t a big job and she had a little time on her hands didn’t mean it was a good idea. She hadn’t been this hesitant about anything since her skydiving course last year. She needed to know what she’d be getting into and she needed Adam to know she wasn’t that blindly devoted girl anymore. “Normal rules would have to not apply. Because if I agree to do this, there could well be things I want to say to you that usually I absolutely wouldn’t.”
“This is sounding ominous.”
“It won’t work if I don’t have the freedom to speak my mind.”
He hesitated. “If you do this for me, then I’ll accept that much.” His dark eyes were earnest. “I’d appreciate it, Danni.” When she was younger he’d called her Danni. But somewhere along the way as they’d both gotten older, and he’d gone away to school and become even more serious, formality had crept into their relationship and he’d switched to calling her Danielle with rare exceptions. Calling her Danni now brought back recollections of those easier times. He touched a finger to the small bump on his nose. Just briefly. The gesture looked almost unconscious, and she’d seen him make it before. But it never failed to make her feel guilty. Did he know that? Was it part of persuading her that she owed him?
Whether he knew it or not, it worked. “I don’t know how much help I can be.”
He recognized her capitulation. She could see the guarded triumph in his eyes, the almost imperceptible easing to his shoulders.
“I can’t guarantee anything. Like you pointed out, I’m no expert on romance.”
“But as you pointed out, you are a woman. And I trust you.”
She sucked in a deep breath, about to make a lastminute attempt at getting out of this.
“I’ll be seeing Anna DuPont. She fits all my criteria. I’ve met her a couple times socially and I think there’s potential for us. Drive for us. Please.”
He could, if he chose, all but order her to do it, make it uncomfortable for her or her father if she refused, but his request felt so sincere and so personal—just between the two of them—that the hero worship she’d once felt kicked in and she was nodding almost before she realized it. “One date,” she said, trying to claim back some control. “I’ll drive you for one date.”
Three
On Friday, Danni pulled up to Adam’s wing of the palace in the Bentley. The sandstone building towered above her, the shadows seeming to hide secrets and to mock her for how little she knew. What had she gotten herself into? There was no protocol for this situation, for being part driver, part honest adviser, part friend. She took a fortifying breath. All she could do was to stick with what she knew and maybe trust her instincts. At least she wouldn’t be expected to guard her tongue quite as closely as normal.
She got out and waited by the passenger door while he was notified of her arrival. On those occasions she had driven for him in the past, he’d been scrupulously punctual. Tonight was no different. As the clock on the distant tower chimed seven, he appeared, stepping out into a pool of light.
Danni looked at him and couldn’t figure out whether this was going to be ridiculously easy or ridiculously difficult.
She was still shaking her head as he stopped in front of her. “You have something to say? Already?”
“Yes. You’re wearing a suit and tie.”
“Yes.”
“You’re going to have dinner at the riverside jazz festival?”
“Yes.” He managed to make that single word of agreement intimidating.