Lessons in Seduction (2 page)

“Your car, Danielle?” He lifted one eyebrow.

“Your car. But I'm the one who still needs to drive it round to the garage,” she snapped. Oops. Definitely not supposed to snap at the prince, no matter how shocked at herself she was. Definitely not appropriate. But her curt response seemed almost to please him because the corners of his lips twitched. And then, too soon, flattened again.

Danni swallowed. She needed to backpedal. Fast. “We've reached the palace. I trust you had a pleasant evening.” She used her blandest voice as she backed out of the car. Stick to the script. That was all she had to do.

Adam followed her and stood, towering over her, his gaze contemplative. “Very. Thank you.”

“Really?” She winced. That so was not in the script. What had happened to her resolve to be a shadow?

His gaze narrowed, changing from contemplative to enquiring with a hint of accusation. “You doubt me, Danielle?” A cold breeze wrapped around her.

Well, yes. But she could hardly say that and she oughtn't to lie. She searched for a way around it. “No one would know other than yourself.”

“No, they wouldn't.”

She willed him to just step away from the car. Go on into the palace. Get on with saving the nation and the world. Then she could close the door and drive away and get something to eat. And it would be as if tonight had never happened. There would be no repercussions. Not for her and not for her father.

But he didn't move. He stood absolutely still. Her stomach rumbled into the silence.

“You haven't eaten?”

“I'm fine.”

Again the silence. Awkward and strained. If he would just go.

He stood still. Watching her. “I didn't realize you were driving for us again. I thought you were in the States.”

“I was for a while. I came back.” Three-and-a-half years ago she had moved back for good. “But this is temporary, just for tonight in fact. I'm staying with Dad and he had something come up.” Danni held her breath. Did he remember the ban? Would it matter now?

He nodded and she let out her breath. “Everything's all right with him?”

“Absolutely. A sick friend. He'll be back tomorrow.”

“Good.” Adam turned to go into the palace and then just when she thought she was free, turned back. “What was it you said?”

“He'll be back tomorrow.”

“Not then. Earlier. When you were driving.”

All manner of desperate, inappropriate words raced through her mind. No, no, no. He couldn't have heard.

“I can't remember.” So much for her principles. She was lying through her teeth.

“It was around the time I got the laptop out to show
Clara the geographic distribution of lava from the 1300 eruption of Ducal Island.”

She did roll her eyes then; she couldn't help it. He was too much. “My point exactly,” she said, throwing her hand up in surrender. “I said, ‘Way to romance a woman, Adam.' Really. The geographic distribution of lava?”

His expression went cold.

There was a line somewhere in the receding distance, one she'd long since stepped over. Her only hope was to make him see the truth of her assertions. “Come on, Adam. You weren't always this stuffy.” She'd known him when he was still a boy becoming a man. And later she'd occasionally seen glimpses of an altogether different man beneath the surface when he'd forgotten, however briefly, who he was supposed to be and just allowed himself to act naturally.

Now wasn't that time.

His brows shot up. But Danni couldn't stop herself.

“What woman wants to talk about lava and rock formations on a date?” Too late, Danni remembered the saying about how when you found yourself in a hole the best course of action was to stop digging.

The brows, dark and heavy, drew together. “Clara is a Fulbright scholar. She studied geology. She was interested.”

“Maybe she was. But surely she can read a textbook for that kind of thing. It's great if you're planning a lecture tour together but it's hardly romantic. Where's the poetry, the magic, in that? You weren't even looking into her eyes, you were looking at the screen. And did you even kiss her when you escorted her to her door?”

“I'm not sure that's any of your business, but yes.” Somehow he'd made himself taller.

She wasn't going to be intimidated. “Some kiss, huh?”

“And you'd be an expert on kissing and on romance? What would you suggest? Discussing the specifications of the Bentley perhaps?”

Danni took a little step back as though that could distance her from the stab of hurt. She liked cars. She couldn't help that. Wouldn't want to, even if Adam, who she knew for a fact also liked cars, considered it a failing in a woman. “No. I'm not an expert on romance. But I am a woman.”

“You're sure about that?”

This time she didn't even try to hide her mortification. She took a much bigger step back. Her heart thumped, seeming to echo in her chest. She clamped shut the jaw that had fallen open.

Her uniform—a dark jacket and pants—had been designed for men and adapted for her, the only female driver. It was well tailored but it wasn't exactly feminine. It wasn't supposed to be. And it was nothing like Clara's soft pink dress that had revealed expanses of skin and floated over her lush curves. Danni had always been something of a tomboy and preferred practicality along with comfort but she still had feelings and she had pride and Adam had just dented both. Adam, whose opinion shouldn't matter to her. But apparently did.

Shock spread over his face. Shock and remorse. He reached for her then dropped his hand. “Danni, I didn't mean it like that. I meant I still see you as a kid. It still surprises me that you're even old enough to have your license.”

She shoved the hurt down, tried to replace it with defiance. “I got my license over a decade ago. And you're not that much older than me.”

“I know I'm not. It just feels like it sometimes.”

“True.” It had always felt that way. Adam had always seemed older. Distant. Unreachable.

He sighed and closed his eyes. When he opened them again he said, “I'm sure you're a fine woman, but it hardly qualifies you to give me dating advice. I've known enough women.”

“I'm sure you have,” she said quietly. Of late there had been quite the string of them. All of them beautiful, intelligent and worldly, with much to recommend them for the position of future princess. But despite those apparent recommendations, he'd seldom dated the same woman twice. And never, to her knowledge, a third time. She didn't mean to keep track, but a glance at the papers on any given day, even if only when lighting the fire in her father's gatehouse, kept track for her. But it certainly wasn't her place to comment and the implied criticism would centuries ago have cost her her head.

She was thankful for the fact that beheadings hadn't been legal for several centuries because judging by the displeasure in Adam's eyes, he just might have been in favor of the practice right about now. For a moment she actually thought he might lose his legendary cool. She couldn't even feel triumph. There had been a time when, egged on by Adam's younger brother Rafe, flapping the unflappable Adam had been a pastime for the small group of children raised on the palace estate. But she was still too preoccupied with covering her own hurt to feel anything akin to satisfaction.

Adam drew himself taller. The barrier of remote
ness 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.

“A
dam.” 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.