Claiming His Princess: Duty at What Cost? / A Throne for the Taking / Princess in the Iron Mask

‘Really?’ She finally sat down and crossed her legs. Slowly. ‘What is it?’

Wolfe regarded her wryly. ‘And I don’t have any motive for wanting to kill you.’

Yet.

She smiled, clearly sensing his frustration. ‘Am I getting to you?’

‘You don’t want to get to me, Princess.’

‘No, I want you to quit.’

‘Get over it.’

Suddenly her gaze turned serious. ‘Are you planning to investigate my artists?’

‘Of course.’

‘Be nice. Some of them are sensitive.’

‘Unlike you?’ It was both a statement and a question.

‘Unlike me.’

He didn’t believe her. Just the fact that she cared about her artists told him more than anything else. And then there was the look of concern that had briefly crossed her face when she’d first walked into the King’s office. She had a heart. She just guarded it well. He could relate to that. He’d put his in a box years ago, and that was exactly where he intended it to stay. It was a timely reminder to keep his head on straight around this woman. She got to him as no one else ever had, and that made her dangerous and him volatile.

‘Who was your last lover?’

She threw him a look.

‘Before that,’ Wolfe said gruffly.

Her eyes widened. ‘You want a list?’

No, he did not want a damned list. ‘Yes.’

She looked as if she was about to tell him to take a hike. ‘A lovely American took my virginity when I was eighteen because he thought it would be fun to bed a European princess. Then I met a novelist who wanted to write the great Parisian novel. We were quite serious—unbeknown to my father—but three years ago I realised that we weren’t after the same thing and we broke up.’

Wolfe could tell that both men had hurt her and he wanted to run them through with a blunt instrument.

‘Did you love him?’ The question was irrelevant and he hoped she wouldn’t pick up on that.

‘How is that relevant?’

Damn. ‘If you’re going to question me at every turn this won’t work.’

‘I already know it won’t.’

‘Ava…’

She huffed out a breath. ‘I thought I did at the time. Now…I’m not so sure.’

He wanted to ask what had happened since to make her question that but he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know. ‘And since then?’

The look she gave him made his stomach knot.

‘Apart from the Anders football team…’ She recrossed those long legs in the other direction and stared straight at him. ‘You’re the lucky last, Monsieur Wolfe.’

Wolfe sucked in a litre of air at her admission, ignoring her snipe about the football team. How had he so completely misread her? But he’d known, hadn’t he? He’d needed to believe she was as sophisticated and jaded in the art of seduction as he was. It had made it easier to let her go after the night they’d spent together. Made it easier to believe that what was between them was nothing more than mutual biological gratification. Not that it had worked exactly…

He stood up and startled the cat, who promptly jumped down and crossed to Ava. She reached down, her movements as graceful as the animal she scooped into her arms to cuddle.

‘I’ll need to see your itinerary for the next few days,’ he said gruffly.

She didn’t look up. ‘I’ll have Lucy forward it to you tomorrow morning.’

Wolfe moved to the picture window and stared out at the acres of grass that ringed the palace to the sprawling mountains beyond. Incredibly, he was thinking how happy he was that she’d never slept with Gilles.

Hell.

If he was going to protect her he had to stay on task. He had to stop thinking of her as a person. As a desirable woman. And he especially had to stop thinking of her marrying some stupid fool her father was planning to choose for her.

CHAPTER SIX

AVA WASN’T SURE how she was supposed to find a husband when she compared every man she came across to Wolfe. Not that she had taken her father’s oppressive statement seriously. She had no intention of letting herself be bullied into a convenient marriage just to suit his wishes. Not on something this important.

Fortunately she was getting a reprieve from having to pretend to go along with it in the arms of her debonair cousin Baden.

‘Quite the soirée your papa has put on for you, cuz.’

‘Yes,’ Ava agreed flatly, glancing around the gilt-edged ballroom filled to the gills with beautifully attired guests. Alcohol consumption had lifted the mood considerably since the beginning of the night, and even though she hated being here she had to admire her father’s opportunistic streak.

He was a man who didn’t stop until he got what he wanted. And he wanted her married, it seemed. In a hurry. Of course the supreme and lately suppressed romantic in her knew that there was every possibility she would meet someone tonight and fall in love at first sight. After all it had happened to Anne and Gilles. But…Her eyes drifted to Wolfe, standing nonchalantly towards the back of the room.

There was her problem, right there.

He was supposed to look like one of the guests. Undercover. What he looked like was a man who could kill with his bare hands and not put a crease in his bespoke tuxedo. But perhaps that was only because she knew it was true. Perhaps to the other women watching him so closely he just looked like a sexy, rakish male who was good in bed. Something else she knew to be true…

As if sensing her appraisal, he meshed his eyes with hers. Ava felt the impact of his stare from across the room. She couldn’t fathom the effect he still had on her. It was instantaneous and totally consuming. She sensed that he felt it, too, but he had much more control over it than she did. Or the attraction just wasn’t as strong for him as it was for her. Given that he was only here because her father was paying him, she put more weight on the latter.

And at night dreamt of shedding him of the former…

‘Who is he?’

‘Who?’ Ava gripped Baden’s hand and swung him so that Baden had his back to Wolfe.

‘The cowboy leaning against the wall who hasn’t taken his eyes off you all night.’

Ava glanced over Baden’s shoulder as if she was searching for whoever he was talking about. ‘I don’t see anyone special, but then Father has every single man on the planet in attendance tonight. How are you enjoying the evening?’

Baden scoffed. ‘It’s a little soon after Freddie’s death, but…You’re trying to change the subject, dear cousin. There’s a story here you don’t want me to know about. Come on.’ He tickled her ribs as he’d used to do when they were children. ‘Tell Cousin Baden.’

‘Arrête, Baden. This is hardly the place.’ Ava hadn’t meant to snap, but Baden wasn’t the most socially savvy individual at the best of times. ‘You’re letting that wild imagination of yours run away with you again.’

‘I don’t like him.’

‘I don’t either,’ she grumbled, knowing that it wasn’t dislike she felt for James Wolfe, but something else entirely.

If only he wasn’t so arrogant. So self-assured. So lethally male. Ava sighed. Who was she trying to kid? She loved those aspects of Wolfe’s nature. Colyn had never been so overcome with passion that he had dragged her from a dance floor and kissed her senseless the way Wolfe had.

‘You slept with him, didn’t you?’ Baden mused. ‘I can see it in your eyes.’

Pressing her fingers to her forehead, Ava wondered if it was possible for a headache to materialise out of thin air. ‘Please, Baden…’ There was no way she was going to confirm anything to her blabber-mouth cousin. ‘Keep your voice down.’

‘You don’t want your papa to find out?’

‘He’s…’ Ava struggled to come up with some plausible reason as to why Baden might see Wolfe around the palace over the next little while without informing him as to why he was really here. ‘He’s trying out for a staffing position, I believe.’

‘You slept with the hired help. You naughty girl.’ Baden laughed. ‘Not that I can’t see the attraction. All that hard muscle!’

Ava cringed as she realised that Wolfe had moved to within hearing distance. ‘Would you please keep your voice down?’ she pleaded.

‘What position is he going for?’

‘I don’t know and I don’t care. Ask Father.’ Ava knew that he wouldn’t, because he had never had an easy relationship with her father.

Baden sipped his wine. ‘How is the old tyrant bearing up?’

Relieved to be talking about anything other than Wolfe, Ava latched on to the change in topic. ‘You never know with Father. But honestly I think he’s in denial. Hence the party tonight.’ She swept the lavish ballroom with a rueful glance.

‘And you? How do you feel about being Anders’ first Queen?’

Baden knew her life at the palace had never been easy. It had always been something that had bonded them together since he had lost his own father, her father’s twin brother, when he was five. Then his mother had deserted him, taking his baby sister with her, and he hadn’t seen either of them since.

‘Oh, I’m definitely in denial.’ She gave a dismissive shrug, not wanting to dwell on the future when she still had no answers about how to handle it. ‘Can you excuse me? I need the powder room. Why don’t you ask the lovely Countess over there to dance?’

Baden followed her gaze and raised an eyebrow. ‘Because she’s ugly.’

‘Baden!’ Ava rebuked him again. ‘That’s a terrible thing to say.’

‘If you don’t like the truth, don’t get in the way of it.’

Ava gave him a look that told him exactly what she thought of his tasteless comment, and then kept her gaze down as she wound her way purposefully through the throng of guests. She didn’t have a specific destination in mind but somewhere quiet and—

‘I told you not to go outside.’

The sound of Wolfe’s deep voice directly behind her shimmered down her spine.

Ava looked up and realised she had been so preoccupied with Baden’s horrible comment that she had walked outside the glass doors leading to her mother’s rose garden. A golden moon hung like an enormous balloon on the horizon, and fairy lights twinkled strategically from various trees and bushes, giving the summer evening an ambient glow.

‘I needed some air.’

‘Is it any wonder?’

She stopped walking and looked back at him. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It means I’m surprised you’re still standing after all the dancing you’ve done. Husband-hunting looks like difficult work.’

Ava glared at him. Really, she wasn’t in the mood for the uncivilised version of Wolfe tonight. ‘Why are you even here still?’ she asked, her English skewed by her testiness. ‘I thought you were the best, but so far you haven’t come up with anything, and it has been a week already.’

A long week, in which she had once again locked herself in her room in a petulant sulk. Partly she still wasn’t ready to embrace the duties her father wanted her to take on, and partly she had been hoping that Wolfe would get so bored he would quit.

‘Unfortunately the invitation I put out over the internet for the bastards responsible to come forward hasn’t seemed to work. Maybe I’m losing my touch.’

‘Maybe you never had it.’ As soon as the words were out she regretted her provocative tone because his golden eyes sparkled with amusement. ‘Now, that’s just plain nasty, Princess. Fortunately my ego is strong enough to withstand that kind of a slur.’

She snorted. ‘Your ego is like a cockroach. It could withstand a nuclear holocaust.’

Completely unprepared for Wolfe to throw his head back and laugh, Ava struggled to prevent a smile from forming on her lips. ‘Stop that.’ She absolutely loved his deep chuckle. ‘People are looking.’

Not waiting for him to follow her instructions, she continued down the stone steps past small clusters of guests enjoying the fragrant garden.

‘So, any contenders you need me to vet for you?’

Wolfe’s lazy drawl sounded too close, and Ava stopped and swung around to face him.

It took a minute for her to ascertain his meaning and when she did she gasped. ‘You’re vetting my future husband?’

‘It’s part of the package.’

Ava bit back the first retort that came to mind, knowing it wouldn’t lead anywhere good. ‘Well, it’s a useless part,’ she informed him shortly. ‘Just because my father says something should happen it doesn’t mean that it will.’

‘You’re against marriage?’ His brow rose in surprise.

‘No, I’m against marriage without love.’

‘Ah, a romantic. I somehow didn’t take you for that.’

‘You don’t know me very well, that’s why,’ she said stiffly.

The look he gave her told her that he knew part of her very well, and was remembering it just as vividly as she was.

Ava felt a blush creep up her neck and quickly added, ‘And you don’t have to be romantic to want to fall in love.’

‘No, just deluded.’

The wealth of emotion behind his brief response made her hesitate. Everyone had a story that coloured their actions and decisions, and she had a sudden urge to know what his was. ‘Is it that you’re afraid of intimacy, or that you like variety too much to settle down?’

‘Since I’m not afraid of anything, and I move around continuously, I think it’s safe to go with the latter.’

Ava studied his brooding expression and knew he was afraid of one thing at least—revealing anything personal about himself.

‘Choosing that kind of lifestyle would indicate that you’re running away from something.’ She watched his response to her comment and just saw bland enquiry. Then another idea popped into her head. ‘Or is it more that you’re searching for something to add meaning to your life?’

The slight narrowing of his eyes was the only sign that she might have punctured his cool reserve in some form.

‘Why complicate things unnecessarily, Princess? It’s always better to lead with the head, not the heart.’

His use of the word Princess in his sardonic drawl told her it would be pointless to push him. He was a man who did what he wanted regardless of anyone else. ‘You should take coffee with my father,’ she said with measured indifference. ‘You’d get on well.’

His piercing gaze scanned her face and she knew he’d picked up on the bitterness that was never far from the surface at the mention of her father.

‘What’s up between you and your old man?’

About to tell him that she didn’t answer personal questions either, Ava found herself responding anyway. ‘The truth is we’ve never seen eye to eye. He is a man who is very set in his ways. Very practical and logical. I was never his idea of the perfect daughter.’

‘Why not?’

She could see his curiosity was well stirred and paused. She never talked about her relationship with her father—or lack thereof. Ever. But some small part of her wanted Wolfe to understand her. She’d seen the look on his face when she’d revealed how few lovers she’d had in her twenty-nine years—as if he’d expected there to have been a cast of thousands—and she hated that she cared what he thought of her. But it was senseless to deny that she didn’t—at least to herself.

‘I was too much of a tomboy growing up. Too impetuous. I liked bareback horse-riding and climbing trees and he wanted me to dress in pretty clothes and speak only when spoken to. I did like the pretty clothes, but…’ Her voice trailed off.

Wolfe gave her a small smile. ‘The speaking when spoken to…?’

She returned his smile, but it felt hollow. The pain of the past still had too tight a grip for her to find any lightness in those memories. ‘Not so much. When my mother died he got worse. My brother was sent to a military academy to start his leadership training and I was home-schooled because my job was to look pretty, not to go out and work. Nothing I ever did was good enough in his eyes. Do you know he’s never once visited my gallery in Paris—?’ she cut herself off with a self-conscious laugh when she realised just how much she had revealed to him. Why not blurt out that she was afraid she’d never find love either, and tell him all her deepest fears?

‘Does that make you feel like you’re still a disappointment to him now?’

Ava felt her stomach churn. ‘No. I don’t need his praise. I’m not a child.’ She cleared the strident note out of her voice. ‘But I resent that he wants everything his way.’ She bent and sniffed at one of her mother’s prized flowers, the scent faint now in the late evening. ‘Why do you think he wants me to marry?’

‘To make sure the monarchy is secure.’

‘To make sure there is someone beside me who can do the job, you mean.’

‘You think he doesn’t believe you’re capable?’ Wolfe’s brows rose in surprise.

‘I’m a woman. That speaks for itself as far as my father is concerned.’

Wolfe seemed to consider this and Ava moved farther along the path, wishing she’d never let this conversation progress as far as it had.

‘Do you?’

His question stopped her and she glanced back at him. ‘Do I what?’

‘Think you’re capable?’

‘Yes,’ she said, internally cringing at the defensiveness in her tone. She had a Fine Arts degree and a Master’s in Business and while she might not know everything involved in running a country, she…‘I run a successful gallery.’ Which surely counted for something.

‘A small business,’ he dismissed, shoving his hands in his pockets and strolling closer. ‘It hardly translates, wouldn’t you say?’

A wave of heat coursed through Ava at the slight. She might struggle to feel worthy in her personal relationships, but hadn’t she always backed herself professionally. ‘No, I would not say that.’ She didn’t even try to keep the indignation out of her voice. ‘Do you know how hard I had to work to prove myself in Paris? To make my “small” business successful?’ She straightened her spine. ‘How difficult it was to get anyone to take me seriously? To get artists to trust me to work for them when everyone just expected me to be a vacuous party girl?’

She was breathing so hard when she’d finished she nearly missed Wolfe’s soft grin.

‘Oh, you are horrible!’ she spluttered. ‘You were playing devil’s advocate with me!’

‘You have a fire in your belly I guess you would never show your father.’

It pained her to acknowledge he was right. She had built a wall up where her father was concerned and she used it to keep him out. To show him that she didn’t need him. More than that, she was afraid he would shoot her down in flames if she tried and failed in replacing Frédéric.

She was a grown woman who had never got over wanting her father’s approval. She’d moved to Paris so she could avoid facing that.

Feeling dismayed by her unexpected realisations she shook her head. ‘He doesn’t respect me.’ And, boy, did that hurt.

‘So make him.’

Ava’s startled gaze connected with Wolfe’s.

‘And if you stop pretending you’re not sensitive about things when you are, that might help.’

She felt her mouth fall open at his gentle ribbing and quickly snapped it closed. She wanted to argue that she’d mastered that unwelcome aspect of her nature years ago, but just looking at Wolfe made her awash with a certain type of sensitivity she couldn’t deny.

She turned away, only to have him grasp her shoulders and turn her back before she’d taken a single step. He reached out and secured her chin lightly between his fingers, his eyes glittering down at her in the glow of the mood lighting. ‘Maybe you need to think of your duty as being to your people now, Ava, not your father.’

Her breath caught. He hadn’t called her Ava since that morning at Gilles’s. Trying to hold on to her equilibrium, and reminding herself that there was nothing intimate behind his unexpected tenderness, she gave a rueful quirk of her lips. ‘I never looked at it like that.’

‘Because you’re focusing on the past. That’s gone. It’s only the future that counts.’ His tone was firm, the words delivered with such a resounding sense of resolution she knew he had said them before.

‘You’re right.’ She let the silence build between them as her head spun with ideas. His words ‘make him’ settled inside her. Perhaps if she stopped reverting to the recalcitrant teenager she had once been that would be a start. ‘I cannot keep fighting my father. It is not only futile, but he’s sick. And I do have obligations now that require my full attention.’ She released a noisy breath and smiled wearily. ‘Do you think perhaps I have felt sorry for myself for long enough?’

Wolfe’s head came up, surprise lighting his gaze, as if he hadn’t expected her to admit to such a flaw. Then he laughed. ‘You’re one out of the box, Princess.’

She smiled back at him, warmed by the admiration in his voice. Warmed by the fact that he somehow made her feel valued.

She was instantly transported to the single night they had shared together. As much as the passion between them had shocked her, it had also thrilled her. She wondered—No, Ava. Not only was Wolfe not interested in fostering a long-term relationship with a woman, he had said himself that their ‘ship’ had ‘definitely sailed’.

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘WE ARE NOT stopping, Ava, and that’s that.’

Ava knew her father’s face had taken on the stony hue that had used to scare her as a child, but she steadfastly kept smiling at the sea of people waving flags along the tree-lined boulevard as the royal coach trotted slowly down the centre of Anders.

Every year citizens and tourists came out in droves to celebrate Anders Independence Day, with a plethora of sumptuously themed floats and gaily designed costumes. This year there was a more sombre mood to the proceedings, with many of the floats carrying her brother’s picture. It made Ava want to reach out to her people to make up for Frédéric’s loss. After her conversation with Wolfe three nights ago she knew that she could either let her insecurities control her or…try.

So she had.

And it felt like a blessed release finally to make some of the hard decisions she hadn’t realised she’d been actively resisting. One had been to inform her artists that she would be helping them find new representation when her gallery closed down the following month, and the other had been to start sitting in on business meetings with her father’s advisors. The workload was intense, and there were aspects of ruling her country that made her head spin, but she felt as if she was making inroads. Slowly.

Slow inroads into everything except her relationship with her father. Just this morning he had been lecturing her about making a decision on the five ‘expressions of interest,’ as he referred to the marriage proposals he had already received on her behalf, without even considering her view. As far as he was concerned she should bow down to her destiny, and he saw nothing wrong with the fact that one of those proposals had arrived from a man she hadn’t even met!

But Ava wasn’t ready to compromise on that point. And with Wolfe sitting opposite her, sublime in a designer suit, his gaze scanning back and forth over the joyous crowd, she didn’t even want to think about it.

Instead she marshalled her determination to make her father respect her and kept a calm smile on her face as she addressed him. ‘I need to walk some of the way.’

Her father nodded benevolently to his people. ‘I won’t repeat myself, Ava.’

‘I know it’s not the way we’ve traditionally done the avenue ride,’ she said. ‘But if I am going to rule Anders it’s important to me that our people don’t see me as a distant figure. Especially since I have lived in Paris for so long.’

Her father glanced at Wolfe. ‘Tell her it’s too dangerous.’

‘The King has a point,’ Wolfe conceded. ‘It is never a good idea to make last-minute changes to your itinerary.’

Ava felt her stomach plunge as he sided with her father, instantly recognising the emotion that gripped her as a feeling of betrayal. After the gala ball she felt as if they had formed a friendship of sorts. She had enjoyed his company as he had escorted her to and from meetings, had enjoyed him sitting in with her to ensure her safety, and been surprised and thankful when on a couple of occasions he’d offered some keen business insights that had been beyond her understanding at the time.