Innocent Surrender: The Virgin's Proposition / The Virgin and His Majesty / Untouched Until Marriage

Apparently it didn’t bother him at all because when she came back out on deck late that afternoon, he was perfectly cheerful and equable—as if it didn’t matter to him a bit.

Which she supposed it didn’t. Which served her right, Anny supposed, telling herself it was all for the best.

“When do you want to eat dinner?” she asked him.

“Up to you.”

“Are you planning to sail through the evening or moor somewhere?”

He gestured toward the shoreline. “There’s a small village with a protected harbor up ahead. We’ll moor there. Too much work to sail overnight. And what’s the point?”

She completely agreed. “Then I’ll plan on dinner for after we’re tied up.’”

“Sounds good.” He slanted her a grin that made her heart beat a bit faster.

“Will you be going ashore?” she asked him.

He shook his head. “Not unless you want something.”

She could use some clothes that were more appropriate for sailing. But she didn’t want to go ashore to get them. Not in a small village not so very far from her own country. Too many people might recognize her around here. And they would certainly recognize Demetrios. He was famous the world over.

“No,” she decided. “Call me if you need help,” she said, knowing full well he wouldn’t. Then she went back below and put together a salad and some bruschetta to go with the bread, then sliced some meat and cheese.

She was just setting the table when she heard him call her name.

Startled, Anny climbed quickly up the steps and saw that they were coming into the harbor.

“Come take the wheel while I bring down the sail,” Demetrios commanded.

She blinked in surprise. But apparently he’d taken her offer at face value and was now looking at her expectantly. So she did what she was told.

“Theo would be a purist and skip the engine,” Demetrios muttered as he started it up. Then he shrugged. “But I’m not as good at it as he is.”

He seemed fine at it to Anny. His quick efficient competence as he hove to, then brought the mainsail down over the boom, seemed nothing short of miraculous to Anny. She hung on to the helm and tried to keep the boat where he wanted it as he finished furling the jib.

And she was just congratulating herself on doing her bit and handing the wheel back over to him, when he said, “Get up on the bow. I need you to signal me which side the buoy is on and then tie on to the mooring ball.”

“Me?”

Something unreadable flickered in his gaze. Anny didn’t even try to figure it out. She just said, “Right,” and scrambled up to do what he asked.

Using her hand signals to guide him, Demetrios adjusted the course, backing down the motor as they closed in on the buoy. “Okay. Grab the mooring line,” he instructed.

She grabbed it, then, continuing to follow his directions, she passed the bridle line through the eye, and quickly, trying not to fumble, wrapped the other end securely to the bow cleat. Then she sat back on her heels and waited for something dire to happen.

Nothing did. Or if it did, she was too inept to tell.

But then Demetrios called, “Great. That’s it.”

“It is?” she asked cautiously.

A quick glance at him and she saw a grin lighting his face. It was as if she’d been awarded some distinguished medal. At his thumbs-up, Anny took a deep breath and let it out again in a whoosh. She flexed her shoulders and grinned back at him. A warm elemental sense of satisfaction filled her.

The feeling was closest, she supposed, to the satisfaction she felt when she figured out a bit more of the culture and history of the cave painters she was writing her dissertation about. It was as if a significant piece of the puzzle fell into place.

She felt like that now.

But this was more. Now she felt a physical satisfaction as well. She hadn’t done much of the sailing today. But she’d done more physical work than she ordinarily did. She was tired, her muscles had been challenged by the unaccustomed exertion. Her skin was a bit sunburned even in spite of the lotion she’d slathered on exposed body parts and the visor she wore. She felt alive, aware. Wonderful.

Free.

She opened her arms and spun around, embracing the whole world in the joy of it.

“That good, is it?” Anny heard Demetrios’s amused voice behind her.

She felt faintly embarrassed by her childish exuberance, but not embarrassed enough to pretend complacency. She turned and smiled at him. “It’s the best day I’ve had in years.”

His brows lifted and he looked at her a long moment, as if he were trying to determine if she was sincere. She met his gaze squarely, unapologetically.

Finally, slowly, a heart-stoppingly gorgeous smile lit his face. “Then that is good,” he said. “I’m glad.”

He was glad he’d brought her along.

It was better than being alone.

All the time he’d been at Cannes, he’d longed for time alone. But he knew that if he’d been here alone, he’d have been restless. He would have sailed happily enough. But he would have spent most of the time in his head thinking about work, about the new screenplay, about the distribution deal he’d just done. He would not have appreciated the moment.

Now he couldn’t help it.

It was hard not to with Anny embracing it every time he looked at her.

And he did look at her. A lot.

From the first day he’d met her, she had stirred something in him that he thought Lissa had killed. Not just his desire for sex—though admittedly Lissa had done a number on him there, too.

But Anny’s whole outlook on life was so different.

Of course it would be, he could hear Lissa scoff in his mind. Princess Adriana had never had the disadvantage of growing up illegitimate in tiny, dusty Reach, North Dakota. Princess Adriana had always had everything her little heart desired. Why shouldn’t she embrace life? It gave her everything she wanted.

Yes, he had known Lissa well enough to know exactly what she would have said about Anny. It was what she said about everyone. No one had ever had things as tough as Lissa. No one had overcome as much, had suffered more.

Admittedly his late wife had overcome her fair share of obstacles. But some of them, Demetrios knew, were of her own making. Some of them were the product of the chip on her shoulder she could never quite shake off.

“Why should I?” she’d said to him once. “It’s made me who I am.”

For better or worse, yes, it had. And what he knew above all was that it had never made her happy. She’d never felt joy like Anny had expressed tonight. She’d never opened her arms and embraced life.

“You’re very pensive,” Anny said to him now.

They were eating dinner on deck. She’d brought their salads, meat and cheese up to the cockpit because, as she’d said, “Why be down below when it’s so glorious up here?”

They’d enjoyed the sunset while they’d eaten, and his mind had drifted back to the miserable nights he’d spent sailing to Cabo with Lissa, and how different it had been from this.

“Is something wrong?” Anny asked him. “They don’t look like good thoughts.”

He flexed his shoulders. “Just thinking how much better this is than the last time I went sailing.”

“I thought you went with your brother and Franck,” she said, frowning.

“I meant the last time I went a few years ago.” But he smiled as he remembered the very last time. “When we went with Franck it was good.”

“He thought so,” she agreed. “I wish he could do more of it. Mostly he won’t leave his room.” She paused thoughtfully. “It’s easier not to, I think.”

“Yes.” It was definitely easier not to risk. Safer, as well not to want what you couldn’t have.

Demetrios drained his beer and stood up. “You cooked. I’ll clean up.”

“You worked hard all day,” Anny said, standing, too. “I’ll help.” And carrying her plate, she followed him down into the galley.

She was no help. Not to his peace of mind, anyway. Oh, she washed plates and put away food. But the galley was small—too small for them not to bump into each other. Too small for him to avoid the whiff of flowery shampoo, the occasional brush of her hair as she dodged past him to get to the refrigerator, and—once—the outright collision that brought his chest and her breasts firmly against each other.

He remembered her softness. Wanted to feel it again.

The more time he spent with her, the more he wanted to spend. And, let’s face it, the closer he wanted to spend it. He wanted to touch her fresh, soft skin. He wanted to thread his fingers through her hair. Wanted to carry her off to his bunk and know her even more thoroughly than he’d known her the one time he’d made love with her.

But it wasn’t going to happen.

She’d said so. Had explained why. He understood. He just wished his hormones did.

He stepped back out of the galley and said abruptly, “Not going to work.”

Anny blinked at him. “What’s not?”

“This.” He jerked his head toward her in the galley. “You can clean up or I will. Not both of us.”

“But—”

If she were Lissa, all this brushing and bumping would have been a deliberate tease. Not with Anny. Now he just looked at her and waited for the penny to drop.

He could tell the moment that it did. Instead of looking at him coquettishly and giving him an impish smile as Lissa would have done, Anny looked mortified.

“You think I—” Her face flamed. She shook her head. “I never—! I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—Oh God!”

“It’s all right,” he said. “I can control myself. But I’d rather do the cleaning up myself.”

Her cheeks were still bright red. “Of course,” she mumbled, and she practically bolted up the companionway steps without a backward glance.

Demetrios watched her go. It was a tempting view.

He didn’t need the temptation, God knew, but there were some things a man simply couldn’t resist.

As the days went on it wasn’t only the physical Anny that Demetrios found hard to resist. She was as appealing as ever physically.

But it was something more that attracted him. She was cheerful, bright, thoughtful, fun. And he never knew what she was going to do next.

One afternoon she decided she’d fish for their dinner. He scoffed at the notion. “You fish?”

“What? You think princesses can’t fish?”

“Not in my experience.”

“Known a lot of princesses, have you?”

“One or two,” he told her. That one had been five and the other ninety-five didn’t seem worth mentioning.

“Well, live and learn,” she told him, putting the rod together and settling down on the deck. “We used to go fishing on Lake Isar in Mont Chamion. We had our own little hideaway there, a little rustic cabin my great-grandfather built.”

“No castle?” he teased.

She shook her head, smiling, but her expression softened and she got a faraway look in her eyes. “About as far from a palace as you can get and still have indoor plumbing. Grandfather had that put in,” she told him. “We loved it there—Mama, Papa and I—because we could be ourselves there. Not royal, you know?”

He didn’t, of course. Not about the “royal” bit. But Demetrios nodded anyway because since he’d become famous he’d learned all about the need to get away.

“It was the perfect place,” Anny went on. “Quiet. Solitary. Calm. I felt real there. Myself. My family. No distractions.”

“Except the fish.”

She grinned. “Except the fish.”

“I presume you brought bait for the fish there—which is going to be something of a problem here.” He nodded at the bare hook on the end of her line.

“Sometimes we did,” she agreed. “Sometimes, though,” she added saucily, “we used whatever was handy. Like now.” And she dug into her pocket and pulled out a tin of sardines she’d found below.

Demetrios laughed. “If you catch a fish with that, princess, I’ll cook it.”

She laughed, too. Then she baited her hook and cast the line over the side. It was less than half an hour later that he heard her say, “I got one!”

It was a sea bass, Demetrios told her. Spignola. “Good eating,” he said, taking if off the hook and heading down to the galley.

“I can cook it,” Anny protested.

But he insisted. Once they moored the boat for the evening, she stayed on deck and kept fishing, he baked it with a bit of olive oil, lemon, tomatoes, and basil.

“Nothing fancy. Just something I learned at my mother’s knee,” he said when he brought the plates up on deck. He’d torn up greens for a salad and had two beer bottles tucked under his arm.

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