The Montoros Affair: The Princess and the Player / Maid for a Magnate / A Royal Temptation

But what was so bad about making plans beyond breakfast? She’d had some great lovers in the past, but what she’d experienced with James went far beyond the category of casual. Hadn’t he felt all the wonderful things she’d felt last night?

She rolled her eyes to make it harder for him to detect the swirl of emotion going on underneath the surface. “You can stop with the deer-in-the-headlights, hon. I just narrowly escaped one marriage. I’m not at all interested in jumping right into another one, no matter how good the prospective groom is at feeding me.”

Which was absolutely, completely true. Saying it aloud solidified it for them both.

With a wicked smile, he yanked on her hand, pulling her into his embrace. His weird expression melted away as he nuzzled her neck.

Foot-in-mouth averted. Except now she was wondering exactly what his intentions toward her were. A few nights together and then ta-ta?

And when did she get to the point where that wasn’t necessarily what she wanted? She didn’t do all that commitment-and-feelings rigmarole. She liked to have fun and secretly felt sorry for women on husband-hunting missions. Her mother had gotten trapped in that cycle and lived a miserable existence for years and years as a result. No, thank you.

Nothing had changed just because of a few emotions she had no idea what to do with. Her affair with James had begun so unconventionally and under extreme circumstances. If they’d been able to go out on a real date from the beginning, they’d probably have already moved on by now.

Good thing she’d made it clear marriage wasn’t on her mind so there was no confusion, though a few other things could be better spelled out.

James sucked on her tender flesh, clearly about to move south, and she wiggled away before her body leaped on the train without her permission.

“That wasn’t supposed to be a code word.” She giggled at his crestfallen expression but sobered to hold his gaze. “Listen, before you go get breakfast, let’s lay this out. Last night was amazing but I’m not done. Are you? Because if this thing between us was one night only, I’ll be sad, but I’m a big girl. Tell me.”

He was already shaking his head before she’d finished speaking. “No way. I’m nowhere near done.”

Her pulse settled. Good answer. “So, if you want a repeat of the grapes-on-the-floor routine, I’m all for it. But I’d prefer a real bed from now on. My plan is to put some elbow grease into this place, preferably someone else’s, and create a lover’s retreat where we can escape whenever we feel like it.”

“Are you expecting us to have to hide out that long?” Wary surprise crept into his tone, setting her teeth on edge.

“I don’t know. Maybe.” What, was it too much trouble to drive out here just to have a few stolen hours together? “Is what I’m suggesting so horrible?”

“No. Not at all. My hesitation was completely on the issue of hiding out. I want to be seen with you in public. I’m not ashamed of our relationship and I don’t want you to think I am.”

Her heart squished as she absorbed his righteous indignation and sincerity. He wanted their relationship to be aboveboard, just as he’d wanted to clear things with Will before proceeding. And that meant a lot to her. He kept trying to make her think he didn’t have a noble bone in his body when everything he did hinged on his own personal sense of honor.

“I didn’t think that, but way to score major points.” She batted her eyelashes at him saucily. “But that aside, I don’t even know if I’m staying in Alma permanently or I’d get my own place. I suspect you’re in the same boat.”

He’d told her he hoped to get another contract with a professional soccer—sorry, football—team, and that the team could be in Barcelona or the UK or Brazil or, or, or... He might end up anywhere in the world. And probably would.

“Yeah. I haven’t made a secret out of the fact that I don’t plan to stick around,” he agreed cautiously.

“I know. So do you really think there’s a scenario where either of us would be willing to parade the other across the thresholds of our fathers’ houses even if we do clear up the engagement announcement?”

He sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. Let’s rewind this whole conversation. Smashing idea, Bella. I’d love to help you get this place into shape so I can take an actual shower in the morning.”

That was the James she knew and loved. Or rather, the James she...didn’t know very well, but liked a whole lot. With a sigh, she let him kiss her again and shoved him out the door for real this time because her stomach was growling and her heart was doing some funny things that she didn’t especially like.

Space would be good right now.

The sound of the Lamborghini’s engine faded away as she went about taking inventory on the lower floor. Apparently most, if not all, of the original furnishings remained, as evidenced by their arrangement. Bella had been in enough wealthy households to recognize when a place had been artfully decorated and this one definitely had. The pieces had been placed just so by a feminine hand, or at least she imagined it that way. That’s when it hit her that this farmhouse had probably once belonged to an ancestor of hers. Someone of her blood.

A long gone Montoro, forgotten for ages once the coup deposed the royal family. She’d never felt very connected to the monarchy, not even at the palace in Del Sol where some of the original riches of the royal estate were housed. But the quieter treasures of the farmhouse struck her differently.

She picked up a filthy urn resting on a side table. White, or at least it was under the grime. She rubbed at it ineffectually with her palm and managed to get a small bit of the white showing. The eggshell-like surface was pretty.

Maybe it wasn’t priceless like the Qing Dynasty porcelain vase sitting in an art niche at the Coral Gables house. But worth something. Maybe it was actually worth more than the million-dollar piece of pottery back in Miami because it had been used by someone.

She’d never thought about worth being tied to something’s usefulness. But she liked the idea of having a purpose. She’d had one in Miami—wildlife conservation. What had happened to that passion? It was as if she’d come to Alma and forgotten how great it made her feel to do something worthwhile.

With renewed fervor, she dove into cleaning what she could with the meager supplies at hand, and revised her earlier thoughts. It would be fun to put some elbow grease of her own into this house. Whom else could she trust with her family’s property?

When the purr of James’s car finally reverberated through the open door, she glanced at her dirty arms and her lip curled. Some princess she looked like. A Cinderella in reverse—she’d gone from the royal palace to being a slave to the dust. A shower sounded like heaven about now.

The look in James’s eye when he walked in holding a bag stenciled with the logo of the only chain restaurant in Alma had her laughing. “There is no way you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking. I’m filthy.”

“Yes, way.” He hummed in approval. “I’ve never seen a sexier woman than you, Bella Montoro. Layer of dirt or not.”

There he went again making her insides all melty and that much more raw. She always got the distinct feeling he saw the real her, past all the outside stuff and into her core. The outside, inconsequential stuff was invisible to him. Coupled with the hard twist of pure lust she got pretty much any time she laid eyes on him, she could hardly think around it.

She shook it off. This fierce attraction was nothing more than the product of their secret love affair. Anticipation of the moment they’d finally connect, laced with a hint of the forbidden. It had colored everything and she refused to fall prey to manufactured expectations about what was happening between them.

Get a grip. “Smells like ham and biscuits,” she said brightly.

He handed her the bag. “I hope you like them. I had to drive two towns over to find them.”

The first bite of biscuit hit her tongue and she moaned. “I would have paid three hundred euros for this.”

He laughed. “On the house. You can pay next time.”

“Oh?” She arched a brow, relieved they’d settled back into the teasing, fun vibe she’d liked about them from the beginning. “Are you under some mistaken impression that I’m a liberated woman who insists on opening her own doors and paying her own way? ’Cause that is so not happening.”

“My mistake,” he allowed smoothly with a nod and munched on his own biscuit. “You want a manly bloke to treat you like a delicate hothouse flower. I get it. I’d be chuffed to climb all the ladders around here and wield the power tools in order to create a luxury hideaway, as ordered. You know what that means I get at the end of the day in return, right?”

“A full body massage,” she guessed, already planning exactly how such a reward might play out. “And then some inventive foreplay afterward.”

That was even more fun to imagine than the massage part of the evening’s agenda.

“Oh, no, sweetheart.” He leaned in and tipped her chin up to capture her gaze, and the wicked intent written all over his face made her shiver. “It means I get the loo first.”

Eight

The farmhouse’s great room looked brand-new and James couldn’t take all of the credit. It was because the house had good bones and old-world charm—qualities he’d never appreciated in anything before.

Hell, maybe he’d never even noticed them before.

Bella finished polishing the last silver candlestick and stuck it back on the mantel of the humongous fireplace, humming a nameless tune that he’d grown a bit fond of over the past day as they’d worked side by side to get their lover’s retreat set to rights.

“Did you hear that?” she asked with a cocked head.

“Uh, no.” He’d been too busy soaking in the sight of a beautiful woman against the backdrop of the deep maroon walls and dark furniture. “What was it?”

“The sound of success.”

She smiled and that heavy feeling in his chest expanded a tad more, which had been happening with alarming frequency all day. Unfortunately, the coping mechanism he’d used last night—grabbing Bella and sinking into her as fast as possible so his mind went blessedly blank—wasn’t available to him at this moment because a workman from the municipality was on his way to restore the water connection.

It was a minor miracle the workman had come out on short notice, given the typical local bureaucracy, but once James had mentioned that he was a representative for the Montoros, everything had fallen into place.

He’d have to make himself—and his distinctive green car—scarce. Just as he’d done this morning when the bloke from the electric company had come. But it was fine. The time away had given him an opportunity to talk through strategy with his sports agent, who mentioned a possible opportunity with Liverpool. No guarantees, but some shifting had occurred in the roster and the club needed a strong foot. Brilliant news at an even better time—the sooner James could escape Alma, the better.

“Yep,” he said and cleared a catch from his throat. “Only twenty-seven rooms to go.”

They’d started on the downstairs, focusing on the kitchen and great room, plus the servant’s quarters past the kitchen, where they intended to sleep tonight if the bed they’d ordered arrived on time, as promised. A lot had been accomplished in one day but not nearly enough.

Once they got the master bedroom upstairs cleaned up, James planned a whole silk-sheets-and-rose-petals-type seduction scene. He owed it to Bella since she’d been such a good sport about sleeping in the room designated for the help.

One thing he immensely appreciated about Bella: she joked around a lot about being high maintenance but she was the furthest thing from it. And he knew a difficult, demanding woman when he saw one, like his last semipermanent girlfriend, Chelsea. She’d cured him of ever wanting to be around a female for more than a one-night stand, a rule which he’d stuck to for nearly two years.

Until Bella.

Since he couldn’t lose his mind in her fragrant skin for...he glanced at his watch and groaned...hours, he settled for a way-too-short kiss.

She wiggled away and stuck her tongue out at him. “Yes, we have a lot of work left. But not as much as we would have if you hadn’t made all those calls. You’re the main reason we’ve gotten this far.”

The hero-worship in her gaze still made him uncomfortable, so he shrugged and polished an already-sparkling crystal bowl with the hem of his shirt so he had an excuse not to look directly at her. “Yeah, that was a brilliant contribution. Hitting some numbers on my phone.”

“Stop being such a goof.” Hands on her hips, she stepped into his space, refusing to let his attention linger elsewhere. “You’re a great person. I’m allowed to think so and don’t you dare tell me I can’t.”

That pulled a smile from him. “Yes, Your Highness.”

“Anyway,” she drawled with an exaggerated American accent, which only widened his smile, as she’d probably intended. “When I was cleaning the fireplace, I realized I really need to call my father. We can’t ignore the press release about my engagement to Will much longer.”

Though she kept up her light tone, he could tell some stress had worked its way into her body. Her shoulders were stiff and a shadow clouded her normally clear eyes.

“Maybe we can wait,” he suggested, and laced his fingers with hers to rub her knuckles. “Tomorrow’s soon enough.”

“I kind of want to get it over with.” She bit her lip, clearly torn. “But I also really like the idea of procrastinating.”

“Why?” he asked, surprising himself. He’d meant to say they should wait. Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?

He, of all people, understood avoiding conflict, especially when it involved an overbearing father. But the distress evident in the foreign lines around her eyes had to go and he would do whatever it took to solve the problem.

Maybe it wasn’t a good thing for him to encourage her to wait. Maybe she needed to get the confrontation over with. But how would he know if he didn’t ask?

“My father really wants me to fall in line, like Gabriel did. When Rafe abdicated, it was kind of a big deal.” She sighed. “I get that. I really don’t want to cause problems because of my own selfishness.”

“But you’re not,” he countered. “How is it a problem that you want to choose the bloke you marry?”

“Because my father says it is.” Her mouth flattened into a grim line. “That’s why I want to put off dealing with all of this. I’m just not ready for all of the expectations that go along with restoring the monarchy. I mean, I always knew our family had come from a royal line, but that was so long ago. Why is it so important to my father all of a sudden?”

She seemed a little fragile in that moment so he pulled her into his arms, shushing her protests over the state of her cleanliness.

“I wish I could tell you why things are important to fathers,” he murmured. “Mine has yet to explain why it’s so horrifying to him that I don’t want a job at Rowling Energy. Becoming a world-class football player might make some dads proud.”

“Not yours?” she whispered, her head deep in his shoulder.

Her arms tightened around him, which was oddly comforting. What had started as an embrace he’d thought she needed swiftly became more precious to him than oxygen.

“Nah. Will’s his golden boy.”

“Why don’t you want to work at Rowling?”

It was the first time anyone had ever asked him that.

Most people assumed he wanted to play football and there was little room for another career at his dad’s company. But even now, when he had few choices in continuing his sports career, he’d never consider Rowling an alternative.

His father wasn’t the listening type; he just bulldozed through their conversations with the mindset that James would continue to defy him and never bothered to wonder why James showed no interest in the family business.

“It’s because he built that company on my mother’s grave,” he said fiercely. “If she hadn’t died, he wouldn’t have moved to Alma and tapped in to the offshore drilling that was just starting up. I can’t ever forget that.”

“Is someone asking you to forget?” she probed quietly. “Maybe there’s room to take a longer view of this. If your father hadn’t moved to Alma, you wouldn’t have discovered that you loved football, right?”

“That doesn’t make it okay.” The admission reverberated in the still house and she lifted her head to look at him, eyebrows raised in question. “I love football but only because it saved me. It got me out of Alma at an early age and gave me the opportunity to be oceans away. I can’t be on the same small island as my father. Not for long.”

When had this turned into confession time? He’d never said that out loud before. Bella had somehow pulled it out of him.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly and snuggled back into his arms, exactly where he wanted her.

“I’m sorry you’ve got the same issues with your father. But there’s always gossip in a small town. We’re going to be dealing with a scandal over the press release once someone catches on to us shacking up in this love nest. But I support whatever decision you make as far as the timing,” he told her sincerely, though he’d be heavily in favor of waiting.

He wasn’t royalty though. She had a slew of obligations he knew nothing about; he could hardly envision a worse life than one where you had to think about duty to crown and country.

“I think that’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.” Her voice cracked on the last word.

Puzzled, he tipped her chin up, and a tear tracked down her cheek. “Which part? When I called this jumble of a house a love nest or described our relationship as shacking up?”

She laughed through another couple of tears, thoroughly confounding him. Just when he thought he finally got her, she did something he couldn’t fathom.

“Neither. The part where you said you support me, no matter what. It makes me warm, right here.” She patted her stomach.

He almost rolled his eyes. That was laying it on a bit thick, wasn’t it? “I do support you, but that’s what peop—lovers...people in a rela—” God, he couldn’t even get his tongue to find the right word to explain the status of what they were doing here.

Maybe because he didn’t know what they were doing here.

“Yeah,” she said happily, though what she was agreeing to, he had no idea. “That’s what you do. I get that. You’ve always done exactly the right thing, from the very beginning. ”

He scowled. “I don’t do that.”

He didn’t. He was the guy who buckled when it mattered most. The guy whose team had been counting on him and he’d let them down. The guy who ran from conflict instead of dealing with it. Hadn’t she been listening to anything he’d said about why he played football?

His character had been tarnished further with the hooker incident. James Rowling was the last person anyone should count on. Especially when it came to support. Or “being there” for someone emotionally.

“You do.” Her clear blue eyes locked with his and she wouldn’t let him look away. “You look in the mirror and see the mistakes your father has insisted you’ve made. I look at you and see an amazing man. You did hard physical labor all day in a house that means nothing to you. Because I asked you to. You’re here. That means a lot to me. I need a rock in my life.”

She had him all twisted up in her head as the hero of this story. She couldn’t be more wrong—he was a rock, all right. A rolling stone headed for the horizon.

It suddenly sounded lonely and unappetizing. “I can’t be anyone’s rock. I don’t know how.”

That had come out wrong. He intended to be firm and resolute, but instead sounded far too harsh.

“Oh, sweetie. There’s no instruction manual. You’re already doing it.” She shook her head and feathered a thumb over his jaw in a caress that felt more intimate than the sex they’d had last night. “You’re letting someone else cloud your view of yourself. Don’t let your father define who you are.”

He started to protest and then her words really sank in. Had he subconsciously been doing that—letting his father have that much power over him?

Maybe he’d never realized it because he’d refused to admit the rift between him and his father might be partially his own fault. James had always been too busy running to pay attention. Even now, his thoughts were on Liverpool and the potential opportunity to play in the top league. But more importantly, Liverpool wasn’t in Alma—where the woman who had him so wrongly cast in her head as the hero lived. He was thinking about leaving. Maybe he was already halfway out the door.

Which then begged the question—what if he buckled under pressure because he always took off when the going got tough?

* * *

The new bed was supremely superior to the floor.

Bella and James christened it that night and slept entwined until morning. It was the best night of sleep she’d ever had in her life.

But dawn brought a dose of reality. She hadn’t been back to the Playa del Onda house in almost forty-eight hours. The quick text message to Gabriel to explain her absence as a “getaway with a friend” hadn’t stopped her father from calling four times and leaving four terse voice mail messages. She hadn’t answered. On purpose.

With the addition of running water and electricity, the farmhouse took on a warmth she enjoyed. In fact, she’d rather stay here forever than go back to the beach house. But she had to deal with her father eventually. If this matter of the engagement announcement was simply a test of her father’s resolve versus her own, she wouldn’t care very much about the scandal of being with James.

But it wasn’t just about two Montoros squaring off against each other. It was a matter of national alliances and a fledgling monarchy. She didn’t have any intention of marrying Will, but until the Montoros issued a public retraction of the engagement story, the possibility of another scandal was very real. This one might be far worse for Gabriel on the heels of the one Rafe had caused. And hiding away with James hadn’t changed that. She had to take care of it. Soon.

“Good morning,” James murmured and reached out to stroke hair from her face as he lay facing her on the adjacent pillow. “This is my favorite look on you.”

“Bedhead?” She smiled despite the somberness of her thoughts.

“Well loved.” He grinned back. “I liked it yesterday morning, too.”

Speaking of which... “How long do you think we can reasonably hole up here without someone snapping a picture of us together?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Forever.” When she arched a brow, he grinned. “I can fantasize about that, can’t I? As long as I keep jetting off when people show up, what’s the hurry?”

Her conscience pricked at her. James was leaving the timing of forcing the issue to her, but a scandal could be damaging to him as well. It was selfish enough to refuse to marry Will, but she wasn’t really hurting him as long as they were up front about it. A scandal that broke before the retraction could very well hurt James and she couldn’t stand that.

“I think I need to talk to my father today,” she said firmly. “Or tomorrow at the very latest.”

James deserved what he’d asked for—the right to take her out in public, to declare to the world that they’d started seeing each other. To take her to a hotel, or dinner or wherever he liked. It wasn’t fair to force him to help her clean up this old farmhouse just so she could avoid a confrontation.

Except she wasn’t only avoiding the confrontation. She was avoiding admitting to herself that her own desires had trumped her responsibilities. Hurricane Bella had followed her across the Atlantic after all.

“I’ll drive you back to Playa Del Onda,” he said immediately. “Whenever you’re ready.”