Put him in a room with a dozen women, all beautiful enough to get any man they wanted, he’d have to fight them off. All that macho. The aura of power. The beautiful, masculine face; the hard-bodied good looks…
The prince would collect lovers with disquieting ease.
But she would not be one of them.
Getting sexually involved with a man was not on the list of things Ivy wanted to do with her life. And if that ever changed—and she couldn’t imagine that it would—she would choose someone who was Damian’s opposite.
She’d want a lover who was gentle, not authoritative. Caring, not commanding. A man whose touch would be nonthreatening.
The prince’s touch was not like that.
Each caress left her shaken. Trembling. Feeling as if she were standing on the edge of a precipice and one more step would send her plunging to the rocks below…
Or soaring into a hot, sun-bleached sky.
Ivy let out a breath. Enough of this. There was more than an hour to go until the prince’s driver came for her.
Plenty of time to get ready. Too much time, really. The last thing she wanted was to think about what lay ahead.
Ivy brewed a cup of ginger tea. She sat in a corner of the wide windowsill, shivering a little in the cool dawn hours as she sipped her tea and wondered how long it would be until she sat here again.
Soon, she promised herself. Soon.
At seven, she packed, showered and dressed. She was ready long before Damian’s driver rang the bell.
He was polite.
So was she.
The big Mercedes rolled silently through the busy Manhattan streets. Ivy looked out through the dark glass at people going about their everyday lives and wondered why she’d let this happen. She didn’t have the money for a good attorney but she knew lots of people in high places. Surely someone could help her…
Then she remembered what had started all this. She had agreed to have this baby and Damian Aristedes was the child’s father.
She had no choice but to do as he wished.
It was the right thing, for Kay’s memory, for the baby…
“Miss?”
Ivy looked up. The car had stopped; the driver stood beside her open door.
“We’re here, miss.”
“Here” was a place she’d been before. Kennedy Airport, a part of it that was home to private jets.
She’d been a passenger in private planes going to and from photo shoots in exotic locations. The planes were often big, but she’d never seen a noncommercial aircraft the size of the one ahead of her.
Sunlight glinted off the shiny aluminum wings, danced on the fuselage and the discreet logo emblazoned there. A shield. A lance. An animal of some kind, bulky and somehow dangerous, even in repose.
“Miss Madison?”
A courteous steward led her to the plane. He had that same logo on the pocket of his dark blue jacket and she realized it was a crest. A royal crest, for the royal house of Aristedes.
What are you doing, Ivy? What in the world are you doing?
She stumbled to a halt. The steward looked at her. So did Damian’s driver, who was carrying her suitcase to the plane.
Someone else was looking at her, too, from inside the cabin. She couldn’t see him but she knew he was there, watching her through cool eyes, seeing her hesitate, assessing it as a sign of weakness.