Defying the Prince

‘Just as long as you have a nice slice of stale bread to go with it.’ But Izzy was starting to realise that her stay with the prince wasn’t likely to be diluted by the presence of other people. ‘When you said you lived miles from anywhere you weren’t joking.’

‘I rarely joke.’

She looked at his black dinner jacket. ‘I thought you were in the air force. Why aren’t you wearing a fancy uniform?’

‘I left active service five years ago. Now I advise the DD.’

‘DD?’ She tried to get her spinning brain round it. ‘Dear Daughter?’

His jaw tightened. ‘Defence Department.’

‘Oh. Cool.’ Izzy peered into the darkness and saw nothing but tall cypress trees and olive groves. ‘So do you spend a lot of time here?’

‘As much as I can. I value my privacy.’ His eyes glittered with a dark emotion that was alien to her. There were dark layers to the man that were hidden away, buried deep beneath a royal exterior that no observer was allowed to penetrate.

Izzy recognised instinctively how complex he was and the gulf between them widened because she knew that she wasn’t at all complex.

Her school report came to mind.

Isabelle is as shallow as a bird bath but is unlikely to provide even that useful service unless she gives up dreams of stardom and attempts to make something of her life.

She’d been determined to prove them wrong but so far she wasn’t making much progress.

‘Look, I’ll just phone a taxi or something when we get to your place,’ she muttered. ‘It would be better for both of us. I can take care of myself.’

‘You’ll stay at my palazzo until I’ve decided what to do with you.’

Like a piece of rubbish, Izzy thought, that needed recycling. Which bin do I throw her in? Plastics or green waste? ‘Right, because we both know I’m really going to fit in there. I can’t think of anything I’d love more than being trapped somewhere isolated with just you for company.’ Her singsong response was supposed to conceal how hurt she was but she saw his eyes narrow speculatively.

‘I wouldn’t have thought a woman who chose to wear a strapless dress made from nothing but sequins cared too much about fitting in.’

‘Well, that shows you know nothing about women.’

‘Funnily enough I thought I knew a great deal about women. Apparently I was wrong.’ His voice was a lazy masculine drawl and her spine tingled.

‘If the women there tonight are the sort you’ve been mixing with it’s no wonder you’re ignorant. They weren’t really women. They didn’t smile or laugh, except when they were laughing at me,’ she muttered, ‘and frankly I’m fed up with being the butt of everyone’s humour. That’s why I’d rather you dropped me off here. Let’s face it, we have nothing in common. I’ll just mess up your precious palazzo and although I’m pretty robust all this frowning disapproval is starting to get to me. I don’t want to leave the island with confidence issues.’

He shot her a look. ‘I cannot imagine you suffering from confidence issues.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ Izzy said darkly. ‘Sometimes I feel as though the whole world is frowning at me. Like now, for instance. You keep looking at my dress as if you can’t quite believe your eyes. You’re obviously deeply prejudiced towards sequins.’

‘They’re not exactly subtle.’

‘So? I love this dress.’ She refused to apologise for it. ‘And it’s hypocritical of you to be superior given all the bling you royals own.’

He shifted gears, that strong male hand alarmingly close to her knee. ‘I own “bling”?’

‘Did you see that sparkly tiara thing your mother was wearing this evening?’

‘That “tiara thing” was a gift from a sixteenth century British monarch.’

‘Well, it was sparklier than anything I own so it’s a bit hypocritical of everyone to turn their noses up at my love of shiny things just because some of us can’t afford the real thing. A party needs sparkle and yours didn’t have anywhere near enough. Talking of which, you do realise that I don’t have any luggage, don’t you? So unless you happen to own something that might fit me I’m going to be wearing this not-exactly-subtle dress every day I’m in captivity.’

‘You are not in captivity.’

‘So I can leave whenever I like?’

There was a brief pause. ?