“Nic,” she began with trepidation and noted how his jaw became taut at her use of his name, “I had an appointment that day and I panicked.” Lexie could feel warmth starting to suffuse her cheeks. A minute flicker in his eyes told her he had noticed. He remained quiet though, probably giving her enough rope to hang herself with later. “I am truly sorry for how things ended that morning.” It sounded so inadequate.
He let the statement hang in the air for several seconds. “I’m guessing you also had a fully booked itinerary the next day so you were too busy to make a phone call.” He shrugged. “You can save your apologies, Princess. I’ll play along with your pretend game.” His tone was casual but his eyes turned hard. “Your brother has made sure I would dance to his tune,” he bit out. “Only a fool would turn down the chance to own that horse.”
Suddenly he laughed, but there was little humor in it. A little piece of her heart broke to be at the receiving end of it. “Don’t worry your pretty little head over it, Your Highness. I may have foolishly forgotten back then that it was nothing more than a one-night hook-up but I’m a quick study, especially if it’s written in black and white.”
Lexie looked at him blankly.
“You seem to have forgotten something when you left in a hurry that morning. Housekeeping found it under my bed.” His hand reached inside the front pocket of his jeans, and Lexie blanched at the tiny scrap of cloth he was holding out. It was her underwear.
She took it from him with nerveless fingers.
“There’s more,” he said with an odd tone Lexie couldn’t make out. He pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to her. Lexie’s eyes widened in horror.
Blair and her stupid bucket list. Confessing that she wanted to be anonymous for a night out in Vegas, Blair had egged her to make a list. When Lexie had asked her what sort of things she could do, her cousin had rolled her eyes and grabbed the pen and paper she was holding and proceeded to write her suggested to-do activities. Lexie didn’t even have to read them to recall what Blair had written.
There were just three items: 1. Get wasted. 2. Get inked. 3. Get laid. Had Nic read it? His eyes were enigmatic but his next statement confirmed it.
His gaze was piercing, expectant. “We never did get around to finishing item number three, Your Highness,” he said tauntingly.
Visions of Nic’s dark head between her legs and his wicked tongue stroking her into a conflagration were too much. Lexie fled on her heels, slamming the door shut as Nic’s mocking laughter drifted out to haunt her all the way to Los Angeles.
Chapter Six
“What did the Prince want?”
Nic swore under his breath. Rupert Butler was waiting for him in his hotel room, lounging insolently on the sofa and drinking something he had pilfered from the minibar. As he was the patron and paying for Nic’s accommodations, he couldn’t very well boot him out.
Butler had spies, and Nic was not surprised he was keeping tabs on his whereabouts. He should have thought ahead about how he planned to spin this. “It’s personal.”
Butler laughed mockingly. His pale forehead and light eyes brought to mind impressions of a Gestapo officer. “I bet it was.”
Nic started pulling clothes out of the closet and stuffing it haphazardly into the luggage that was open on his bed.
Butler took a slow sip and regarded him thoughtfully. “I gotta hand it to you, Nic. You’re a fast worker. You think on your feet. Not like that bastard Suarez,” he spat out the name of his team’s former captain.
“Get to the point, Rupert,” Nic ground out, not in the mood for Butler’s games.
“You better watch it. I don’t take kindly to prima donna players, no matter how high his handicap rating is,” he sneered. “Tell me, did dear old brother warn you to get your filthy gaucho hands off his delectable sister? If I had known she wasn’t averse to some horseplay, I would have mounted the bitch myself. “
It was an act of supreme self-control that Nic didn’t pummel the patron in sheer rage. He knew Butler was baiting him so he said in a casually deceptive voice, “I don’t share, so back off.”