Hannah almost licked her lips. He looked incredible. The dense curved muscles of his chest gave way to lean hard abs. “Did you bring your girlfriends here?”
“Just one, and only once. She found it too isolated for her liking.”
“So what do you do when you’re here?”
“Sleep. Read. Relax.”
She sipped her beer. “What do you read?” “Everything. Novels. Biographies. Histories. Whatever I can get my hands on.”
Her lips curved and she settled onto the blanket. “Do you have a favorite author?”
“I do, but I don’t think he’s writing anymore. Most of his books were published nearly twenty years ago. James Clavell is his name. He wrote Shogun, Tai-Pan, Noble House—”
“King Rat,” she supplied, smiling. “I loved his books. My father introduced me to him. For years I wanted to learn Japanese.”
“Did you?”
“No. You couldn’t find Japanese language classes in B—” Hannah broke off, realizing she came dangerously close to saying Bandera, her hometown in Texas. She flushed, took a quick sip of her beer. “I learned Spanish and Italian instead.”
“You’re fluent in both?”
“Yes. You are, too. I read somewhere that you know more languages than any other modern royal. Do languages just come easily to you?”
“I worked at it, the same way I worked at playing football. You don’t improve if you don’t apply yourself.”
“Not everyone is willing to work that hard.”
He shrugged, the thin fabric of his shirt clinging to his broad shoulders and outlining his muscles. “I don’t mind hard work. Never have.”
Hannah bit her lip, liking him more with every moment that passed. Zale was her kind of man—gorgeous, built and brilliant, too. Not fair, she thought breathlessly, far too attracted for her own good.
What she needed was to cool down. “Feel like swimming?” she asked.
“Good idea. It’s hot.” He pointed along the cliff to an opening in the rock. “There’s a little alcove over there by the rock where you can change. Or if you don’t like caves, you can just change here, and I promise not to look.”
“Cave sounds great,” Hannah answered, grabbing her suit and getting to her feet.
In the hollowed-out rock she stripped off her clothes and stepped into the tangerine bikini bottoms before tying the strings of the bikini top around her neck and back. The tiny shiny orange triangles barely covered anything and she sucked in her stomach as if she could somehow make herself smaller.
It took all of her courage to walk back to the blanket in nothing but her suit.
It didn’t help that Zale stood at the edge of the water, watching her walk. He’d changed while she was gone and was wearing black and red surfer-style board shorts instead of the traditional European men’s suit.
She liked the long board shorts. They hung low on his lean hips, showing off his flat, chiseled stomach. He looked like a surfer—tan, lean, muscular—and she couldn’t remember the last time she had found a man this sexy.
Dropping her clothes on the blanket, Hannah walked toward him. “I like your board shorts. Do you surf?”
“I do.” He paused. “Well, I did. I grew up surfing—my brother Stephen was really good—but haven’t gone on a true surf trip in years.”
She waded into the water, gasping a little at the cool temperature. “Where would you go?”
“Wherever there were good waves. Rincon, Brazil, Indonesia, Costa Rica.” He ran a hand through his hair, muscles in his thick bicep flexing. “I miss it. But then I miss football, too. I find it hard, being inside, sitting at a desk, as much as I do.”
“So how do you handle it?” she asked, wading deeper and sinking down to her shoulders. The water felt warmer already. “I run and work out. A lot.”
There was a roughness in his voice, a sound of pain, and Hannah’s chest squeezed. Everything about him was so real, so physical.
Here on this island he was a man, not merely a king, and she found the man incredibly appealing.
Her survival instinct told her to be careful, that allowing herself to feel anything for him would lead to danger. But Zale was so hard to resist. Who else had this combination of dense muscle, burnished skin, keen intellect and burning ambition?
“You need a proper vacation,” she said huskily. “A chance to just unplug and unwind.”
“It’d be nice.”
“Why don’t you take one?”
“Our honeymoon was supposed to be one.”
Hannah inhaled sharply, feeling as if she’d gotten a kick to the ribs.