HER HEART WAS RACING, need and desire painted her skin with a flush, and her breathing was coming out in small pants. Mason opened her eyes, and closed them immediately. The plush cream interior of the private jet jarred against the dream memory of their first night together. She resisted the urge to groan aloud, knowing that Danyl would hear it from where he sat on the other side of the plane. It would be a miracle if he hadn’t heard whatever sounds she’d made during the intensity of her dream. From that first night to their last, sex had never been a problem between them. If anything, it had been the glue to keep them together for that short while.
And then, as sorrow and loss crept into her consciousness like a thief, stealing pleasure and happiness, she desperately wanted to cling to that dream. To cling to that moment when they had been innocent, when they had had no fear of the future, no sense of reality about to come crashing down...no warning...
She fought the tears that were gathering at the edges of her eyes and instead tried to focus her mind on the present.
‘Would you like some water?’ Danyl asked, his tone dark, as if he had sensed her thoughts. He’d always somehow done that, but where once she’d loved him for it, now she resented it.
‘What I’d like is a shower,’ she bit back harshly. Too harshly.
From the moment her father had sealed her fate with the words ‘You should go’ after they had returned to the farm and Danyl had explained his proposition, a whirlwind of activity had surrounded her, even though it was just the three of them in the house, Danyl’s entourage having stayed outside with the vehicles.
Within fifteen minutes a small bag was packed with only the essentials, assurances that the right clothes would be provided her made, promises of financial transfers were given, papers—that Danyl had arranged to be emailed over—were printed out and signed, and Mason had found herself ushered onto a helicopter that ferried them to a small airfield where she was presented with the royal family’s private jet.
She was wearing the same clothes she’d put on that morning, the sweet smell of hard work and horse clinging to her shirt the way the past had clung to her dream.
‘Then by all means have one,’ he said, not even bothering to look up from the laptop he had been punishing with an energy and determination that she had once relished.
‘Really? You have a shower on a plane?’
‘Sadly it’s less a luxury and more a necessity these days.’
These days. As if at some point in his life he’d imagined something different. There were a million ways Mason had once dreamed of taking this trip with Danyl to Ter’harn. But never like this. She tried to be kind to the young woman who had thought that she might go to the palace as his fiancée. But she couldn’t help the harsh thoughts that told her off for being foolish. As if she—a girl from a small town in Australia—might one day be the Princess of a desert kingdom. Things like that just didn’t happen.
The sound of furious typing brought her attention back to Danyl. She’d feel pity for the person on the receiving end of his frustration, if she wasn’t in exactly the same position. He’d changed. And yes, so had she, but looking at him then, the slight dusting of grey at his temples only serving to make him look even more sophisticated and self-assured, she could see that this was not a man who would dye away the signs of his age, but embrace them and harness them to his advantage. She remembered the sight of his chest as he’d pounded in the wooden stake a few hours and a few hundred thousand miles away. He had kept his lean, mouth-watering physique and somehow only added to it.
Mason wondered briefly what he saw when he looked at her. A lucky escape? Something inside her, buried deep, protested against the thought, but she forced herself to be practical. What they had had was ten years ago. Things changed. People changed.
* * *
Danyl waited until he’d heard her retreat to the back of the plane following the air stewardess, who was telling Mason where she could find towels, before risking a glance at her. He’d not been able to take his eyes from her while she was sleeping. Even though it was almost as painful as not looking at her.
Another email pinged into his inbox and he bit back a groan. Under any other circumstances an email with the subject line ‘Last Chance!’ with an eight-by-ten picture of a beautiful woman sent to a member of the royal family could be mistaken for a blackmail note. It almost felt like that from where he was sitting.
At the time, he’d thought hiring a private matchmaker was a good idea. If people thought it was hard meeting someone in this technologically driven, increasingly reclusive world, they should try being a prince. If he’d just wanted someone to grace his bed, that wasn’t exactly a hardship, although he was mentally avoiding the maths on how long it had actually been since the last time he’d indulged his desires. It was the perfect someone he was looking for. The person who would become his Queen, who would stand beside him at royal and diplomatic functions, who would not have any expectations above that ‘duty’, who would allow his parents to step away from the throne and for him to finally take on the full mantle of royalty. Someone who would—eventually—provide him with heirs. And if that last thought bit a hole into the part of his heart he’d thought long since anaesthetised, then that was his problem, not hers. Whoever she may be. He scanned the email once more.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Last Chance!
Danyl,
I have looked high and low to find you what you want, but I’m beginning to think that even you don’t know what that is. In the last eighteen months I have provided you with a number of perfect candidates and you have either offended, dismissed or infuriated each one of them. Amata de Cayce will be present at your parents’ gala. She is a lovely girl. Perhaps too lovely for you, but she’s your last chance. The end of your parents’ gala will be the termination of our contract.
I will expect all finances to be settled by the end of the gala weekend.
He had to give Angelique her due. There was no real appropriate sign-off for that kind of email. Danyl suddenly felt as if he were nine years old, back in the palace’s private school room, being told off by the sublimely superior Madame Fortier.
He ran a hand over his face, before clicking on the attachment of Amata de Cayce. Christ, he must be getting old, because the girl—and she looked like a girl—seemed so young, even though her stats put her at twenty-six. It was older than Mason when he’d first met her.
He bit back the growl of frustration that threatened to erupt from his chest. He should have told Mason that he had a date for the event. But it was not as if it was easy to slip into conversation: I know I had to pay you an inordinate amount of money to come here, but I already have a plus one... Nope. Wouldn’t quite cut it. And besides, Mason was only attending at his parents’ request, not his. Not really.
He fought the wave of thoughts cascading through his mind, then gave up and swam in their stream. He had to admit that it was ironic, his looking at the picture of a woman who might be his future bride, when the one he once thought would be was presently engaged in the shower and presumably trying to work out several ways in which she could either kill, maim or at the very least inflict some kind of damage to his royal person.
Then again, it was exactly because of the woman presently engaged in the shower that he was forced to look for an unemotional, very heavily stringed but essentially perfect marriage of convenience. And then he was drenched in memories of Mason, of what they had had, what they had lost and what, now, could never be. Danyl was a practical man, and for the most part always had been. The only thing he could do was try to make the most of this ridiculous situation. He’d hated bringing Mason all the way to Ter’harn. He could see the hurt, the fear, lying hidden in those deep brown pools he’d once thought to drown in.
/> Mason had said that she’d refused the financial incentive of the interviews because they would zero back in on Rebel and the horse race that had effectively ended her career. Well, for eight years at least. She’d only come to the Winners’ Circle, as he now knew, to be able to use the purse money to rescue her father’s farm. And if guilt warred in his breast for thinking it was for fame, or money for personal gain, then that was his penance for thinking so badly of a woman he’d once...