Pride After Her Fall

Nash’s expression of pure male bafflement would have made her laugh in any other frame of mind. Right now she just wanted to hit him.

‘It was a joke!’

She looked away, staring blindly through the plane porthole at the same view that only minutes ago had held her spellbound.

‘Just don’t call me doll any more,’ she muttered.

‘Sorry?’

She jerked her head around. ‘I don’t like being called doll. A doll is something you put in a box when you finish playing with it, or put on a shelf like a trophy.’

Nash was silent. He was examining her face as if translating Sanskrit.

‘Have you finished?’

‘Non. I didn’t in a million years imagine when I went to your apartment last night I’d be ending the next day with you in Mauritius.’

‘As I hadn’t told you I was flying out to Mauritius, I’m sure you didn’t,’ he observed dryly.

He was being deliberately obtuse.

‘I’m not that sort of person.’

‘What sort of person, dare I ask?’

‘One who freeloads.’

Nash threw back his head and laughed, the sound rich and warm.

‘I’m glad you find it so funny,’ she said stiffly. ‘I can assure you nothing about this situation amuses me.’

Fed up, Lorelei folded her arms and averted her face. Still in yesterday’s clothes, she felt creased and wilted and distinctly at a disadvantage. Whilst he found it funny and had it all under control.

‘Lorelei.’ He spoke patiently, the amusement still in his voice. ‘I apologise for not telling you last night I was going away.’

She hated this—him being the cool, calm male and her being the hot, hysterical female. She’d been a witness to this scenario before and vowed she’d never play this role.

But who was forcing her into the role? Didn’t she have a choice here? She was letting the inequalities of the situation play with her deepest insecurities and it wasn’t serving her. The fact she was in this seaplane with him, coasting towards the runway, was proof enough that last night hadn’t been all on her side.

‘Apology accepted,’ she said stiffly, wondering if they could start this all over again, with her being sexy and playing hard to get, instead of frustrated and sulky because she was in yesterday’s clothes and he hadn’t kissed her once since she’d slipped from his bed this morning.

‘And I do not consider you a freeloader.’

She made a dismissive gesture with one hand, keeping her eyes averted.

‘Is this about your father?’ he said, cutting right through to the heart of the matter.

She raised her eyes to his. Grim.

‘I don’t talk about my father. Ever.’

He looked at her for a moment and then inclined his head. ‘If that’s what you wish.’

No, it wasn’t. She wanted to wail and thump with her fists and bemoan Raymond and the fix he’d left her in, but none of that was Nash’s concern and she wasn’t laying more of her troubles at his feet. She’d dealt with this on her own thus far. She would continue to do so.

‘Except you’re not dealing with it, are you, Lorelei?’ whispered a niggly little voice. ‘You’re winging over the coast of Africa with a man who delights and terrifies you in equal measure because he’s seen what a mess you’ve got yourself into and he’s trying to help.’

All of a sudden she was beginning to feel ungrateful and childish.

She suspected a big part of her was trying to find something to take her attention off what she was trying resolutely not to think about—the mess she’d left behind her at home.

A mess that wasn’t hers to begin with.

Those defence measures against the impossible weight of debt and the expectations she had laid upon herself to keep her family legacy intact were barely holding up any more and so she was lashing out. She also knew one of the reasons those defence mechanisms were no longer working had something to do with the man sitting beside her. He’d opened up vulnerabilities in her she was having trouble overcoming. Hence last night’s tears.

She’d seen puzzlement and frustration in him several times as he’d come face-to-face with her issues back in the Principality, and it was getting harder to hide them from him.