She made him wish things could be different. Pointless. Futile. Wishing for that always was.
“Anything of interest?” she asked. “Or am I as dull on paper as my life has felt thus far?”
“Not dull,” he said. “I liked the bedsheets thing. Shows initiative.”
“I’m glad you appreciated it. No one else did.”
“I can imagine.”
“Is this the part where you defend my father and tell me that I’m being protected for my own good?”
He ignored the constricted feeling in his chest. Or tried to. “No. Because, as I said, this is a job to me. I am not on anyone’s side. And, were it not so easy to walk out the front door of my house late at night, when I was in my teens I would have very likely climbed out a window or two myself.”
Her left eyebrow arched up above her sunglasses. “You broke rules? I find that hard to believe.”
There was no ignoring the kick of emotion that hit him in the gut when she said that. “I did,” he said. “And I’ve broken a hell of a lot more than rules in my life.”
CHAPTER FIVE
MAK did keep his distance during the clothes-shopping portion of the trip, loitering near the entrance of a small shop while she tried on, and bought, several pairs of boots. Then, keeping at a distance as she trawled through a designer boutique and picked up a few new dresses.
When she emerged with her hands full of bags, Mak was standing outside the door, ready to take them from her.
“Are you about finished?” he asked.
“I should be.”
They wandered back up to the car and deposited her purchases in the trunk. “Are you ready to go back to the palace?”
No. No she wasn’t. Just the thought of it made her throat feel as if it was about to close up completely. She felt claustrophobic. Suffocated.
“No. I … can we go down to the beach?”
He took his sunglasses off and swept her up and down with his eyes. “Dressed like that?”
“I want to go. Just for a while.”
He nodded once in consent and they left the car in its place, walking down the boulevard to where the sidewalk ended and the sand began.
She bent and pulled her black pumps off, holding them in one hand as she walked down to water, letting the waves touch her toes.
She closed her eyes, heat washing through her, warming her skin but nothing else. She felt cold inside. Maybe it was all a bit dramatic, but she felt like a prisoner in some ways. In terms of what was expected of her, what was going to happen.
She had no idea what her father would do if she outright went against him and refused to marry. So she’d taken the coward’s way out. She’d tried to get the men to run away from her.
“Maybe I should just try and swim to freedom,” she said, sensing Mak behind her. She turned and looked at him, bubbles of amusement fizzing in her stomach at the sight of him in his black suit jacket, slacks and shiny shoes, standing on the shore.
“It’s a long swim to the next island or to mainland.”
“True. And anyway, my father would just send a helicopter to bring me back.”
“Would he?”
She turned to face him, their eyes clashing, the impact resonating through her body. “Honestly? I don’t know. I don’t know what he would do if I simply refused to marry the man he selects for me. But I … I don’t know that I really want to find out. See, the thing about using my reputation to get them to run from me … well, that way is about them. And I could … blame someone else.”
“Easier than doing it yourself.”
“Yes. I’m a coward.” She looked at his profile. “Soon to be a married coward, I suppose.”
“Marriage isn’t that bad,” he said, his voice rough.
“You don’t seem like you’d be a big endorser of the institution. Since you don’t believe in love and all.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t believe in it. I said I didn’t want it. Love is real, Eva. Very real, and it’s not rainbows and blue skies. If you love someone enough, it can cause the kind of pain you can only imagine. The kind of pain you wouldn’t wish on an enemy. You think you want love because you’ve read fairytales. Because you read until the happily ever after. Real life isn’t like that. You can’t just say, ‘This is it, this is the end and it will be all right.’ You don’t know if it will be.”