Expecting A Royal Scandal

Cairo shrugged. “Dancer. Television personality. Expensive trophy wife, ever open to the appropriate upgrades. Whatever you call yourself.”

Her smile took on that edge that fascinated him, but she didn’t look away.

“I do like an upgrade.” She fingered the rim of her glass and he remembered the feel of her skin under his hand, hot and soft at once. Touching her had been a serious miscalculation, he was aware. One that pounded in him still, kicking up dark yearnings and desperate longings he knew he needed to ignore. “Are you going to tell me why I’m here?”

“No insulting version of my title this time? I’m wounded.”

“I find my creativity wanes along with my interest.” She leaned forward and set her glass down on the table before her with a decisive click. “Monte Carlo is wasted on me, I’m afraid, as I’m not much of a gambler.” Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “I prefer the comfort of a sure thing. And I loathe being bored.”

“Is this what boredom looks like on you? My mistake. I rather thought you looked a bit...flushed.”

“I find myself ever so slightly nauseated.” He knew she was lying. The glitter in her bright eyes told him so, if he’d had the slightest doubt. “I can’t think why.”

He thrust his hands into the pockets of his trousers. “Perhaps you dislike penthouses with extraordinary views.” He smiled. “The coast or me. Take your pick. Both views, and I say this with no false modesty at all, are stunning.”

“Maybe I dislike spoiled rich men who waste my time and think far too highly of their overexposed charms.” The edge to her smile and that glittering thing in her gaze grew harder. Hotter. “I’ve seen it all in the pages of every tabloid magazine every week for the last twenty years. It’s about as thrilling as oatmeal.”

“I must have misheard you. I thought you compared me to a revoltingly warm and cloying breakfast cereal.”

“The similarities are striking.”

“A man with less confidence than I have—and no access to a mirror—might find that hurtful, Ms. Hollis.”

“I feel certain you find whatever you need in all the reflective surfaces available to you.” She eyed him. “I suppose that almost qualifies as a skill. But while that confirms my opinion of your conceit, it doesn’t tell me what I’m doing here.”

Cairo hadn’t decided precisely how he would do this. Somewhere in his murky, battered soul he’d imagined this might prove a rare opportunity to be honest. Or as near enough to honest as he was capable of being, anyway. He’d imagined that might make purchasing a wife to ward off a revolution a little less seedy and sad, no matter his reasons. A little self-deprecating humor and a few hard truths, he’d imagined, and the whole thing would be easily sorted.

But he hadn’t expected to want her this badly.

“I have a proposition for you,” he forced himself to say, before he made the unfortunate decision to simply seduce her instead and see what happened. He already knew what would happen—didn’t he?—and the pleasures of the moment couldn’t outweigh the realities of the future bearing down on him. He knew that.

He couldn’t believe he was even considering it.

“I’d say I’m flattered,” Brittany was saying coolly, “but I’m not. I’m not interested in being any man’s mistress. And not to put too fine a point on it, but your charms are a bit...” She raised her brows. “Overused.”

He blinked, and took his time with it. “I beg your pardon. Did you just call me a whore?”

“I’d never use that word,” Brittany demurred, and though her voice was smooth he was sure there was something edgy and sharp lurking just beneath it. “But the phrase rode hard and put away wet comes to mind.” She waved a hand at him. “It’s all a bit boring, if I’m honest.”

“Do not kid yourself, Ms. Hollis,” Cairo advised her quietly. “I’ve had a lot of sex with a great many partners, it’s true.”

“That’s a bit like the ocean confessing it’s slightly damp.”

He smiled. “The media coverage of my sex life might indeed be boring. I wouldn’t know as I make a point never to follow it. But the act itself? Never.”

“You’d be the last to know, of course. Even a man as conceited as you are must realize that.”

“I suppose the first hundred or so could simply be interested in my dramatic personal history,” Cairo said, as if considering her point, though he kept his gaze trained on the increasing color high up on her cheeks. Interesting. “And the second two hundred could be in it for my personal wealth. But all of them? The law of averages suggests not all of them would come apart like that, screaming and wailing and crying beneath me. The same reasoning applies if you suggest they were faking it. Some, I imagine, because there are always some. But all?”

“I’m sure you saw whatever it is you wanted to see.” He could have sworn there was a huskiness in her voice and a deeper shade to the red of her cheeks, and he didn’t care what she said. He knew passion when he saw it. She was as affected as he was. “Ninety times a day, or whatever the horrifying number is. The mind boggles.”

Cairo was no saint, by design or inclination. But he was also not quite the epic sinner he’d played all his life. And in all the years he’d performed his role in the circus that was his life, he’d never felt the slightest urge to tell a woman that. What the hell was happening to him tonight?

“I’m only good at one thing,” he told her, the way he’d have told anyone else. He pretended he couldn’t hear the intensity in his own voice. He pretended he had no idea how little in control of himself he was just then. “And as it happens, I’m very, very good at it.”

She swallowed, which he shouldn’t have found even remotely fascinating, no matter how elegant her neck. “Is that your proposition? My answer is an emphatic no, as I said. But also, your pitch needs some work.”

“That I’m an excellent lover is a fact, not a pitch,” Cairo said with a small shrug. He found he was enjoying himself, which was almost as unusual as the claws of need that still raked through him. “The proposition is far less exciting, I’m afraid. I’m not in the market for a mistress, Ms. Hollis. Why would I bother with such a confining arrangement? I rarely meet a woman who wouldn’t do anything I ask for free, no need to provide room, board or baubles on demand.”

“I’m overcome by the romance of it all.”

“Then this will delight you.” Cairo eyed her, a column of gold tipped in all that sweet copper he wanted to bury his hands in, and he found his blood was pumping much too hard through his body then, as if he was out on a long, hard run in a harsh winter. He ignored it. “I find myself in need of a wife. I’ve been considering a number of candidates for the position, but you are far and away my first choice.”

He expected her to say something scathing. Perhaps let out a scandalized laugh. He even braced himself for the lash of it, and damned if he didn’t enjoy the anticipation of that, too. But she only considered him for a moment, her dark hazel gaze unreadable, and he found he had no idea what she might say.

That, like everything else with this woman, was a new experience. He told himself he hated it. Because he should have. He needed an employee of sorts, at minimum. A partner if at all possible. What he did not need was any more trouble, and Brittany Hollis had that stamped deep on every inch of her lovely skin.

God knew he had enough trouble. It lived inside him. It was his world.

“Who’s your second choice?” she asked when the silence had drawn out almost too long.

“My second choice?”

Brittany didn’t quite roll her eyes. “I can hardly determine whether to be insulted or complimented if I don’t know the field, can I?”

Cairo named a famously orphaned Italian socialite, primarily well-known for her bouts of sulky nudity on board the superyachts of her questionable Russian oligarch boyfriends.

Brittany sighed. “Insulted it is.”

“She’s a far second, if that helps. Far too much work for too little return.”

This surprising American, who he’d expected would fall at his feet in an instant and who cared if that was as much about his credit line and his title as the charms she’d called overused to his face, only gazed at him a moment, her dark eyes narrow. He thought he could see her thinking and he didn’t understand why or how he could find that the sexiest thing he’d seen in years. It was that glint in her hazel gaze. It was moving through him like something alcoholic.

“You don’t actually want to get married, then. You want to inflict your wife on someone—the world, perhaps? As any girl would be, I’m of course delighted to be considered an infliction. It’s all my dearest fairy-tale fantasies made real, thank you.”

He couldn’t help but smile at her dry tone, though the curve of his own mouth felt as hard as granite. “I’m sorry, did you expect protestations of love? I could do that, if you like. You can even believe them, if it helps. But the offer is for a job. A position. Not a romantic interlude.”

Those too-dark eyes held his for a moment that stretched on a little too long for comfort. Then even longer. And Cairo had never wanted to read another person’s mind as much as he did then.

“I feel certain there’s a middle ground.” She stood, running an unnecessary hand over the sleek fall of her gown as she did, and Cairo found he wanted her with a raw fervor that shook through him, making him a total stranger to himself. Making him a traitor to his cause. Making her nothing less than a calamity—which only made the wanting worse. “I’d suggest you find it before you approach the socialite. I’ve heard she bites.”

And then Brittany Hollis—so far beneath him that she should have been prostrate with gratitude at his attention to her and appreciative of the faintest bare crumb of his interest—actually turned on her heel, showed him her back as if he really did bore her silly and walked out.

* * *

Halfway through her burlesque performance a few nights later, Brittany felt an electric ripple go through the crowd. And seconds later, through her.

She told herself she was imagining things as she strode across the stage to the pulsing beat, but she knew better. She knew that feeling, like being lit on fire and forced to stand still in the crackling flames. That was exactly how she’d felt in Monte Carlo, burnt to a crisp where she stood on the casino floor.