Royal's Untouched Love (8 page)

Finally, she took a deep breath, standing up resolutely. With fingers that only trembled slightly, she unbuttoned his shirt and laid it on the back of the couch. She would shower, she would go home, and she would spend the rest of her long weekend simply seeing Athens, the way that she had meant to do ever since she first came to the city.

Someday, she would look back on this and see it for what it was, a sweet experience with a terrible outcome. Right now, she couldn't think of it at all.

CHAPTER FOUR

Jaque was beginning to realize that Heidi was a woman of many different faces. When he met her, she was a sweet little mouse, afraid of her own shadow. When he had taken her out for dinner and then back to his barge, she was an alluring enigma of a woman. Now that she was working at the main office, he could see that she was a consummate professional, brisk and kind until something went wrong, and then she leaped into action to fix it.

Ever since she had been installed in her new office location, Heidi Conrad had been shaking things up. The first week, the engineers had grumbled, but then, when they started looking at her designs, her data and her suggestions, there had been nods of approval all around. She was not an engineer herself, but her thorough knowledge of their work bought her their respect and their affection.

A part of Jaque felt a great deal of pride when he saw her stride into the meeting rooms, ready to fight for what she knew was right. He never would have thought that the shy graduate from New York would be so clever and so brash.

However, there was another, larger part of him that was watching her every step with a kind of watchful glare. Most of the time, she dressed in long-sleeved dark dresses, cut conservatively with a bit of width to the skirt, designed to give her a feminine but professional silhouette. It was utterly appropriate even for Greece, which could sometimes be a little conservative about women in the workplace.

However, there was no hiding that glorious fall of red hair. When Jaque glanced at it too long, he found himself remembering how it had looked trailed through his fingers, tangled over his sheets. When he saw the way some of the other men in the company looked at her, he could see that they were wondering just how it might feel in their hands, tumbled across their own beds.

It gave him some comfort that Heidi was turning down each and every invitation to dinner or coffee. She was friendly, but there was a
distance to her as well, something that fended off even the most ardent of pursuers.

It gave him no credit at all that she seemed utterly professional around him. She called him Jaque, as nearly all of his staff did, but otherwise, she was perfectly deferential, perfectly polite. Her green eyes were cool when she saw him, her hands calm and settled.

Sometimes, it tormented him. It looked as if she couldn't even remember what it had been like to cry out in his arms. It was as if she couldn't remember looking up at him, her eyes wide and gorgeous, lovely and reflecting all the wonder of the world.

It was for the best. He told himself that it was certainly for the best.

Sometimes, he even believed it.

*

Heidi told herself that she was over Jaque and what they had done with each other. After that hurtful morning at the empty barge, she had gone home to her own lovely apartment and simply sat in a warm bath for a while. Over the next few hours, she simply thought about what had happened and how she had felt about it. She considered what it had meant to her.

She decided that she was not sorry it had happened. Regardless of how he behaved afterward, there was no questioning the fact that Jaque had been a perfect lover. When she allowed herself to think back to what they had done together, she still felt frissons of pleasure race through her.

However, he had proved to be someone else after that, and that was something she could not abide.

When she returned to work with the fresh new week, she had done it with resolve and a kind of amnesia. Whenever she found her thoughts drifting back to that night, she turned them away, instead pursuing her challenging new job with the determination and cleverness that had won her so many honors in grad school. Her co-workers were skeptical at first, but she had won them over with her boundless energy and enthusiasm.

Heidi was so distracted at first that it took her almost a week to realize how much she loved her new position. Instead of merely providing figures and studies for people who might never read them, she was now working with the team that could put her research to good use. This was precisely the work that she was trained to do, and she was thrilled.

At least, she should have been.

Two weeks after she arrived, Marten, a German engineer who headed up one of the minor subcommittees, had asked her out for dinner. Assuming it was a company affair, she agreed easily, thinking nothing of it until she arrived at a small but tasteful bistro.

The moment she sat down at the table, she felt a curious coldness come over her. She watched Marten, noting that he was a handsome man just a few years older than she was. He was earnest about their work, dryly funny in a way that she appreciated it, and from what she could tell, very kind.

After dinner, they went for a walk in the park, and when he pulled her in for a kiss, she froze. He sensed that she had stiffened up, and he pulled back.

"This isn't working for you at all, is it?" he said with a sigh.

"No, I'm so sorry, Marten, I had an excellent time …"

"So did I," he said with a regretful grin. "Everyone told me to forget about it, but I figured that I had to at least give it a try. You're beautiful, and no one knows their way around the environmental graphs like you do."

She laughed a little at his joke, but something else that he said caught her attention.

"Everyone told you not to ask me out? Can I ask why?"

Marten looked a little startled. "Well, because of your breakup before you came here."

"My … breakup?"

"Office gossip says that you broke up with a boyfriend or a fiancé right before you came here," he said. "Most of the office assumes that you're still getting over it."

"Yes," she said after a pause. "That's … not quite right, but it's close enough. I will say that I'm glad that you took me out for dinner though. I had been feeling a little lonely for friends."

"Friends, eh?" he said with a laugh. "I can live with that. Next Thursday, there's a trivia night at the English-styled pub close to work. You should join us."

To her surprise, she did join them, and found herself having a good time. When the laughter was over, however, she had found her way back to her apartment, and when the door closed behind her, it was so silent.

When it was silent, it was altogether too easy to slip into a memory of dark hair, blue eyes, and hands that brought her a kind of pleasure she could only imagine before. She could still hear his words, rushed with passion and then sweet afterward.

"God, when am I going to forget him?" she said out loud, staring up at her tall ceiling.

She was very afraid that the answer was going to be never.

*

Things continued for a month or so, and then LaMer Enterprises was thrown into turmoil. The UN had come back with a resolution to see an aggressive fifteen percent reduction in ocean pollution in the next ten years, and the yachting industry was one of the biggest ones under scrutiny.

Heidi found herself pulled into more meetings than ever, calming down the alarmists and sometimes being quite sharp with the ones who didn't think it needed to be done at all.

"Of course it needs to be done," she said sternly. "If you want to have a business legacy to leave to your grandchildren and not just a pile of excuses over the things you should have done when you had the time, this is exactly what needs to be done."

She found a strange ally in Anastasia Buros, a Princess of Greece and a committed environmentalist. Where Heidi had come from the most humble of American origins, Anastasia Buros had come from the closest thing America had to royalty. Instead of spending her time looking good and swanning around the world, however, she gave her time and money to water conservation, an enterprise in which she had enlisted her husband Augustine.

Anastasia seemed delighted by Heidi, and though at first Heidi was cautious, she found herself warming to the other woman. It was Anastasia who convinced her to come aboard her husband's own yacht, the Wild Waves, for a weekend cruise. It had been good to get away from the office, to see what she was trying to protect. Anastasia was sweet and bubbly, and though Augustine was more sardonic, Heidi was surprised to realize that she liked both of them a great deal. That was why she didn't think twice when Anastasia invited her for a light dinner of mezes followed by an evening of dancing.

"It'll be fun!" Anastasia said brightly. "No one recognizes us at all, and Athens has an amazing nightlife that I bet you haven't even experienced yet!"

It was true. Heidi had been feeling more than a little hermit-like lately, and if having some fun with Greek royalty didn't make the cut, she was going to be facing some pretty severe loneliness in the future.

Before she went out, she nerved herself up and went to spend some of the money she had saved up on some clothes for the clubs. She didn't know much, but she knew that she certainly couldn't wear her work clothes out anywhere fun.

She ended up with a sparkly green top that made her eyes look apple green and a short black skirt that showed off her long pale legs. On impulse, she let her hair fall down her back, shaking it out into loose waves.

When she looked at herself in the mirror, Heidi wasn't sure how she looked, but she looked nothing like herself, which supposedly was something.

Dinner was delicious, but it was obvious that Anastasia and Augustine couldn't wait to get on to the clubbing. Heidi had never been ushered straight to the front of a line in front of a club, and though she felt as if she was getting away with something that she shouldn't have been, it was a relief to get into the darkness of the dance club.

Anastasia parked her at the bar, making sure she had a drink and didn't want to come dancing.

"You should, though," the princess had said. "It's fun!"

"Maybe later," Heidi said with a slight smile. "Right now, I'm just enjoying my juice."

Though she had to admit that Augustine and Anastasia were a striking couple, she didn't see much that appealed about the dance scene at all. The few men who came up to her seemed interesting, the other women at the club seemed intent on ignoring her, and she was beginning to feel more than a little self-conscious in her new outfit. She was becoming increasingly resolved to make her excuses and duck out until Augustine and Anastasia returned, out of breath and satisfied.

"Hey, I think your boss is here," Anastasia giggled.

Though she had previously thought that she was overly warm from the club environment, Heidi suddenly felt as if cold water had been splashed over her.

"What?"

Augustine gestured towards the second floor of the club. When Heidi looked up, there, leaned casually against the railing, was the man she had been trying very hard to forget.

Even from where she sat, she could tell that he was dressed in a tight red T-shirt and black jeans that seemed to cling to his legs like a second skin. A bottle dangled casually from one hand, and she could see that he was turned and listening to a platinum blonde girl in a short, short black dress. The sly smile on his face and the blonde's closeness told her all she needed to know about what they were talking about.

"Don't gossip about him, though," Anastasia cautioned. "It wouldn't be kind."

That startled Heidi a bit, making her tear her eyes away from Jaque to look at Anastasia. "What do you mean by that?" she asked.

"Jaque is something of a problem for the Swedish royal family," explained Augustine. "His mother has been trying to get him to settle down for ages, and at this point, it seems like she's at her wits' end. I think the last thing that Jaque needs is to get found out bringing home a girl or two after some of his exploits this past spring."

Against her will, Heidi found herself blushing. She had read some of those tabloids in preparation for interviewing for LaMer Enterprises. Some of them were pretty shocking to a girl who grew up in the Midwest.

Augustine nodded. "I see you take my meaning. Jaque is a good man, one of the finest I know, but when it comes to impulse control, well, he could be better."

"I had heard he's been pretty quiet for the last few months," sad Anastasia thoughtfully, but Heidi's mind was going too fast to hear any of it.

Suddenly, all her thoughts of getting out of the club and going home fell away. It didn't matter if Jaque had seen her or not. She was not going to let him think that she was going to go home to a quiet apartment and a cup of tea. She was not going to let him think, or even have a chance to think, that she was some shy virgin waiting wistfully for his return.

"Are you doing well, dear?" asked Anastasia. "You looked a little wan when we came up."

"I don't feel tired at all," Heidi said. "I think I want to dance."

The music playing at the club had a thudding backbeat to it, something that got the entire dance floor moving with more menace that she would have thought. Heidi was no trained dancer, but she knew how to move her body and how to find the beat. She threw herself into the dancing crowd with a will, and they in turn welcomed her.

Her feet seemed to know exactly where to go and what to do, and when she started to dance, everything else fell away. Suddenly, she wasn't saddened by Jaque's abandonment or anything else. Suddenly, she was completely in her body, completely free.

She glimpsed Augustine and Anastasia dancing close by, she saw snatches of other faces, and other people. With a wild grin on her face, she fell in with the rhythm of the people close by. She danced closer to a tall blond who looked like a professor, but when he tried to take her hand, she skittered away. Then she found herself face to face with a dark-haired man with black, black eyes, who grinned at her, and she danced with him for a short while, but when he asked her if she wanted to step away for a drink, she shook her head and whirled on.