“Three months? That doesn’t seem long enough to fall in love.”
“Ah, but when it’s meant to be, it can happen in no time at all. As it did in our case.”
“I . . . uh . . . I guess, but I just don’t know . . .” She pushed to get inside her battered brain, to figure out why his statement seemed off. Why didn’t she think she was the type of girl to fall head over heels in love in so short a time? But she was lost here; her synapses offered her nothing, not one clue.
“You were finishing up your master’s degree at Cornell University when we met in a bar near campus.”
“Finishing my degree? In what?” Why couldn’t she remember something so basic?
“Astronomy. You had just defended your thesis and said you were celebrating. A few more things to do and you’d officially be done.”
“What was I planning on doing after that?”
“Looking up at the stars, Adara.”
“That’s sort of lame, Chris. I’m sure I have higher aspirations than that.” She spoke with some heat now, though it didn’t quite make sense. She didn’t remember what her aspirations had been.
“But the heavens are infinite. Isn’t helping to map out the farthest reaches a noble prospect for anyone?”
“I don’t know, but as you continue to talk about it, I feel better about things. It sounds like something I definitely want to do. Did I tell you what my next plans were?”
“Not that night you didn’t. You said you were done even speaking about school for a little while, and that you were at the bar to have fun. You were absolutely radiant,” he said before lifting her chin and kissing her. “You still are.”
“Hmm,” she murmured, entranced by just his voice. How could a man who was effectively a stranger do that to her? But that had been happening a lot in the past day. “What came next?”
“We talked until the bar closed, and then we walked down by the gardens and lay in the grass and talked for a long time more. Come to think of it, I did most of the talking. And we decided right then that we were a perfect match.”
“This is so frustrating, because I absolutely can’t remember any of it. But my gut tells me I’m not the type of girl who just falls for a man, any man, and particularly a man I’ve just met.”
“I absolutely agree. You’re not that sort of woman. It took me a good week before we made love for the first time,” he said as he ran his fingers through her hair.
“A week? It only took a week?” Horrifying. She’d slept with him that quickly?
“You told me you’d been a virgin long enough.”
So it could have been worse. But she was still speechless. She’d just fallen into bed like that after a week, and with a guy she hardly knew? She had to ask him, “What sort of girl am I?”
“You’re a beautiful, fascinating, spontaneous, intelligent woman. I’ll say the word woman again. We connected in a way that night that’s so rare; most people never find it, ever. And you certainly have no reason to feel shame, shame of any sort, at what we did. I may not have realized it at the time, but my heart already belonged to yours the minute you first smiled at me with that unrestrained joy of yours.”
Was what he’d just said a little over the top? Maybe. But his words were doing the trick. She relaxed against him. She had no idea how she’d felt back then, but she had no doubt right now that lying in his arms was soothing. And more than soothing. She found her fingers grazing down along his arm as he held her close against him.
“And then we just kept seeing each other?” she asked.
“We decided just a few days ago, Adara, that we couldn’t live without each other.”
“What is that in your voice?” She tried to look at him, but he was cradling her head and she was unable to.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I don’t know either. But when you said that, something didn’t seem quite right,” she told him. “Something in the sound of your voice changed.”
“It’s nothing. Nothing, really. We just had a slight argument the day of the crash,” he said after hesitating yet again.
“What did we argue about?”
What was it with all these long silences? She tried once more to look up at him, but he pulled her more tightly to him, and she soon stopped fighting him.
“I hadn’t yet told you that I was a prince.”
“What? Wait! What? What? Please repeat that.”
She couldn’t have possibly heard what she thought she’d just heard. Maybe he just meant a prince of a man. But that wasn’t what he’d said.
“I don’t want to argue again,” he said.
“Then answer my questions.”
“Ah, Adara, your spirit thrills me. It’s one of the many reasons I’ve fallen in love with you.”
“Don’t think you can sweet-talk me and I’ll forget,” she told him. “Yes, much of my past life is a blank, but I remember everything from the moment I woke up.”
“I’m a prince of the island nation Rubare Collina. You didn’t receive the news the first time any better then than you have just now,” he said, and his eyes were downcast.
This time, she pushed against him, refusing to let him hold her so she couldn’t see his face. He released her and she scooted back on the bed so she was sitting up and could see into his eyes when he raised them again.
“You’re an actual prince? Royalty?” He nodded. “Why would you have hidden something like that from me, Chris? Or should I call you Your Royal Highness?”
He looked away toward the open window overlooking the sea. Then he turned back toward her.
“I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep my royal title. Being a prince means responsibility; it means that I have to do everything on someone else’s schedule. There are rules . . .”
“What does any of that have to do with me?”
“I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want anyone to know. I just wanted to be Christopher Dante, just a normal guy from nowhere particularly important. It was nice. But then I realized I couldn’t forsake my country or my obligations to it, my duties — at some point, everyone has to grow up. I also realized that I wanted you to be by my side when I returned home.”
“And I was okay with all of this?”
She somehow doubted it — who would want to live in this way, under a constant spotlight and all the constraints of such a life? Such a complete lack of privacy. A lack of self-direction. But how was she to know for sure? And this man did seem to know her, intim
ately.
“No. Not exactly ‘okay’ with it,” he said. “But you love me, and because you love me, you knew you would forgive the deception.”
“I told you this?” she said with narrowed eyes.
“Why don’t you wait until you regain your memory to make any judgments? Then you’ll feel it.”
“I’m trying to, but I don’t know at all what I wanted,” she said, dragging her fingers in frustration through her sleep-tangled hair. “And I know when something feels wrong.”
“How do you feel while you’re lying in my arms?” he asked, pulling her back against him.
Heat shot instantly through her and her heart began pounding — why did he always have that effect on her? “It feels right,” she had to admit.
“Then trust in that feeling, Adara, because we’re meant to be together, and deep down inside you know that.”
He ended the conversation with a kiss that left even her toes tingling. She still had a lot of doubts about him and what he’d told her. But she wasn’t willing to walk away from whatever it was that they had together. Not yet.
She’d soon find herself again — get her freaking memory back — and maybe then she’d win this happily-ever-after that some prince was offering up to her.
Chapter Nine
You look as if you’re enjoying yourself.”
Adara slipped beneath the water and came up gasping for air.
“You scared me, Chris.” She swam over to the side of the pool, where he was sitting in a chaise longue.
“I’ve been watching you for more than a few minutes. You seemed deep in thought,” he said. He pulled his shirt over his head, and the sight of his chest took her breath away. And she’d already lost her breath just a few moments before.
“You should have let me know I wasn’t alone. Coughed, or something like that. It’s only fair.”
“I could watch you all day long. I can’t possibly describe what you do to me.”
He stood up and began removing his trousers, and, oh, gosh, his underwear too, and she waited. Breathless once more. They hadn’t made love yet — not since the accident, anyway, a full week ago — and she desperately wanted to. Make love to a virtual stranger. Was that weird? Was she in fact some sort of man-eater? One of those cheap tramps she read about? Or was it the opposite? Was she just repressed in some way and yearning to break out from her inhibitions, the way he’d told her that she’d done when they first met?
