Royal's Untouched Love (5 page)

She turned into her office, and now Jaque had time to properly admire how his little American had bloomed.

Instead of the plain slacks and blouses he had seen her in, she wore a floral dress with a wide skirt that flowed with her body, showing off her round hips and her long legs. Over that was a dark gray light cardigan that made her green eyes as vivid as the ocean. Her skin had darkened, giving her red hair an unexpected luster, and in just about every way, she was a woman to turn heads.

What a little surprise the American girl is,
Jaque thought.
Hopefully, she will like what I propose.

When she turned back to him with a happy grin on her pretty face, Jaque realized that he was interested in proposing more than a change of position, and he wondered what kind of trouble this was going to be.

*

The moment she laid eyes on Jaque LaMer again after two months, Heidi could feel herself turn back into that awkward girl at her graduation. Suddenly, she felt gawky and plain, like the little bookworm who could only watch the other students across the hallway.

He had appeared so suddenly with a mysterious offer of a café trip on company time, and when he named her one of her favorite spots in the city, she had leaped at the chance without thinking about what it might mean.

Now that they were seated at Angelo's outdoor patio looking out over deep blue water, however, her mind was full. She figured he hadn't brought her out to fire her, but after that, she wasn't sure what he had in mind.

Jaque seemed to be in no hurry to initiate things. He ordered a dessert sampler for both of them as well as some of Angelo's famous milky tea, and then he turned to her speculatively.

"The dress is a good choice," he said with a smile. "It makes you look like a Cassatt painting."

She plucked at the fabric of her skirt, smiling a little. "I thought I was set with slacks and blouses, but Marisol convinced me that women in Athens were meant to have more style."

She almost mentioned how she had found the dress during an amazing sale, hidden under a few other items and overlooked, but she stopped herself.

"Anyway," she continued, her face blushing, "I bought a few dresses, and after wearing them in the summer heat, I don't think I can go back."

"You look freer," he said. "Happier in general."

"I don't think that's the dress," she said with a grin. "The job's amazing, Jaque. There's so much to learn, and when I write up reports for the sustainability of the industry, and even right down to the little parts, I feel like I'm making a difference."

"Then you are going to love what comes next …"

She listened intently as he explained his engineer's concerns as well as what she had said that they needed. She was already nodding along and realizing that the reports she had been doing, tweaked slightly, would help the engineering team do the magic that they needed to do to get a truly green LaMer yacht on the water.

"So I think I'd like to bring you over to the main compound. It'll help you work more closely with the engineering team, and it will also help me figure out what I need to know. This is an interesting trend that I want to keep an eye on, and at this point, I am surprisingly uneducated about what a green yacht might need to look like."

"Of course," she said with a smile. "I'll have to tell you, I'm stopping myself from telling you what it should look like right now, but I suppose that it can wait until I'm actually installed. This sounds like it's going to be incredible, thank you so much for thinking of me."

For a moment, she was startled to see an odd expression cross his face. It seemed like a mix of amusement, pride, and something else. If she didn't know better, she would have said that it was desire, but that seemed unlikely in the extreme.

He was a prince and the owner of a multimillion-dollar, multinational company. She was the girl he had hired fresh out of school to make sure that his yachts weren't hurting the environment. Even if she had finally managed to dress a little more like a professional adult and to learn more about the fascinating city that she had found herself in, they were an odd couple to say the least.

"I'll be in better shape to understand what it is you're saying after I've gone over the reports you've been doing so diligently," he admitted. "However, I would like to take you out to dinner tonight. I have another few hours of work to do, but after that, I can come pick you up around five thirty."

"Why?" she blurted out, and then her hands flew to her mouth in horror. "Oh god, that's not what I meant at all …"

To her relief, Jaque burst into laughter, shaking his head. "Well, that's not a response I've ever gotten when asking a woman to dinner," he chuckled.

"That was so rude, I'm so sorry …"

"It's fine," he said. "I will understand if you have other plans, but if you do not, I would like to take you out because it will assuage my guilt over abandoning you without a word in Athens two months ago, and because I would also like hear about how you found your feet and how you like the city. Simple, yes?"

"Yes," she agreed. "I … I would love to get dinner with you. Five thirty?"

"Yes. I'll come for you, so just wait in front of the building."

As Jaque walked her back to her office, Heidi's mind was spinning. She might dress a little better now, but underneath, she had never felt more like the little foster child who had been bullied by all the other children at school.

When she was finally alone in her office, she set to work, because otherwise, she was going to be a nervous wreck. It sort of worked, but every now and then, she would look up, realize she was going to dinner with perhaps the most handsome man she had ever met, and feel that same clutch of anxiety.

*

Heidi was waiting on the steps in front of the research building at five thirty on the dot, but when Jaque still hadn't shown up fifteen minutes later, she started to feel a little restless.

Had he thought better of this and decided to go home? Had he forgotten all about her? Those thoughts, though certainly unpleasant, were better than the darker ones at the back of her mind. She had seen how reckless Athenian drivers could be, and she had heard company rumors about the risks that Jaque took in his cherry-red Ferrari.

By six, Heidi's stomach was tied into knots, and when Jaque finally pulled up, she was shaking a little.

"I'm sorry I'm late," Jaque said, coming out to get the door for her. "An investor trapped me on the phone, and though I always dream of simply leaving them to talk to an empty room, I never seem to quite get up the nerve to do it … Heidi, are you all right?"

She started to say yes, but then, for some reason that she couldn't fathom, the truth came out instead.

"I was scared," she said simply. "I thought maybe you had had an accident."

Jaque went from inquisitive to regretful in a heartbeat, and he reached down to squeeze her hands.

"I'm sorry, I truly am," he said. "I'll do better in the future and send you a text, all right?"

She gazed at him blankly. If she had been able to expect anything, she would have assumed that the notoriously reckless Jaque LaMer would have ignored her fear, or perhaps even mocked her for it.

"All right," she said. "I'm sorry, I'm a little … shaky, I guess …"

"Of course. Are you still all right to get into the car? I promise, rumors all aside, I'm a safe driver. I like my skin and my car too much not to be."

That won a small laugh from her, and she nodded. She allowed him to hand her into the car, and as she sunk into the leather seats, she felt herself calming down.

"Have you been in accidents before?" he asked as they pulled into traffic."That looked a bit like personal experience talking there for a moment."

"I haven't, but my parents were killed in one when I was fifteen," she said. She wondered if she was in some kind of shock, because that wasn't the type of information she disclosed at the drop of a hat. When she could see that Jaque was not shocked, but only sorrowful, she found herself continuing.

"It was just a senseless tragedy," she said. "I was at a friend's house, and they were out getting some groceries. There was a rainstorm, and the water on the road sent them skidding into a tree. The paramedics said it was fast, but …"

She trailed off. Jaque nodded with sympathy.

"And after that, where were you?"

"I was in shock for what seemed like forever, and when I guess I
woke up
so to speak, I was in foster care. I was there for two years, graduated from high school early, got a scholarship, and well … you know the rest."

"That's quite a story," Jaque commented. "You must have been tough to survive that."

It was something she had heard before, but somehow, coming from Jaque, it didn't irritate her.

"Stubborn, maybe," she said with a slight smile. "That's what my professors always said, anyway. Too stubborn to quit."

"Well, I appreciate both toughness and stubbornness at LaMer Enterprises. It allows me to show my American friends the very finest in Athenian cuisines."

Without her being aware of it, they had pulled up to a gorgeous little restaurant in the heart of downtown Athens. Jaque handed the keys to a valet as they made their way up the stairs to the entrance.

As she got out of the car, Heidi felt surprisingly light. She had told her story before, but afterward, she often felt tired and worn. She had never told it and felt such a sense of … relief, she supposed. She had told Jaque about who she was and where she had been, and she felt the better for it.

That relief was soon replaced with a sense of trepidation as she looked around. The other female guests were dressed to the nines in elegant sheathes and short black dresses. She loved her floral dress, but the fact remained that it was something that was appropriate for work, not wherever Jaque had brought them.

"I think that I'm a tad under dressed for this," she muttered as they waited for the maître d’.

Jaque only grinned at her. "Tonight, Heidi, I'm going to show you that the only accessory that you need to be considered appropriate for any venue is a wealthy man with ties to royalty."

She laughed at him, but as it turned out, what he said was true. There were a few glances in their direction, but when the viewers recognized who Jaque was, their gazes automatically turned speculative and fascinated.

"No one cares what I wear as long as I make sure to bring a Swedish prince with me everywhere I go," she said with a slight laugh. "I wish I had known that in high school. Bet that would have made lunch a lot more pleasant."

The look that Jaque gave her was oddly compassionate. "I wish I could have helped you then too. Hopefully, eating here will be a little more interesting than your average American school cafeteria."

"It would kinda have to be," she said.

The restaurant was fancier than any she had ever been to. She could feel her heart beat a little faster when she realized that none of the items had a price listed, but then she swallowed hard and made herself choose anyway. She wasn't exactly sure what she was getting, but she figured she couldn't go wrong with chicken.

If Jaque noticed her discomfort, he gave no sign. Instead, he entertained her by telling her a story about a time he and a friend had dined here, and how his friend, who at the time was perhaps a little more drunk than he should have been, had knocked into a waiter and spilled an entire table's worth of food onto the ground. The story was half done by the time she realized he was talking about Apolo Buros, the Crown Prince of Greece, and she marveled all over again at whom Jaque knew and how casual he was about it.

By the end of the story, she was laughing, and then Heidi realized that he had likely told that story simply to relax her.

"You know, you're really very kind," she blurted out, and to her shock, he looked suddenly a little embarrassed.

"You mustn't let on that you know," he said mock-seriously. "I do have a reputation to maintain, after all."

"Oh, of course," Heidi replied. "You mustn't be seen being a good person. It would ruin that playboy image that you have worked so hard to cultivate."

The food arrived, and her reservations melted away at the first mouthful. The chicken, cooked in a saffron butter sauce, was deeply delicious. Every bite melted in her mouth, and the soft rosemary bread that they served with it was just as good.

"You look pleased," Jaque said over his cut of rare steak.

She blushed, wondering if she had given herself away somehow, but he looked happy.

"You should always look at least this happy," he commented, taking a bite of his own meal. "Your smile is amazing."

She laughed a little self-consciously. "You're very free with your compliments," she said softly.

"But I mean each and every one of them," he said with a smile. "When I tell you that your smile could light up a cave miles beneath the darkness, or when I say that your hair rivals the sunrise … I mean those things."

She told herself that this was simply the way that European men were, prone to give compliments, prone to admire, but there was something else there.

"Thank you," she said finally, unable to hide the smile on her face.

Jaque laughed a little when he saw it. "So you smile when I compliment you? What happens if I compliment you more?"

Heidi couldn't stop herself from laughing at his inquisitive tone. "I don't know, are you planning to try?"

"I might," he responded.

"Well, be careful. Maybe I'll get such a swelled head I’ll float off back to America, and then who will you get to help you get your yachts good and green?"

He nodded, and their conversation shifted to other things. She wasn't thinking about it at all until they were in the middle of a conversation about their favorite movies, and Jaque spoke up again.

"Your lips could make a chaste man give up his vows."

She coughed on the water that she was drinking, shooting him a mock-stern look.

"No more compliments when I'm drinking something," she said. "It's not good for me, my clothes, or our table."