Page 4 of Her Red Hot Secret Royal Fling

“I’ve got it covered.”

She glanced at him. “What? How?”

“I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it pretty much as soon as I got back to my room and lost…well, I thought everything, but apparently not. I sent out for clothes and shoes for you. They should be in your room anytime now.”

It was yet another example of how money talked. The Santoros were not just wealthy, they were fantastically, uber-rich, some of the wealthiest people in the world, in fact. Though there was money in Sofia’s family, it was more in the realms of the ordinary.

“He’s going to be furious.”

“No, he’ll be irritated. But he’ll put up with it, because he’s a good friend.”

She dropped her head into her hands. “You bloody owe me, Salvatore Santoro, and after the next few days are over, you’re going to owe the King, too.”

CHAPTER TWO

IT TOOK EVERY OUNCE of Ares’s willpower not to react to the appearance of Sofia Marona, dressed not in an immaculate lilac skirt suit now, but rather a pair of cargo pants, a fitted long-sleeved shirt, and hiking boots.

It took even more willpower not to let his gaze drop to the swell of her breasts, so lovingly caressed by her shirt, nor the neat turn of her bottom hinted at by the dark green pants. Her face was no less dangerous to look at, though, because her lips were full and wide, somehow imploring him to reach across and trace them, first with his finger and then, perhaps, with his tongue.

Not since he’d been a teenager and had, for six months, had a tutor named Bettina Torez had he found it so difficult to ignore his attraction to someone.

Then, he’d been made wild by hormones rampaging through his body. At twenty-eight, he didn’t have that excuse, but he had another.

Louisa.

Their breakup had hit him hard. Her finality in walking away had been the most shocking part of it. There’d been no discussion, no negotiation, no apology. She’d made up her mindsome time ago, he deduced, and had been gradually adapting to the idea of no longer being together. Only she hadn’t told him, nor had she even signaled that she felt that way, so he had been utterly blindsided. Nothing could compare to the grief of losing your parents and your older sibling, but it was the first time since their abrupt, unexpected deaths that he’d been shocked—and alone.

Dismayed and unsure how to proceed.

Almost two months later, he was still picking up the pieces of his life, trying to rewire his brain so she was no longer a part of what he expected in a day. The number of times he would reach for his phone to call her, to tell her something unimportant, showed how much he hadn’t prepared for this.

Her reasoning though was indisputable. She didn’t want this life.

She didn’t want to be a public figure, and there was nothing Ares could do to change her mind. He would have offered her many things, but he was King, and the duties and responsibilities to his country were not something he took lightly; nor that he had any interest in abdicating.

I still love you, but I don’t want to be with you. I don’t want to be a part of this. I can’t do it, Ares.

Well, join the club. Many was the time Ares had thought exactly the same thing. There were elements of his job and life that he adored—such as the ability to make a difference to his people—but other parts he hated—like the way the public seemed to think it had a right to know absolutely everything about him. Privacy was a foreign concept indeed, to a man like him. He couldn’t blame Louisa for opting out of it. Nor could he blame her for taking two years to come to the realisation that she didn’t want this. Press speculation about the state of their relationship had reached fever pitch, and it didn’t matter if she was with him or not, she was a target for aggressive paparazzistalking regardless. Whether she was walking her dog, or taking her niece to a sports game, or dining out with girlfriends, the event would be immortalized and splashed across the papers, as though it were a deeply important matter of national security rather than a woman simply living her life.

I’ve been put in a cage, and I didn’t even realise it. I need to get out.

She’d left the country the day after their breakup, heading to Australia to take up a job in an advertising agency in Sydney, where she wouldn’t be so instantly recognisable, and she could resume, she hoped—as did Ares—something of a normal life.

Still, her rejection went some of the way to explaining his gut-clenching desire for Sofia. It went beyond the woman’s physical beauty. It was something about the way she moved and spoke, the hint that there was a deep vein of passion and feeling running through her, which she controlled with the same vice-like grip on emotions that Ares was famed for.

“Salvatore isn’t well,” she explained, with a hint of impatience in her tone. “He can’t go hiking. He suggested me as his replacement.”

No.Just sayno.You’re the King of this whole damned country, and this is your personal hiking time, the one non-negotiable in this whole damned life. There were very few people he would allow to intrude on that. Any of the Santoros had a leave pass, but that was pretty much it.

He knew they all thought of Sofia as something of a sister—he’d heard them talk about her for long enough to know she had an almost mythical place in their family—but that didn’t mean he had to extend the same reasoning to her. Did it?

So what, was he really going to turn her down, when she’d shown up dressed and ready to leave? His lips compressed into a line of disapproval.

Was he really going to reject her?

“It’s three days of hiking,” he said, a hint of ambivalence in his tone. After all, she looked as though a rough breeze could snap her in two.

Her chin jutted with obvious defiance. A spark ran through his bloodstream. Not many people challenged him; he missed that. “I’m aware.”

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