Page 43 of Her Red Hot Secret Royal Fling

And yet he knew she didn’t belong here with him.

He frowned, because that wasn’t quite right. He knew she didn’twantto belong here. She hadn’t bothered to hide her feelings on that score, and she’d been honest about her aversion to marriage and children. Having totally missed Louisa’s hesitations about becoming a part of the royal machinery, he wasn’t going to even consider imposing the same obligations on Sofia.

The thought of curtailing her freedom, in any way, was akin to Ares exterminating a butterfly just for the sake of it.

He would never ask it of her.

“It’s beautiful here,” she said, reaching for her champagne and lifting it towards his. “Thank you for bringing me.”

He dipped his head in silent acceptance of her thanks and clinked his glass to hers. “To our week together.”

Her smile was, briefly, wistful. “To this week.”

He watched as she sipped her drink, full, luscious lips pressed to the glass in a way that made his pulse jerk erratically.

“Ares,” she replaced her glass carefully, staring at the condensation on the outside before giving him the full force of her attention. “You don’t have to answer this.”

And he knew, or he was pretty sure he did, what was coming next. “It’s okay,” he said. Because he didn’t want there to be any secrets between them anymore. She was leaving the next day, and he wanted to know that they’d explored each other fully. Not just physically, but emotionally too. Whatever they were, that was warranted. “You can ask me anything.”

She gnawed at her lower lip, visibly tense.

He leaned forward, running his hand over hers. “I mean it.”

She glanced at him, almost shy, then took another quick sip of champagne.

“What happened with the two of you?”

Louisa was, more or less, what he’d guessed had been on her mind, since they’d arrived at the restaurant.

“There were a few things, but ultimately,” he said, running a hand over the back of his neck, “she hated the attention. She hated the publicity, the photographers, the articles, the constant speculation. As time went on, and gossiping about a possible engagement between the two of us reached a fever pitch, her life became unbearable. Louisa was followed constantly. So were her parents, her twin sister. She couldn’t do anything without a hoard of paparazzi on her case.” He took a sip of his own drink. “I put out a press release, asking for her privacy to be respected, but that only stirred things up further.”

“Were you engaged?” she asked, her voice strangely terse.

“No. We’d talked about it, obviously. You don’t date someone like me, the age that I am, without it being a pretty big issue, right from the start.”

Sofia toyed with the napkin in her lap.

“At first, she was fine with it. Excited, even. The press adored her, initially. But after about a year, the status quo got boring, and some hit pieces started to run. They stirred up unkind stories about her past—totally untrue, or at least unwarranted. She had to quit her job, because of the photographers who would trail her there. She was offered to work from home, but so much of what she did was client facing…”

Sofia winced.

“In the end, she just wanted to escape.”

“You, or the pressure of being with you?”

“It’s hard to say.”

“Is it?”

“If she had loved me, as I believed she did, I don’t know if the press would have been able to bother her so much.”

Sofia’s features were unreadable, but her eyes were awash with emotion. Sympathy, or something else?

“I don’t blame her,” he added quickly because he didn’t. “This life is not easy, and it’s better that she realized that before we gotengaged, or worse, married. Or even more disastrously, had a child together. I couldn’t have borne the idea of causing her such misery and knowing that I had essentially trapped her in a life she didn’t love.”

Sofia’s face was a little pale. She took several sips of her champagne, then turned as Dimitri approached them, her smile still dazzling, but a lot less bright. Ares noticed that it didn’t reach her eyes. It was more mechanical, like she had forced herself to lift the corners of her lips.

Dimitri placed a platter between them, bowed a little then walked off. Ares regarded the offering—oysters, calamari, scampi, scallops and a salad of freekeh and quince paste.

---