Page 97 of Modern Romance Collection May 2024 Books 1-4

She glanced over her shoulder, nodded once to shown she’d heard him and then continued on. He watched as she moved down the path until she disappeared around a corner. Whatever her motives were in inviting him out onto the ocean, it would give him time to get to know her better since she’d kept him at a distance the past forty-eight hours.

Four minutes later he strode onto the dock. A sleek, spacious speedboat greeted him. Portholes indicated a cabin belowdeck. Esme, seated at the helm, glanced up, her eyes hidden behind large sunglasses.

“Where are we headed?”

“The ocean.”

“Did you always keep important details to yourself?” he asked as he climbed aboard and sank down onto a plush leather seat kept cool by an overhead canopy.

“Need to know, sir.”

“Call me Julius.”

“No thank you, sir.” She tossed a saucy smile over her shoulder. “It’s protocol, and I am your bodyguard.”

“Yet you were something more.”

Seated behind her, he couldn’t miss the tensing of her shoulders beneath the white T-shirt, the tightening of her fingers around the steering wheel.

“Could we keep the past behind us? Just for an hour?”

She looked over her shoulder, her eyes hidden. But he could hear the vulnerability in her voice, the rawness that hinted at the depth of her pain. Pain that kept her from sharing the truth with him.

Suddenly angry with himself, regretting whatever he’d done to cause that pain, he nodded. She turned away and, gradually, her shoulders dropped, her body relaxing.

She guided them out of the bay with an easy confidence he admired. Even though a part of him wanted to grab the wheel, to take the helm and drive the boat across the waves, he knew he was in good hands.

An odd sensation, he reflected, as his gaze drifted over a sailboat cruising by. He felt that he was not the kind of man who handed over control easily. Based on what little he had remembered thus far, coupled with the minute details he’d gleaned from Esmerelda, Burak and the media, he seemed regimented, regulated almost to an extreme.

Was his ability to trust now, to place himself in the hands of someone he barely remembered, because he had no history to stop him from doing so? Or was it because of the woman at the wheel taking them further out onto the open ocean? This strong woman who had never been pushed on a swing and whose shocked laughter had stirred not just his desire but his heart?

Probably, he mused as he slid on his own pair of sunglasses as the sun glinted off the waves, a mixture of the two.

He shoved away his thoughts, leaned back into the seat and enjoyed the ride.

What was I thinking?

Esme glanced at a small mirror positioned on the dashboard that provided some protection from the ocean spray. Julius sat on the seat, arms draped casually along the back, his long legs stretched out. Wind ruffled his dark blond hair. Sunglasses now obscured his eyes so she couldn’t tell if he was sleeping or watching the passing sea. In black swimming trunks and a gray T-shirt, he looked like any other beachgoer in the Caribbean.

Not at all like the disciplined prince she’d protected for over a year.

Over the past hour they’d barely exchanged five words. He’d appeared content to lay back and rest. That he trusted her and didn’t pester her with questions had unnerved her as much as it had touched her. Julius had placed his trust in her before in a professional capacity. But then he’d had an entire dossier on her, not to mention security clearances, reviews of the very small number of men she’d dated and several extensive interviews that had felt more like inquisitions.

Now, he had a handful of memories and thirty-five years of emptiness. Yet still he trusted her.

Even though you’re lying to him.

She pushed that uncomfortable thought away. Not only was she evading his questions, all created by her initial distortion of the truth, but she had lied to him this morning, too. She’d awoken just after sunrise and gone out onto the deck. It had been impossible to miss the sounds of someone clutched in the throes of a nightmare coming from the open window to his room. She’d had to force herself not to go to him, especially when she’d heard him gasp a word that had brought tears to her eyes.

“Mãe.”

He’d been dreaming of his mother. He’d only been fourteen when Her Majesty the Queen had passed away. Esme had been five. All she could remember of the event was dressing in black and standing next to her mother as vehicle after vehicle had passed by in a funeral procession, the people around her weeping and tossing flowers onto the street. The first four months she’d been a part of his detail, he hadn’t said a word about his mother. But after the parade incident and her ending up in the hospital, he’d mentioned her occasionally. Little things, like commenting that his mother would have found an ambassador at a dinner in Lisbon amusing or that she would have liked a painting at the Louvre. She had thought those confidences an indicator that they had grown closer after the accident.

Reading too much into something simple, she told herself.Desperate for anything anyone would give you.

The past was the past. She’d made choices she had to live with. For now, she had followed the instinct of inviting Julius out onto the water and distracting him from whatever nightmare he’d lived through last night.

“Am I seeing things?”

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