Page 89 of Modern Romance Collection May 2024 Books 1-4

“Perhaps I didn’t make it clear.” She set the knife down carefully, as if she was trying to resist the temptation to stab him with it. “I want nothing more to do with you. I am sorry about your accident, but you expressed that you had no interest in working with me anymore.”

“And now I’m saying otherwise.”

“You can’t just change your mind like that!” She went from simmering frustration to full-blown anger in seconds. “I’ve moved on. If you haven’t noticed, I left the country I was born and raised in and decided to travel halfway around the world thinking that I might just have a slight amount of time to get myself together before tackling the next phase of my life, only to have the man who fired me from his team chase me halfway across the world and show up on my private beach that I paid good money for. Do you think you can just waltz in here and take over my life once more? Do you truly think that after you...”

She paused then, as if trying to get her words right before she spoke. He made note of it, filed it away for later.

“After you reassigned me without talking to me at all, just dropped this bombshell on me with no warning, you assigned me to a role that I had expressed that I was not interested in in the slightest, that I would just give in to your demands?”

“I did think that having amnesia might make a difference.”

“Well, it doesn’t,” she fired back. “I’m getting on with my life. You should do the same.”

“I’ll ensure you have a reference for future employers. I will also pay you one hundred thousand euros for you to serve as my bodyguard.”

Her eyebrows climbed up to her hairline.

“That’s nearly a year’s salary.”

“I’m interrupting your vacation. And after firing you. Paying you an outrageous sum seems like the least I could do.”

He smiled, a slow, sensual smile designed to tempt. And tempt it did. Not that it would make a difference.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Is that all I’m expected to do? Or would there be other duties as assigned?”

“Such as?”

“Sharing your bed.”

Fury ripped through him.

“That’s not what I would be purchasing, Miss Clark.”

She blinked at the chill in his voice, then surprised him as a chilly yet satisfied smile slowly tilted her lips up.

“You might have lost your memory, Your Highness, but you’re still in there. Just as cold and bastardly as ever.”

With that, she turned to leave. He went after her, his long strides eating up the distance between them. He caught her elbow and turned her around.

“Then I’ll try a different tactic.”

She yanked her arm away.

“There’s nothing you can say that will make me—”

“Please.”

She stared at him, stunned.

“What?”

“Please, Miss Clark. Maybe by the time I return to Rodina, my memory will have returned. But if it doesn’t, then I will be stepping into a role that literally impacts people’s lives. I will do far better if I have time to recover, and recover with the presence of someone who feels familiar to me. Someone who knows me, better than I know myself.”

She was bending. He saw it in the way she bit down on her lips, crossed her arms over her chest as if to ward him off even as her defenses began to crumble.

“Why can’t Burak fly over—?”

“I don’t know him.”

---