Page 22 of Incognito

He nodded, enjoying her take-charge attitude. It got tiring making the decisions all the time.

“Are you always this organised and thorough?”

She blushed and fiddled with the list, folding the paper edges into tiny creases. “I try to be,” she said, her tone defensive.

“Relax. It was a compliment.”

“Thanks.”

She didn’t look grateful. In fact, she looked downright uncomfortable, and Dante knew he had to quit while he was behind. Yet another conversation heading south with the woman he couldn’t read.

It was frustrating the hell out of him.

“Would you like to have dinner before we head back?”

He asked out of politeness, but a small part of him wished she’d accept. He never had a chance to eat like this: casually, anonymously, without a horde of people waiting for him to finish his soup or take a sip of wine before touching their own.

“Thanks, but it’s been a long day.” She gathered her papers, laptop, and pens, and stuffed them into a large black satchel that looked like it could carry a year’s worth of hotel bathroom supplies.

“Maybe tomorrow?”

A half-hearted nod in his direction didn’t inspire him with confidence and he knew without a doubt the minute they concluded their business tomorrow night, he’d get the same response.

He couldn’t figure her out.

Which made him want to try harder.

The Prince of Calida never backed down from a challenge.

13

“So, you won’t eat with me, but you’ll let me buy you a drink?”

Natasha cradled her wine glass, swirling the full-bodied shiraz and staring into its ruby depths. No answers to her confusion there, considering she’d been wondering the same thing since she’d entered the Lobby Bar a few minutes ago with Dante.

“I usually have a nightcap before I go to bed,” she said, knowing her steaming mug of hot chocolate complete with two pink marshmallows in the comfort of her room didn’t compare to sharing a smooth red with a sexy prince in the hotel’s bar.

“Really?”

He quirked an eyebrow, no doubt at the thought of her quaffing wine by herself before bed. Hmm… not the image she wanted to portray.

“I’m a cocoa addict,” she admitted, joining in his laughter and ruining her sophisticated act. “But this is great,” she added, lifting her glass in his direction, feeling gauche and unworldly compared with his polish.

“You didn’t answer my question,” he said, fixing her with the type of stare she imagined he used on wayward inferiors.

“Maybe I didn’t want to bruise your ego completely, so I softened the blow of refusing dinner by sharing a wine with you?”

His startled expression had her hiding a grin behind her wine glass. She doubted his royal highness received many knock-backs, let alone had his ego bruised too often.

In reality, she refused his dinner invitation because it seemed too intimate. Her relentless attraction to him was hard enough to control without sitting across from him at a cosy table for hours, giving him the opportunity to captivate her with his natural charm.

Dante made her feel like a woman and then some, the monstrous cultural gap between them disappearing when he stared at her like every word she uttered was a riveting soliloquy. Worse, he made her forget every logical reason why she was with him—to work—and that scared her beyond belief.

He shook his head, smiling. “You’re still not answering me.”

Uh-oh, looked like she couldn’t evade his astuteness. She could try flirting, which she was hopeless at, or she could give vague answers and look more of a fool in the process.

Or she could take the only way out she knew and be upfront.

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