Page 31 of My Dark Horse Prince

Something shifts inside me, at his explanation. Is he for real? “It’s fine,” I say again, but this time. . .I mean it.

“I’ll need your help,” he says. “To get the wind turbines working.”

He knows what they are? “Okay.”

“Apparently my powers only work when I’m touching you.”

Something about the word touching makes a tiny zing fly up my body. “Okay.”

“You don’t mind?” Is he really serious? The man who grabbed me and carried me like a sack of flour down the stairs cares whether I mind?

I shrug.

He drops to one knee and grabs my crutch and offers it to me carefully. “I’ll be more polite, I swear.” He looks so earnest, his dark hair falling forward in front of his eyes. Now that he’s wearing Aleks’s clothes—presumably, because they’re a little too tight—he looks modern, too.

If I weren’t all broken, and if I met him at a club or at the barn, I’d probably leap on him and attack. He’s got a killer physique, an absolutely dreamy grin, and beautiful hair.

Which is why I should keep things really, really professional. There’s no way the crippled horse girl friend of Kristiana is anything more than a passing fancy to him. He hasn’t seen any other women in a hundred years, after all. He’s probably just impressed that my teeth are all relatively straight—thanks to Kristiana’s mother getting me braces when she got them for Kris—and that I’m clean. I hear they didn’t get the chance to bathe often before running water was common. Maybe I looked like most women of his era when he saved me.

Who knows?

“Let’s just get the shopping trip over with,” I say.

“Over with? Aleks said girls still love to shop.” He frowns. “Is that not true?”

Kris and Aleks are sitting in the car, waiting, so I gesture. “We better go. They’re waiting on us.”

“They can wait.” Grigoriy crosses his arms and looks at me. “Is this not fun? If you don’t want to go, we can just tell them to get clothing for us. After the day we’ve both had—me back from who knows where, and you being thrown off a train—they’ll do it for us.”

I sigh. “I would like shopping if I wasn’t so poor.” Did I really just say that? “I feel terrible, letting them pay for everything for me.”

He narrows his eyes. “I know what you’re saying, but Aleks says that soon, I’ll have money again. Once that happens—which I can only do thanks to your help—I’ll give you money of your own. Then you can repay them.”

I shake my head. “That’s very generous, but it’s just you giving me money, instead of them doing it. It’s still uncomfortable.”

“But Kris has no money of her own, right? She uses Aleks’s money.”

“She does have money.” Much more than I do, anyway, thanks to her family and her veterinary practice, and her race winnings. I roll my eyes. “Plus, they’re getting married.”

“Then marry me,” he says. “If that means you don’t have to feel bad about using mine.”

My heart practically beats its way out of my chest. “Stop.”

His eyes are wide and terribly sincere looking. That just makes the joke even meaner. “Stop what?”

“Don’t make jokes like that.”

“It’s not a joke.” He steps closer. I can feel the heat radiating off of his large body. “If you married me, would you not feel better about using my money?”

“You don’t even know me,” I say. “And I don’t know you. But you should know this. I’m not planning to ever get married.”

“Because you’ve met all the wrong men.” His smile is smug, even though I just rejected what really must have been a joke. “I’ll change your mind.”

This entire day is surreal. “I’m a cripple,” I say. “And I have no money. I came here to beg Kristiana for a loan, and I couldn’t even get that right.”

“We’re all broken in our own ways,” Grigoriy says. “Yours is just more obvious.”

For someone who makes absurd jokes, he’s got a remarkable amount of insight. “How did you heal me?” I ask. “And why didn’t you fix my leg when you did it?” I hate that tears spring to my eyes, but if we only get one miracle in life, why couldn’t mine have fixed my leg, too?

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