Page 53 of Twelve Nights In The Prince's Bed

He nodded once, a sharp jerk of his head, but his eyes narrowed and his face showed confusion. ‘Then why did you lie to me?’

‘Apparently, that’s what I do now,’ she said, glad that her feet finally got the memo and carried her away from him, towards her living room. But Adrastos caught her at the wrist, spinning her back to face him.

She closed her eyes, his touch so incendiary her body began to tremble.

‘Why did you lie to me?’

This time, a glib response wasn’t going to cut it. She shook her head, words failing her, tears—so much a part of her now—shimmering on her lashes. ‘I needed to leave.’

He frowned. ‘Was it really so awful?’

She closed her eyes.

‘I thought you enjoyed being with me. I thought you liked what we were doing. If that was not the case, you could simply have told me so. I’m a grown man, Poppy, I could have handled the truth.’

She wanted to repeat that famous movie line to him, because she didn’t really think he could handle the truth in this instance, not the honest to God truth anyway.

‘This was easier.’

‘Easier?’ he repeated, his jaw moving as he stared down at her. ‘For whom?’

She blinked up at him, confusion warring with anger. ‘I cannot understand why you are behaving like this,’ she said after a minute. ‘Is it your ego that’s hurt? Your pride wounded? You cannot believe any woman would want to leave you sooner than you were ready to let her go? Is that it?’

‘I cannot understand why you lied,’ he contradicted. ‘I cannot understand why you would choose to hide out in your apartment here rather than just be honest with me—’

‘Oh, go to hell,’ she snapped, anger winning, confusion something she could analyse and interpret later.

‘I beg your pardon?’

She wrenched her arm free, rubbing her wrist to erase the warmth of his touch.

‘Go to hell, Your Highness,’ she corrected, storming into the living room and looking around.

Her fingers itched to grab something and throw it, an impulse that truly shocked Poppy, who was not, and never had been, prone to violence.

‘Stop right there,’ he growled, standing in the door to the room, arms crossed over his broad chest, so she realised she had actually picked up a ceramic vase. Her eyes were like flames, pure heat.

‘We are having this conversation and then I am leaving. But first, I want to understand what happened that morning. No, what happened the night before,’ he corrected. ‘At the ball. We went outside, you wanted to talk to me, then you changed your mind. And don’t say it was about the job: I know now that’s not the case.’

She ground her teeth together.

‘There is no point to any of this,’ she said angrily, slamming the vase back on the side table and moving to a window. ‘You told me what you want—I just gave you your wish a few days earlier.’

‘At no point did I say I wanted us to end things then and there.’

‘No, but you did want it to end. You wanted to get back to your life, for me to move on with mine, to find someone who’d “make me happy”,’ she muttered. ‘Do you have any idea how that felt? To hearyouof all people calmly elucidating your wish-list for me? How inappropriate I consider it for you, the man I lost my virginity to, to be openly plotting my next relationship?’

Silence arced between them, as fierce as electricity.

‘I was not—’

‘Yes, damn it!’ She rounded on him. ‘You were.’

‘Well, so what?’ he said, not moving a muscle. ‘Is there something wrong with me expressing a wish for you to be happy?’

‘Withsomeone else,’ she reminded him contemptuously.

‘And this is why you left?’ he demanded. ‘Because you didn’t want me to talk about our futures? About what life would be like after this came to an end?’

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