The Prince She Had to Marry by Christine Rimmer

marginally better. If he wanted to keep it that way, he was going to have to put in some effort. “Yes, Lili. What is it?”
    Her face flooded with charming color. “I...well, for me, that, what happened in April, was good. It was very good. Excellent, even.” She looked up at him, so earnest, so hopeful. “Was it that way for you, too?”
    He told the truth. “Yes.”
    Her eyes were indigo, deep as night. “I was...so surprised. I always thought the first time was, you know, not so good?”
    He found he had to clear his throat before he could answer. “Often it can be difficult,” he said, after which he felt like a complete bonehead.
    She kept scanning his face, as though she might find the secrets of the universe hidden somewhere between his eyebrows and his chin. “I have another question.”
    Of course you do . “Yes?”
    “Why were you so angry with me afterward?”
    He supposed he’d known that was coming. “I wasn’t angry.”
    “You didn’t say anything, except that I should go. You wouldn’t even look at me.”
    “It was best, that you left. I thought...we could put it behind us, forget that it had ever happened.”
    “That’s called denial, Alex,” she chided. “You know that, don’t you? Denial doesn’t work. Don’t you know that?”
    “You’re probably right,” he gave out grudgingly. “In this case, it certainly didn’t.”
    “Are you still writing, Alex?”
    He frowned down at her. “How did we get from sex and denial to my writing?”
    She lifted an arm and waved it in a circular motion. “It’s all connected. It’s all part of the greater whole.”
    He wisely did not release the scoffing sound that was trying so hard to escape from his throat. “I have no interest in writing. Not anymore.”
    “You should. Everyone needs a form of expression, I think. I don’t know where I would be without my painting.”
    As far as he was concerned, the world could get along perfectly well without another watercolor of a frolicking unicorn. But he decided not to share that. “There’s no point in my writing anything anymore, Lili. I have nothing whatsoever to say.”
    “Try, why don’t you? You might surprise yourself.”
    “I have altogether too much trying to do already, simply in dealing with you.”
    She reached up then and put her cool, smooth hand on the side of his cheek. Her tender touch stunned him like a blow. Heat flared in his groin and his breath caught. She...seduced him, with a touch.
    It occurred to him that she had been seducing him all his life. He’d kept up a workable defense against her innocent wiles for decades. Recently, however, she’d been breaching the battlements, digging defiant little tunnels under the walls....
    One kiss, he found himself thinking. One kiss unobserved by a single paparazzo. What could it hurt?
    And then she went on tiptoe, the way she had done before dawn on their wedding day. She went on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his.
    A butterfly-brush of a kiss, too brief. Too beautiful for words.
    She sank back to her bare heels. “All right, then. I’ll have a nap.”
    He wanted to laugh. And groan. And drag her close again.
    But he only turned to the bed and pulled down the covers as she padded over to the dressing room, vanishing inside. A moment later, she emerged with an enormous pink T-shirt and went into the bath. He sank to his chair and waited until she came out dressed in the T-shirt, which had a giant-sized picture of Minnie Mouse making a telephone call on the front.
    “I actually do feel a little better about everything,” she announced as she climbed up into the bed, revealing an altogether too-tempting length of perfect, smooth thigh.
    “Good.” He rose and pulled the gold sheet up over her.
    She gazed up at him from the pillows, her expression angelic. “I know you’re going to leave the moment I fall asleep.”
    He didn’t deny it. “By then, we’ll have been in here together long enough to allay suspicion.