Tamara nodded. “Not at first,” she laughed softly, remembering those first few days at The Burling School. They’d gotten into some pretty good arguments over…petty issues now that she thought about it. “But yeah, we figured it out, didn’t we?”
Willow leaned in and hugged Tamara. “We did!” She pulled back and sniffed. “Okay, I’m going to order a bottle of wine and soak in a hot bath until my fingers get all wrinkly. You have a good night.”
She headed for the elevators and Tamara wondered what she should do for the night. She should probably go out and do something naughty. But…well, she just didn’t have the energy for that. And besides, Mike wasn’t around. She usually did her bad things with him and Joe. They were a fun couple and she never felt like a third wheel around them.
“Tamara,” a deep voice called out behind her.
Tamara spun around, cringing inside when she saw Jurid approaching. Darn it! She should have gone up the elevator with Willow!
“Your Highness,” she greeted him, adding in a curtsy for good measure. If the curtsy was a bit sarcastic again, well, she didn’t give a whit. Let him think what he wanted.
He took her hand and the heat of his touch surged through her, her skin tingling. Looking up at him, she wanted to pull her hand away, but she didn’t want him to know how intensely he affected her.
“Perhaps we could have a drink?” he offered. “It has been a while since we’ve seen each other. It would be nice to get to know you.”
Tamara might have laughed at the absurdity of his request. “That sounds a bit odd, considering…” she trailed off, not wanting to even say the word.
“That we are engaged?” he asked, taking her hand and tucking it into his elbow as he led her towards the private elevator. “Yes. It does sound a bit incongruous considering our relationship.”
Tamara relaxed slightly. Well, as relaxed as she could be as she walked beside a man who didn’t seem like he relaxed. Ever!
“I was hoping that we could have a conversation.”
They stepped into the elevator and the doors closed. There were four body guards surrounding the two of them, but Tamara still felt the intimacy of the moment intensely.
“A conversation.” She probed the word in her thoughts, wondering what he was really asking. He smiled and her stomach muscles tightened. “About?”
He looked down into her eyes and she felt something unexpected. Her breasts felt heavy, her mind blanked, and she had the sudden urge to press against him. That was ridiculous, she told herself firmly. She barely knew the man. There would be no leaning. No pressing. No touching at all!
“I’d like to learn more about you, Tamara.”
Jurid watched the woman who had captured his attention from the moment she’d stepped out of the building this morning. He’d never anticipated such an intense attraction to his betrothed.
“Tell me what you do in London,” he asked, just as the doors to the elevator opened up to the penthouse of the hotel.
He led her over to the sitting room, then accepted both glasses of wine that the butler brought to them, handing one to Tamara. She took the wine tentatively and looked around. “This is nice,” she said instead.
He didn’t respond as she looked around at the hotel space. As far as he was concerned, the hotel looked similar to many others. It was elegant and appropriately staffed. Those were his main requirements.
So while Tamara looked around at the hotel sitting room, he watched her carefully. The lavender dress swayed enticingly over her figure, playing a bit of hide and seek. It was very alluring, but he doubted it was deliberate. Was that type of walk instinctive? Did she unconsciously know that her dress would move against her like that?
It was an intriguing thought. He suspected that she felt the same intense attraction that he felt, but how did he get her to acknowledge it?
“Do you stay here very often?”
He half smiled at her evasiveness. “Not really. Athens is one of the capital cities in Europe so, obviously, I’ve stopped by on official visits.”
“I saw that you visited London last year.”
He smiled slightly. “Yes. I was there. I believe my staff tried to arrange for a dinner between the two of us.” The color staining her cheeks confirmed his suspicions that she’d deliberately left the city as soon as she’d heard about his plans for a state visit.
“Yes, well, I had previous travel plans,” she told him weakly.
“That seems to have happened regularly. Why is that?”
She turned to look at him, her eyes giving him that defiant light. “Because I didn’t want to meet with you,” she finally told him.
He laughed softly. “Honesty. I like it.”
Her eyes widened slightly. “You do?”
“Yes. It’s a rare commodity in my world.”
“Well,” she began, then paused to take a fortifying sip of her wine, “if you prefer honesty, then let me tell you right now that I don’t want to marry you. I don’t know you and it seems medieval that our marriage is even a question.”
He laughed outright at that, then stood up. “I agree with you. But your father is rather insistent and the betrothal contract was signed a long time ago. So, I don’t really have a way out of our betrothal contract at the moment, my dear.” He took her wine and placed the glass on a low table, then took her hands in his. “But why are you so against a union between us?”
She looked down at their hands, then up into his eyes. “My father shows one face to the world, then another face to his people. And yet another face to his family. It would be one thing if those images meshed in some way, but in too many ways, he contradicts himself. That means that, for two of his three faces, he’s lying. Maybe all of the time. I don’t know and, because he’s so autocratic, he doesn’t allow anyone to really get to know him.”
“All leaders have to adjust the truth a bit. Politics is a messy business and there are too many opinions in our worlds to be completely honest. And sometimes, the truth is a bit more ambiguous than we’d like.”
“That’s probably true, but when the lies are outright fabrications, I can’t abide by it.”
“Ah. You’d like your lies to be obfuscated.”
She blinked. “No!” she snapped. “I don’t want any lies.”
“That’s simply not possible. The world doesn’t work in a nice, orderly fashion.”
She huffed a bit. “He lies to his family! He tells us things, then never follows through! And these are stupid lies!”
“Such as?”
She watched him, trying to determine if he really cared. “Well, one day, I saw him on television announcing that a new school was going to be built for a village that desperately needed it. The village had 30 kids or so. Only a small school was needed, one that wouldn’t cost a great deal of money to build and maintain. At the time, the kids had to travel an hour both ways to attend the school in the next village.” She couldn’t read his expression, his eyes were carefully blank. Attentive, but they didn’t reveal anything more than curiosity. So she continued.
“He announced it on television and answered a lot of questions from the news reporters. He even expounded on the need for the school for these kids.”