A Wish and a Wedding (15 page)

“Yes.” His tone—so amused without laughing at her—sent another delicious shiver through her. “The local men seemed to enjoy watching you…um…floating, as well.”

She blushed and shrugged. She couldn't refute it, since at least a dozen had tried to charm her, both in the water and then offering their help in walking up the rocky sand. “I wasn't trying to—oh! You don't think they knew who my cousins are, do you?”

His face softened. “No, Mari, I think they saw a pretty woman enjoying life, and they wanted to enjoy it with you. I know I did.”

She couldn't look at him as she said huskily, “Then why didn't you swim with me?”

He didn't speak, because they both knew the answer; and suddenly she felt a lump in her throat. “Stupid question. I need a shower to wash out all the salt before dinner. Thanks for carrying my bags.” Without meeting his eyes, she held out her hands; he put her bags into them. “See you at dinner.”

“Mari?”

About to run, she turned her head, but didn't look at him. “Yes?” Curse the huskiness in her voice! Did everything in her have to scream
I've got a crush on you
?

His voice sounded so gentle. “It wouldn't have been wise for me to swim with you.”

She gulped. “I know. It's all right. I wasn't expecting—” Oh, what a fool she was making of herself!

“Will we go swimming tomorrow? It's supposed to be a beautiful day, and the Captain knows some coves that are private on the way to Patmos, at Naxos or Icaria.”

The pity buried inside the offer made her burn inside with shame. He knew how she felt about him—falling faster than a bungee-jumper off a bridge—and he
pitied
her. “Someone might see us and put the wrong connotations on it. You can't risk your career for me. We should stick to tourist things. It's less—personal.”

“What if I want to get personal with you, Mari?” he asked, as husky as she. “What if I no longer care about the consequences?”

Her cheeks aflame, she whispered, “One of us has to care.”
For your sake.
And she found that was her real reason; he was a duke, and there wouldn't be any consequences in their having a relationship for her.

But he could lose his career.

She all but fled inside to her cabin before he could look at her, touch her—or say a single word to change her mind.

 

Did she dare do it?

Blue dress: safety—little black dress: joy—green dress: protection—lavender silk…
bliss…

“What are you carrying on about? For all you know, he doesn't feel anything but politeness and diplomatic duty for you,” she muttered. “He hasn't shown one single sign of interest. Wear something sensible and don't make a total idiot of yourself—again!”

The sun had slowly dropped in the sky and, clad only in her underwear, fresh from her shower, she was choosing dresses at random and tossing them aside. She owned all of three sexy dresses, kept carefully from her parents' view, and about ten safe, pretty, schoolmarm dresses that screamed,
Take me home to meet Mother
.

The trouble was she wanted to be sexy
and
be taken home to meet Mother—but the truth stared her in the face every day, with every word from his beautiful, cultured mouth: Lysander could never take her home. The way she saw it, she had two choices. She could follow her heart and her body's pleadings, wear one of her three hidden dresses and, if she could seduce him, become Lysander's lover for as long as she could hold him. Or she could play it safe, do the right thing for everyone else, and lose—

Lose what? That was the question, really. She'd known within a couple of days that Lysander was everything she'd ever dreamed of, but in her dreams she'd seen a man who loved her for life, not for a few days or weeks. Prince or duke, it made no difference for a girl like her. Lysander was as unattainable as Mikhail. She only wished he was as easy to reject and forget.

But still that lovely, silky, low-cut and high-slit lavender dress was in her hands…and then over her head…

Then she'd piled her hair up, letting it fall in tendrils over her neck and shoulders…soft make-up was on her face, and she'd sprayed that gorgeous perfume that made her think of black-hearted roses. And those naughty silver heels her mother had said made her look like a bad girl that she'd never been able to bring herself to return or wear…

Heart pounding and stomach churning, she left the room nine times and came back nine times, pacing the room and talking herself alternately into and out of it all. Brave chance or stupid risk? If only she knew. All she
did
know was that if she didn't try, didn't touch him, she'd regret it for life.

With that thought, finally she screwed her eyes shut and opened the door a tenth time, walked through it and closed it behind her.

 

Sander choked on his wine the moment she walked into the dining suite. Was it the Fates conspiring against him? He'd talked himself into and out of a tuxedo, into and out of soft, romantic music and candlelight…the staff didn't know if they were coming or going. Finally “out” had won, common sense had prevailed, and he'd begun to tell himself it was the right and noble thing—for Hellenia, for Persolis and for Mari. Definitely the right thing for everyone concerned to not even think of seducing her.

But then she'd come in wearing
that
dress.

Soft, swishing silk with thigh-high slits and cut low, revealing creamy cleavage. The honey-satin skin of her throat and neck was revealed by the curls piled high and tumbling down; a scent like sweet sin enveloped him in moments.

And that smile, so naughty and yet as adorably unsure as the look in her eyes, was his downfall. Duke he was, diplomat he might be, but beneath it all he was just a man…

He only knew he was on his feet, walking to her when he lifted one of those soft, sweet-scented hands to his mouth and felt her quiver. Masculine heat and triumph flared through every pore and cell when he saw the look in her eyes. He pulled her to him, a question in his eyes and heart, and she answered with that dazzling, vivid smile. And that scent, reminiscent of full-blown roses on hot summer nights, filled his head as her core body temperature grew with her arousal.

She wanted him so badly she wasn't even trying to deny it.

She'd come here tonight hoping or expecting—he didn't know or care. The pounding of his blood made hope expectation, and expectation imperative. He tried to speak, but couldn't find words. There was only here and now: a lifetime waiting for a single moment.

“I don't think we're going to talk about droning in church, are we?” she whispered as he lowered his mouth to her, her eyes shimmering.

He choked on laughter, thinking of all the most poetic words
to give her, but his mind failed him and he said simply, “No, we're not.” And still smiling, he drew her right against him and kissed her.

He'd never known he could smile as he kissed a woman, but Mari did that to him. For years he'd wandered the world, equating success with happiness, learning how to do everything right and please everyone. Then this smiling bundle of feminine joy had come into his life—everything he shouldn't want and couldn't have. In a day she'd shown him how empty his smiles had been, how shallow his heart had been until she'd filled him with her sunshine and her passionate commitments, her high principles and her giving nature, so crystal-clear and so wonderfully impulsive. Everything he shouldn't want and couldn't have was standing in his arms, in one dazzling package of so-called ordinary woman.

Dimly he heard music as they kissed—the steward must have seen them, and that should have worried him, but didn't. Slowly he moved to the music, she followed, and still they kissed as he moved her out from the glass-enclosed room to the deck beneath summer stars.

Mari made a soft noise and wound a hand into his hair, tender and intimate, and something inside him exploded. Other women had touched him there, but somehow none of them had affected him the way Mari did. She touched him and he felt so
happy
inside… More, he had to have more—and he lifted her up against him and made her part of him, body and heart.

Impossible to ignore, unable to deny, he was
gone
—for the first time since he'd had a crush on a princess, fifteen years ago. What was it about Mari? She was blunt, outspoken and no prettier than twenty women he knew—but her joy in living, her sparkling sense of adventure, drew him time after time. And her caring, her strong moral sense of right and wrong, her fear of hurting others, her vivid passion for—

Him.
He'd only seen a shy kind of embarrassment with the men who had flocked around her this afternoon, but for him she
smiled, blushed, and the yearning in her eyes came alive…just as he came alive with her, and had done from the first moment he'd seen her.

This
was why he'd avoided her from the start. Losing his position with Mikhail had been a convenient excuse. When he was close to her he forgot everything but his need to be with her. Mari held the power to make him toss aside consequences and not care a bit. She was like liquid sunshine, and he wanted more and more…

He wanted too much, too fast. Mari had said clearly that she was going home in a few days. She loved it here, but she belonged in Australia. If she complicated his life, he could take the consequences—but he'd ruin her chances of ever going back to safe anonymity. Would she hate him for that?

“Lysander, Lysander,” she mumbled between kisses. Her hands were tangled in his hair. So much passion, such vivid, innocent need for him—

And if she couldn't stop, he was completely addicted to the shots of bubbling happiness she injected with a smile, with a touch, with the way she said his name. And her kisses—

Consequences go hang. This was here and now. She was in his arms, and she was staying there as long as he could keep her.

Three days later

“A
T THE
risk of sounding like a complete tourist—what a fantastic place,” Mari sighed as they moved back onto the yacht. “The tour was really excellent.”

“It certainly was informative,” Sander agreed, with a fatalistic feeling inside. If his mother heard of his Bible tour in Patmos, he'd never hear the end of it.

So why was he smiling?

The answer was right in front of him, her curvy backside swaying as she ran up the gangplank. Mari made him smile just by being near him. Her enthusiasm for life was infectious, and it made him feel glad to be here—just glad to be alive.

“Couldn't you just
imagine
St John sitting in the cave, seeing all those visions?” she asked, flushed and starry-eyed as she flopped down on a deck lounger. “The guide described it so you
knew
how he must have felt. Coming here makes it all real, doesn't it?”

Actually, Sander would have been totally bored but for the constant entertainment of Mari's wide-eyed wonder as they toured the island. And her italics, instead of annoying him, kept him amused. Mari's dramatics were as natural to her as breathing, and endearing because they weren't designed to draw at
tention to her. She just said what was on her mind, and she was as passionate about others' interests as her own.

On that note, he said, “The donkeys were real, at any rate, and very grateful to you.”

Mari's chin lifted. “It's a disgrace the way that master treated them. None of the other masters were cruel—their donkeys were well cared for. Somebody should do something about him, like those animal liberation groups.”

“You did something,” he replied, holding in a smile, thinking of her cold refusal to ride on a too-thin donkey with scars on its back. She'd walked all the way up to the caves…and one pleading look from those pretty eyes had had him climbing off his donkey as well. A few sad glances at the state of the donkeys other tourists rode on had had some of their riders joining in the silent protest.

“Maybe you'll do better business if you learn to take care of your donkeys,” she had told the indignant master. “Take a lesson from the other masters.”

“A private protest isn't enough,” she said now. “Are we online on the yacht? I'd like to find a website—”

“You can't save the world, Mari,” he said gently.

“Don't say that!” Her eyes flashed. “It's an excuse to do nothing! If everyone cared enough to right one wrong, just one, how much would the world improve?”

She was right. Most of the women he'd been with cared only for their next beauty treatment, or being the first to wear a new dress or hairdo or sunglasses and set a fashion. “So you're righting the wrongs of donkeys?” he teased, wanting to see her passion continue—with him. Their kisses were getting more intense by the hour, and he was more and more enchanted by her. They both knew it couldn't last; he'd eventually find his Duchess and have heirs, and she'd find a man to walk her down the aisle—

He had to blank out the thought, for the face he saw was his own—and the face of his Duchess was Mari's.

“At least I care for something more than my own wants and
fears,” she flashed. “Do you? Do you care enough for your people to give up what you love and do your best for them?”

With a few pithy words she'd cut through the layers of his self-delusion to the ugly core truth. Though his diplomatic work and ties would help Persolis, that wasn't why he'd stayed on in the Corps. He hadn't planned to be Duke, had never wanted it. He liked his life as it was. He didn't want to change it, didn't want to right anyone's wrongs on a deeper level than he did now. And when the promised time came to take over and let his mother retire, would he continue making excuses?

Not now. Not now he saw himself for the man he was—and didn't like it. He
did
care for his land, his people—and it was time to stop running away.

“I'm sorry, that was out of line,” she mumbled, as he seemed still lost in his thoughts. “It's none of my business what you do, Lysander. It's between you and your mother.”

“And my people.” He fixed his gaze on her, loving the honest remorse in her pretty face. Loving her
caring.
Just—
loving.
Wanting her to feel proud of him, he gave her similar honesty. “I'm going back, Mari. Even if I don't feel qualified, I'm going back.”

Her smile, so tentative, grew until a light like sunrise filled her eyes. “Start small and work your way up, Dad always says. He began by picking up rubbish on the beaches. Now, twenty years later, he earns a good living in recycling with his ‘clean green' business. He even consults with members of the Australian Government on safe rubbish storage practices.”

“Impressive,” he murmured, wanting to kiss her so badly it was pain. But—hadn't he met a green representative on unsafe rubbish practices last time he was in Persolis? He remembered signing something to make changes to an edict of his father's, so that residents near the dump were exposed to less hazardous waste…

Suddenly intrigued, he asked, “What does he do with rubbish that's so unique the government consults him on it?”

“He's invented a kind of environmental blanket for naturally-degradable rubbish, and is working on a radiation-reducing con
tainer for toxic waste.” Grinning, Mari rose from the deck lounger. “Dad's passion for a cleaner environment is too serious a conversation on a stomach only filled with ice cream. See you at dinner.”

She ran lightly along the deck, her curly ponytail floating behind her. She had a little tripping step; he always thought she'd fall flat on her face at any moment. Sander had been appreciating her unusual way of moving for days. He'd finally worked it out, after watching her constantly: she had a slight tendency toward pigeon toes she was forcing outward, and it made her awkward. Graceful she was not.

And yet though this couldn't possibly last beyond the few days they were on the yacht, he couldn't stop smiling. And wishing. And wanting.

The worst of it was the more he had of her, the more he wanted—a lifetime of
more
—and duty was flapping out through the window on the wings of an albatross, slow and relentless.

Slow?
He'd known her all of five days, and for the past four days all he'd been able to think of was touching her again, and the joy of having that gorgeous smile beaming up at him as she laid her sweet little hands on him. When they'd swum off Naxos he'd been in pain, trying to keep his hands and body to himself; but she hadn't had such scruples. She'd started a splashing contest as an excuse to get closer, and wrapped silky-wet arms around his neck.

“I know,” she'd breathed, as an attack of unwanted conscience had taken him over and he'd tried to hold off. “This is all we can have, Lysander. It's just a holiday romance—so let's enjoy our holiday.”

The tender acceptance in her words had made him hate himself, but he hadn't held back. Sweet, salty kisses in the warm ocean with a woman he liked, respected as well as desired—a memory to keep when he had to do his duty and marry the right woman.

He'd made dozens of memories since then: dancing beneath
the stars at night; eating from her fork at lunch at Naxos; her soft moans when they touched; the feel of her against him when they kissed, her body always straining to be closer.

They had to get back to Hellenia, and fast. He couldn't hold out much longer—and not just against making love to her. Every day, every hour, he was falling in deeper. He was barely sleeping, filled with the need to get off the bed, walk about forty feet, pull her into his arms and tell her,
Let's do what your great-uncle did—run away and forget the consequences. It won't start a war this time…

He groaned to himself. How could she say yes, given her family history and her love for her cousins? But it didn't stop the stupid hope that she'd put him first… That she'd marry him and give him a lifetime of her caring, her scruples and her joy in living, in touching him. He couldn't lie to himself: he loved Mari, but he couldn't make love to her. He couldn't bring himself to hurt her, knowing he had to walk away. All he could hope for was more wonderful kisses…and that he'd remember her and their time together with a smile when he did his duty.

“Your Grace, Her Majesty the Queen is on the phone for you,” the steward informed him respectfully.

“Perfect timing,” he murmured beneath his breath. Racked with guilt, filled with hidden resentment against the future and the duty he had to embrace, Sander walked to the bridge to speak to Jazmine.

 

“Tonight's the night,” Mari said softly to herself as she pulled the little black dress from its hanger.

They were out of time; they docked back at Orakidis Harbour tomorrow.

Lysander's scruples made him even more wonderful to her—she knew he was holding back on making love for her sake—but if this time was all they could have…if this night was their last…she wanted to have a night to remember.

Tonight, all she hadn't been able to bear with Mikhail would
become all she could dream of. Tonight she'd give everything to Lysander. One night with the man she was head over heels in love with would be worth the price she paid later.

How she'd fallen in love so fast, after a lifetime of never loving any other man she'd met, she had no idea. Perhaps it was holiday love—maybe it could never last for them—but right now she didn't care. She only asked for tonight.

Deliberately she wore no shoes, no jewellery, and left her hair down, mussed with mousse, as if she'd just risen from bed. She wore no make-up but shimmering lipgloss. The dress, with its spaghetti straps and flaring short skirt, gave the message she needed.

This time there was no agonised indecision. She walked straight out of her room and up the stairs to the dining hall—and caught her breath. Lysander waited for her in a magnificent tuxedo, with a deep red rose in his hand, and that smile. “Mari
mou
,” he said softly—
My Mari.

Wanting nothing more than to run into his arms, she couldn't ruin the moment. She walked slowly to him, her whole body alight with joy and need. “Lysander…” she breathed.

“We're not going to talk about safe garbage practices tonight,” he murmured as he put the rose in her hand.

Even as she lifted the rose to her face, she choked on laughter. “No, we're not.” And she slid her arms around his neck. “Make love to me.”

His eyes took fire, but still they searched hers. “Are you sure?”

“I know we can only have tonight.” She smiled bravely up at him, a mass of yearning and sad acceptance twining in her heart. “Tomorrow we pretend it didn't happen, for everyone's sake—you'll keep your position, and I'll go home. But tonight is ours.”

“No. Either way, I'm going home too. You were right—it's time for me to take my place in Persolis.” A tender hand caressed her cheek; his eyes were filled with desire, with
caring
, and she felt her heart splinter. “I don't want just one night with you, Mari. I want you to know that if it were up to me we'd have so much more.”

She closed her eyes in joy and agony. One of them had to keep their head.
For Lysander's sake, and for his people.
“Change will come to Hellenia slowly. There's no convenient duchy for me, to make me acceptable. I can't be like Great-Uncle Kyri and Great-Aunt Giulia, and toss aside the consequences to others. So let's have tonight.”

Lysander kissed her once, twice, and melting honey filled her body, sweet yearning and hot need. “You're so lovely, so strong and caring—you'd fight for what's right. You'd make a magnificent duchess…” he whispered in her ear, and she felt the
if only
hovering in the air between them.

Moved, lost, she had to struggle against saying something stupid. “Take me to bed.”

He lifted her in his arms. “I feel so happy when I'm touching you.”

That was it—she'd waited for so long for this kind of happiness, for the dream to come. But this could only be a holiday romance. They were worlds apart; only the here and now existed for them. “Me too.”

“I tried to stop this,” he mumbled hoarsely between kisses. “But how do I resist a woman who's perfect for me in every way, or tell my heart to stop feeling like this? In a world where I rarely know what to believe, I believe in you, Mari.”

“Lysander,” she whispered against his mouth, angling her face so it fitted his perfectly. She felt so
wonderful
in his arms…He murmured endearments in his native tongue, and her heart became his—but she gave it in silence, for his sake.

“This is inevitable,” he whispered. “
We're
inevitable. We're right. Tell me you feel it, Mari. I know you do.”

Oh, she did, but at this moment, when dream could become reality, the strong streak of practicality in her overtook her fantasies and stepped gently on them. “I want to make love,” she said in reply, because there was nothing else to say.

Instead of taking her to bed, he put her back on her feet and cupped her face in his hands. “You don't believe in us?”

Hating to hurt him, she hesitated a moment too long, and his hands dropped from her face. She felt the words hovering on his tongue—then he stepped back; the emotion in his eyes dimmed, and he said, smooth and oh, so cool, “Dinner will be getting cold.”

Mari's smile faltered; the stars dimmed in her eyes and she nodded. “I understand, Your Grace.” Her voice was thick. “I'm not very hungry. Good night.”

And with her acceptance, when his words had been designed to make her fight for him, Sander panicked. “No, Mari.” He strode to her—she was already walking out through the door—and snatched her close and kissed her, but she didn't respond. “Stay,” he commanded roughly. “I'll
make
you believe in us.”