His hand tightened on hers. “And princes?”
She was very conscious of the man walking beside her, aware that something was happening between them. It was unexpected, and she couldn’t quite define it. She felt uncertain, a little breathless, oddly excited.
“No,” she said finally. “I’m not against princes. I just don’t believe in them. How can you be against something that doesn’t exist?”
“You have to believe,” he said slowly. “Somewhere inside you. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”
She drew a breath. “But I’m not myself tonight. I’m somebody else. And she believes in princes.”
For a long silent moment Ryder walked beside her, wondering why her denial affected him so strongly. He grew curious then about who had destroyed her illusions so thoroughly, and why the very thought of someone doing that to her made anger rise in him. He felt oddly that she was somehow unreal herself, that she was wearing more than a mask as a disguise. And when he spoke at last, he was surprised at the words that emerged.
“Does she believe in love?”
“I suppose she does.” Her voice was low, curiously tentative. “I suppose she has to. She’s a…a piece of a story about love and princes. What else has she got to believe in? It’s all she is.”
He stopped walking suddenly and turned to face her, his hands lifting to her shoulders. “What if I want her to be more than that?” he asked quietly. “What if I need her to be a flesh and blood woman?”
Amanda had been the focus of a man’s charm before, but it had been many years since she had been able to accept that charm at face value. Her illusions had begun crumbling before she had left her teens, when her first serious relationship had ended badly, and the years after that had done nothing to shore up fragile ideals.
She had tried not to become cynical, but had finally come to the conclusion that either she’d had enormous misfortune in the men she met, or else it truly was impossible to encounter one solitary individual who had no interest in her money.
Amanda Wilderman didn’t believe in princes.
And yet here was a prince. A handsome, humorous, charming man who kept her on her toes with his sharp intelligence. And he hadn’t the faintest idea who she was.
But then something happened that she hadn’t anticipated. A very simple and natural thing, given a man and a woman virtually alone together in a moonlit garden. And now she didn’t know how to answer his question.
“I warned you I wasn’t a gentleman,” he murmured.
Amanda might have anticipated the kiss, natural under the circumstances. But her reaction to it went far beyond anything she could have predicted. She’d been kissed before, and by some “gentlemen” for whom the art was their stock-in-trade; but she had never felt anything like what she felt when Ryder kissed her.
His lips were hard, warm; there was no attempt to gently seduce or charmingly sway. He was no supplicant. He kissed her as if she were his for the taking, as if there were no need for preliminaries between them.
A wave of pure raw heat swept over Amanda, as if she’d stepped out of a cool room to stand under the blazing sun of a hot summer day. It was a shock at first and her hands lifted to push at his shoulders. But before she could even try to escape, a second wave of pleasure shuddered through her. She was hardly aware of a soft sound purring in the back of her throat, and didn’t realize that she had moved until she felt the heavy silk of his hair under her fingers and the hard strength of his arms around her.
Those sensations gave her the willpower—albeit, just barely enough—to push herself back from him and try to turn away. But he refused to release her completely, drawing her against him and holding her firmly.
“Let me go,” she ordered him huskily, staring down at the arms around her waist. She could feel the hard strength of his body at her back, and fought desperately to ignore the weakness of her own.
He kissed the nape of her neck, and said somewhat thickly, “It must be the moonlight. Do you think that’s it, Cinderella? Moon madness?”
“Definitely,” she managed to say with a shaky laugh. Then she caught sight of the luminous dial of his watch, and a chill chased the last of the cobwebs from her mind.
Eleven-thirty.
Where had the time gone? Until that moment she had half made up her mind to end the farce at midnight. But she couldn’t. When her mask came off, everything would change. Her own guard would go back up, because, of course, Ryder would change once he knew who she was. The unburdened pleasure of strangers would be gone.
She couldn’t see it end, not like that.
“Now I know how the prince felt,” Ryder said. “I could get obsessed about you.”
Amanda felt a pang, and recognized it somewhat ruefully for what it was. She hadn’t expected it to be painful to have awakened interest in a man from behind the anonymity of a mask.
“You’ve let the moonlight go to your head,” she said. “And so have I.”
“Does it matter?” he asked.
“I guess not.” This time Amanda managed to pull completely away from him. It was time; she had to leave while she still had the willpower for it. But how could she distract him? She took a few steps to a handy bench and sat down, adding in a light tone, “You’ve also forgotten your manners.”
“Have I? In what way?”
“You haven’t offered me champagne,” she said reprovingly.
He stood gazing down at her for a moment, then said, “More evidence of moon madness. Would you care for a glass of champagne, milady?”
“Very much. Thank you.”
“And will you wait here for me?”
“I promised I wouldn’t leave.” She wasn’t lying, after all, she reassured herself. She had promised not to leave at midnight. And she wouldn’t.
“Good enough. I’ll be right back.”
Amanda sat perfectly still until he was lost to sight on the other side of the shrubbery. A glance around was enough for her to orient herself, and she offered silent thanks that she was familiar with the garden. She picked a path that would take her around the makeshift ballroom as quickly as possible, then removed the glass shoes, snatched up her skirts, and ran.
She held the shoes tightly in one hand, unwilling to drop them despite Samantha’s gentle request to the contrary. Her only other thought was to get away as soon as possible, and she took a shortcut through the Brewster house that led straight to the front door, racing past a number of startled servants.
Some of them had been en route to the ballroom with their hands full of various things. Amanda heard at least one crash from behind her and winced, but didn’t stop.
She burst out the front door and caught a glimpse of the white limo waiting at the bottom of the steps. But before she could make good her escape, a very large and very old gentleman dressed all in white, like a Kentucky colonel, crossed her path.
They tangled unaccountably, and Amanda felt one of the shoes slip from her grasp.
“I am sorry,” the old gentleman said in a gentle, apologetic baritone. “Did I hurt you?”
“No, of course not,” she replied distractedly, then caught the sounds of approaching footsteps hurrying in her wake. Where was the shoe? Her skirt was so full she couldn’t see—
“Oh, hell,” Amanda muttered, and fled. She raced down the steps and dove headfirst through the open door of the waiting limo.
—
The old gentleman, large, bulky, smilingly benign, chuckled softly as he gazed down at the delicate glass slipper.
“Now, then,” he murmured to himself.
And with a speed and silence astonishing for a man of his size and age, he faded back into the shadows.
Love stories you’ll never forget
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