Ugh.
Of course it seemed silly to worry about being branded as the type who sleeps with the boss. Having an affair with a drop-dead sexy prince trumped any other gossip. “How long has it been since you saw your father?”
Tony looked up from his laptop slowly. “I left the island when I was eighteen.”
“Island?” Her hand grazed the covered window as she envisioned water below. “I thought you left San Rinaldo as a young boy.”
“We did.” He closed the computer and pivoted the chair toward her, stretching his legs until his feet stopped intimately close to hers. “I was five at the time. We relocated to another island about a month after we escaped.”
She scrunched her toes in her gym shoes. Her scuffed canvas was worlds away from his polished loafers and a private plane. And regardless of how hot he looked, she wouldn’t be seduced by the trappings of his wealth.
Forcing her mind back on his words rather than his body, she drew her legs away from him. Was the island on the east coast or west coast? Provided Enrique Medina’s compound was even near the U.S. “Your father chose an island so you and your brothers would feel at home in your new place?”
He looked at her over the white tulips centered on the cherry coffee table. “My father chose an island because it was easier to secure.”
Gulp. “Oh. Right.”
That took the temperature down more than a few degrees. She picked at the piping on the sofa.
Music drifted from the back of the plane, the sound of a new cartoon starting. She glanced down the walkway. Kolby was buckled into a seat, munching on some kind of crackers while watching the movie, mesmerized. Most likely by the whopping big flat screen.
Back to her questions. “How much of you is real and what’s a part of the new identity?”
“My age and birthday are real.” He tucked the laptop into an oversized briefcase monogrammed with the Castillo Shipping Corporation logo. “Even my name is technically correct, as I told you before. Castillo comes from my mother’s family tree. I took it as my own when I turned eighteen.”
Resting her elbow on the back of the sofa, she propped her head in her palm, trying her darnedest to act as casual as he appeared. “What does your father think of all you’ve accomplished since leaving?”
“I wouldn’t know.” He reclined, folding his hands over his stomach, drawing her eyes and memories to his rock-hard abs.
Her toes curled again until they cracked inside her canvas sneakers. “What does he think of us coming now?”
“You’ll have to ask him.” His jaw flexed.
“Did you even tell him about the extra guests?” She resisted the urge to smooth the strain away from the bunched tendons in his neck. How odd to think of comforting him when she still had so many reservations about the trip herself.
“I told his lawyer to inform him. His staff will make preparations. Kolby will have whatever he needs.”
Who was this coolly factual man a hand stretch away? She almost wondered if she’d imagined carefree Tony…except he’d told her that he liked to surf. She clung to that everyday image and dug deeper.
“Sounds like you and your father aren’t close. Or is that just the way royalty communicates?” If so, how sad was that?
He didn’t answer, the drone of the engines mingling with the cartoon and the rush of recycled air through the vents. While she wanted her son to grow up independent with a life of his own, she also planned to forge a bond closer than cold communications exchanged between lawyers and assistants.
“Tony?”
His eyes shifted to the shuttered window beside her head. “I didn’t want to live on a secluded island any longer. So I left. He disagreed. We haven’t resolved the issue.”
Such simple words for so deep a breach where attorneys handled all communiqués between them. The lack of communication went beyond distant to estrangement. This wasn’t a family just fractured by location. Something far deeper was wrong.
Tucking back into his line of sight, she pressed ahead. This man had already left such a deep imprint on her life, she knew she wouldn’t forget him. “What have your lawyers told your father about Kolby and me? What did they tell your dad about our relationship?”
“Relationship?” He pinned her with his dark eyes, the intensity of his look—of him—reaching past the tulips as tangibly as if he’d taken that broad hand and caressed her. He was such a big man with the gentlest of touches.
And he was thorough. God, how he was thorough.
Her heart pounded in her ear like a tympani solo, hollow and so loud it drowned out the engines.
“Tony?” she asked. She wanted.
“I let him know that we’re a couple. And that you’re a widow with a son.”
It was one thing to carry on a secret affair with him. Another to openly acknowledge to people—to family—that they were a couple.
She pressed hard against her collarbone, her pulse pushing a syncopated beat against her fingertips. “Why not tell your father the truth? That we broke up but the press won’t believe it.”
“Who says it’s not the truth? We slept together just a week ago. Seems like less than that to me, because I swear I can still catch a whiff of your scent on my skin.” He leaned closer and thumbed her wrist.
Her fingers curled as the heat of his touch spread farther. “But about last weekend—”
“Shanny.” He tapped her lips once, then traced her rounded sigh. “We may have argued, but when I’m in the room with you, my hand still gravitates to your back by instinct.”
Her heart drummed faster until she couldn’t have responded even if she tried. But she wasn’t trying, too caught up in the sound of him, the desire in his every word.
“The pull between us is that strong, Shannon, whether I’m deep inside you or just listening to you across a room.” A half smile kicked a dimple into one cheek. “Why do you think I call you late at night?”
She glanced quickly at the video area checking to make sure her son and the steward where still engrossed in Disney, then she whispered, “Because you’d finished work?”
“You know better. Just the sound of you on the other end of the line sends me rock—”
“Stop, please.” She pressed her fingers to his mouth. “You’re only hurting us both.”
Nipping her fingers lightly first, he linked his hand with hers. “We have problems, without a doubt, and you have reason to be mad. But the drive to be together hasn’t eased one bit. Can you deny it? Because if you can, then that is it. I’ll keep my distance.”