Crown Prince's Chosen Bride Read online

  She spluttered to a halt. ‘You don’t want to know about the wharves? Okay, on the left-hand side—I mean the port side—is Luna Park and...’

  Tristan lowered his hand. Moved closer to her. So close they were just kissing distance apart. She tried not to look at his mouth. That full lower lip...the upper lip slightly narrower. A sensual mouth was another definite asset in a man. So was his ability to kiss.

  She flushed and put her hand to her forehead. Why was she letting her thoughts run riot on what Tristan would be like to kiss? She took a step back, only to feel the railing press into her back. It was a little scary that she was thinking this way about a man she barely knew.

  ‘There’s no need for you to act like a tour guide,’ he said. ‘The first day I got here I took a guided tour of the harbour.’

  ‘But you asked me to show you the insider’s Sydney. The Wharf Theatre is a favourite place of mine and—’

  ‘That was just a ploy,’ he said.

  Gemma caught her breath. ‘A ploy?’

  ‘I had to see you again. I thought there was more chance of you agreeing to show me around than if I straight out asked you to dinner.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, momentarily lost for words. ‘Or...or lunch on the harbour?’

  Her heart started to thud so hard she thought surely he must hear it—even over the faint thrumming of the boat’s motor, the sound of people calling out to each other on the cruiser that was passing them, the squawk of the seagulls wheeling over the harbour wall, where a fisherman had gutted his catch.

  ‘That is correct,’ Tristan said.

  ‘So...so you had to find another way?’ To think that all the time she’d spent thinking about him, he’d been thinking about her.

  For the first time Gemma detected a crack in Tristan’s self-assured confidence. His hands were thrust deep into the pockets of his white trousers. ‘I...I had to see if you were as...as wonderful as I remembered,’ he said, and his accent was more pronounced.

  She loved the way he rolled his r’s. Without that accent, without the underlying note of sincerity, his words might have sounded sleazy. But they didn’t. They sent a shiver of awareness and anticipation up her spine.

  ‘And...and are you disappointed?’

  She wished now that she’d worn something less utilitarian than a T-shirt—even though it was a very smart, fitted T-shirt, with elbow-length sleeves—and sneakers. They were work clothes. Not ‘lunching with a hot guy’ clothes. Still, if she’d had to dress with the thought of impressing Tristan, she might still be back at her apartment, with the contents of her wardrobe scattered all over the bed.

  ‘Not at all,’ he said.

  He didn’t need to say the words. The appreciation in his eyes said it all. Her hand went to her heart to steady its out-of-control thud.

  ‘Me neither. I mean, I’m not disappointed in you.’ Aargh, could she sound any dumber? ‘I thought you were pretty wonderful, too. I...I regretted that I knocked back your request for me to show you around. But...but I had my reasons.’

  His dark eyebrows rose. ‘Reasons? Not just the company rules?’

  ‘Those, too. When we first started the business, we initiated a “no dating the clients” rule. It made sense.’

  ‘Yet I believe your business partner Andie married a client, so that rule cannot be set in concrete.’

  ‘How did you know that?’ She answered her own question, ‘Of course—Jake Marlowe.’ The best friend of the groom. ‘You’re right. But Andie was the exception.’ Up until now there had been no client who had made Gemma want to bend the rules.

  ‘And the other reasons?’

  ‘Personal. I...I came out of a bad relationship more...more than a little wounded.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ His eyes searched her face. ‘And now?’

  She took a deep breath. Finally she had that heartbeat under control. ‘I’ve got myself sorted,’ she said, not wanting to give any further explanation.

  ‘You don’t wear a ring. I assumed you were single.’ He paused. ‘Are you single?’

  Gemma was a bit taken aback by the directness of his question. ‘Very single,’ she said. Did that sound too enthusiastic? As if she were making certain he knew she was available?

  Gemma curled her hands into fists. She had to stop second guessing everything she said. Tristan had thought she was wonderful in her apron, all flushed from the heat of the oven and without a scrap of make-up. She had to be herself. Not try and please a man by somehow attempting to be what he wanted her to be. She’d learned that from her mother—and it was difficult to unlearn.

  Her birth father had died before she was born and her mother, Aileen, had brought Gemma up on her own until she was six. Then her mother had met Dennis.

  He had never wanted children but had grudgingly accepted Gemma as part of a package deal when he’d married Aileen. Her mother had trained Gemma to be grateful to her stepfather for having taken her on. To keep him happy by always being a sweet little girl, by forgiving his moody behaviour, his lack of real affection.

  Gemma had become not necessarily a people pleaser but a man pleaser. She believed that was why she’d put up with Alistair’s bad behaviour for so long. It was a habit she was determined to break.

  She decided to take charge of the conversation. ‘What about you, Tristan? Are you single, too?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you ever been married?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I...I haven’t met the right woman. And you?’

  ‘Same. I haven’t met the right man.’ Boy, had she met some wrong ones. But those days were past. No more heartbreakers.

  The swell from a passing ferry made her rock unsteadily on her feet as she swayed with the sudden motion of the boat.

  Tristan caught her elbow to steady her. ‘You okay?’ he said.

  The action brought him close to her. So close she could feel the strength in his body, smell the fresh scent of him that hinted at sage and woodlands and the mountain country he came from. There was something so different about him—almost a sense of other. It intrigued her, excited her.

  ‘F-fine, thank you,’ she stuttered.

  His grip, though momentary, had been firm and warm on her arm, and her reaction to the contact disconcerted her. She found herself trembling a little. Those warning antennae waved so wildly she felt light-headed. She shouldn’t be feeling this intense attraction to someone she knew so little about. It was against her every resolve.

  She took another steadying breath, as deep as she could without looking too obvious. The Argus had left the Harbour Bridge behind. ‘We’re on home territory for me now,’ she said, in a determinedly conversational tone. ‘Come over to this side and I’ll show you.’

  ‘You live around here?’ he said as he followed her.

  ‘See over there?’ She waved to encompass the park that stretched to the water under the massive supports for the bridge overhead, the double row of small shops, the terraced houses, the multi-million-dollar apartments that sat at the edge of the water. ‘You can just see the red-tiled roof of my humble apartment block.’

  Tristan walked over to the railing, leaned his elbows on the top, looked straight ahead. Gemma stood beside him, very aware that their shoulders were almost nudging.

  ‘Sydney does not disappoint me,’ he said finally.

  ‘I’m glad to hear that,’ she said. ‘What made you come here on your vacation?’

  He shrugged. ‘Australia is a place I always wanted to see. So far from Europe. Like the last frontier.’

  Again, Gemma sensed he was leaving out more than he was saying. Her self-protection antennae were waving furiously. She had finetuned them in those six months of sabbatical, so determined not to fall into old traps, make old mistakes. Would he share more with h
er by the end of the day?

  ‘I think you need to travel west of Sydney to see actual last-frontier territory,’ she said. ‘No kangaroos hopping around the place here.’

  ‘I would like to see kangaroos that aren’t in a zoo,’ he said. He turned to face her. ‘Living in Sydney must be like living in a resort,’ he said.

  Gemma tried to see the city she’d lived in all her life through his eyes. It wasn’t that she took the beauty of the harbour for granted—it was just that she saw it every day. ‘I hadn’t thought about it like that but, yes, I see what you mean,’ she said. Although she’d worked too hard ever to think she was enjoying a resort lifestyle.

  ‘Do you like living here?’ he said.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Though I haven’t actually lived anywhere else to compare. Sometimes I think I’d like to try a new life in another country. If Party Queens hadn’t been such a success, I might have looked for a job as a chef in France. But in the meantime Sydney suits me.’

  ‘I envy you in some ways,’ he said. ‘Your freedom. The lack of stifling tradition.’

  She wondered at the note of yearning in his voice.

  ‘There’s a lot more to Sydney than these areas, of course,’ she said. ‘The Blue Mountains are worth seeing.’ She stopped herself from offering to show them to him. He didn’t want a tour guide. She didn’t want to get too involved. This was just lunch.

  ‘I would like to see more, but I go back home on Monday afternoon. With the party on Friday, there is not much time.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ she said, keeping her voice light and neutral. She knew this—Tristan—was only for today...an interlude. But she already had the feeling that a day, a week, a month wouldn’t ever be enough time with him.

  ‘I have responsibilities I must return to.’ His tone of voice indicated that he might not be 100 per cent happy about that.

  ‘With your family’s corporation? Maybe you could consider opening an Australian branch of the business here,’ she said.

  He looked ahead of him, and she realised he was purposely not meeting her eyes. ‘I’m afraid that is not possible—delightful as the thought might be.’

  He turned away from the railing and went over to where he had put down her bag. Again, he pretended it was too heavy to carry, though she could see that with his muscles it must be effortless for him.

  ‘Let’s stash your bag somewhere safe and see about that coffee.’

  ‘You don’t want to see more sights?’

  He paused, her bag held by his side. ‘Haven’t I made it clear, Gemma? Forgive my English if I haven’t. I’ve seen a lot of sights in the time I’ve been in Australia. In the days I have left the only sight I want to see more of is you.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  TRISTAN SAT OPPOSITE Gemma at a round table inside the cabin. After his second cup of coffee—strong and black—he leaned back in his chair and sighed his satisfaction.

  ‘Excellent coffee, thank you,’ he said. Of all the good coffee he’d enjoyed in Australia, he rated this the highest.

  Gemma looked pleased. ‘We’re very fussy about coffee at Party Queens—single origin, fair trade, the best.’

  ‘It shows,’ Tristan said.

  He liked Party Queens’ meticulous attention to detail. It was one of the reasons he felt confident that his reception on Friday would be everything he wanted it to be—although for reasons of security he hadn’t shared with them the real nature of the gathering.

  ‘Not true,’ Tristan muttered under his breath in his own language. He could have told Eliza by now. The reason he was holding back on the full facts was that he wanted to delay telling Gemma the truth about himself for as long as possible. Things would not be the same once his anonymity was gone.

  ‘I’m glad you like the coffee. How about the food?’ she asked.

  Her forehead was pleated with the trace of a frown, and he realised she was anxious about his opinion.

  ‘Excellent,’ he pronounced. Truth be told, he’d scarcely noticed it. Who would be interested in food when he could feast his eyes on the beautiful woman in front of him?

  To please her, he gave his full attention to the superbly arranged fruit platter that included some of the ripe mangoes he had come to enjoy in Queensland. There was also a selection of bite-sized cookies—both savoury, with cheese, and sweet, studded with nuts—arranged on the bottom tier of a silver stand. On the top tier were small square cakes covered in dark chocolate and an extravagant coating of shredded coconut.

  ‘It all looks very good,’ he said.

  ‘I know there’s more food than we can possibly eat, but we knew nothing about your lunch date and her tastes in food,’ Gemma said.

  ‘In that case I hope you chose food you liked,’ he said.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I did,’ she said, with a delightful display of dimples.

  ‘What is this cake with the coconut?’ he asked.

  ‘You haven’t seen a lamington before?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘If Australia had a national cake it would be the lamington,’ she said. ‘They say it was created in honour of Lord Lamington, a nineteenth-century governor.’

  ‘So this cake has illustrious beginnings?’

  ‘You could call it a grand start for a humble little cake. In this case they are perhaps more illustrious, as I made them using the finest Montovian chocolate.’

  ‘A Montovian embellishment of an Australian tradition?’

  ‘I suspect our traditions are mere babies compared to yours,’ she said with another flash of dimples. ‘Would you like to try one?’

  Tristan bit into a lamington. ‘Delicious.’

  Truth be told, he preferred lighter food. He had to sit through so many official dinners, with course after rich course, that he ate healthily when he had the choice. The mangoes were more to his taste. But he would not hurt her feelings by telling her so.

  Gemma looked longingly at the rest of the cakes. ‘I have the world’s sweetest tooth—which is a problem in this job. I have to restrict myself to just little tastes of what we cook, or I’d be the size of a house.’

  ‘You’re in very good shape,’ he said.

  She had a fabulous body. Slim, yet with alluring curves. He found it almost impossible to keep his eyes from straying to it. He would have liked to say more about how attractive he found her, but it would not be appropriate. Not yet...perhaps not ever.

  She flushed high on her cheekbones. ‘Thank you. I wasn’t fishing for a compliment.’

  ‘I know that,’ he said.

  The mere fact that she was so unassuming about her beauty made him want to shower her with compliments. To praise the cuteness of her freckles, her sensational curves. To admit to the way he found himself wanting to make her smile just to see her dimples.

  There was so much he found pleasing about her. But he was not in a position to express his interest. Gemma wasn’t a vacation-fling kind of girl—he’d realised that the moment he met her. And that was all he could ever offer her.

  It was getting more difficult by the minute to keep that at the top of his mind.

  ‘I’ll try just half a lamington and then some fruit,’ she said.

  She sliced one into halves with a knife and slowly nibbled on one half with an expression of bliss, her eyes half closed. As she licked a stray shred of coconut from her lovely bow-shaped top lip, she tilted back her head and gave a little moan of pleasure.

  Tristan shifted in his seat, gripped the edge of the table so hard it hurt. It was impossible for his thoughts not to stray to speculation about her appetite for other pleasures, to how she would react to his mouth on hers, his touch...

  There was still a small strand of coconut at the corner of her mouth. He ached to lean across the table, taste the
chocolate on her lips, lick away that stray piece of coconut.

  She looked at him through eyes still half narrowed with sensual appreciation. ‘The Montovian chocolate makes that the best lamington I’ve ever tasted.’

  She should always have chocolate from Montovia.

  Tristan cleared his throat. He had to keep their conversation going to distract himself. In his hedonistic past he had been immune to the seduction techniques of worldly, sophisticated temptresses, who knew exactly what they were doing as they tried to snare a prince. Yet the unconscious provocation of this lovely girl eating a piece of cake was making him fall apart.

  ‘I believe you’re a trained chef?’ he said. ‘Tell me how that happened.’

  ‘How I became a chef? Do you really need to know that?’

  ‘I know very little about you. I need to know everything.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, delightfully disconcerted, the flush deepening on her creamy skin. ‘If that’s what you want...’

  ‘It is what I want,’ he said, unable to keep the huskiness from his voice. There was so much more he wanted from her, but it was impossible for him to admit to the desire she was arousing in him.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I was always interested in food. My mother wasn’t really into cooking and was delighted to let me take over the kitchen whenever I wanted.’ She helped herself to some grapes, snipping them from the bunch with a tiny pair of silver scissors.

  ‘So you decided to make a career of it?’ It wouldn’t be an easy life, he imagined. Hard physical work, as well as particular skills required and—

  He completely lost his train of thought. Instead he watched, spellbound, as Gemma popped the fat, purple grapes one by one into her luscious mouth.

  Inwardly, he groaned. This was almost unbearable.

  ‘Actually, I was all set to be a nutritionist,’ she said, seemingly unaware of the torment she was putting him through by the simple act of eating some fruit. ‘I started a degree at the University of Newcastle, which is north of Sydney. I stayed up there during the vacations and—’

  ‘Why was that? I went to university in England but came home for at least part of every vacation.’