The Montoros Affair: The Princess and the Player / Maid for a Magnate / A Royal Temptation. Charlene Sands
She spotted her cousin Juan Carlos Salazar across the room and nearly groaned. While they’d grown up together after his parents died, he’d always been too serious. Why wasn’t he in Del Sol managing something?
Of course, he looked up at that moment and their gazes met. He wove through the crowd to clasp Will’s hand and murmur his appreciation for the party to his hosts. Juan Carlos was the kind of guy who always did the right thing and at the same time, made everyone else look as if they were doing the wrong thing. It was a skill.
“Bella, are you enjoying the party?” he asked politely.
“Very much,” she lied, just as politely because she had skills, too, just not any that Juan Carlos would appreciate. “I saw Tía Isabella. I’m so glad she decided to come to Alma.”
“I am as well. Though she probably shouldn’t be traveling.” Juan Carlos frowned over his grandmother’s stubbornness, which Bella had always thought was one of her best traits. “Uncle Rafael tried to talk her out of it but she insisted.”
The Montoros all had a stubborn streak but Bella’s father took the cake. Time for a new subject. “How are things in the finance business?”
“Very well, thank you.” He shot Will a cryptic glance. “Better now that you’re in Alma working toward important alliances.”
She kept her eyes from rolling. Barely. “Yes, let’s hear it for alliances.”
Juan Carlos and Will launched into a conversation with too many five-syllable words for normal humans to understand, so Bella amused herself by scrutinizing Will as he talked, hoping to gather more clues about his real personality.
As he spoke to Juan Carlos, his attention wandered, and Bella watched him watch a diminutive dark-haired woman in serviceable gray exit by a side door well away from the partygoers. An unfamiliar snap in Will’s gaze had her wondering who the woman was. Or rather, who she was to Will. The woman’s dress clearly marked her as the help.
Will didn’t even seem to notice when Juan Carlos excused himself.
“Do you need to attend to a problem with the servants?” Bella inquired politely.
She’d gone to enough of her parents’ parties to know that a good host kept one eye on the buffet and the other on the bar. Which was why she liked attending parties, not throwing them.
“No. No problem,” Will said grimly and forced his gaze back to Bella’s face. But his mind was clearly elsewhere.
Which told her quite a bit more about the situation than Will probably intended. Perhaps the dark-haired woman represented at least a partial answer for why Will seemed both pained by Bella’s presence and alternatively agreeable to a marriage of convenience.
Bella had come to the party as requested by God and everyone and she deserved a chance with Will. He owed it to her, regardless of whether he had something going on with the diminutive maid.
“Look, Will—”
“Let’s dance.” He grabbed her hand and led her to the dance floor without waiting for an answer, off-loading their champagne glasses onto a waiter’s tray as they passed by.
Okay, then. Dancing happened to be one of her favorite things about parties, along with dressing up and laughing in a private corner with someone she planned to let strip her naked afterward.
For some reason, the thought of getting naked with Will made her skin crawl. Two out of three wasn’t bad, though, was it?
The quartet seated in the corner had switched from chamber music to a slightly less boring bossa nova– inspired piece. Not great, but she had half a chance of finding a groove at least.
Was this how the people of Alma partied? Or had the glitzy Miami social scene spoiled her? Surely not. Alma was one of the wealthiest countries in the European Union. What was she missing?
Halfway into the song, Will had yet to say a word and his impersonal hand at her waist might as well have belonged to an eighty-year-old grandfather. This might go down in history as the first time a man under thirty had danced with her and not used it as an excuse to pull her into his strong embrace. It was as if Will had actually wanted to dance or something.
None of this screamed, “I’m into you.”
Perhaps the problem with this party lay with the host, not the country. Will might need a little encouragement to loosen up.
When the interminably long dance finally ended, Bella smiled and fanned herself as if she’d grown overheated. “My, it’s a little warm in here.”
Will nodded. “I’ll get you another glass of champagne.”
Before he could disappear, she stopped him with a hand on his arm, deliberately leaning into it to make the point. “That’s okay. Let’s go out on the terrace and talk.”
The whole point was to get to know each other. The car trip hadn’t worked. Dancing hadn’t worked. They needed to try something else.
“Maybe in a few minutes,” Will said with a glance around the room at large. “After I’ve played the proper host.”
Disappointment pulled at her mouth but she refused to let a frown ruin her lipstick. “I hope you won’t mind if I escape the heat for a bit by myself.”
For a moment, she wondered if he’d really let her go. He’d invited her, after all, and hadn’t introduced her to one person yet. This was supposed to be a date, wasn’t it?
“Certainly.” Will inclined his head toward the double glass doors off the great room. “I’ll find you later.”
Fuming, Bella wound through the guests to the terrace—by herself!—and wondered when she’d lost her edge. Clearly a secluded terrace with a blonde American in half a dress didn’t appeal to Will Rowling. What did—dark-haired housekeepers?
Great, she thought sourly. Bella had come to the party with the genuine intent of seeing where things might go with Will, because she said she would. Because she’d bought into the hoopla of being a princess, which came with responsibilities she’d never asked for nor wanted any part of.
But she’d done it, only to be hit over the head with the brutal truth yet again. The man her father wanted her to marry had less than zero interest in her as a person. She wouldn’t be surprised to learn Will was perfectly okay with a hard-core marriage of convenience, complete with separate bedrooms and a paramour on the side.
Sounded an awful lot like her parents’ marriage, and that she wanted no part of.
She shuddered, despondent all at once. Was it asking too much for someone to care what she would actually have to sacrifice with this mess her father had created?
The night was breathtaking, studded with stars and a crescent moon. Still, half the stone terrace lay in shadow, which went perfectly with her mood. Leaning on the railing, she glanced down into the crash of ocean against the cliff below.
“Thinking of jumping?”
The male voice emanating from behind her skittered down her spine, washing her in a myriad of emotions as her heart rolled and her pulse quickened. But she didn’t turn to face him because she was afraid if she actually glimpsed James for even a fraction of a second, all of her steely resolve to work things out with his brother would melt like gelato in the sun. And the leftover hot sticky mess would be difficult to clean up indeed.
“Would you stop me?” she murmured.
“No. I’d hold your hand all the way down, though.”
Her eyelids fluttered closed. How had he managed to make that sound so daringly romantic?
The atmosphere shifted as he moved closer. She could feel him behind her, hear the intake of his breath. A sense of anticipation grew in the silence, peppering her skin with goose pimples and awareness.
Before