Carrying The King's Pride. Дженнифер Хейворд

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      He inclined his head. “Kala.” Fine.

      She breathed an inward sigh of relief and sat back against the seat. Nik sank his hands into her waist, dragged her onto his lap and captured her jaw in his fingers. “You haven’t properly said hello.”

      A wave of heat blanketed her. “We’re in the car...”

      “It’s never bothered you before. “ He lowered his head, his firm beautiful mouth brushing against hers. “And it’s only a kiss.”

      And yet a kiss from Nik could be disastrous. Her lashes lowered as he captured her mouth in the most persuasive of caresses. Gentle, insistent, he claimed her again and again until her traitorous body responded, lighting up for him as it always did. Her lips clung to his, seeking closer contact.

      Gathering her to him, Nik deepened the kiss, his fingers at her jaw holding her captive as he explored the softness of her lips, the recesses of her mouth. All of her.

      A soft sound left her throat, her fingers curling in the thick hair at the base of his neck. Nik lifted his mouth from hers, a satisfied glitter in his eyes. “Now you don’t look like a cardboard cutout. You look insanely beautiful tonight, Sofía.”

      “Efharisto.” Thank you. A word he had taught her in his language. “And you,” she murmured, “had your usual throng of fans.”

      His eyes glittered. “Jealous? Is that what has you off center for once? If so, I like it.”

      The taunt knocked some common sense into her head. She pushed a hand against his chest and forced him to let her go. Sliding off his lap, she took her seat back and straightened her hair. Searched desperately for a source of innocuous conversation to fill the space.

      “Congratulations on your big deal. The analysts half expected it to fall through.”

      He inclined his head. “I thought it might at one point. But making the impossible happen is my forte.”

      She smiled. No ego there. But why wouldn’t there be? First in his class at Harvard, a genius with numbers and forging high-stakes deals, the Wizard of Wall Street as he was known, he had turned his tiny Mediterranean island of Akathinia, a glittering former colonial jewel that hosted much of the world’s glitterati, into a thriving, modern economy over the past decade, his reckless, some would say suicidal, deal making paying off with deep dividends for his country. It was the envy of the Mediterranean.

      She shook her head. “Your need to win is insatiable, Nik.”

      “Yes,” he said deliberately, his gaze trained on her. “It is.”

      A flush heated her cheeks. He had set out to win her after her initial resistance to his invitation to dinner and succeeded. Not a fair game, really, when she’d discovered the reckless, rebel prince had far more layers than anyone thought. Brilliant and deep with a philosophical side few knew about, he was undeniably fascinating.

      She leaned her head back against the seat and eyed him. “What happens when winning isn’t enough anymore?”

      His lashes lowered in that sleepy, half-awake big cat look he did so well, when he was anything but. “I think I’m in the process of finding that out.”

      She blinked. It was the first deeply personal insight he’d given her. To have it come tonight of all nights was confusing. Tangled her up in a knot.

      Carlos dropped them off. They rode the elevator, reserved exclusively for the penthouses, to the fifty-seventh floor and Nik’s palatial abode.

      Sofía kicked off her shoes while Nik opened a bottle of Prosecco and walked through to the salon with its magnificent views of the park, the floor-to-ceiling windows encasing the luxurious space offering a bird’s-eye view of the Empire State Building and the sweep of the city with its breathtaking 360-degree perspective.

      A light throb pulsed at her temples as she stood in front of the windows and took in the view. Lights blazed across the smoky, steamy New York skyline, as if a million falling stars had been embraced by the sweeping skyscrapers.

      Nik’s spicy aftershave filled her senses just before he materialized by her side with two glasses of sparkling wine. Tipping her glass toward him in the European-style version of the toast he preferred, her eyes on his, she drank.

      Finding Nik’s seeking gaze far too perceptive, she looked back at the view, following a jet as it made its way across the sky, silhouetted against the skyscrapers. It reminded her of what tomorrow was. Had her wondering if that was why she had chosen tonight to end this. Because it had reminded her of her priorities.

      “You’re thinking about your father.”

      “Yes. Tomorrow is the twentieth anniversary of his death.”

      “Has it gotten any easier?”

      Did it ever get any easier when your father’s plane dropped from the air into the Atlantic Ocean because of faulty mechanics that, properly addressed, could have saved his life? When it had cost her the guiding force of her life?

      “You learn to let it go,” she said huskily. “Accept that things don’t always make sense in life. Sometimes they just happen. If I had allowed my anger, my sadness, my bitterness at the unfairness of it all to rule me, it’s I who would have lost.”

      “An inherently philosophical way to look at it. But you were only eight when it happened, Sofía. It must have affected you deeply.”

      That seemed too slight a description for what had unraveled after that phone call in the middle of the night—her mother in her grief—her childhood ripped away in the space of a few hours with one parent gone and the other so emotionally vacant she might as well have been, too.

      “I have an understanding of what it’s like to lose something precious.” She moved her gaze back to his. “It makes you aware of how easily it can all fall apart.”

      “And yet sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you go on to make something of yourself. Create and run a successful business...”

      Her mouth twisted. “Which could also fall apart if the market changes.”

      “Any business could fall apart if the market changes. It’s the reality of being in the game. You don’t anticipate failure, you believe in your vision.”

      She absorbed the verbal hand slap.

      “How did you fund the business?” he asked. “You never did tell me.”

      “The airline was at fault for my father’s accident. Faulty mechanics. The settlement was held in trust for me until I turned twenty-one. I put myself through design school on a scholarship in the meantime.”

      “What was the ultimate intention? The business or the designing?”

      “Both. My first love is designing, but I put that on hold when we started the business. We needed to get the store in the black, pay off some investments. Now I finally feel like we’re getting to the point where we can hire some staff and I can work on a line for the store.”

      “How many years have you been open now?”

      “Six.”

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