Lucy Monroe - Prince of Secrets

The plan had been to give her a small taste of passion before leaving the apartment, to flirt with Chanel in subtly sexual ways over dinner and then leave her after a make-out session that left her wanting more.

Gaining her acquiescence to a hasty marriage with the prenuptial agreement the royal family’s lawyers had already drawn up required strict adherence to his carefully thought out strategy.

The plan was to keep her reason clouded by emotion, unfulfilled lust built into consuming desire being the primary element.

He didn’t plan to consummate their relationship for another week, at least. He wanted her blinded by her own physical wants, ready to commit to him sexually and emotionally.

Instead, he felt like an untried boy gasping for the chance to feel up under her skirt.

“Are you okay?” Chanel asked, worry in her tone.

Shaking off the disturbing thoughts, he gave her his most winning smile. “Of course. I am here with you, aren’t I?”

“Don’t say things like that.” Her frown was far too serious for his liking.

“Why not, when they are true?”

“They don’t sound true.” There was too much knowing in her gray eyes for his comfort. “That smile you give me sometimes, it’s just like a plastic mannequin.”

How odd that she should claim to know the difference. No one doubted his sincerity.

A smile was a smile. Except when it wasn’t. As he well knew but had not expected his less-than-socially-adept companion to. Taken aback, he sat down, noting as he did so the interested looks of their neighbors.

He turned the smile on them. “What do you say? Am I sincere?” he asked an older woman wearing something he was sure fit a lecture hall better than a formal dinner hosted in the Hilton ballroom.

Her returning smile was the besotted one he was used to getting from women. Even academics. “Very. Perhaps your companion can’t help her insecurities. Women like us don’t usually snag such lovely escorts.”

Chanel made a small, almost wounded sound next to him.

Before he could respond to it, the short, rather round man beside the older woman puffed up like a rooster. “Is that meant to imply that I am not as imposing?”

The woman looked at her date, and the smile she gave him shone with the kind of emotion Demyan found incomprehensible. “No, you are not, and that’s exactly the way I love you. I would not have married you nearly forty years ago and stayed this long otherwise.”

Feathers suitably smoothed, the man relaxed again in his chair, even deigning to give a somewhat superior smile to Demyan before turning to his wife. “Love you, too, m’dear.”

The older couple became obviously lost in a moment Demyan felt uncomfortable witnessing. He turned his attention to Chanel, only to find her frowning, her expression sad and troubled.

“What is it?”

“She’s right. You don’t belong with me.”

“That is not what she said, Chanel.” He put his hand on the green-silk-clad thigh closest to him. “I would say there is great evidence to the contrary.”

“What do you mean?”

He did not answer, but his expression was as meaningful as he could make it.

He could tell the exact moment all the tumblers clicked into place in Chanel’s scientific brain.

Her eyes widened, color surging up her neck into her face. “That’s just chemistry. A kiss hardly constitutes a claim.”

On that, he could not agree. Loss of control or not, their kiss had been a definite claim-staking on his part. “I’m surprised a woman of your education would declare there was anything mere about chemistry.”

“We’re here.”

“And?”

“And if the chemistry was so amazing, we wouldn’t be.”

He couldn’t believe she’d said that. He’d damn near ruined a pair of Armani trousers because of the heat between them.

They were not back at her apartment making love for two important reasons only, and neither had a thing to do with how much he’d wanted what she offered so innocently.

Making love tonight wasn’t according to plan. Even if it had been, Demyan would have changed the plan because he’d needed the distance from his passion.

He couldn’t tell her that, though. Not even close. “I thought you wanted to hear this lecture.”

“I did.”

He let one brow quirk.

“I do,” she admitted with the truculence of a child, made all the more charming because he was fairly certain she had not been a truculent child.

Just a very different one than her mother had expected her to be.

From everything he’d learned about her, both from the investigative dossier and herself, Chanel Tanner took after her father, not her mother. Not even a little. Mrs. Saltzman had clearly found that very trying when raising her daughter.

An hour later, Chanel looked up from the furious notes she’d been taking for the past twenty minutes on her smartphone. “I’m enjoying myself. Thank you.”

A genuine smile creased his lips. “You’re welcome.”

He liked seeing her like this, enthusiastic, clearly in her element.

“Dr. Beers has made at least two points I hadn’t considered before. They’re definitely worth additional consideration and research.” Chanel glowed with satisfaction Demyan found oddly enticing.

He liked this confident side of her.

Afterward, Demyan made sure she got the opportunity to talk to not only the visiting lecturer but also the head of the university department overseeing her lab’s research.

Her boss, who had attended the dinner as well, kept shooting her accusing glances from across the ballroom.

Demyan observed, “The head of your research is not happy to see you here.”

“He doesn’t like any of his assistants to make connections outside the department.” Chanel didn’t sound particularly bothered by that fact.

“That is very shortsighted.”

“He’s a brilliant scientist, but petty as a human being.” She shrugged. “I have no aspirations to run my own lab.”

“Why not?”

“Too much politics involved.” She looked almost guilty. “I like the science.”

That sounded like what Demyan knew of her father. “Why the frown?”

“My mother and stepfather would be a lot happier if I had more ambition, or any at all, really.”

“Yes?”

“When Yurkovich Tanner offered my schooling scholarship, they made it clear I could attend any school I wanted to.”

This was not news to Demyan, but perhaps she would explain why she’d opted for a local state school when she’d had the brains, the grades and the SAT scores to attend MIT, or the like.

“You graduated from Washington State University.”

“It was close to home. I didn’t want to move away.”

Pity. It might have done both Chanel and her mother a world of good. “You were still looking for a relationship with your mother.”

He understood that, though he’d never told another soul. His parents had given him up in everything but name, but he’d never cut ties completely with them.

He’d spent his angst-ridden teen years waiting for them to wake up and realize he was still their son. It hadn’t happened and by the time he left to attend university in the States, he’d come to accept it never would.

“I think I still am,” Chanel answered with a melancholy he did not like.

“You are very different people.”

“I’m the odd one.”

“You are not odd.” Unique, but not in a bad way.

“I wasn’t the daughter she wanted. My younger sister is the much-improved model.”

“That’s ridiculous. You are exactly as you should be.”

“Sometimes even I think you’re being sincere.”

Once again, she’d startled him. Because she was right. In that moment, he’d been speaking nothing but the truth with no thought of his final agenda.