Maisey Yates - Six Of The Best Of Desire 2016

“Where do you study that?”

“I’ve been accepted into a program in London. I had hoped to pursue nursing in the military to increase my experience, but my government had other plans for me to be a translator.”

A nurse, soon to become a nurse-practitioner? Now, that surprised him. “Very impressive.”

“Thank you.” She nodded regally, a lock of hair sliding free from her twist and caressing her cheek. She tucked it behind her ear. “Now, explain to me what I need to know to speak intelligently about what I saw down on the field with all those musclemen when I return home.”

Standing, he extended an arm to her. “By all means, Princess, I know a little something about European football even though the team I own is an American football team.”

She rose with the elegance of a woman who’d been trained in every manner to grace high-end ballrooms not ball games. And yet she chose to further her education and serve her country in uniform.

Princess-Captain Erika Mitras wasn’t at all what he expected when he’d spotted a foreign dignitary on the guest list. He’d envisioned either a stiff-necked VIP or a football groupie bent on a photo op and a chance to meet the players. He didn’t come across many people who dared tell him they didn’t like football—European or American. In fact, he didn’t have many people in his life who disliked sports. The shipping business might be the source of Reynaud wealth, but football had long been their passion.

How contrary that her disinterest in sports made her all the more appealing. Yes, she aroused him in a way he couldn’t recall having felt about any woman before.

And quite possibly some of that allure had to do with the fact that for once in his life he wasn’t under the scrutiny of the American media. Perhaps if he was careful, he could do something impulsive without worrying about the consequences rippling through his family’s world.

He stepped closer, folding her hand into the crook of his arm, and caught a whiff of a cinnamon scent. “And while I do that, what do you say we enjoy London? Dinner, theater, your choice. Just the two of us.”

Flights could be rescheduled.

She paused to peer up at him, her cool blue eyes roaming his face for a moment before the barest hint of a smile played over her lips. “Only if, after a brief outline of the differences in these football sports, we can agree to no football talk at all?”

“None,” he vowed without hesitation.

“Then it sounds lovely.”

Who knew cinnamon would be such a total turn-on?

One

2 ½ Months Later

New Orleans, Louisiana

Princess Erika Birgitta Inger Freya Mitras of Holsgrof knew how to make a royally memorable appearance.

Her mother had taught her well. And Erika needed all the confidence she could garner striding onto the practice field full of larger-than-life men in training. Most important, she needed all her confidence to face one particular man. The leader of this testosterone domain, the owner of the state-of-the-art training facility where he now presided. Players dotted the field in black-and-gold uniforms, their padded shoulders crashing against each other. Shouts, grunts and curses volleyed. Men who appeared to be trainers or coaches jogged alongside them, barking instructions or blowing whistles.

She’d finished her military stint a month ago, her hopes of serving her country in combat having been sidelined by her parents’ interference. They’d shuffled her into some safe figurehead job that made her realize the family’s Viking-warrior heritage would not be carried on through her. She’d been so disillusioned, adrift and on edge the day she attended the soccer game, she had been reckless.

Too reckless. And that weekend of indulgence brought her here. Now. To New Orleans. To Gervais.

Her Jimmy Choo heels sank into the most plush grass ever as she stepped onto the practice field of the New Orleans Hurricanes. She’d assumed this particularly American game was played on Astroturf. And assumptions were what she had to avoid when it came to her current adventure in the United States.

She had not intended to see Gervais Reynaud again after he left the United Kingdom. Their weekend of dates—and amazing, mind-blowing sex—had been an escape from rules and protocol and everything else that had kept her life rigidly in check for so long. She’d had relationships in the past, carefully chosen and approved. This was her first encounter of her own choosing.

And it had turned out to be far more memorable than she could have ever imagined.

She felt the weight of his eyes from across the open stretch of greenery. Or perhaps he had noticed her only because of the sudden silence. Players now stood still, their shouts dimming to a dull echo.

The rest of the place faded for her while she focused on Gervais Reynaud standing at the foot of the bleachers, as tall as any of the players. He was muscular, more so than the average man but more understated than the men in uniform nearby. She knew he had played in his youth and through college but had chosen a business route in the family’s shipping enterprise until he had bought the New Orleans Hurricanes football team. The American football team. She understood the difference now. She also knew Gervais’s purchase of the team had attracted a great deal of press coverage in business and sports media alike.

He had not told her much about his life, but before she made her trip here she had made a point of learning more about him and his family.

It certainly was amazing what a few internet searches could reveal.

Tracing their ancestry deep into Acadian history, the Reynaud family first built their fortune in shipping, a business that his grandfather patriarch Leon Reynaud had expanded into a thriving cruise ship company. Leon also turned a love of sports into another successful venture when he’d purchased shares in a Texas football team, learning the business from the inside out. His elder son, Christophe, inherited the shares but promptly sold them to buy a baseball team, creating a deep family rift.

Leon passed his intense love of football to his younger son, Theo, whose promising career as a quarterback in Atlanta was cut short due to injury and excess after his marriage to a celebrated supermodel fell apart. Theo had three sons from his marriage, Gervais, Henri and Jean-Pierre, and one from an earlier affair, Dempsey. All of the sons inherited a passion for the game, playing in college and groomed for the NFL.

While the elder two sons broke ties with their father to bring corporate savvy to the front office of the relatively new team, the younger two sons both continued their careers on the field. The Reynaud brothers were especially well-known in Louisiana, where their football exploits were discussed—as much a topic of conversation as the women in their lives. She’d overheard references to each in the lobby of the five-star hotel where she’d spent the night in New Orleans.

Would she be the topic of such conversation once her “encounter” with Gervais became public knowledge? There would be no way to hide it from his football world much longer.

Football. A game she still cared very little about, a fact he had teased her about during their weekend together, a weekend where they had spent more time undressed than clothed. Her gaze was drawn back to that well-honed body of his that had made such passionate love to her.

His dark eyes heated her with memories as he strode toward her. His long legs ate the ground in giant slices, his khakis and sports jacket declaring him in the middle of a workday. He stopped in front of her, his broad shoulders blocking the sun and casting his handsome face in shadows. But she didn’t have to see to know his jaw would be peppered with the stubble that seemed to grow in seconds after he shaved. Her fingers—her body—remembered the texture of that rasp well.