Bride By Royal Decree. Caitlin Crews
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such thing. “Crude and disrespectful at once. My ancestors turn in their graves as we speak.” His voice was rich and deeply cultured, his English spiced by the hint of something else entirely. Maggy loathed the part of her that wanted to know what that something else was. Needed to know it, even. The man only gazed down at her, a faint frown marring the granite perfection of his dark, arrogant brow. “Why are you blonde?”
Maggy blinked. Then, worse, lifted a hand to the hair she’d dyed blonde three days ago because she’d decided blonde made her look more approachable than her natural dark chestnut color.
Then she went a little cold as his implication settled deep in her gut.
“Why are you watching me?” she demanded. Not in any sort of approachable manner, because there was friendly and then there was freaked out, and she was already a little too close to the latter. “Are you a stalker?”
There was a slight noise from the goons behind her at the counter, as if they’d reacted to that, but the man before her merely moved one of his index fingers. That was all. He was wearing the sort of buttery soft leather gloves she’d be afraid to touch with her rough hands and he merely lifted one finger. And that was that. Instant silence.
“You do not know who I am.”
It wasn’t a question. If anything, it seemed like an indictment.
“You do realize,” Maggy said slowly, sitting back on her heels and wondering if she could use her bucket and sponge as some kind of weapon if things got serious here, “that anyone who asks that question is basically outing themselves as a giant, irredeemable douche.”
His brow rose as if he had never heard the term. But there was no question, as his gray eyes glittered, that he recognized it as the insult it was.
Maggy had the strangest notion he was unused to insults altogether. And perhaps astonished that she dared change that. It meant he was even more of an untouchable rich guy than she’d already imagined—but she couldn’t figure out why recognizing that made her a little breathless.
“I beg your pardon.” His voice was dark. It rolled through her, making that breathless feeling worse and her chest feel tight besides. “A douche? Is that what you called me?”
She tipped her chin up in that way a battalion of counselors and former employers had told her was aggressive, and pretended not to notice the emphasis he put on that last word.
“The coffee shop is closed,” she said flatly. “Please gather your goon squad and go and in future? Maybe take a moment or two to consider the fact that marching around with a pack of armed men with potential steroid problems isn’t necessary when you’re after a cup of coffee.”
The man did nothing for a moment but gaze down at her, his dark eyes assessing in a way that washed over her and left strange goose bumps in their wake. Then he thrust his hands into the pockets of his trousers, widening his stance, in a manner that should have looked more casual. But didn’t.
“Tell me,” he said in that same commanding voice that seemed to resonate deep inside of her. “Do you have a small birthmark behind your left ear? Shaped like a lopsided heart?”
Maggy felt cold. As frigid as the winter air that had rushed inside when they’d arrived.
“No,” she said. Though she did. And it took every bit of self-possession she had not to reach up and run her fingers over it.
He only studied her, his austere mouth flat. “You are lying.”
“And you’re creeping me out,” she retorted. She clambered up and onto her feet then, aware again of an instant reaction from the goons—and, again, the way the man in the center stopped them with the faintest wave of one finger. “What is this? What do you want? I’m guessing it’s not a Mexi-mocha soy latte with an extra shot.”
“Is your name Magdalena, by any chance?”
Maggy understood then that this man already knew the answers to the questions he was asking. And it hit her like a kick to the belly that he was asking at all. It made the hardwood floors seem to creak and slide beneath her feet.
“No,” she lied again. She couldn’t have said why she was halfway to panicked, only that she was. “My name is Maggy. It’s not short for anything.” She pulled her phone from the back pocket of her jeans and clenched it tight in her hand. Maybe she even brandished it at him a little. “And if you don’t leave right now, I’m calling the police.”
The man didn’t smile. His mouth looked as if perhaps he never had. Still, there was a silver gleam to those hard rain eyes of his, and her breath got tangled somewhere in her throat.
“That will be an exercise in frustration for you, I am afraid,” he said as if he wasn’t the least bit threatened by the notion of the police. Almost as if he welcomed it instead. “If you wish to contact the local authorities, I will not stop you. But it would be remiss of me if I did not warn you that doing so will not achieve the results you imagine.”
Maggy couldn’t have said why she believed him. But she did. It was something about the way he stood there, as if he was used to being mistaken for a very well-dressed and granite-hewn statue, and was about as soft himself.
“Then how about you just leave?” she asked, aware that her lips felt numb and that her stomach felt...weird, the way it kept flipping and knotting and then twisting some more. And meanwhile that place behind her ear where her birthmark sat seemed to be much too hot. As if it was lit on fire. But she didn’t dare touch it. Not in front of this man. “I want you to leave.”
But this man in all his haughty, brooding ruthlessness wasn’t listening to her. She’d stood up and he was clearly intrigued by that. He let those shrewd gray eyes travel all over her, and the worst part was that she had the childish urge to cover herself while he did it. When really, what did she care if some weird guy stared at her? She didn’t wear skinny jeans and tight thermal long-sleeved T-shirts that fit her like a second skin to admire her own figure.
Yet somehow, she got the impression he wasn’t staring at her ass like all the other rich guys had when she’d worked down the street in one of the village’s bars and they’d been after a little bit of local flavor in between ski runs and highly public divorces.
“It is uncanny,” the man said, his voice lower now and something like gruff. “You could be her twin, save the brazenly appalling hair.”
“I don’t have a twin,” Maggy snapped, and she could hear that there was too much stuff in her voice then. The way there always was anytime some stranger claimed she looked just like their niece or friend or cousin. When she’d been a kid, she’d gotten her hopes up every time. But she was a lot older and whole lot wiser now and she recognized these moments for what they were—throwaway comments from people who had no idea what it was like to have been thrown away themselves. “I don’t have anyone, as a matter of fact. I was found by the side of the road when I was eight and I can’t remember a single thing from before then. The end.”
“Ah, but that only proves my theory,” the man said, something hard, like satisfaction, gleaming like silver in those eyes of his.
He pulled off his leather gloves as if it was part of an ancient ceremony. Maggy couldn’t have said how he managed it, to somehow exude all of that brooding masculinity and yet be standing there doing nothing but removing a pair of gloves. He wasn’t sacking the walls of a city or performing some athletic feat, no matter how it echoed around inside of her. When he was done—and when she was busy asking herself what on earth was wrong with her that she should find a man’s strong, bare hands illicit—he pulled out a smartphone from his pocket, much larger and clearly more high-tech than the one she’d gotten recently when she’d felt so flush after her first month of regular paychecks here. Her fingers clenched hard on hers, as if she was embarrassed by her own phone, and she shoved it in her back pocket again. He swiped his screen a few times and then offered it to her, his face impassive. Though through it all, his gray eyes gleamed.
Maggy stared at his shiny,