5. Alyx
Chapter 5
Alyx
W aking in the king size bed didn’t get any easier. Four days and nights spent in Daniel’s sprawling estate, occupying a bedroom easily twice the size of Rhonda’s entire apartment, and she still jerked awake. She slept on the far right of the bed, closer to the door than the twelve feet of ceiling-to-floor windows looking out over the garden below. A six-foot dresser and nightstand lined the brick wall next to the bed and a desk and sofa sat along the opposite wall.
Sitting and pulling her knees to her chest, she rubbed the sleep from her face.
The weirdest part of the room, however, was the spiral staircase that extended upward to the deck on this side of the house. The patio or salon was for her exclusive use. Daniel promised that although his bedroom next door shared similar access to it, he would cede the area to her for privacy.
What the hell was I thinking? She stared around the room, always a little lost for what to do when she woke in the palatial suite.
A knock on the door sent her scrambling off the bed and she pulled the comforter to her chest. “Come in.”
Daniel stepped inside, carrying a tray with coffee and croissants. The man delivered it every morning, like clockwork. “Good morning.” He always looked so put together and delicious, from the open collar of his button-down shirt to his pressed slacks and casual loafers. Even his hair didn’t have the decency to be tousled.
She caught sight of herself in the mirror and immediately wished she hadn’t. Her hair’s natural curl took over when she slept—like Gremlins fed water after midnight—and turned spiky and stuck straight toward the ceiling.
“Morning,” she mumbled, glad this was a job and not an actual date.
The first morning he brought coffee, she hadn’t been able to muster a greeting. He’d strolled into the room with a knock, set the coffee on the nightstand and gave her that heart-stopping grin before sailing out again. The second morning, he’d brought the coffee and spent a minute waiting for her to get out of bed and accept it.
Yesterday, he’d joined her for coffee.
It wasn’t that he was bad company. Far from it, actually. She just wasn’t used to someone being cheerful in the a.m. She could care for a little less morning time, perhaps postponing it until after twelve.
He handed her the cup with a bemused look. “Maybe you should go to bed earlier.”
Alyx was almost too tired to glare, but she tried, delivering it over the rim of the coffee cup. “I was only up late because you wanted me to memorize the family tree and then we had to watch those two documentaries about the Czar’s descendants.”
She would never admit to a certain amount of fascination, particularly on the pieces that referenced her grandfather. Nor would she engage him in another debate about whether the man her father called dad and the grand duchess’s grandson were one and the same.
Daniel remained convinced—she had her doubts.
Better to let that argument lie.
“Okay. Well, drink your coffee and then take a shower and drink more coffee. Victor will be here this afternoon to have lunch with us and do the initial assessment of our coupledom.”
Alyx sighed. There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Time to earn my paycheck .
She walked away from him, coffee cup in hand, to look out the window. The garden formed a geometric pattern of colors. Landscaped around a koi pond, roses flourished, daisies occupied a section and row upon row of morning glories and impatiens formed the colorful border. The whole of it was surrounded by a white stone wall that matched the white stone brick of the house and profusions of white jasmine spilling down its sides.
But the best part was also the most solitary. A white-roofed gazebo set off in the corner offered sanctuary with a splash of vivid color with its blue-painted wood. A table and chairs sat beneath on the pavestones that made up its floor, but it remained lonely with no flowers or growth attached to it.
Maybe that was why she liked it.
“Alyx?”
“Do you ever go out there?” She glanced over her shoulder. Daniel studied something on his digital tablet.
“Where?”
“Out there, in the garden.” She jerked a thumb toward the window. “Do you ever go out there?”
Daniel crossed the room and glanced outside, distraction evident in every gesture. “Not often. We held a launch party for some investors there last year. By the way, Victor wants us to make a list of what we’d find the most uncomfortable to do. I started one, I thought we could go over it at breakfast and put our thoughts together.”
“Not using an exquisite place like that makes me uncomfortable,” she murmured, looking back at the garden. Maybe she could get out there and walk around before their “instructor” arrived.
“What?”
She gave him a half smile. “Nothing. I’ll be down for breakfast in a few minutes.” He needed to leave before she could shower.
“Okay.” He picked up his coffee cup and paused in the open door. “Do you want to sleep in here or my room tonight?”
She choked on the hot brew and coughed violently as it burned her windpipe. Her eyes watered as she met his concerned expression. “Why the hell would I sleep in your room?”
“My staff will be here in the morning. Theresa arrives at 6 a.m. She’ll definitely notice if we’re not sleeping together.” The sanguine delivery did not ease the shock of his statement.
“We have a no-sex clause. Are you forgetting that?”
Amusement settled across his face and he leaned on the doorjamb. “Hence the use of the word ‘sleep.’ The beds are more than large enough for us to share and not touch. But she’ll notice and remember. You agreed to perform twenty-four, seven. Theresa only comes on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I gave her a couple of days off to get you settled, but she’s here tomorrow. Those nights, we have to sleep together. The rest of the week you can sleep in here.”
He was serious.
“Why can’t we just get up and slip into the other room via the deck upstairs?” It seemed a little clandestine to plot “waking up” together, but that would be preferable to actually sharing a bed.
“She’s going to come in and clean your room. It’s part of her job. She’ll notice the bed’s been slept in. Don’t worry, Alyx.” The slow grin spreading across his lips had a decidedly unsettling effect on her equilibrium. “I won’t bite. See you downstairs in ten. We have a lot to do.”
“Thirty,” she called after him belatedly, but the door already shut. She stared at her rumpled bed. She could sleep in the car on those nights or…
Her shoulders relaxed. Okay, she could sleep on the floor in his room or the sofa. If his room was anything like hers, it would have plenty of space. Her heart knocked against her ribs and she drained the coffee. If he kept dropping these surprises on her, she would need to add some vodka to the coffee to keep up.
Shower first.
Round two would arrive as soon as she went downstairs.
* * *
DANIEL
Daniel checked his list for the third time and glanced at his watch. She’d lingered in the shower far past the ten minutes he’d instructed. On the one hand, he liked that she enjoyed the house, more because she didn’t have to sleep in her car. On the other, he had two back-to-back video conferences and he wanted to go over the list before they started.
Breakfast on Theresa’s off days was fruit, fresh croissants delivered from a local bakery and coffee. He drank his third cup and switched the tablet’s screen over to his schedule. He would have to talk to Lucy about rearranging the next few days. The Tokyo meetings couldn’t be put off, but most of those were scheduled for three and four in the morning.
The squeak of tennis shoes sliding on tile floor announced the arrival of the prospective princess. “Remember to skip the hop down the stairs tomorrow morning.” He didn’t glance up in case she saw amusement in his face. Her first morning, she’d slid down the banister. Straddled it and slid down. He’d stood in the shadow of the living room, certain she’d seen him, but when she hesitated and looked around before throwing her leg over and riding the rail down, he’d realized she hadn’t.
For just a moment, her expression had turned radiant and open. He saw the laughter in her smile and pure joy in the sparkle of her eyes. It took his breath away. He should have chastised her, but he didn’t want to erase that whimsical moment.
Not for anything.
“I know.” She drew out the words dramatically and tiptoed over to the table. “I will be light as a feather. You won’t know I’m here.”
“I doubt that.” He always knew when she was in the room, whether she sat and drank her coffee quietly or flipped through the paper with the speed of a child searching for the comics. She filled every room with her sheer presence. Even if his P.I. hadn’t tracked down her birth certificate and traced her parents, he would have known she was something special.
“Don’t worry. I do actually know how to walk. I’m just tired and not particularly looking forward to having my every move watched.” She sat in the chair to his right, one bare leg crossing over the other. Despite two shopping trips, she still wore her own clothes.
“And don’t look at me like that. There’s no staff here and this Victor person knows what we are—I’m not on display.” She munched on a croissant and reached over to snatch the paper, pulling out the trade section.
He put a finger on the corner. “List first. Paper second.”
“Yes, sir. Right away, sir.” She wiped her fingers on a napkin and accepted the digital tablet. He scrolled it back to the list and waited as she read. She pulled one leg onto the chair, her sneakered foot resting on the fabric and her chin on her knee, toes tapping.
She never quite sat still. A multitude of expressions washed over her face as she read. They traveled like lightning, or Santa Ana wind propelled clouds. Curiosity, surprise, irritation, amusement—every new emotion chased away the first. “You’re worried about eating in public with me? Do I chew with my mouth open or something?”
“No.” He nodded to her leg. “But Victor wanted a very specific list of what might make us uncomfortable. You don’t seem to mind how you sit on furniture.”
Her foot hit the floor with a thump and she gave him a long, hard stare. “Would you like me to pretend that we have company now?”
“It wouldn’t hurt.” He found her quirks charming, but they wouldn’t win them points with the press. Not with a long line of royal darlings like the Princesses Grace, Caroline, Diana and Kate. If not for the charade they had to perform, he wouldn’t mind.
Alyx shifted in the seat, her posture straightened and she crossed one leg over the other. Her chin came up, coolness breezed over her eyes and her eyebrow lifted. Despite the tank top, shorts and ponytail, she radiated elegance. “Happy?”
“Incredibly.” He leaned back in the chair and steepled his fingertips together. She took his breath away, fresh scrubbed without any trace of cosmetics. He could stare at her all day just to see the next bluster of emotion blow through, but the clock ticked and they had work to do. The EU contract bids would begin accepting proposals within six months according to all his sources. Once he had a launching pad into that market, he could afford to indulge other whims.
He forced himself to focus and tapped the digital tablet. “What makes you uncomfortable?”