Royally Claimed. Marie Donovan

I do have time for this.” He leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss on her mouth. She caught his shoulders and pulled him close. His lips moved over hers gently, then more demanding. She moved in close to him, intoxicated by his clean scent, his hot masculinity. She opened her mouth to him and he slid his tongue inside to caress hers. Her arms curved around his neck and he backed her against the small couch. She almost lost her balance and he steadied her.

      Once he was sure she had her balance, he groaned and moved away. “Julia, you tempt me terribly. I am putty in your hands.”

      She’d bet he’d be a lot firmer than that. But she managed to back away, putting the table between them. “My parents…” she gestured.

      “Of course. This is their home.” He rubbed his face. “One o’clock tomorrow. We can have lunch on the terrace at the villa. I’ll send Benedito to the far side of the island and have him cut weeds or something.”

      “Frank!” she scolded. “He seems perfectly nice.”

      He rolled his eyes. “Don’t let his cheerful elfin looks fool you. He’s a thorn in my side.”

      “But he’s your right hand.”

      “That, too.” Frank smiled at her. “Enough about Benedito. Tomorrow is for us.”

      “Okay.” Her voice suddenly sounded breathy and seductive. He noticed that as well, running his gaze down her body.

      “Tomorrow.” He took a deep breath, repeating her words as if he were promising himself—and her—a treat. “Lock the door behind me.” He winked and left.

      Julia blew out a long breath. She had the sneaking suspicion that she would have asked him to stay, parents’ home or no, if her head had been feeling better.

      She went into the kitchen and took a pain pill with some fresh juice before lying down in her lonely bed. She pulled a quilt over herself, but it was no substitute for a warm male body. Was it a good idea to invite Frank to share her bed? She just couldn’t decide. Her mind was telling her no but her body, well, it had a mind of its own.

       4

      BENEDITO HAD BEEN uncharacteristically quiet on the boat ride back to Frank’s family’s island. The two men carried several boxes of food and building supplies into the villa.

      Frank set a bag of bread, meat and cheese on the large oak worktable in the center of the kitchen.

      Benedito set a couple bottles of red wine next to it. “I will get more wine tomorrow, but this should be enough for tonight.”

      Frank nodded, but he wasn’t about to drink a whole bottle on his own and show up hungover to pick up Julia. Benedito had an inordinate capacity for vinho and would not show a single bad after-effect.

      The kitchen was bigger than most in the Azores, the stove and oven wall tiled in blue-and-red Portuguese tiles and inset oak cabinets. The exposed walls had been sponge-painted peach and gold over beige in some unfortunate past decade and Frank was planning to change that. The master bathroom was powder pink, his mother’s favorite color, but probably not Stefania’s, the bride-to-be’s.

      On the other hand, Stefania and her groom probably didn’t give a fig about the wall color and only wanted a big soft bed. That certainly had been his first priority when he and Julia had stayed there.

      Unfortunately they had leapt before they looked, straight into bed. He didn’t ever regret making love with her, but in the end, it hadn’t been enough to keep them together. What a miracle that had brought them both back to the Azores at the same time.

      Somehow the uncanny Benedito had read his mind. “Don Franco, did you have a nice lunch with the senhorina?”

      “How did you know I had lunch with her?” He made cheese and sausage sandwiches on crusty bread for him and Benedito and put the rest of the food away.

      “The waiter is my second cousin’s daughter-in-law’s brother.” Benedito opened one bottle of wine and a plastic container of marinated olives from the farmers’ market. He poured the wine and ate the olives out of the container with his gnarled fingers. Benedito abandoned his manners with gusto when he was away from his wife.

      He offered some to Frank, who gave up on his own manners and accepted. Pure heaven. “A close family connection,” he said sardonically. “Yes, we had a nice lunch and then had coffee and pastéis de nata in the park.” He’d left the box with Julia—she looked as if she could stand to gain some weight.

      “Ah, yes, the park.” Benedito nodded knowingly. “Quite the box of pastéis it was.” He made a zipping motion across his lips and winked.

      “How do you know that? Were you skulking in the shrubbery or is the gardener there your nephew?” He restrained himself from chucking an olive—or the entire container—at Benedito’s head.

      “Leonor’s nephew.”

      “Of course.” Frank sighed. A fishbowl of a life, that’s what he led. And of course, Benedito had ducked the question if he had indeed been skulking in the shrubbery. It was fair to say Frank wouldn’t have noticed if the entire Portuguese Army had been doing reconnaissance missions in the bushes. He finished his sandwich and turned on his laptop to do some business. “Benedito, can you install the new faucet in the downstairs powder room? The old one is leaking.” If Benedito was busy, maybe he would stop bugging Frank.

      No such luck. “Senhorina Julia certainly is beautiful.”

      “Mmm-hmm.” Frank stared at his email program, mentally willing him to go away. Two dozen emails from various people on his estates.

      “She is very smart, an advanced nurse in a big American hospital, according to her neighbors.”

      “Yes.” Good Lord, the old man had been busy this afternoon.

      “A wonderful companion for any red-blooded man.”

      That was hovering on the border of disrespect, even if Frank knew exactly what he was talking about and agreed one hundred percent. He lifted his eyebrow and scowled at Benedito.

      “Will you be seeing the senhorina again?” the old man pressed.

      “Maybe if I can get some privacy for once!” Frank shouted, finally losing his temper. “With waiters and gardeners and neighbors all reporting back to you as if you were my guardian and I were a virginal princess out in the world for the first time? How do you expect me to do anything with her? Tell me that!”

      “Ah, to be alone.” Benedito nodded, his eyes wide, as if the idea of privacy was a new and strange concept. To him, of course, it was. “Don Franco, if you would excuse me, I have to check on some building supplies.”

      “Fine, go.” Frank waved his hand and forced himself to read his email from the mainland. Problems with wine caskets, grapevines, animals needing the vet, two of his fieldhands fighting over the same girl. Fortunately, relatively small things, although Frank recalled the girl in question being quite pretty and flirtatious. And with a mean, burly father. He toyed with the idea of inquiring whether the two fieldhands had turned up with black eyes and fat lips received after their fight, but the more he stayed out of their personal business, the more smoothly it ran.

      Involving the Duke in romantic quarrels would bring shame and embarrassment upon the parties involved. Better that the Duke focused on his own romantic problems. And even better that the Duke stopped referring to himself in the third person.

      Frank grinned and immersed himself in estate business for the next couple hours, thoughts of Julia always at the edges of his mind.

      Benedito popped into the kitchen again. “Boa tarde, Don Franco.”

      “Yes, good evening to you, too. Did you take care of those building supplies?”

      “Yes, and picked up the paint, as well.”