Claiming His Princess. Kate Walker

      ‘I’m a woman. That speaks for itself as far as my father is concerned.’

      Wolfe seemed to consider this and Ava moved farther along the path, wishing she’d never let this conversation progress as far as it had.

      ‘Do you?’

      His question stopped her and she glanced back at him. ‘Do I what?’

      ‘Think you’re capable?’

      ‘Yes,’ she said, internally cringing at the defensiveness in her tone. She had a Fine Arts degree and a Master’s in Business and while she might not know everything involved in running a country, she…‘I run a successful gallery.’ Which surely counted for something.

      ‘A small business,’ he dismissed, shoving his hands in his pockets and strolling closer. ‘It hardly translates, wouldn’t you say?’

      A wave of heat coursed through Ava at the slight. She might struggle to feel worthy in her personal relationships, but hadn’t she always backed herself professionally. ‘No, I would not say that.’ She didn’t even try to keep the indignation out of her voice. ‘Do you know how hard I had to work to prove myself in Paris? To make my “small” business successful?’ She straightened her spine. ‘How difficult it was to get anyone to take me seriously? To get artists to trust me to work for them when everyone just expected me to be a vacuous party girl?’

      She was breathing so hard when she’d finished she nearly missed Wolfe’s soft grin.

      ‘Oh, you are horrible!’ she spluttered. ‘You were playing devil’s advocate with me!’

      ‘You have a fire in your belly I guess you would never show your father.’

      It pained her to acknowledge he was right. She had built a wall up where her father was concerned and she used it to keep him out. To show him that she didn’t need him. More than that, she was afraid he would shoot her down in flames if she tried and failed in replacing Frédéric.

      She was a grown woman who had never got over wanting her father’s approval. She’d moved to Paris so she could avoid facing that.

      Feeling dismayed by her unexpected realisations she shook her head. ‘He doesn’t respect me.’ And, boy, did that hurt.

      ‘So make him.’

      Ava’s startled gaze connected with Wolfe’s.

      ‘And if you stop pretending you’re not sensitive about things when you are, that might help.’

      She felt her mouth fall open at his gentle ribbing and quickly snapped it closed. She wanted to argue that she’d mastered that unwelcome aspect of her nature years ago, but just looking at Wolfe made her awash with a certain type of sensitivity she couldn’t deny.

      She turned away, only to have him grasp her shoulders and turn her back before she’d taken a single step. He reached out and secured her chin lightly between his fingers, his eyes glittering down at her in the glow of the mood lighting. ‘Maybe you need to think of your duty as being to your people now, Ava, not your father.’

      Her breath caught. He hadn’t called her Ava since that morning at Gilles’s. Trying to hold on to her equilibrium, and reminding herself that there was nothing intimate behind his unexpected tenderness, she gave a rueful quirk of her lips. ‘I never looked at it like that.’

      ‘Because you’re focusing on the past. That’s gone. It’s only the future that counts.’ His tone was firm, the words delivered with such a resounding sense of resolution she knew he had said them before.

      ‘You’re right.’ She let the silence build between them as her head spun with ideas. His words ‘make him’ settled inside her. Perhaps if she stopped reverting to the recalcitrant teenager she had once been that would be a start. ‘I cannot keep fighting my father. It is not only futile, but he’s sick. And I do have obligations now that require my full attention.’ She released a noisy breath and smiled wearily. ‘Do you think perhaps I have felt sorry for myself for long enough?’

      Wolfe’s head came up, surprise lighting his gaze, as if he hadn’t expected her to admit to such a flaw. Then he laughed. ‘You’re one out of the box, Princess.’

      She smiled back at him, warmed by the admiration in his voice. Warmed by the fact that he somehow made her feel valued.

      She was instantly transported to the single night they had shared together. As much as the passion between them had shocked her, it had also thrilled her. She wondered—No, Ava. Not only was Wolfe not interested in fostering a long-term relationship with a woman, he had said himself that their ‘ship’ had ‘definitely sailed’.

CHAPTER SEVEN

      ‘WE ARE NOT stopping, Ava, and that’s that.’

      Ava knew her father’s face had taken on the stony hue that had used to scare her as a child, but she steadfastly kept smiling at the sea of people waving flags along the tree-lined boulevard as the royal coach trotted slowly down the centre of Anders.

      Every year citizens and tourists came out in droves to celebrate Anders Independence Day, with a plethora of sumptuously themed floats and gaily designed costumes. This year there was a more sombre mood to the proceedings, with many of the floats carrying her brother’s picture. It made Ava want to reach out to her people to make up for Frédéric’s loss. After her conversation with Wolfe three nights ago she knew that she could either let her insecurities control her or…try.

      So she had.

      And it felt like a blessed release finally to make some of the hard decisions she hadn’t realised she’d been actively resisting. One had been to inform her artists that she would be helping them find new representation when her gallery closed down the following month, and the other had been to start sitting in on business meetings with her father’s advisors. The workload was intense, and there were aspects of ruling her country that made her head spin, but she felt as if she was making inroads. Slowly.

      Slow inroads into everything except her relationship with her father. Just this morning he had been lecturing her about making a decision on the five ‘expressions of interest,’ as he referred to the marriage proposals he had already received on her behalf, without even considering her view. As far as he was concerned she should bow down to her destiny, and he saw nothing wrong with the fact that one of those proposals had arrived from a man she hadn’t even met!

      But Ava wasn’t ready to compromise on that point. And with Wolfe sitting opposite her, sublime in a designer suit, his gaze scanning back and forth over the joyous crowd, she didn’t even want to think about it.

      Instead she marshalled her determination to make her father respect her and kept a calm smile on her face as she addressed him. ‘I need to walk some of the way.’

      Her father nodded benevolently to his people. ‘I won’t repeat myself, Ava.’

      ‘I know it’s not the way we’ve traditionally done the avenue ride,’ she said. ‘But if I am going to rule Anders it’s important to me that our people don’t see me as a distant figure. Especially since I have lived in Paris for so long.’

      Her father glanced at Wolfe. ‘Tell her it’s too dangerous.’

      ‘The King has a point,’ Wolfe conceded. ‘It is never a good idea to make last-minute changes to your itinerary.’

      Ava felt her stomach plunge as he sided with her father, instantly recognising the emotion that gripped her as a feeling of betrayal. After the gala ball she felt as if they had formed a friendship of sorts. She had enjoyed his company as he had escorted her to and from meetings, had enjoyed him sitting in with her to ensure her safety, and been surprised and thankful when on a couple of occasions he’d offered some keen business insights that had been beyond her understanding