Rags To Riches: A Desire To Serve: The Paternity Promise / Stolen Kiss From a Prince / The Maid's Daughter

“Go to bed, Grace.”

Nodding, she unhooked her seat belt. Blake’s hooded gaze followed her progress. When she disappeared inside the stateroom, he downed the dregs of his Riesling and reclined his seat back.

* * *

Well, Grace thought as she crawled between the sheets fifteen minutes later, she could imagine worse wedding nights. The social studies teacher in her had read enough ancient history to shudder at some of the barbaric marriage rites and rituals practiced in previous times.

In contrast, this night epitomized the ultimate in comfort and luxury. She was being whisked across an ocean in a private jet. She’d found every amenity she’d needed in the surprisingly spacious bathroom. The cotton sheets were so smooth and soft they felt like whipped cream against her skin. Two million stars winked outside the curved windows built into the bulwark. The only thing she needed to perfect the scene was a groom.

With a vengeance, all those play-wedding scenes she and her cousin had enacted as girls came back to haunt her. Hope’s marriage had brought her nothing but heartache and fear. Grace’s…

Oh, hell! Disgusted by her twinge of poor-me self-pity, she rolled over and thumped the pillow. She’d made her bed. She’d damned well lie in it.

Now if only she could stop with the nasty urge to march back into the main cabin and reopen negotiations. As Blake had so bluntly suggested, the sex was certainly doable. More than doable. The mere thought of his hard, muscled body stretched out beside her, his hands on her breasts, his mouth hot against hers, made the muscles low in Grace’s belly tighten.

She clenched her legs, felt the swift pull between her thighs. Need, fierce and raw, curled through her. Her breath got shorter, faster.

This was stupid! Blake was sitting just a few yards away! Two steps to the stateroom door, one signal, silent or otherwise, and he’d join her.

Sex could be enough for now, she told herself savagely. She didn’t need the shared laughter, the private smiles, the silly jokes married couples added to their storehouse of memories.

And it wasn’t as though she’d arrived at this point unprepared. Teaching high school kids repeatedly reinforced basic truths, including the fact that each individual had to take responsibility for his or her protection during sex. Grace had seen too many bright, talented students’ lives derailed by their biological urges. She wasn’t into one-night stands and hadn’t had a serious relationship in longer than she cared to admit, but she’d remained prepared, just in case.

So why not ease out of bed and take those two steps to the door? Why not give the signal? She and Blake were married, for God’s sake!

She kicked off the sheet. Rolled onto a hip. Stopped. The problem was she wanted the shared smiles and silly jokes. Needed more than casual sex.

“Dammit!”

Disgusted, she flopped down and hammered the pillow again. She was a throwback. An anachronism. And thoroughly, completely frustrated.

* * *

She didn’t remember drifting off, but the wine and champagne must indeed have gotten to her. She went completely out and woke to a knock on the stateroom door and blinding sunlight pouring through the window she’d forgotten to shade. She squinted owlishly at her watch, saw it was the middle of the night Texas time, and had to stifle a groan when another knock sounded.

“It’s Eualdo, Ms. Grace. Mr. Blake said to let you know we’re ninety minutes out.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“I’ll serve breakfast in the main cabin when you’re ready.”

She emerged from the stateroom a short time later, showered and dressed in a pair of white crops and a gauzy, off-one-shoulder top in a flowery print. A chunky white bracelet added a touch of panache. She figured she would need that touch to get through her first morning-after meeting with her groom.

Blake unbuckled his seat belt and rose when she approached. Except for the discarded tie and open shirt collar, he didn’t look like a man who’d sat up all night. Only when she got closer did she spot the gold bristles on his cheeks and chin.

“’Morning.”

“Good morning,” he answered with a smile. “Did you get any sleep?”

“I did.” God! Could this be any more awkward? “How about you?”

“All I need is a shower and shave and I’ll be good to go. Eualdo just brewed a fresh pot of coffee. I’ll join you for breakfast as soon as I get out of the shower.”

He started past her, then stopped. A rueful gleam lighting his eyes, he brushed a knuckle across her cheek.

“We’ll figure this out, Grace. We just need to give it time.”

* * *

Time, she repeated silently as the Gulfstream swooped low over a dazzling turquoise sea in preparation for landing. Despite her inner agitation, the sweeping view of the Mediterranean enchanted her.

So did the balmy tropical climate that greeted them. Grace had watched several movies and travel specials featuring the south of France. She’d also read a good number of books with the same setting, most recently a Dan Brown–type thriller that had the protagonists searching for a long-lost fragment of the Jesus’s cross at the popes’ sprawling palace in Avignon. None of the books or movies or travelogues prepared her for Provence’s cloudless skies and brilliant sunshine, however. She held up a hand to block the rays as she deplaned, breathing in the briny tang of the sea that surrounded the Marseille airport.

A driver was waiting at the small aircraft terminal with a sporty red convertible. After he’d stashed their bags in the trunk, he made a polite inquiry in French. Blake responded with a smile and a nod.

“Oui.”

“C’est bien. Bon voyage.”

Grace glanced at him curiously as he slid behind the wheel. “You speak French?”

“Not according to Cecile.”

Right. Cecile. The chef who owned the restaurant where Alex and Julie had hosted their rehearsal dinner. The gorgeous, long-legged chef who’d draped herself all over Blake. That display of Gallic exuberance hadn’t bothered Grace at the time. Much. It did now. With some effort, she squashed the memory and settled into the convertible.

Blake got behind the wheel. He’d changed into khakis and a fresh shirt and hooked a pair of aviator sunglasses on his shirt pocket.

“Just out of curiosity,” she commented as he slipped on the glasses, “where are we going?”

“Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. It’s a small town about an hour north of here.” A smile played at the corners of his mouth. “A nationwide transportation strike stranded Mother there during one of her antique-hunting trips about five years ago. She used the downtime to buy a crumbling villa and turn it into a vacation resort for top-performing DI employees and their families.”

Grace had to grin. That sounded just like her employer. Correction, her mother-in-law. Delilah Dalton possessed more energy and drive than any six people her age.

“The place was occupied most recently by DI’s top three welding teams and their families,” he added casually. “But Madame LeBlanc indicated we’ll have it to ourselves for the next two weeks.”

Not so casually, Grace’s heart thumped hard against her ribs. The combustible mix of lust and longing she’d had to battle last night had been bad enough. How the heck was she going to get through the next two weeks? Alone. With Blake. Under the hot Provencal sun and starry, starry nights.

Slowly she sank into her seat.

Six (#ulink_827f7d81-922e-5f8a-9c5d-ef73163bc2b1)

A little over an hour later Blake turned off the autoroute onto a two-lane road shaded by towering sycamores. Their branches met overhead to form a green tunnel that stretched for miles. The rocky pinnacles of the Alpilles thrust out of the earth to the left of the road. Sun-drenched vineyards and olive groves rolled out on the right, flashing through the sycamores’ white, scaly trunks like a DVD run in fast-forward.

As delightful as the approach to Saint-Rémy was, the town itself enchanted Grace even more. Eighteenth-century mansions that Blake called hôtels lined the busy street encircling the town proper. Dolphins spouted in a fountain marking one quadrant of the circle, stone goddesses poured water from urns at another. In the pedestrians-only heart of the town, Grace caught glimpses of narrow lanes crammed with shops and open-air restaurants that invited patrons to sit and sip a cappuccino.

Blake noticed her craning her neck to peer down the intriguing alleyways. “We’ll have lunch in town,” he promised.

“I’d like that.”