Banished Prince to Desert Boss by Heidi Rice

Author:Heidi Rice
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-03-23T14:13:42+00:00

‘So I see Dane finally turned up,’ Orla murmured beside Jamilla.

But Jamilla could hardly hear her friend’s comment above the thundering in her ears.

He looked...magnificent, his bronze hair lightened by the sun, his skin tanned a darker brown. The white T-shirt showed off the defined contours of his pectoral muscles, while the frown on his face and the purposeful stride suggested he had a lot to talk about.

Her reprieve was over.

She’d been preparing for this confrontation for four days. She’d gone through every possible permutation of how she was going to tell him—succinctly and without any flicker of the emotion currently turning her insides to mush—that they needed to put the events of that night behind them, go back to how they had been before she’d climbed aboard his bike and become a wild woman. She couldn’t afford to lose herself again, and she needed his help to ensure the rest of the tour went off without a hitch. That kiss had been a mistake—a massive mistake that neither one of them wanted to repeat, surely.

But what had all seemed so simple, so obvious—while she’d stared at the ceiling above her bed late at night or spent hours deflecting the endless press enquiries with well-rehearsed platitudes about Rome’s eternal beauty and its ability to make anyone lose their mind, or took on the titanic task of rearranging the tour commitments so she would be spending as little time as possible in Dane’s company—suddenly seemed a lot less simple or obvious.

‘He looks like he’s got rather a lot to say to you,’ Orla added while he was still out of earshot. ‘Do you need me to stay?’

‘No,’ Jamilla said as forcefully as she could manage with the panic starting to choke her.

She’d been enough of a coward already. If she hadn’t taken the opportunity to leave Rome ahead of him she could have had this situation done and dusted by now, instead of having it turn into a lump of radioactive waste in her stomach over four restless days and sleepless nights while he’d done his disappearing act. Getting their working relationship back on track was her only priority. And that meant standing her ground and not freaking out.

Reaching them at last, Dane nodded at his sister-in-law but his gaze barely left Jamilla’s. ‘Hey, Orla, you’re looking...’ a smile curved his lips which didn’t quite make it to his eyes ‘...enormous.’

Orla let out a half laugh, doing her best to defuse the tension. ‘Gee, thanks, bro,’ she muttered. ‘Now I feel like even more of an elephant.’

He leaned past Jamilla and gave his sister-in-law a brotherly peck on the cheek. ‘If it’s any consolation, the elephant look suits you, sis.’

‘You rat,’ she said, giving him a slap on the arm, but then she laughed, the amusement more genuine this time. The pretty flush of pleasure on her face at Dane’s compliment made Jamilla realise this man could charm any woman if he put his mind to it.

But the reckless twinkle in his blue eyes hardened to steel as his gaze landed back on her.

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