“No.” Under the same roof with this man, and her emotions in a riot... A shiver snaked up her spine. “Thanks for the offer, but I... I need peace and quiet. Not Mr. Judgy looking down his nose at me when he knows zilch about relationships.”
“You know a lot about my relationships. Or the lack of.”
Her skin heated up, and she desperately prayed he couldn’t see it. “You’re not exactly known for your distance with the media. No wonder your poor aide looked like he had the worst job in the world.” She ran a hand over her nape, exhaustion slowly creeping in. “I just want to go home.”
“The press will be swarming there. My apartment has twenty-four-hour security and is a fortress against the media. You will be safe there.”
The thought of the media shoving their cameras in her face, those salacious details of Brian’s affairs—Mia sank back against the cold metal.
Hiding away in the Daredevil Prince’s lair seemed like salvation.
“Admit it, you’re tempted. This is not a situation either of us wants, but it was clear that I couldn’t leave you there.”
“Why were you at the press conference in the first place?”
After almost a year, her agent had convinced Mia that her fans needed closure, that she should announce her retirement from soccer publicly. Any contractual ties she’d had with Nik’s team had been severed months ago when she’d learned that the third injury she’d sustained would damage her knee irrevocably if she continued to play.
At least, her everyday life hadn’t been affected.
With that devastating blow and Brian’s accident, her life had been on a downward spiral. The announcement at the press conference—it was to be a new start. Only she’d been ambushed by the press about Brian’s affairs.
And Nikandros had been there.
Sweat beaded her brow. That nauseous feeling returned with a vengeance. “Did you know the news about Brian’s affairs? Why didn’t you warn me?” Her fingers bunched in his shirt, renewed betrayal coursing through her. “Or did you decide I deserved to be humiliated and turned into a spectacle for my alleged sins against Brian?”
His fingers clamped over her arms, the warmth from his body teasing her awake in more ways than one. “I did not know what was going to come out. Mia, I did not know what he...was doing with all those women. I... If nothing else, I would have told him he had a problem.”
“Somehow I doubt that the vows of marriage would mean anything to a serial womanizer like you.”
His chin drew back. “Who is drawing conclusions now?”
His eyes were hard, flat, his fingers tightening over her arms. He tensed, and then slowly the breath he’d been holding pushed out. She’d hurt him?
It was the most nonsensical thought on the most bizarre night of her life.
But then, the man she’d thought him to be would have never offered help tonight. He wouldn’t have even looked at her twice, especially since it was obvious that he’d made up his mind that she had driven Brian away.
But Nikandros had never pretended a friendship or even an acquaintance. Among Brian’s friends, he’d always maintained a polite, even wary, distance from her. As if she’d contaminate his pedigree if he got too close.
“Then why were you there? You sold the women’s team, I know. They said you were leaving Florida. Maybe even the States. You dumped your latest girlfriend.” She rattled off everything she had gathered about him from social media, a habit she hadn’t quite kicked from when he’d first appeared on the scene.
“You had to know... Don’t lie to me, Nikandros. God, please, no more lies.”
Mia closed her eyes. It made her face the one thing she’d been trying to deny—that something inside her had sparked into life tonight, inside the car. Because of the Daredevil Prince.
The sense of him around her amplified a thousand times. The scent of him—dark and delicious and so fundamentally different from her own, clung to her nostrils.
So when he spoke, when his breath feathered over her skin, when his hands descended on her shoulders and pulled her into his body, when the strength and heat of him teased her into a desperate, deep longing, she drowned in the sensations.
She felt his powerful body shudder around her, felt his sharp inhale as he buried his nose in her hair, felt the raw, shameful urge to press her body into his, vibrating through her like a quake.
“I came because I needed to say goodbye.”
A brittle laugh escaped her. “I don’t believe you. You’ve never even considered me a friend. You couldn’t stomach the idea of Brian marrying me. You—”