This time she jerked her hand away and rose. “I told you I won’t wear it.”

Before she could pull the ring off he was beside her. “And I told you you would. Think.” When she paused, the ring half off her finger, he continued. The tone he used was precisely the tone he used to draw the answer he wanted out of reluctant suspects. Deals, he thought ruefully, were deals. “Would you rather swallow your pride and wear it, or explain every time you go out why you don’t have an engagement ring?”

“I could say I don’t care for jewelry.”

He grinned, touching the sapphires on her right hand, then the deep-blue stones she wore at her ears. “Could you? Some lies are more easily believed than others.”

Brie pushed the ring back on. “Damn you.”

“Better,” he said with a nod of approval. “Curse me as much as you like, just cooperate. It might occur to you, Your Highness, that I’m just as inconvenienced by all this as you.”

Trapped, she turned away. “Inconvenienced? You seem to be enjoying it.”

“I’m making the best of a bargain. You could do the same, or you can stomp your feet.”

She whirled back around, eyes flashing. “I don’t make a habit of temper tantrums.”

“Could have fooled me.”

She calmed, only because to have let loose would have gratified him. “I don’t like it when you make me feel like a child, Reeve.”

His voice was equally calm. “Then don’t object when I make you feel like a woman.”

“Have you an answer for everything?”

He thought of her, of what was growing inside him. Briefly he touched her cheek. “No. A truce for the moment, Brie. Before this business of the engagement came up we got along well enough. Look at it as a simplification.”

She frowned, but discovered she was willing to call a truce. Until she had her full strength back. “A simplification of what?”

“Of everything. With this”—he lifted her left hand again—“you won’t have to explain why we spend time together, what I’m doing here. As an engaged couple we can get out a bit, get away. People are tolerant of lovers escaping. You won’t be as tied to the palace.”

“I never said I felt tied.”

“I’ve seen you looking out the window. Any window.”

Her gaze came back to him and held. Abruptly she surrendered and, with a sigh, sat back on the window seat. “All right, yes, sometimes I feel closed in. None of this is familiar to me, and yet it isn’t altogether strange. It isn’t a comfortable feeling, Reeve, to feel as though you belong, but never being quite sure you won’t make a wrong turn and find yourself lost again. And the dreams—” She broke off, cursing herself. It was too easy to say more to him than was comfortable.

“You’ve had more dreams?”

“Nothing I remember very well.”

“Brie.” The patience wasn’t there as it had been with Franco, but the knowledge was.