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his mouth turned down in denial. “Why would I be angry? I mean, who am I to be angry?”
    “Don’t.” She plucked at the edges of the label on the beer bottle. “I wanted to tell you who I was, Nate.”
    “But you didn’t.” Despite his claim that he wasn’t angry, it was obvious in his tone.
    “No. I didn’t.”
    “Why?”
    She sucked in a breath, memories of those carefree summers making her want to sigh. At last, she said, “I didn’t want things to change. I wanted to be just Holly.”
    “You were never just Holly.” His tone was as low and ominous as the storm.
    “I was,” she insisted. “Here, on this island, for all of those blissful summers, I was just Holly. I can’t tell you how much I looked forward to coming to Heart each year. I startedcounting down the days just after the New Year. I didn’t have any obligations when I was here. This was every bit the haven your resort’s name proclaims it to be.”
    But Nate was shaking his head. “It was a fantasy,” he insisted.
    “All right.” She wouldn’t parse words. “It was a fantasy. But I needed it, Nate. Desperately.”
    She still did. He didn’t know what it was like. How utterly on display she’d always felt back in her country. So little had been private, especially since her mother had insisted on granting the media unprecedented access.
    Holly’s first birthday? The cameras had been rolling, the entire party nationally televised so that everyone in Morenci could ooh and aah as the little princess messily gobbled up cake, opened her presents and then toddled on shaky legs around the palace garden. Sure, it had served as a fundraiser for a leading birth-defects charity, but still, it had set the tone. Every birthday, every milestone after that, had been open to the public via the media.
    It was tiring to be smiling for the cameras at all times. It left very little room for one to be oneself. Sometimes, Holly felt like afraud. She wasn’t always happy or poised or eager to share her attention with whomever was demanding it.
    Heaven help her, but sometimes she wanted to be selfish and irritable, maybe stamp her feet in protest or outrage or just because she was having a bad day. Perhaps even raise her voice or slam a door or break a dish. As if … She nearly laughed, just thinking of how outrageous such things would be. She hadn’t been allowed the luxury of a tantrum.
    But then, a couple of weeks ago, the idea of packing her bags and taking off unannounced had seemed outrageous and undoable. Perhaps there was hope for her after all.
    Holly glanced at Nate. Given his rigid posture, she half expected him to disagree. Instead, he nodded slowly.
    “I guess I can understand that.”
    “You can?”
    He turned to face her. “After college, I worked in a very upscale hotel in Chicago. We catered to a lot of celebrity clientele. I know actors and rock stars aren’t quite the same as royalty.”
    “Close enough,” she murmured.
    “Yeah. Well, I realized pretty quickly thattheir lifestyle wasn’t always as glamorous as it seemed to much of their adoring public.”
    “It’s not,” she agreed softly. She scratched at the bottle’s label again with one of her nails and frowned. “Everyone thinks they know you.”
    He turned. “I didn’t know you at all.”
    “Nate—”
    He was already facing the window again as he added, “Anyway, with all those pushy managers, obsessed fans and paparazzi trying to get to them twenty-four seven, I figured out pretty quickly that it’s got to be annoying.”
    “There’s very little privacy.” Thinking again of her mother’s open-palace-door policy, she added, “Very little.”
    “Yet you managed it for five summers.”
    Her lips curved at the memories.
    “You know, running around in shorts and bathing suits, with my hair pulled into crooked pigtails, I didn’t look very much like a princess. I think that’s why I got away with it.” She laughed ruefully. “Now, had I been wearing my