The playboy prince’s convenient bride

Sabrina Summerville is content with her betrothal to the sensible Prince Luis—their match will reunify the kingdom of Vela. So why does she feel so drawn to Luis’s darkly dangerous brother, Prince Sebastian?

Prince Sebastian has always pursued a decadent lifestyle, taking full advantage of being the scandalous second son! But when his brother abdicates and leaves the beautiful but betrayed Sabrina alone at the altar, he has no choice but to step up. Not only must he become a ruler, he must marry Sabrina himself! And if the sparks are anything to go by, their marriage is sure to be explosive...

‘So suddenly you’re the perfect gentleman?’ Sabrina mocked unsteadily.

Sebastian’s eyes had adjusted to the light but her face was a pale blur, her body less distinct. The compulsion to reach for her in the darkness was so strong the effort of fighting it made him quiver like someone with a fever. ‘I deserved that—but you deserved a better proposal.’

‘Not everyone has your way with words. I suspect the only proposals you have any working knowledge of are of the indecent variety.’

‘I may not know much about duty, but you have now agreed to marry my brother and you are totally out of bounds. So you can stop looking at me like that.’

‘You don’t know how I’m looking at you.’

‘I know those big hungry eyes. Just go inside while you still can.’

She shivered, a thrill of excitement shimmering through her body at the message in his dark voice. ‘What happens if I don’t go inside?’

KIM LAWRENCE lives on a farm in Anglesey with her university lecturer husband, assorted pets who arrived as strays and never left, and sometimes one or both of her boomerang sons. When she’s not writing she loves to be outdoors gardening, or walking on one of the beaches for which the island is famous—along with being the place where Prince William and Catherine made their first home!

Books by Kim Lawrence

Mills & Boon Modern Romance

Surrendering to the Italian’s Command

One Night with Morelli

Captivated by Her Innocence

The Petrelli Heir

Santiago’s Command

Gianni’s Pride

In a Storm of Scandal

Wedlocked!

One Night to Wedding Vows

One Night With Consequences

Her Nine Month Confession

A Secret Until Now

Seven Sexy Sins

The Sins of Sebastian Rey-Defoe

Royal & Ruthless

The Heartbreaker Prince

At His Service

Maid for Montero

21st Century Bosses

The Thorn in His Side

Visit the Author Profile page at

millsandboon.co.uk for more titles.

A Ring to Secure His Crown

Kim Lawrence

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

About the Author

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

EPILOGUE

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

SABRINA CLOSED HER bedroom door with care, conscious of her two flatmates who were both doing a night rotation in Casualty. She had reached the front door, a piece of toast in one hand, her oversized bag in the other, when her phone rang.

She swore softly, and then again as her efforts at juggling caused her toast to land butter-side down on the carpet. Why did it always do that?

She dumped her bag, picked up the toast with a grimace and glanced at the caller ID before lifting the phone to her ear. The low-voiced conversation lasted a few moments as the junior lab assistant gave her the results she and the entire research team had been waiting for.

Consigning the toast to the waste-bin, Sabrina was smiling when she opened the door; the results were not what they had expected, they were better! Embracing the buzz of excitement, she hitched her bag over her shoulder, grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl to soothe her rumbling stomach and released the loose, heavy honey strands of hair that had got stuck down the collar of her jacket before backing out of the front door.

It was the noise that hit her first, like a solid wall of sound; the voices calling her name seemed to come from everywhere.

Dropping the apple, she turned and was immediately blinded by flashing lights. She lifted a hand to shade her eyes and turned her head to avoid the microphones being thrust in her face.

Heart thudding like a piston, she tried to turn back but it was already too late. In seconds the weight of bodies pushing against her had already carried her several feet away and into the street and now she was surrounded.

‘Lady Sabrina... Lady Sabrina... Lady Sabrina...! When is the wedding?’

‘Will it happen before or after the island is reunified?’

‘When did Prince Luis propose?’

‘Is this a marriage of convenience?’

‘What sort of message do you think you are sending to young women, Dr Summerville?’

The sound of her own name and the stream of questions coming from all directions felt like a physical assault. The conviction she had just walked into her own personal nightmare, the sense of galloping claustrophobia intensified along with the gut-freezing horror that literally paralyzed Sabrina. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t even think past the static buzz of panic in her head. She just closed her eyes, put her head down and waited for the ground to open up.

It didn’t.

And then something did, though in amidst the confusion she didn’t immediately register anything about what was happening until the grip on her wrist tightened and another hand slid around her waist. She was no longer being carried along by the media crush, she was being pulled in the opposite direction by someone who was strong enough to make it seem easy and to make her wild attempt to hit out at her abductor a joke.

It happened in a blur, one minute she was in the street trying to fight for her freedom and the next she was being unceremoniously dumped like a sack of potatoes into the back seat of a big sleek car that had been hidden from her view by the mass of bodies.

People didn’t get kidnapped in front of the press and hundreds of cameras, she told herself while struggling to sit up. She managed it in time to see a camera being thrown at the crowd before the man who had climbed in beside her slammed the door on the noise outside. The mob were now pretty much hysterical.

‘Drive, Charlie, if you would!’ he drawled in an almost bored tone of voice.

The man in the driving seat reacted by doing just that. He pulled away from the kerb with a squeal of brakes and with scant regard for the lives of the bodies blocking their way.

Sabrina found her eyes connecting with the small, mean-looking eyes of the man in charge of the getaway in the rear-view mirror before she looked away. The tattoo in the shape of a dragon on the back of his thick neck was even less comforting.

Although she knew all about the physical and chemical processes that led the body to over-produce adrenaline, could answer, and actually had answered, an exam question on them, she had never, up to that point, personally experienced how compelling the flight-or-fight reflex was.

As the primitive survival response kicked in she literally threw herself at the door, pressing every button in a frantic effort to open it and sobbing with frustration when it didn’t budge. She began to batter on the window, more in desperation than with any real hope of attracting attention—they were travelling at speed and the windows were blacked out.

‘If you’re trying to break it I should tell you that it’s bulletproof, though that is quite a right hook you have, cara, and I consider myself lucky that you are not wearing heels.’

Her clenched fists slid down the glass and for a moment she rested her forehead against the coolness of the glass before she took a deep breath and turned to face her captor. She might have lost the fight to open the door but she’d won the fight to hide her fear behind a mask of cool disdain—well, as disdainful as you could look when your face was wet with tears and your mascara had most likely run.

‘I am not your cara, I am not your anything, but if you don’t let me go I will be your worst nightmare,’ she promised. ‘You will stop this car and let me out this instant or I will...’ Her voice dried and her jaw hit her chest as she identified the man who was sitting in the corner, one arm resting along the padded backrest, the other holding a phone.

He smiled, looking like a fallen angel on performance-enhancing drugs. It had always made total sense to her that the devil would be good-looking or else where was the temptation?

Not that she was tempted in any way!

* * *

His electric-blue eyes glittering with amusement, Prince Sebastian Zorzi tipped his head and touched a gentle finger to her chin.

Shock zigzagged along her nerve endings as Sabrina pulled her head away breathing hard. The initial relief she’d felt upon realising she was not actually being abducted, but in fact rescued, was swallowed up by a wave of antipathy as she met the mockery in the eyes of her future brother-in-law. His suit was beautifully cut and a dark charcoal, the jacket stretched across broad shoulders, unbuttoned to reveal the white T-shirt he wore instead of a shirt and tie. The T-shirt clung just enough to suggest the strong, well-developed contours of his broad chest. It wasn’t his tailoring that made her scalp tingle though—under the laconic surface there was an explosive quality about him. In the toughness stakes Sebastian Zorzi could have given the bulletproof glass a run for its money.

Obviously she had been aware that the brothers were physically dissimilar. Nothing surprising about that; siblings often were. She and Chloe looked nothing alike, after all.

But the Zorzi Princes were not just different, they were total opposites in everything. It went beyond their colouring or build, or even their smiles, actually especially their smiles! One’s made you feel safe, the other? She gave a little shudder. Safe was not a word she could imagine many people using when it came to Sebastian Zorzi!

‘That’s right, Lady Sabrina, I’m the rescue party.’ He lifted his hand and spoke into the phone cradled in his palm. Sabrina noticed his fingers were very long, the ends square-tipped and capable. They were definitely strong hands.

‘Yes, I’ve got her. She’s...’ The dark lashes lifted from the angular jut of his high carved cheekbones, his blue eyes seemed to consider her for a moment—the bone-stripping intensity making her shift in her seat before he responded to the question she couldn’t hear. ‘In one piece, just about. She looks like she’s been dragged through a hedge backwards, but she retains the ability to look down her well-bred little nose... So, yes, all right—if you like that sort of thing.’

His tone suggested that personally he didn’t like, but then, having seen the sort of women Sebastian thought of as fine, Sabrina was actually quite glad.

He had a type.

And it had nothing to do with IQ points.

Hard to imagine that the endless succession of tall, leggy blondes whose names had been linked with his were universally dumb, but Sabrina had always imagined, with an uncharacteristic lack of charity, that they probably pretended to be dim! There was a type of man who just couldn’t cope with a woman who could challenge them intellectually, and in her opinion the black sheep of the Zorzi family ticked all the boxes for that type!

He was the sort of royal prince who made republicans say smugly, I told you so...or they should do, she reflected grimly. It was just that somehow Sebastian made the unacceptable seem charming and no matter what his indiscretions everyone seemed to forgive him; and not only that, they liked him despite the fact he’d been sticking a finger up to authority all of his adult life.

It had always mystified Sabrina. Yet sitting a few feet away from him in an enclosed space, she began to understand it better. He didn’t have to deliver a charm offensive, he just had to breathe!

The sensual shock wave of his presence had to be experienced to be believed! She had, and Sabrina no longer believed that any of the stories that circulated about him were exaggerated.

In the past it would not have been strange that they had never met. For many years relations between the two Velatian royal families had been, if not frigid, definitely cool.

Times had changed. No longer enemies, the two royal families had become the best of friends and co-conspirators, united in a common cause.

But at every social occasion where both families had been present, somehow Sebastian had always been absent. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise her if Sebastian had been banned from such occasions. The only time Sabrina had even been in the same room as Sebastian Zorzi previously, it had been a very large room and he had vanished very early in the evening through a back exit, along with the much younger wife of an elderly diplomat, before they’d had the chance to be formally introduced.

Later that same evening she remembered the awe-inspiring and rather cold, or so it had always seemed to her, King Ricard coming to find his younger son. Luis, she recalled, had covered for his brother. It seemed to be the pattern of the siblings’ relationship, his brother breaking the rules and Luis covering up for him.

If that meeting had ever happened she might have been prepared for the aura of raw masculinity Sebastian projected like a force field. It was primitive, raw sex appeal in its most concentrated form.

It made her skin prickle, her heart race and her limbs grow heavy and shakily weak. She didn’t like it, but she accepted that she might well be in the minority there. A lot, if not most, might not exactly disapprove of the blatant sexuality of his wide, mobile mouth and the hard sculpted lines of his face. She took comfort in the knowledge that any second-year medical student, or, for that matter, sensible person, would have known her symptoms were caused by the after-effects of shock.

‘Did anyone see us leave...?’ He repeated the mystery caller’s question. ‘A few, I’d say.’ His eyes, glittering with malicious amusement, found her own and she stopped the frenzied smoothing of her hair while he responded to the person on the other end of the line. ‘I wasn’t actually counting, but, no, she didn’t give them any quotes, barring the curses. I learnt a few new ones!’ He winced and lifted the phone away from his ear, waiting a moment, a smile playing across his lips until eventually he pressed it back into the angle of his jaw. ‘Of course I’m not being serious. She was the epitome of inbred princess cool,’ he soothed, before sliding the phone back into the breast pocket of his jacket.

Sabrina still didn’t really know what was happening, but in that moment her desire to find out came second to her desire to react to his comments. ‘The next time you accuse someone of being inbred I think maybe you should consult your own family tree.’

He gave a low throaty chuckle that alarmingly raised goosebumps over the surface of her skin. ‘Point taken, though, as I’m sure you are aware, there was for some time a question mark over my genetic inheritance.’

Her eyes fell even though he displayed none of the awkwardness she immediately felt. Of course she knew. News of the late Queen’s affair had found its way onto every front page after the love letters she had written to her lover had found their way into the public domain after the man’s death.

Then soon after, in case anyone had missed the lurid headlines, there was the book written by the man’s ex-wife and the nanny, who had been the first to connect the dates with the birth of the Queen’s second son and shared her suspicions with a tabloid.

There had been a show of solidarity by the Zorzi royal family at the time too. The Queen had appeared looking beautiful and frail at the side of her husband, the two Princes with their hair slicked back and faces shiny.

‘But nobody believes that now,’ Sabrina said uncomfortably.

He threw her a sardonic look. ‘Oh, plenty believe it, cara, and a lot more wish it was true...’ One slanted brow arched as he shrugged his shoulders. ‘Myself included.’

Distracted from her own situation by this statement, she could not hide her astonishment. ‘You wish you were a bastard? I’m sorry, I...’ She broke off, blushing furiously, but Sebastian Zorzi did not appear even slightly put out by being referred to as a bastard.

‘Let’s just say I don’t wake up feeling lucky that Zorzi blood is running through my veins.’

‘Well, Luis is proud of his heritage,’ she countered defensively.

‘My brother is more forgiving than I am.’

‘Forgiving of who?’

The mockery left his eyes as he stared at her for a long moment. The expression on his face was hard to read. ‘While I’m enjoying this deep and meaningful discussion, aren’t there other questions you should be asking at this moment?’

She shook her head in confusion.

‘Like, what just happened?’

She immediately felt stupid. ‘So what did just happen?’

He gave a throaty chuckle that sounded cruel to Sabrina. ‘Welcome to the rest of your life, cara.’

‘I’m not spending the rest of my life with you.’ Or even another second, if she had her way.

‘My loss, I’m sure,’ he drawled sarcastically.

She clenched her teeth. ‘But why the cameras? The journalists? I don’t understand.’

His dark brows lifted. ‘Really? I’d heard you were bright. Ah, well, bright doesn’t always equate with quick on the uptake, I suppose,’ he conceded as she flushed angrily. ‘There has been a leak.’

Crazily, all she could think about with those blue eyes mocking her was the leak in her bathroom that had occurred last winter, the one that had taken the landlord a month to fix.

He sighed, the sound the auditory equivalent of an eye roll. It was the last straw for Sabrina.

‘Look, I’m sure having cameras and microphones thrust in your face is all part of a normal day in your life but it’s not in mine, so shall we pretend just for a moment that you have an ounce of sensitivity? I’m badly traumatised and, like you said, not so quick on the uptake!’

A tense silence followed her outburst. She never yelled!

‘Ever heard of volume control?’

She said nothing, afraid if she opened her mouth again she’d do something even more embarrassing like cry.

As he stared at her the humorous glint in his eyes completely faded, though there was certainly no softening in his blunt delivery as he spelt out the situation. ‘Someone in the inner circle sold the story: wedding, reunification, the whole master plan.’

She shook her head and swallowed past the lump the size of a tennis ball that was lodged in her throat ‘Why would anyone do that?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, maybe for money?’

She gnawed on her full lower lip, resenting the ease with which he made her feel gauche and naive.

‘But don’t worry, we know it wasn’t you.’

Her eyes flew wide, the pallor that emphasised the sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her small straight nose deepening. ‘What?’

‘Well, first thought was that you might have got tired of waiting for Luis to pop the question and decided to nudge things along.’

‘Why the hell would I want to do that?’ In the hothouse emotional atmosphere her knee-jerk reaction emerged uncensored. ‘I mean...’ Her eyes fell from his searing stare. No, he couldn’t see what was in her head; how the hell could he? At that moment she didn’t even know what was in her head.

‘I touched a nerve...interesting.’

‘I am not a science experiment!’

One side of his mouth lifted in an incredibly attractive half-smile that made her fight to catch her breath while her skin prickled with antagonism.

‘I am sensing that this is bad timing?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ The bad timing was the twisting sensation in her stomach.

‘No need to be coy. I’m assuming that there is a boyfriend in the wings you want to break the news to? Does this guy know that you’ve been tagged as a sacrifice to the great cause of reunification for years?’

‘I am not a sacrifice!’

‘Sorry, a willing victim, then. How many barrels of oil do you reckon marrying my brother is worth, just an estimate?’

She clenched her teeth. ‘I am not a victim—’

‘And the oil deposits in your rocky little kingdom have nothing whatsoever to do with the sudden enthusiasm to reunify our lovely island state? Sorry, not actually sudden. How old were you when they told you the plan? That the feel-good factor of a royal wedding would silence the traditionalists on both sides of the border who cling to the good old days when we hated each other’s guts.’ He pushed his broad, muscular shoulders a little deeper into the leather backrest and let his head fall back. ‘It must make you feel very special to know that you make up an entire chapter in a legal document that took two countries ten years to agree on.’

‘You forgot one important factor...my family ran out of male heirs and, for the record, some guts,’ she told him with grim sincerity, ‘are easier to hate than others.’

His head lifted; he was grinning his insanely attractive smile. ‘Go ahead,’ he invited, tossing her his phone, which she caught on instinct. ‘I’ll pretend to be deaf.’

Lips clamped tight, she tossed it back. ‘Thanks but I have my own phone and I don’t have a boyfriend.’ At university she’d dated a bit, but nothing serious, and then her best friend had met, fallen for and got engaged to a fellow student all in the space of a month. And though Sabrina could not imagine finding herself similarly smitten she had asked herself, what if?

Did she really want to find her soul mate only to be forced to walk away from him? The anger she hadn’t even acknowledged to herself at the time suddenly found its voice—its loud voice.

‘I don’t date. You go on dates to hopefully get butterflies wondering if he is the one, right? So what would be the point?’ She stopped, bringing her lashes down in a concealing curtain across her eyes, appalled as much by the bitter outburst as the person she had chosen to open up to. ‘Besides, I’ve been far too busy with work for much else.’

‘And now you’re going to give that up too like a good little girl, anxious to please. I can see now why it never actually crossed anyone’s mind that you were the leak. The general consensus being that you have never broken a rule in your life.’

His scorn stung, even if what he claimed was depressingly true. She had always been the good girl; she was not about to apologise for it. ‘You make that sound like a vice.’

‘As opposed to what...a virtue?’ On the point of answering his own blighting question, he seemed to change his mind when after a short static pause he added, in an oddly flat voice, ‘The culprit—and, mea culpa, he is one of ours—has been found, and he is, as we speak, being dealt with severely.’

‘Dealt with?’ It sounded sinister, especially when Sebastian said it.

His grin reappeared but it didn’t reach his blue eyes. ‘Don’t worry, despite the bad press we get we haven’t actually executed anyone for a century or so, as for thumbscrews we have found them not really that effective, so we just sacked him.’

‘He lost his job?’

The air escaped through his clenched teeth in an irritated hiss. ‘You’re worried about the fate of a man who was responsible for throwing you to the wolves back there? Wow, you really are going to have to toughen up if you’re joining our family, sweetheart!’ he ground out. ‘But if it makes you feel better the guy won’t be penniless. His insider story of what goes on behind closed doors is pretty much guaranteed to make the bestseller list after it has been serialised in the Sunday papers.’

The colour that had been seeping back into her face retreated. ‘That’s terrible!’

‘But hardly news,’ he responded, sounding very relaxed about the situation. ‘The fact my stepmother has a plastic surgeon on speed dial is not exactly the best-kept secret, neither is my father’s tendency to throw the first thing that comes to hand when thwarted.’

It crossed Sabrina’s mind that an outsider’s view of the place could not be any more jaundiced than this cynical insider’s.

‘So what actually happens now?’

‘Now you go get measured for your wedding dress.’ His gaze slid down her body.

Smiling through clenched teeth, Sabrina struggled not to react to the calculated insolence in his scrutiny, sweat breaking out across her upper lip as she fought the impulse to lift a hand to shield her shamefully hardened nipples.

‘Size eight, am I right? Or maybe a ten up top and an eight in the hips?’ His eyes dropped to her legs where her ankles were neatly crossed one over the other, making her aware that she was rhythmically rubbing one calf against the other.

The abrupt cessation of movement brought his heavy-lidded gaze back to her face. ‘I’m curious—did it ever occur to you to say no?’

‘No?’ she echoed, wondering if any woman ever had to say no to him. It seemed very unlikely.

Her sense of disorientation increased as his eyes narrowed on her face. ‘Or are you actually content to be a pawn?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Really? Next you’ll be telling me that you love Luis, that he is the one.’

Her full lips thinned as she framed a carefully expressionless response to his contemptuous question. ‘I’m not going to tell you anything...’ Then spoilt the effect by instantly exploding resentfully, ‘I wouldn’t expect someone like you to understand.’

Sebastian levered his shoulders from the leather padded backrest and seat as he leaned forward, angling his body towards her. ‘And what exactly wouldn’t someone like me understand?’

She clamped her lips and shook her head, not that the action lessened the feeling of being cornered or the nerve-rattling impact of the aura of testosterone he exuded. If the option to crawl out of her skin had been offered at that moment she would have taken it.

‘Duty,’ she choked through clenched teeth.

His throaty laugh was mockingly ironic. ‘Of course, duty.’ His slow hand clap raised the levels of her animosity.

‘What is funny about that?’

He widened his eyes. ‘Sorry,’ he said, sounding anything but. ‘Was I meant to look impressed by your sacrifice? Oh, I don’t think it’s funny, cara, I think it’s tragic that you are embracing martyrdom so enthusiastically. I’d blame the brainwashing but I think perhaps you were always the good little girl.’

The air left her lungs in a wrathful hiss. ‘I have grown up, unlike some people, and I do not consider myself a martyr!’ Her voice wavered; she was trembling inside and out with the violent rush of emotions his words had shaken loose.

It was a fact of life—or at least her life—that she had little control over a lot of things, but this was one occasion when she didn’t have to take it—or him!

‘You can mock the concept of duty and service, but I’d prefer to be a good girl, as you put it, than a selfish, thrill-seeking, hedonistic waste of space. Has there ever been a moment in your life when you haven’t put yourself and your pleasure above anything else?’

She probably imagined the flash of something that had looked like admiration before his head tilted to one side as he gave the appearance of considering her question. ‘Probably not,’ he conceded.

‘Well, being a selfish waster is not a luxury we can all have even if we wanted it.’

‘You enjoy your occupation of the moral high ground and in a few years’ time, when you are wearing the crown, I just hope you will still think it was worth the things you gave up.’

‘I haven’t given anything up.’

‘How about your work? Why did you waste time, effort and money to qualify as a doctor when you had no intention of ever using that skill?’

Her eyes fell. ‘Research is important.’

‘Granted, but it will have to survive without you, because my instructions are to deliver you to the embassy. Ours.’

‘I’m not a parcel, I’m a person!’

‘With feelings, of course—where are my manners? The shoulder to cry on...’ He leaned towards her and her nostrils flared as the male, warm scent of his body, mingled with a faint fragrance, filled them. ‘Feel free.’

‘I do not require a shoulder and if I did—’

‘I’m only the spare,’ he cut in with an exaggerated sigh as she leaned heavily back. ‘I get that totally. You’re saving yourself for the man with the crown.’

Her hands clenched into fists as she looked at him with burning eyes. ‘You are a really horrible man, you know that?’

‘And you are a very beautiful woman.’ A look of incredulity flickered across his face. ‘Wait, are you...?’ He put a finger to her chin and lifted her face towards him. ‘Yes, you’re blushing!’

‘I am not blushing.’ A sudden possibility had occurred to her, one that would explain his outrageous attitude and the reckless gleam in his eyes. ‘Have you been drinking?’

‘Not for at least two hours.’ He raised his voice to reach the man in the driver’s seat. ‘Charlie, what time did we leave?’

‘I believe it was four a.m., sir,’ the man with the tattoo responded in a cultured voice.

‘Really? Oh, well, I’m totally sober...well, maybe not totally,’ he conceded. ‘Oh, here we are.’ The car drew up outside the embassy. ‘Oh, and I almost forgot, Luis sent his love, and this.’

He leaned across and the sudden shock that had held her immobile as his lips covered hers faded into something else as the slow, sensuous exploration deepened. Sabrina was not sure how her arms came to be around Sebastian’s neck but they were, and she was kissing him back as if he were water and she’d spent the last week in the desert. She had never before felt, never imagined anything like the sudden explosion of hot need inside her.

A need that intensified as she felt a shudder move through his lean body and felt the touch of his tongue between her parted lips. She moaned into his mouth and pushed her body into his as he kneaded his fingers into her hair. She felt on fire, filled with an aching need to...what?

Luckily, before she found the answer, as suddenly as it had started the kiss stopped.

She sat there, shivering, eyes wide, sucking in air in tiny laboured gasps as he leaned back in the seat staring at her, his hypnotic blue stare searing. Hot, dark streaks of colour emphasising the contours of his sharp cheekbones.

‘How dare you?’ The sound of her open palm making contact with his cheek was shocking.

He lifted a hand to his cheek and drawled, ‘Don’t slap the messenger, cara.’

‘You are vile!’ She choked, almost falling out of the car when the door was opened by someone wearing a military uniform.

She could hear his laughter as she walked stiffly up the shallow flight of embassy steps.

CHAPTER TWO

SEBASTIAN SET HIS shoulder to the stiff door that opened out onto a small Juliet balcony. It gave suddenly, filling the warm room with a welcome breeze. The view was as dramatic as the plumbing was idiosyncratic. His shower had run cold and then it had almost scalded him. Oh, well, maybe it was time he learnt how the other half lived, even if that half could claim a heritage as illustrious as his own, such as it was.

For a moment his lip curled into a cynical smile. For reasons obvious when you considered his nickname at school had been the royal bastard, Sebastian had never been able to take the whole heritage thing seriously.

A tap on the door made him turn, but before he could respond Luis walked into the room, his normal smile absent.

‘Reading your body language I’d guess you were just told you’ve got weeks to live, or you’ve just had a heart to heart with our father. How is His Royal Highness?’

Luis’s heavy sigh and despondent attitude would normally have evoked a sympathetic reaction from Sebastian, but today the only thing he felt was a surge of irritation. Didn’t Luis realise that until he showed a bit of backbone the King was never going to stop trying to micromanage his life? Maybe not even then, Sebastian, a realist, conceded. If he were in his brother’s shoes...

But you’re not, are you, Seb?

Luis gets the crown and the girl.

‘I didn’t think you’d come, neither did...anyone.’

‘You asked.’

Actually his father had ordered, which under normal circumstances would have guaranteed Sebastian’s nonappearance, and yet he was here. So why? He rubbed the towel across his dripping hair and veered away from the question in his head before it formed.

‘I asked the last three times I came to visit the Summervilles.’

‘You know I have an allergy to duty.’

‘So you keep telling everyone. Seriously—’

‘It is a very serious allergy.’

‘I wanted you to get to know Sabrina.’

‘It’s you she’s marrying.’ And me she’s kissing, he thought, the sharp twinge of guilt he felt drowned out by the stronger slug of lusty heat that accompanied the memory of those soft, sweet-tasting lips. If Luis had kissed her more often maybe she wouldn’t have melted in his arms.

That’s right, Seb, because it’s never your fault, is it?

He waited for the familiar hit of mingled frustration, sympathy and affection as he watched Luis walk, shoulders hunched in defeat, across the room. Instead, Sebastian found himself feeling anger and something that, had the circumstances been different, he would have called envy.

But of course it wasn’t.

Envy would mean that his brother had something that he wanted, and Luis didn’t.

Luis was welcome to the crown.

There had been a time when they were growing up that being pushed into the background and being referred to as the spare had got to Sebastian, but that had been before he had recognised that it was a lot worse for Luis, carrying the expectations of a country on his young shoulders. Luis had no choices—even his wife was picked out for him.

Luis was welcome to his bride; Sebastian had his freedom. His father had told both of his sons that privilege came with a price; well, so far he’d been proving his father wrong. Sebastian enjoyed the privileges that came with his title without any of the responsibilities.

And Sebastian didn’t want to marry Sabrina—he didn’t want to marry anyone—he just wanted to take her to bed. Even thinking about her now, and that miracle of a mouth of hers, made smoky desire slither hotly through him.

He ignored it. He’d kissed Sabrina and he wasn’t going to do it again, even if the primal attraction that drew him to this woman was stronger than anything he could ever remember feeling. He knew himself well enough to know that it would pass—it always did.

And in the meantime there were plenty of women to kiss who were not about to marry his brother, who were not about to throw away their lives. Her business, he reminded himself, her choice.

Luckily he had recognised, before the entire kiss incident in the car had got out of perspective, the real danger of building it up into something it was not. She had an incredible mouth, beautiful lips and they made him hungry. The need to taste had swept away every other consideration in his head, but it had been what it was: a ‘perfect storm’ moment. Or maybe a perfect moment of madness, fuelled by the alcohol he’d imbibed much earlier in the morning at the nightclub, where he had been even more bored than usual.

The chances were, seeing Sabrina here, in her natural environment, as a woman who represented everything he had been rebelling against and rejecting all his life, that he would regain his normal objectivity.

‘I didn’t expect you to come, but I’m glad you did. I do appreciate the support.’

‘Support?’ Sebastian queried with a frown.

‘I can’t say I’m exactly looking forward to tonight.’

‘Performance anxiety or...don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts?’

Luis turned away but not quickly enough to hide his flush of annoyance at the joke that presumably offended his highly developed sense of duty. If it was annoyance?

Guilt? Could he have hit a nerve? Was his brother having second thoughts? Sebastian dismissed the possibility almost straight away, no matter what his personal feelings. For Luis, duty, no matter what form it took, came first.

‘So how is the blushing bride?’

‘Fine... I guess.’

‘You guess? You mean you didn’t spend the night saying hello?’ Sebastian said, immediately imagining himself saying a very long hello.

‘I only just arrived and she...we... She doesn’t blush.’

Sebastian’s brows lifted. ‘Oh?’ he said, remembering the delicious rosy tinge that had washed over Sabrina’s pale skin.

‘Not that that is a bad thing.’

Sebastian’s eyes narrowed in his brother’s face. ‘Which means that you think it is.’

Luis looked guilty. ‘She just isn’t always what you’d call very spontaneous.’

Sebastian cloaked his expression as he heard the echo of that soft little mewling cry as she’d opened her mouth to him. His body hardened helplessly at the memory of her soft breasts pushing into his ribcage.

The effort of fighting his way free of those intrusive memories delayed his response. ‘Spontaneity can be overrated.’ It could also be great...she would be great in bed.

Never going to find out, Seb.

He was a bastard but not that much of a bastard.

‘Exactly, especially when your every move is being scrutinised. She has all the qualities to make the perfect Queen.’

The speculative furrow between Sebastian’s dark brows deepened as he listened to his brother, sounding very much like a man who was trying desperately to convince himself that he believed in what he was saying.

‘I’m sold,’ he murmured drily. ‘How about you?’

Luis dodged the soft question and his brother’s speculative stare. ‘Marriage is all about teamwork.’

‘So I hear.’ He had never given marriage much thought aside from concluding fairly early on that it was not for him, about the same time that he had nearly made a fatal error. ‘I nearly proposed once,’ he remembered, a rueful smile tugging the corners of his mouth upwards as he tried and failed to visualise the face of the woman who he had decided, at nineteen, was the love of his life.

‘You!’ His brother’s jaw hit his chest before he recovered. ‘You’ve been in love?’ Luis shook his head. ‘Who? When? What happened?’

‘What always happens—the glitter rubs off. I found out she snored and her laugh grated, but for a while I believed that she was perfect. Actually, I’ve believed quite a few were perfect since, the difference being I no longer expect it to last.’

In Sebastian’s opinion, if you were looking for a formula for unhappiness it would be hard to come up with a more sure-fire method than tying yourself to one person for life based on a short-lived chemical high.

‘Perfect? Like you, you mean?’

Sebastian winced and grinned, watching as Luis, his expression growing distracted, moved to one of the two chairs arranged at the foot of the bed. Sebastian held up a warning hand.

‘I wouldn’t do that. I made the same mistake. The leg dropped off. I’ve propped it.’

Luis made a detour to the other chair.

Sebastian’s gaze moved around the room of faded grandeur. ‘It’s not what I was expecting. They really are strapped for cash. No wonder,’ he observed cynically, ‘they are so willing to sell their daughter off to the highest bidder.’

‘They’re not selling her!’ Luis protested. ‘Sabrina understands. She respects—’

‘Our mother understood,’ Sebastian interrupted, wondering if the anger he felt would ever go away. Anger at the system that had trapped his mother in a marriage that had, in the end, destroyed her. ‘And that didn’t turn out so well.’

‘It’s not the same!’ his brother protested, flushing as he surged to his feet.

Sebastian arched a brow. ‘From where I’m standing it looks like a classic case of history repeating itself.’

Luis’s horrified rebuttal was immediate. ‘I’m not like...him.’

Then break the blasted cycle!

Sebastian didn’t voice his thought. What would be the point? He knew his brother would never challenge their father, and, if the positions were reversed, was he so damned sure that he would? Easy to criticise from where he stood.

‘I wonder, Seb. What do you think he’d do if he knew...?’

Sebastian’s irritation slipped away as he walked across to where his brother stood and laid a hand on Luis’s shoulder. ‘He won’t,’ he said firmly. ‘We burnt the letters. No one knows they ever existed.’

The young brothers had not known at the time they discovered the love letters hidden under a floorboard that despite breaking off the affair after she discovered she was carrying her lover’s child she had continued to see him after the child she had conceived with him had been born.

The irony was that they were right, there was a royal bastard, only it wasn’t the son that the scandal-mongers had identified.

‘As far as the world is concerned, the affair only started the year I was born.’ Sebastian could see no reason anyone should ever know. ‘We are the only two people who know, unless you plan on telling him?’

Luis shuddered. ‘I stood by and watched you being bullied at school and then at home when we both know that you should be King. I have no legitimate claim to the throne. I’m not even his son.’

Sebastian shook his head. ‘Be glad of that every day. Be glad of it, Luis!’ he said, his voice gruff with ferocious sincerity. ‘You’ve escaped the taint that I carry. I’m the son the bastard deserves. You will make a better King than I ever could be. You’re the one who has made all the sacrifices...and you are still making them.’ Sebastian straightened up, relaxing the grip on his brother’s shoulders. ‘You don’t have to marry her, you know. You could say no.’

Luis shook his head and dodged his brother’s gaze. ‘Easy for you to say. I’m not—’

‘Selfish as hell?’ Sebastian thought of where being unselfish had got his mother. He’d choose selfish every time.

Luis’s gaze lifted, just as his brother vanished into the bathroom. ‘I’m not a rebel like you. I need to... I care about what people think about me.’

Sebastian re-emerged with a fresh towel, which he rubbed vigorously over his damp hair.

‘And this marriage isn’t about me, it’s about bigger things. I’m realistic about it.’

‘So how does she feel about it?’

Luis gave an uncomprehending shrug. ‘How do you mean?’

‘I mean what does Sabrina expect from this marriage? Is she realistic too?’ He gave a sudden shrug, annoyed with himself for wasting time on a subject that was none of his business. ‘Is the warm glow of doing the right thing enough for her too?’ He began to vigorously rub his already towel-dried hair, asking himself where this swell of outrage was coming from. She’d made her bed and she seemed happy to lie in it...with his brother. ‘Hell, Luis, do you two even talk?’

‘We have a lifetime to talk,’ Luis responded, not sounding as though the life he saw stretching ahead filled him with joy. ‘But you mean sex, don’t you? It’s not like you to be so squeamish. Actually no, I haven’t slept with her.’

‘That’s not what I meant, but as you’ve shared aren’t you taking this untouched virgin bride stuff a bit too far, Luis?’

Luis laughed. ‘Even father doesn’t expect that.’

‘How incredibly liberal-minded of him.’ Sebastian was still struggling with the implication of some of Sabrina’s unguarded comments. Was it really possible that Sabrina had not had a lover, out of fear of falling in love?

‘What if you’re not compatible? Have you thought of that?’

Luis for once looked annoyed. ‘For God’s sake, Seb, this isn’t about how good she is in bed!’

As the comment unlocked a stream of graphic images that flowed relentlessly through his head, Sebastian lowered his eyelids to half-mast. His jaw clenched as he struggled to stem the flow and pretended an amusement he was a long way from feeling. ‘But it would help.’

It would help him even more, Sebastian mused darkly, if he could stop thinking of unfastening glossy honey hair and watching it fall over bare shoulders, pushing it back to reveal small firm breasts...

Oblivious to the tension underpinning his brother’s taut delivery, Luis laughed. ‘I really like her.’

‘Like?’

Luis tipped his head in acknowledgment. ‘She’s sweet,’ he began with the attitude of a man who was clutching at straws.

‘And,’ he ploughed on with determination, ‘she has a lot of common sense.’

Were they even talking about the same woman? Sebastian wondered, thinking about the woman who had attempted to punch her way out of his locked car just to avoid being shut in there with him.

He recognised she’d been driven to this drastic move by desperation and fear and he had fully intended saying something to soothe her, but the expression on her face when she’d recognised him, the fact that she’d looked as though she had just discovered she had jumped into a car beside the Devil himself...he simply hadn’t been able to resist playing up to her prejudices a little.

But then she had challenged his own firmly embedded prejudices. In the abstract he had been able to despise Sabrina Summerville, or at least the idea of her, a woman who, despite coming from a different generation, was just as willing as his own mother had been to be a compliant, political pawn.

The first surprise had been the desire that had twisted inside him when he’d found himself sitting just inches away from her, which shouldn’t have happened. He had seen the photos. He already knew that she was good-looking, admittedly more classy than classically beautiful. But what those photos had not prepared him for was the crystal clarity of her skin, the sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her small straight nose, the deep liquid darkness of her eyes that seemed to reflect her every mood like a mirror. And last, but definitely not least, the pink lushness of her amazing lips.

The blood-roaring primal intensity of his reaction had effectively blocked everything else from his mind for what might only have been seconds, but could have been an hour.

And the hits had just kept coming!

He’d expected a passive victim; he had got a feisty fighter, who clearly thought he was a total waste of space. What had got to him the most had been the conflict in her eyes, her vulnerability.

He’d just wanted to tell her not to do it. Not to marry Luis. Instead he’d kissed her...a greedy response to a need that had been visceral in its intensity.

‘I’ve never seen her lose her temper,’ Luis said.

Sebastian could not control the bark of laughter that bubbled up from his chest as he lifted a hand to his cheek where the imprint of her fingers had lasted, but he didn’t react to his brother’s puzzled look.

‘Perhaps you should try giving her cause and see what happens?’

‘She’s very pretty,’ Luis added, his tone almost defensive as though he expected his brother to deny the fact.

Was Luis serious? The woman was beautiful. She wasn’t his type, he had never leaned in the direction of cut-glass delicacy, but even he could recognise her natural beauty, the rare ‘get out of bed with her hair mussed and still look knockout gorgeous’ beauty, not that he would ever get the chance to prove his theory.

She was his brother’s.

The reminder slowed the heat rising inside him but did not stop its slow, inexorable progress.

What are you, Seb? Fifteen? Get a grip, man!

‘Are you asking me for an opinion?’ Sebastian struggled hard to tap into the sympathy he normally felt for his brother, who was the one expected to make a marriage of convenience, the one looking ahead to a life of being the acceptable public face of the crown.

‘No, yes? I suppose?’ His brother produced one of his genuine smiles, seeming to suddenly shrug off his mood with an ease that Sebastian envied.

‘Maybe you should go on a date.’

‘With Sabrina?’

‘Well, the dating ritual is kind of what people do before they get married, unless you have one of those “wake up in Vegas with a tattoo, a hangover and a wife” marriages. I can recommend the first two as a way of passing a weekend.’

Luis’s eyes slid from his brother’s as he sketched a smile. ‘I haven’t thanked you yet, for getting her out of that press scrum.’

‘Glad to be of help,’ Sebastian said, wondering about the change of subject and his brother’s unusually evasive attitude. Luis, he decided as he studied his brother’s face, looked positively shifty.

‘I’m sure she took it all in her stride.’

Sebastian clamped his jaw as he fought a compulsion to defend Sabrina from the criticism he could hear behind this faint praise. ‘You’d have preferred she’d have fallen apart?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Actually she was pretty shaken, but she came out fighting.’ He saw no point adding that the fight had been mostly directed, quite deservedly, at him.

Luis got to his feet. ‘She was lucky you were so close.’

‘She might not agree... I’d been drinking.’

Luis looked amused. ‘Fall asleep and snore, did you?’

Sebastian’s eyes fell. ‘Not exactly.’

* * *

Sabrina stubbornly refused to acknowledge the lump in her throat as she unpacked. The task didn’t take long. There wasn’t much, just a few pieces of clothing and personal items she had hastily crammed into a holdall.

They represented the majority of her things from the London flat she’d shared with a couple of girlfriends, or had up until two days ago.

The embassy staff hadn’t wanted her to return at all that day, but in the end she’d been given the begrudging go-ahead for half an hour with what they’d termed a discreet security presence, which had turned out to consist of a team of four large dark-suited men.

Sabrina had retained enough of her natural sense of irony—just—to wonder what non-discreet looked like, as two of the silent, unsmiling figures had stared straight ahead as she’d packed and written a note for her flatmates, who had both been sleeping after a long night shift. The other two minders had been, as they’d put it, securing the exits... She really didn’t want to know what that involved! Though the dawning realisation that soon this bizarre would be her normal had made her lose whatever humour she might have seen in the situation.

When it had come to making a goodbye visit to the research unit where she had worked for just over the last year she’d changed tack, not requesting permission, instead just announcing her intention the next morning. Wait, no, it had been this morning. Things were happening so fast it was a struggle to retain any sense of time in this speeded-up version of her own life. She had hidden her surprise when the tactic had worked. Perhaps in the future she should stop saying please and simply demand?

Being the future Queen had to have some benefits.

You’re getting ahead of yourself, Brina. You’re not even a princess yet.

Her ironic grin barely surfaced before it vanished, because soon she would be.

She supposed she didn’t really have the right to feel so shocked, it was hardly news, but in the past it had been a distant thing. Now it was all very real and there was no more pretending that her life was normal.

An expression of impatience drifted across her heart-shaped face, firming the lines of her delicate jaw and soft full lips as she cut off the self-pitying direction of her thoughts.

It is what it is, Brina, so get over it, she told herself sternly as she shook out the silky blouse she was clutching and put it on a hanger.

Was it actually worth the effort of unpacking?

The rate at which things were moving now would mean this wouldn’t be her home for much longer. They were talking June wedding. Weeks away, not months or years. Once more she stubbornly ignored the flurry in her belly, less butterflies and more a buzzard’s wings flapping this time in the pit of her stomach.

Her determined composure wobbled, as did her lower lip, as she pulled out the last item. The outline of the white lab coat she held up blurred as her dark eyes filled with hot tears.

She dashed a hand impatiently across the dampness on her cheeks and blinked hard as her thoughts were inexorably dragged back to when the colleagues she had worked beside for the past year had given her an impromptu leaving party. Some party poppers left from New Year had been pulled from a drawer and dutifully popped, exciting a mild overreaction from the security men, one of whom had flung her to the floor.

Someone whose name she didn’t even know was willing to put himself between her and a bullet. She could see the surreal realisation hit her friends almost as hard as it did her.

In the subsequent dampened party atmosphere someone had handed around sausage rolls hastily bought from the twenty-four-hour mini-mart on the corner, and then they had presented her with the lab coat, a crown emblem sewn onto the breast pocket.

She had struggled to smile at the joke while accepting the leaving present and hugs of colleagues, who’d all said how much they were going to miss her, while she had tried hard not to think about how much she would miss them. She’d miss, too, the challenge of her work—unlike the challenges that lay ahead, this one had been of her own choosing.

Despite the hugs she’d been able to see they were looking at her differently, thinking about her differently. The realisation had saddened but not surprised her. Experience had taught her to expect no less. It was why once she’d had a choice in such things she had never advertised her title or background. She’d wanted to be accepted for who she was with no preconceptions.

She would always treasure her time at university, both as a medical student and then staff member at the prestigious research unit. Dr Summerville was a title she had earned and was proud of. Lady Sabrina, daughter of the Duke and Duchess of East Vela, was simply an accident of birth, the same accident that would see her promotion to Princess and one day Queen of the soon-to-be-reunified island kingdom.

She had relished the opportunity to be judged for her ability and not who her parents were. She had liked that when people had asked her where she was from, East Vela had drawn a puzzled frown and an inevitable, where is that? Or, don’t you mean Vela Main?

There were big advantages for someone who did not like attention of being a royal from somewhere so obscure, the main one being that a third-division royal did not rate heavy security—one of those things she was learning that you did not fully appreciate until it vanished.

For the last few years Velatian politics had seemed a long way away, and she had kept it there, enjoying her freedom, her taste of real life. Sure, she’d been able to hear the clock ticking down, and the knowledge of what lay ahead had never vanished, but she had always known that her parents would make sure she was eased gently into her future role.

But there had been no gentle easing, more like a total immersion. A sink-or-swim introduction of what it meant to be Queen-in-waiting.

One day she had gone to bed as Dr Summerville, an invisible white coat in a laboratory, and had walked out into the street the next morning to calls of, ‘Lady Sabrina, when is the wedding?’

Her eyes clouded with memories as she rubbed her arm where the imprint of his fingers was beginning to turn from black to a more mellow yellow. She squeezed her eyes shut but couldn’t block out his face...or her guilt, or the feeling in the pit of her stomach when she remembered how his mouth had felt against hers, his taste, the raw sexual energy he exuded.

She lifted both hands to her head and yelled, ‘Go away!’

‘Why? What have I done?’ Sabrina’s eyes flew open as her sister walked into the room and flung herself face down on the bed.

‘There’s a wasp...do you mind?’ Sabrina said, pretending a crossness she didn’t feel because she was glad to see her sister. She eased a dress out from under Chloe’s prone form. ‘I am wearing this tonight.’

Chloe propped her chin on her steepled fingers and scanned the garment that Sabrina hung on a coat hanger and hooked over her wardrobe door.

Chloe gave her verdict. ‘Nice, love the fifties vibe, but you could show a bit more cleavage.’

Sabrina raised a brow.

‘You did ask,’ her sister said.

‘No, actually I didn’t.’

‘Well, you should. Have you any idea how many people read my fashion blog? I am considered a fashion guru.’

‘And what do you think Dad is going to consider about that?’

Sabrina angled a nod in the direction of the micro miniskirt her sister was wearing in neon green.

‘He won’t see it,’ Chloe said with a grin as she rolled over and pulled herself into a sitting position, her long legs tucked under her.

It was then Sabrina saw what her sister was wearing on top.

Chloe gave another million-voltage smile and held her arms wide to proudly show off the T-shirt. Sabrina had seen identical ones in the tourist shops in the capital of Vela Main, where the iconic image was reproduced on everything from tea towels to mugs. It was of the Venetian Prince who had fought for, and gained, independence for Vela.

‘You like? I’m showing my hands-across-the-border solidarity. They say his eyes follow you round the room.’

‘They do,’ Sabrina said shortly. She had seen the original on the wall of the great hall in the royal palace.

‘Don’t you think their Pirate Prince looks like the bad brother? I can’t see how anyone could have thought he was a bastard,’ Chloe added, pulling the fabric outwards to look at the face of the Venetian Prince famous for being the man who had fought dirty to secure Vela Main’s independence from Venice. That, and his career as a successful pirate.

It was Luis who had pointed out the similarity during a day trip her family had made the previous year to take lunch with the royal family at Vela Main.

‘His eyes really do follow you around the room,’ she had said, staring at the original of the much-reproduced image.

‘Sebastian has the same trick,’ Luis had said.

‘He was very handsome. Him,’ she’d added, pointing at the portrait and adding hastily, ‘Not your brother.’

Luis had laughed at her embarrassment. ‘You might change your mind when you two finally meet. I’d like to say Seb got the looks and I got the brains, but...’

‘I think you’re very smart, modest and good-looking.’

Whenever doubts had crept in Sabrina had reminded herself that Luis couldn’t have been more unlike his hateful brother if he’d tried.

They were day and night, Sebastian definitely being night, even though his eyes had made her think of the brightest, most blindingly blue summer sky when he’d bent his head and fitted his cool, firm lips to hers.

She felt the guilty heat rise through her body as she reminded herself that she could have stopped it from happening!

Belatedly aware that Chloe was staring at her, she shook her head.

‘A bit,’ she conceded before changing the subject. ‘God, you look like an advert for something healthy...or toothpaste?’

‘And you, sweetie, look like you were doorstepped by the national media.’ She held out her arms. ‘Hug?’

‘Yes, please.’

Sisterly hug exchanged, they sat down on the window seat side by side.

‘I’m quite jealous of the number of hits you got...did you watch it?’

Sabrina did not pretend not to understand; she had heard she had gone viral. ‘No, I was there.’

‘Don’t look so gloomy. I know many women who would pay to get chucked into the back seat by Sebastian Zorzi, and you were wearing nice undies.’

Sabrina’s eyes widened. ‘You couldn’t...?’

Chloe chuckled at the shocked reaction. ‘No, just a lot of leg.’ Her expression sobered. ‘Seriously, though...?’

Sabrina angled an enquiring look at her sister’s face.

The grin re-emerged. ‘He is seriously gorgeous! How about a double wedding? I’m up for it if you are!’

‘What, and share my day in the spotlight?’ Sabrina said, struggling to reply in kind because the image of her sister, dressed in white, standing beside a tall, lean, handsome figure made her feel a little queasy.

‘Because we all know how much you love that.’ Chloe’s smile vanished. ‘Brina, are you all right? I’m just trying to lighten the mood, you know. Are you really going to do it?’

‘Do what?’

‘Go through with this crazy medieval marriage of convenience? You can’t let yourself be used this way, Brina. It’s so wrong.’

‘I don’t have a choice.’

‘There is always a choice, Brina.’

Sabrina shook her head and veiled her eyes with her lashes. It was true, but now the time was here she wished she believed it. ‘I want to marry Luis. He’s a nice guy.’

Chloe’s expression grew serious as she took her sister’s hands in hers and said gravely, ‘Don’t you think you deserve better than nice? A husband who thinks you are more important than anything?’

After a shocked moment Sabrina brought her lashes down in a protective sweep as she swallowed the emotional lump in her throat. Chloe had voiced the thoughts she didn’t dare even allow herself to think.

‘Since when did you become a paid-up member of the soppy romantic club?’

Chloe’s smile was back as she jumped to her feet. ‘I hide it well. So how about I do wear this tonight?’ She moved her hand down the tiny skirt she wore. ‘And flirt with the sexy Sebastian?’

Sabrina struggled to respond to her sister’s teasing smile, managing some sickly approximation of an answering smile despite the tight feeling of rejection in her stomach.

‘Chloe, be careful. Sebastian Zorzi, he isn’t the sort of man you play with.’

She thought of eyes so blue they took your breath away and felt a little shiver trace a sinuous path down her spine as the memory surfaced, both terrifying and seductive. She didn’t want Chloe to be exposed to the danger he represented.

Or maybe you don’t want her to be kissed.

‘He’s dangerous.’

Chloe laughed. ‘He sounds better and better. Now how about a glass of wine to get us in the mood, or to at least prepare me for the undoubted cold shower that awaits me when I go to my room? Perhaps when you’ve sold your body for the good of the country we can get the plumbing fixed?’ She grinned and produced a bottle from the capacious handbag she had dumped by the door. ‘Glasses?’

CHAPTER THREE

HER MOTHER ENTERED her bedroom with dramatic abruptness just as Sabrina was fitting the last hair in the smooth twist she had wound her hair into.

‘There has been a disaster with the meal. Don’t ask!’

Sabrina didn’t but the harassed Duchess told her anyway. ‘I found out an hour ago that the Queen is gluten and lactose intolerant. Half the menu had to be revised. The chef is not happy.’

‘I’m sure it will be fine,’ Sabrina soothed, getting to her feet. Focusing on her mother’s panic made it somehow easier to deal with her own nerves. ‘Just breathe, Mum.’ She laid a hand on her parent’s arm.

The Duchess took a deep breath. ‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right, but I’m running terribly late. I haven’t even started getting ready, not that it really matters. The Queen—’ she lowered her voice and glanced over her shoulder, as though someone might be listening, before adding in a note of mingled envy and despair ‘—always makes me feel inadequate. I swear the woman gets younger every year!’

‘Mum, you always look lovely!’ Sabrina protested.

Her mother smiled. ‘You’re a good girl, Brina. And you’re right, of course, at my age it’s silly to worry about what I look like.’

‘I didn’t say that,’ Sabrina protested. ‘There’s plenty of time for you to go and get ready.’

‘I can’t. I promised Walter that I’d run through the final details with him and speak to the staff.’

‘Leave it to me,’ Sabrina said, pretty sure she would regret the offer. The major-domo, Walter, always made her feel as though she were ten again and he’d just caught her trying to glue together a piece of porcelain she had broken. ‘You go and get ready.’

‘Really?’

Sabrina nodded.

The Duchess gave her daughter a gentle hug. ‘You’re an angel. I really don’t know what I’ll do without you when you’re married.’

‘Pretty much what you’ve been doing for the past seven years while I’ve been living in London, except from now on I’ll be closer.

‘Of course. You’re such a sensible girl. You’ve never given us a moment’s worry, unlike your sister! Speaking of Chloe, I’m going to check what she’s wearing.’ Reaching the door, she stopped and turned back. ‘You look very beautiful tonight.’

Sabrina grinned and smoothed the full skirt of the calf-length fifties-style pale blue silk dress she wore. ‘Oh, this old thing?’

‘And you’re wearing your grandmother’s pearls,’ the Duchess said, an emotional crack in her voice, as Sabrina touched the string of antique pearls wound around her slender neck. ‘You do know we are both very proud of you, don’t you? I wish there was another way. That you could—’

‘Nobody is forcing me to do anything. Luis is a lovely guy and I plan on being very happy.’ She took her mother by the shoulders and propelled her out of the door. It was only when the door had closed again that her forced smile faded. Happiness, she reminded herself, was not a right; in her case it was more a hope.

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