Royals: For Their Royal Heir

An Heir Fit for a King

Abby Green

The Pregnant Princess

Anne Marie Winston

The Prince’s Secret Baby

Christine Rimmer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

An Heir Fit for a King

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

The Pregnant Princess

Dedication

About the Author

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Epilogue

The Prince’s Secret Baby

Dedication

About the Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Epilogue

Copyright

An Heir Fit for a King

Abby Green

Irish author ABBY GREEN threw in a very glamorous career in film and TV — which really consisted of a lot of standing in the rain outside actors’ trailers — to pursue her love of romance. After she’d bombarded Mills & Boon with manuscripts they kindly accepted one, and an author was born. She lives in Dublin, Ireland, and loves any excuse for distraction. Visit www.abby-green.com or e-mail abbygreenauthor@gmail.com

This is for Sheila Hodgson…thanks for your support and calming influence while life got seriously in the way of this book!

I’d also like to thank the beautiful stranger working in the perfume shop in the Westbury Mall in Dublin, who sparked the original idea for this story and a very special thanks to Penny Ellis of Floris, London, who gave me my first experience in how to build a perfume. Any glaring errors are purely my own!

CHAPTER ONE

LEILA VERUGHESE WAS just wondering morosely to herself what would happen when her dwindling supplies of perfume ran out completely when out of the corner of her eye she spotted something and turned to look, glad of the distraction to her maudlin thoughts.

It was a sleek black car, pulled up outside her small House of Leila perfume shop. The shop she’d inherited from her mother, on the Place Vendôme in Paris. When she took a closer look she saw a veritable fleet of sleek black cars. The lead one had flags flying on the bonnet, but Leila couldn’t make out what country they were from—even though she’d spent most of her life identifying the glamorous comings and goings from the exclusive Ritz Hotel across the square.

A man hopped out of the front of the car, clearly a bodyguard of some sort, with an earpiece in his ear. He looked around before opening the back door and Leila’s eyes widened when she saw who emerged. As if they had to widen purely to be able to take him in better.

It was a man—unmistakably and unashamedly a man. Which was a ridiculous thing to think... One was either a man or a woman, after all. But it was as if his very masculinity reached out before him like a crackling energy. He uncoiled to a height well over six feet, towering over the smaller, blockier man beside him. Powerfully built, with broad shoulders in a long black overcoat.

He looked as if he was about to come towards Leila’s shop when he stopped suddenly, and Leila saw a moment of irritation cross his face before he turned back to talk to someone who had to be in the back of the car. A wife? A girlfriend? He went and put a big hand on the roof of the car as he consulted the person inside.

Leila caught a glimpse of a long length of bare toned thigh and a flash of blonde hair and then the man straightened again and began striding towards the shop, flanked by his minders.

It was only now that Leila even registered his face. She’d never seen anything so boldly beautiful in all her life. Dark olive skin—dark enough to be Arabic? High cheekbones and a sensual mouth. It might have been pretty if it hadn’t been for the deep-set eyes, strong brows and even stronger jaw, which had clenched now, along with that look of irritation.

He had short hair—dark, cut close to his skull. Which had that same beautiful masculine shape as his face.

Shock held Leila still for a long moment as he got closer and closer. For a second, just before the shop door opened, his eyes caught hers and she had the strangest notion of a huge sleek bird of prey, swooping down to pick her up in his talons and carry her away.

* * *

The dark-haired shop assistant behind the glass of the shop barely impinged on Alix Saint Croix’s consciousness as he strode to the door. Surprise me. His mouth tightened. If he’d been able to say that the previous night had been...pleasurable, he might have been more inclined to ‘surprise’ his lover. He was a man who was not used to obeying the demands of anyone else, and the only reason he was indulging Carmen’s sudden whim for perfume was because he was all too eager to get away from her.

She’d arrived in his suite the previous evening, and their subsequent lovemaking had been...adequate. Alix had found himself wondering when was the last time he’d been so consumed with lust or by a woman that he’d lost his mind in pleasure? Never, a little voice had whispered as his lover had sauntered from the bed to the bathroom, making sure all her assets were displayed to best advantage.

Alix had been bored. And, because women seemed to have a seventh sense designed purely to detect that, his lover had become very uncharacteristically compliant and sweet. So much so that it had set Alix’s teeth on edge. And after a day of watching waif-thin models prancing up and down a catwalk he was even more on edge.

But, as his advisor had pointed out when he’d grumbled to him on the phone earlier, ‘This is good, Alix. It’s helping us lull them into a false sense of security: they believe you have nothing on your agenda but the usual round of socialising and modelising.’

Alix did not like being considered a modeliser, and he pushed open the door to the shop with more force than was necessary, finally registering the shop assistant who was looking at him with a mixture of shock and awe on her face.

He also registered within the same nanosecond that she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life.

The door shut behind him, a small bell tinkling melodically, but he didn’t notice. She had pale olive skin, a straight nose and full soft lips. Sexy. A firm, yet delicate jaw. High cheekbones. Her hair was a sleek fall of black satin behind her shoulders and Alix had the bizarre compulsion to reach out and see if it would slip through his fingers like silk.

But it was her eyes that floored him... They were huge light emerald gems with the longest black lashes, framed by gracefully arched black brows. She looked like a Far Eastern princess.

‘Who are you?’

Was that his voice? It sounded like a croak. Stunned. There was an instant fire kindling in his belly and his blood. The fire he’d lamented the lack of last night. It was as if his body was ahead of his brain in terms of absorbing her beauty.

She blinked and those long lashes veiled her stunning eyes for a moment.

‘I’m the owner of the shop, Leila Verughese.’

The name suited her. Exotic. Alix somehow found the necessary motor skills to put out his hand. ‘Alix Saint Croix.’

Recognition flashed in her eyes, unmistakable. She flushed, her cheeks going a pretty shade of pink and Alix surmised cynically that of course she’d heard of him. Who hadn’t?

Her hand slipped into his then, small and delicate, cool, and the effect was like a rocket launching deep inside Alix. His blood boiled and his hand tightened reflexively around hers.

He struggled to make sense of this immediate and extreme physical and mental reaction. He was used to seeing a woman and assessing her from a distance, his desires firmly under control. This woman... Leila...was undeniably beautiful, yes. But she was dressed like a pharmacist, with a white coat over a very plain blue shirt and black trousers. Even in flat shoes, though, she was relatively tall, reaching his shoulder. He found himself imagining her in spindly high heels, how close her mouth would be if he wanted to just bend down slightly...

She took her hand back and Alix blinked.

‘You are looking for a perfume?’

Alix’s brain felt sluggish. Perfume? Why was he looking for perfume? Carmen. Waiting for him in the car. Immediately he scowled again, and the woman in front of him took a step back.

He put out a hand. ‘Sorry, no...’ He cursed silently—what was wrong with him? ‘That is, yes, I’m looking for a perfume. For someone.’

The woman looked at him. ‘Do you have any particular scent in mind?’

Alix dragged his gaze from her with an effort and looked around the small shop for the first time. Each wall was mirrored glass, with glass shelves and counters. Glass and gold perfume bottles covered the surfaces, giving the space a golden hue.

The decor was opulent without being stifling. And there wasn’t the stench of overpowering perfume that Alix would normally associate with a shop like this. The ambience was cool, calm. Serene. Like her. He realised that she exuded a sense of calm and that he was reacting to that as well.

Almost absently he said, ‘I’m looking for a scent for my mistress.’

When there was no immediate reaction such as Alix was used to—he said what he wanted and people jumped—he looked at the woman. Her mouth was pursed and an unmistakable air of disapproval was being directed at him. Intriguing. No one ever showed Alix their true reactions.

He arched a brow. ‘You have a problem with that?’

To his further fascination her cheeks coloured and she looked away. Then she said stiffly, ‘It’s not for me to say what’s an appropriate term for your...partner.’

Leila cursed herself for showing her reaction and moved away to one of the walls of shelves, as if to seek out some perfume samples.

Her father had once offered the role of mistress to Leila’s mother—after she’d given birth to their illegitimate daughter. He’d seduced Deepika Verughese when he’d been doing business in India with Leila’s grandfather, but had then turned his back on her when she’d arrived in Paris, disgraced and pregnant, all the way from Jaipur.

Her mother had declined his offer to become his kept woman, too proud and bitter after his initial rejection, and had told Leila the story while pointing out all the kept women of the various famous people and dignitaries who’d come into the shop over the years, as a salutary lesson in what women were prepared to do to feather their nests.

Leila’s mind cleared of the painful memory. She hated it that she’d reacted so unprofessionally just now, but before she could say anything else she heard the man move and looked up into the glass to see him coming closer. He looked even larger reflected in the mirror, with his dark image being sent back a hundred times.

She realised that his eyes were a very dark grey.

‘You know who I am?’

She nodded. She’d known who he was as soon as he’d said his name. He was the infamous exiled King of a small island kingdom off the coast of North Africa, near Southern Spain. He was a renowned financial genius, with fingers in almost every business one could think of—including most recently an astronomical investment in the new oil fields of Burquat in the Middle East.

There were rumours that he was going to make a claim on his throne, but if this visit was anything to go by he was concerned with nothing more than buying trinkets for his lover. And she had no idea why that made her feel so irritable.

Alix Saint Croix continued. ‘So you’ll know that a man like me doesn’t have girlfriends or partners. I take mistresses. Women who know what to expect and don’t expect anything more.’

Something hardened inside her. She knew all about men like him. Unfortunately. And the evidence of this man’s single-minded, cynical nature made her see red. It made her sick, because it reminded her of her own naivety in the face of overwhelming evidence that what she sought didn’t exist.

Nevertheless she was determined not to let this man draw her down another painful memory lane. She crossed her arms over her chest. ‘Not all women are as cynical as you make out.’

Something hard crossed his face. ‘The women who move in my circles are.’

‘Well, maybe your circles are too small?’

She couldn’t believe the words tripping out of her mouth, but he’d pushed a button—a very sensitive button. She almost expected him to storm out of her shop, but to her surprise Alix Saint Croix’s mouth quirked on one side, making him look even sexier. Dangerous.

‘Perhaps they are, indeed.’

Leila suddenly felt hot and claustrophobic. He was looking at her too intensely, and then his gaze dropped to where the swells of her breasts were pushed up by her crossed arms. She took them down hurriedly and reached for the nearest bottle of perfume, only half registering the label.

She thrust it towards him. ‘This is one of our most popular scents. It’s floral-based with a hint of citrus. It’s light and zesty—perfect for casual wear.’

Alix Saint Croix shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think that’ll do. I want something much earthier. Sensuous.’

Leila put down the bottle with a clatter and reached for another bottle. ‘This might be more appropriate, then. It’s got fruity top notes, but a woody, musky base.’

He cocked his head and said consideringly, ‘It’s so hard to know unless you can smell it.’

Leila’s shirt felt too tight. She wanted to undo a top button. What was wrong with her?

She turned back to the counter and took a smelling strip out of a jar, ready to spray it so that he could smell it. And go. She wanted him gone. He was too disturbing to her usually very placid equilibrium.

But before she could spray, a large hand wrapped around her arm, stopping her.

Heat zinged straight to her belly. She looked up at him.

‘Not on a piece of paper. I think you’d agree that a scent has to be on the skin to be best presented?’

Feeling slightly drugged and stupid, Leila said, ‘It’s a woman’s scent.’

He cocked a brow again. ‘So spray some on your wrist and I’ll smell it.’

The shock that reverberated through Leila was as if he’d just said Take off all your clothes, please.

She had to struggle to compose herself, get a grip. She’d often sprayed perfume on her own skin so that someone could get a fuller sense of it. But this man had made the request sound almost indecent.

Praying that her hand wouldn’t shake, Leila took the top off the bottle and pulled up her sleeve to spray some of the scent. When the liquid hit the underside of her wrist she shivered slightly. It felt absurdly sensual all of a sudden.

Alix Saint Croix still had a hand wrapped around her arm and now he moved it down to take the back of her hand in his, wrapping long fingers around hers. He moved his head down to smell the perfume, his dark head coming close to her breast.

But he kept his eyes on her, and from this close she could see lighter flecks of grey, like silver mercury. Leila’s breath stopped when she felt his breath feather along her skin. Those lips were far too close to the centre of her palm, which was clammy.

He seemed to consider the scent until Leila’s nerves twanged painfully. Her belly was a contracted ball of nerves.

A movement over his head caught her eye and she saw a sleek, tall blonde emerge from the back of the car with a phone clamped to her ear. She was wearing an indecently tight, slinky dress and a ridiculously ineffectual jacket for the cool autumn weather.

He must have picked up on her distraction and straightened to look out of the window too. Leila noticed a tension come into his body as his girlfriend—mistress—saw him and gesticulated with clear irritation, all while still talking on the phone.

‘Your...er...mistress is waiting for you.’ Leila’s voice felt scratchy.

He still had his hand wrapped around hers and now let her go. Leila tucked it well out of reach.

He morphed before her eyes into someone much cooler, indecipherable. Perversely, it didn’t comfort her.

‘I’ll take it.’

Leila blinked at him.

‘The perfume,’ he expanded, and for a moment a glint of what they’d just shared made his eyes flash.

Leila jerked into action. ‘Of course. It’ll only take me a moment to package it up.’

She moved to get a bag and paper and quickly and inexpertly packaged up the perfume, losing all of her customary cool. When she had it ready she handed it over and avoided his eye. A wad of cash landed on the counter but Leila wasn’t about to check it.

And then, without another word, he turned around and strode out again, catching his...whatever she was...by the arm and hustling her back into the car.

His scent lingered on the air behind him, and in a very delayed reaction Leila assimilated the various components with an expertise that was like a sixth sense—along with the realisation that his scent had impacted on her as soon as he’d walked in, on a level that wasn’t rational. Someplace else. Somewhere she wasn’t used to scents impacting.

It was a visceral reaction. Primal. His scent was clean, with a hint of something very male that most certainly hadn’t come out of a bottle. The kind of evocative scent that would make someone a fortune if they could bottle it: the pure essence of a virile male in his prime. Earthy. Musky.

A pulse between Leila’s legs throbbed and she pressed her thighs together, horrified.

What was wrong with her? The man was a king, for God’s sake, and he had a mistress that he was unashamed about. She should be thinking good riddance, but what she was thinking was much more confused.

It made alarm bells ring. It reminded her of another man who had come into the shop and who had very skilfully set about wooing her—only to turn into a nasty stranger when he’d realised that Leila had no intention of giving him what he wanted...which had been very far removed from what Leila had wanted.

She looked stupidly at the money on the counter for a moment, before realising that he’d vastly overpaid her for the perfume, but all she could think about was that last enigmatic look he’d shot her, just before he’d ducked into the car—a look that had seemed to say he’d be back. And soon.

And in light of their conversation, and the way he’d made her feel, Leila knew she shouldn’t be remotely intrigued. But she was. And not even the ghost of memories past could stop it.

* * *

A little later, after Leila had locked up and gone upstairs to the small flat she’d shared with her mother all her life, she found herself gravitating to the window, which looked out over the Place Vendôme. The opera glasses that her mother had used for years to check out the comings and goings at the Ritz were sitting nearby, and for a second Leila felt an intense pang of grief for her mother.

Leila pushed aside the past and picked up the glasses and looked through them, seeing the usual flurry of activity when someone arrived at the hotel in a flash car. She tilted the glasses upwards to where the rooms were—and her whole body froze when she caught a glimpse of a familiar masculine figure against a brightly lit opulent room.

She trained the glasses on the sight, hating herself for it but unable to look away. It was him. Alix Saint Croix. The overcoat was gone. And the jacket. He had his back to her and was dressed in a waistcoat and shirt and trousers. Hands in his pockets were drawing the material of his trousers over his very taut and muscular backside.

Instantly Leila felt damp heat coil down below and squeezed her legs together.

He was looking at something in front of him, and Leila tensed even more when the woman he’d been with came into her line of vision. She’d taken off the jacket and the flimsy dress was now all she wore. Her body was as sleek and toned as a throughbred horse. Leila vaguely recognised her as a world-famous lingerie model.

She could see that she held something in her hand, and when it glinted she realised it was the bottle of perfume. The woman sprayed it on her wrist and lifted it to smell, a sexy smile curling her wide mouth upwards.

She sprayed more over herself and Leila winced slightly. The trick with perfume was always less is more. And then she threw the bottle aside, presumably to a nearby chair or couch, and proceeded to pull down the skinny straps of her dress. Then she peeled the top half of her dress down, exposing small but perfect breasts.

Leila gasped at the woman’s confidence. She’d never have the nerve to strip in that way in front of a man.

And then Alix Saint Croix moved. He turned away from the woman and walked to the window. For a second he loomed large in Leila’s glasses, filling them with that hard-boned face. He looked intent. And then he pulled a drape across, obscuring the view, almost as if he’d known Leila was watching from across the square like a Peeping Tom.

Disgusted with herself, Leila threw the glasses down and got up to pace in her small apartment. She berated herself. How could a man like that even capture her attention? He was exactly what her mother had warned her about: rich and arrogant. Not even prepared to see women as anything other than mistresses, undoubtedly interchanged with alarming frequency once the novelty with each one had worn off.

Leila had already refused to take her mother’s warnings to heart once, and had suffered a painful blow to her confidence and pride because of it.

Full of pent-up energy, she dragged on a jacket and went outside for a brisk walk around the nearby Tuileries gardens, telling herself over and over again first of all that nothing had happened with Alix Saint Croix in her shop that day, secondly that she’d never see him again, and thirdly that she didn’t care.

* * *

The following evening dusk was falling as Leila went to lock the front door of her shop. It had been a long day, with only a trickle of customers and two measly sales. Thanks to the recession, niche businesses everywhere had taken a nosedive, and since the factory that manufactured the House of Leila scents had closed down she hadn’t had the funds to seek out a new factory.

She’d been reduced to selling off the stock she had left in the hope that enough sales would give her the funds to start making perfumes again.

She was just about to turn the lock when she looked up through the glass to see a familiar tall dark figure, flanked by a couple of other men, approaching her door. The almost violent effect on her body of seeing him in the flesh again mocked her for fooling herself that she’d managed not to think about him all day.

The exiled King with the tragic past.

Leila had looked him up on the Internet last night in a moment of weakness and had read about how his parents and younger brother had been slaughtered during a military coup. The fact that he’d escaped to live in exile had become something of a legend.

Her immediate instinct was to lock the door and pull the blind down—fast. But he was right outside now and looking at her. The faintest glimmer of a smile touched his mouth. She could see a day’s worth of stubble shadowing his jaw.

Obeying professional reflexes rather than her instincts, Leila opened the door and stepped back. He came in and once again it was as if her brain was slowing to a halt. It was consumed with taking note of his sheer masculine beauty.

Determined not to let him rattle her again, Leila assumed a polite, professional mask. ‘How did your mistress like the perfume?’

A lurid image of the woman putting on that striptease threatened to undo Leila’s composure but she pushed it out of her head with effort.

Alix Saint Croix made an almost dismissive gesture with his hand. ‘She liked it fine. That’s not why I’m here.’

Leila found it hard to draw in a breath. Suddenly terrified of why he was there, she gabbled, ‘By the way, you left far too much money for the perfume.’

She turned and went to the counter and took out an envelope containing the excess he’d paid. She’d been intending to drop it to the hotel for him, but hadn’t had the nerve all day. She held it out now.

Alix barely looked at it. He speared her with that grey gaze and said, ‘I want to take you out to dinner.’

Panic fluttered in Leila’s gut and her hand tightened on the envelope, crushing it. ‘What did you say?’

He pushed open his light overcoat to put his hands in his pockets, drawing attention to another pristine three-piece suit, lovingly moulded to muscles that did not belong to an urban civilised man, more to a warrior.

‘I said I would like you to join me for dinner.’

Leila frowned. ‘But you have a mistress.’

Something stern crossed Alix Saint Croix’s face and the grey in his eyes turned to steel. ‘She is no longer my mistress.’

Leila recalled what she’d seen the previous night and blurted out, ‘But I saw you—you were together—’ She stopped and couldn’t curb the heat rising. The last thing she wanted was for him to know she’d been spying, and she said quickly, ‘She certainly seemed to be under the impression that you were together.’

She hoped he’d assume she was referring to when she’d seen the woman waiting for him outside the shop.

Alix’s face was indecipherable. ‘As I said, we are no longer together.’

Leila felt desperate. And disgusted. And disappointed, which was even worse. Of course a man like him would interchange his women without breaking a sweat.

‘But I don’t even know you—you’re a total stranger.’

His mouth twitched slightly. ‘Which could be helped by sharing conversation over dinner, non?’

Leila had a very strong urge to back away, but forced herself to stand her ground. She was in her shop. Her space. And everything in her screamed at her to resist this man. He was too gorgeous, too big, too smooth, too famous...too much.

Something reckless gripped her and she blurted out, ‘I saw you. The two of you... I didn’t intend to, but when I looked out of my window last night I saw you in your room. With her. She was taking off her clothes...’

Leila willed down the embarrassed heat and tilted up her chin defiantly. She didn’t care if he thought she was some kind of stalker.

His gaze narrowed on her. ‘I saw you too...across the square, silhouetted in your window.’

Now she blanched. ‘You did?’

He nodded. ‘It merely confirmed that I wanted you. And not her.’

Leila was caught, trapped in his gaze and in his own confession. ‘You pulled the curtain across. For privacy.’

His mouth firmed. ‘Yes. For privacy while I asked her to put her dress back on and get out, because the relationship was over.’

Leila shivered at his coolness. ‘But that’s so cruel. You’d just bought her a gift.’

Something infinitely cynical lit those grey eyes and Leila hated it.

‘Believe me, a woman like Carmen is no soft-centred fool with notions of where the relationship was going. She knew it was finite. The relationship was ending whether I’d met you or not.’

Leila balked. She definitely veered more towards the soft-centred fool end of the scale.

She folded her arms and fought the pull from her gut to follow him blindly. She’d done that with a man once before, with her stupid, vulnerable heart on her sleeve. It made her hard now. ‘Thank you for the invitation, but I’m afraid I must say no.’

His brows snapped together in a frown. ‘Are you married?’

His gaze dropped to her left hand as if to look for a ring, and something flashed in his eyes when he took in her ringless fingers. Leila’s hands curled tight. Too late.

The personal question told her she was doing the right thing and she said frostily, ‘That is none of your business, sir. I’d like you to leave.’

For a tiny moment Alix Saint Croix’s eyes widened on her, and then he said coolly, ‘Very well, I’m sorry for disturbing you. Good evening, Miss Verughese.’

CHAPTER TWO

ALIX WAS HALFWAY across the quiet square, fuelled by a surge of angry disbelief, before the thought managed to break through: no woman, ever, had turned him down like that. So summarily. Coldly. As if he’d overstepped some invisible mark on the ground. As if he was...beneath her.

He dismissed his security detail with a flick of his hand as he walked into the hotel, with staff scurrying in his wake, the elevator attendant jumping to attention. Alix ignored them all, his mind filled with incredulity that she had said no.

He’d ended his liaison with Carmen specifically to pursue Leila Verughese.

When Carmen had undressed in front of him in his suite he’d felt nothing but impatience to see her gone. And then, when he’d gone to his window and seen the light shining from a small window above the perfume shop and that slim figure, all he’d seen was her alluring body in his mind’s eye. The hint of generous curves told of a very classic feminine shape—not exactly fashion-forward, like Carmen, with tiny breasts and an almost androgynous figure, but all the more alluring for that.

He wanted her with a hunger he hadn’t allowed himself to feel in a long time. And that impatience to see Carmen gone had become a compelling need.

When Alix got to his suite of rooms he threw off his coat and prowled like a restless animal. He felt animalistic.

How dared she turn him down? He wanted her. The exotic princess who sold perfume.

Why did he want her so badly?

The question pricked at him like a tiny barb and he couldn’t ignore it. He’d only ever wanted one other woman in a similar way. A woman who had made him think she was different from all the others. When she’d been even worse.

Alix, young and far more naive than he’d ever wanted to admit at the age of eighteen, had been seduced by a beautiful body and an act of innocence honed to perfection.

Until he’d walked into her college rooms one day and seen one of his own bodyguards thrusting between her pale legs. The image was clear enough to mock him. Years later.

As if his own parents’ toxic marriage hadn’t already drummed it into him that men and women together brought pain and disharmony.

Ever since then Alix had excised all emotion where women were concerned. They were mistresses—who pleasured him and accompanied him to social events. Until the time came for him to choose a wife who would be his Queen. And then his marriage would be different. It wouldn’t be toxic. It would be harmonious and respectful.

Alix thought about that now. Because that time would be coming soon. He was already being presented with prospective wives to choose from. Princesses from different principalities who all looked dismayingly like horses. But Alix didn’t care. His wife would be his consort, adept at dealing with the social aspects of her role and providing him with heirs.

So why is this woman getting under your skin?

She’s not, he affirmed to himself.

She was just a stunningly beautiful woman who’d connected with him on some very base level and he wasn’t used to that.

Alix didn’t like to recall that first meeting, when just seeing her had been like a defibrillator shocking him back to life.

His was a life that needed no major distractions right now. He had enough going on with the very real prospect that in a couple of weeks he was going to regain control of his throne. Something he’d been working towards all his life.

And yet this woman was lingering in his mind, compelling him to make impetuous decisions. And despite that Alix found himself drawn once again to the massive window through which he’d seen Leila across the square last night. The shop was in darkness now, the blind pulled firmly down.

A sense of impotent frustration gripped him even more fiercely now. The upstairs was in darkness too. Was she out? With another man? Saying yes to him? Alix tensed all over at that thought and had to relax consciously. He did not do jealousy. Not since he’d kicked his naked bodyguard out of his traitorous lover’s bed. And had that even been jealousy? Or just young injured male pride?

He emitted a sound of irritation and plucked a phone out of his pocket. He was connected in seconds and said curtly, ‘I want you to find out everything you can about a woman called Leila Verughese. She owns a perfume shop on the Place Vendôme in Paris.’

Alix terminated the connection. He told himself that she was most likely playing a game. Hard to get. But he didn’t really care—because he was no woman’s fool any more and, game or no game, he would have her and sate this burning urge before his life changed irrevocably and became one of duty and responsibility.

She didn’t have the power to derail him. No woman did.

* * *

For two days Leila stood in her shop, acutely aware of Alix Saint Croix’s cavalcade sweeping in and out of the square. Every time his sleek car drove past she tensed inwardly—as if waiting for him to stop and get out and come in again. To ask her to dinner again.

She hated it that she knew when his cars were parked outside the hotel. It made her feel jittery, on edge.

Just then her phone rang, and she jumped and cursed softly before answering it. It was the hotel. They wanted Leila to bring over an assortment of perfumes for one of their guests.

She agreed and put the phone down, immediately feeling nervous. Which was ridiculous. This wasn’t an unusual request—hotel guests often spotted the shop and asked for a personal service. At one time Leila had gone over with perfumes for a foreign president’s wife.

Even though she would be venturing far too near to the lion in his lair, she welcomed the diversion and set about gathering as many diverse samples of perfumes as she could.

On arrival at the hotel, dressed smartly in a dark trouser suit and white shirt, hair up, and with her specially fortified and protective wheelie suitcase, Leila was shown to the top floor by a duty manager.

The same floor as Alix Saint Croix’s suite.

She felt a flutter of panic, but pushed it down as the lift doors opened and she stepped into the opulent luxury of one of the hotel’s most sumptuous floors.

To her vast relief they were heading in the opposite direction from the suite she’d watched so closely the other night.

The duty manager opened the door to the suite and ushered Leila in, saying, ‘Your clients will be here shortly—they said to go ahead and set up while you’re waiting.’

Leila smiled. ‘Okay, thank you.’

When she was alone she set about opening her case and taking out some bottles, glad to have the distraction of what she did best. No time to think about—

She heard the door open behind her and stood up and turned around with a smile on her face, expecting to see a woman.

The smile promptly slid off her face when she saw Alix Saint Croix and the door closing softly behind him. Client, not clients. For a long moment Leila was only aware of her heartbeat, fast and hard. He was dressed in a white shirt and dark trousers. Sleeves rolled up, top button open. Hands in his pockets. He was looking at her with a gleam in his eyes that told her the predator had tracked down his prey.

So why was she suddenly feeling a thrum of excitement?

He took a step further into the room and inclined his head towards her suitcase, which was open on an ottoman. ‘Do you supply men’s scents also?’

Leila was determined not to appear as ruffled as she felt. She said coolly, ‘First of all, I don’t appreciate being ambushed, Mr Saint Croix. But, as I’m here now—yes, I do men’s scents also.’

Alix Saint Croix looked at her with that enigmatic gaze, a small smile playing around his mouth. ‘The hotel told me that you regularly come to do personal consultations. Do you regard all clients as ambushing you?’

Leila’s face coloured. ‘Of course not.’ She felt flustered now. ‘Look, why don’t we get on with it? I’m sure you’re a busy man.’

He came closer, rolling his sleeves up further as he said, with a definite glint in his grey eyes, ‘On the contrary, I have all the time in the world.’

Leila’s hands clenched into fists at her sides. She boiled inside at the way he’d so neatly caught her and longed to be able to storm out...but to where? Back to an empty shop? To polish the endless glass shelves? He’d just suggested a lucrative personal consultation—even if his actions were nefarious. Not to mention the wad of cash he’d left her the other day...

Swallowing her ire, and not liking the way he was getting under her skin so easily, she forced a smile and said, ‘Of course. Then, please, sit down.’

Leila was careful to take a chair at a right angle to the couch. Briskly she took out some of her sample bottles containing pure oils and a separate mixer bottle.

As he passed her to sit down she unconsciously found herself searching for his scent again, and it hit her as powerfully as it had the first time. Leila had a sudden and fantastical image of herself having access to this man’s naked body and being allowed to spend as much time as she liked discovering the secret scents of his very essence, so that she could try to analyse them and distil them into a perfume.

She cursed her wayward imagination and said, without looking at him, ‘Had you any particular scent in mind? What do you usually like?’

She was aware of strong thighs in her peripheral vision, his trousers doing little to hide their length or muscularity.

‘I have no idea,’ he said dryly. ‘I get sent new perfumes all the time and usually just pick whatever appeals to me in the moment. But generally I don’t like anything too heavy.’

Leila glanced at him sharply. His face was expressionless, but there was an intensity in his eyes that made her nervous. For a moment she could almost believe he wasn’t talking about scents at all, and felt like telling him to save his breath if he was warning her obliquely that he wasn’t into commitment—because she had no intention of getting to know him any better.

She couldn’t deny, though, how her very body seemed to hum in his presence.

Instinctively she reached for a bottle and pulled it out, undoing the stopper. She sniffed for a moment and then dipped a smelling strip into the bottle and extracted it and held it out towards him. ‘What do you think of this, Monsieur Saint Croix?’

‘Please...’ he purred. ‘Call me Alix.’

Leila tensed, her hand held out, refusing to give in to his unashamed flirtation. Eventually, eyes sparkling as he registered her obvious struggle against him, he took the sliver of paper and Leila snatched her hand back.

He kept his eyes on her as he smelled it carefully, passing it over and back under his nose. She saw something flare in his eyes, briefly, and felt an answering rush of heat under her skin.

Consideringly, he said, ‘I like it—what is it?’

‘It’s fougère—a blend of notes based on lavender, oakmoss and coumarin: a derivative of the tonka bean. It’s a good base on which to build a scent if you like it.’

He handed her back the tester and lifted a brow. ‘The tonka bean?’

Leila nodded as she pulled out another bottle. ‘It’s a soft, woody note. We extract ingredients for a scent from anything and everything.’

She was beginning to feel more relaxed, concentrating on her work as if there wasn’t a whole subtext going on between her and this man. Maybe she could just ignore it.

‘It was developed in the late eighteen-hundreds by Houbigant and I find it evocative of a woody, ferny environment.’

Leila handed him another smelling strip.

‘Try this.’

He took it and looked at her again. She found it hard to take her eyes away as he breathed deep. Every move this man made was so boldly sensual. Sexy. It made Leila want to curl in on herself and try not to be noticed.

‘This is more...exotic?’

Leila answered, ‘It’s oudh—quite rare. From agarwood. A very distinctive scent—people either love it or hate it.’

He looked at her, his mouth quirking slightly. ‘I like it. What does that say about me?’

Leila shrugged minutely as she reached for another bottle, trying to affect nothing but professionalism. ‘Just that you respond to the more complex make-up of the scent. It’s perhaps no surprise that a king should favour such a rare specimen.’

Immediately tension sprang up between them, and Leila busied herself opening another bottle.

Alix Saint Croix’s voice was sharper this time. ‘A king in exile, to be more accurate. Does that make a difference?’

Leila looked at him as she handed him another sample and said, equally coolly, ‘I’m sure it doesn’t. You’re still a king, after all, are you not?’

He made a dissenting sound as he took the new tester. Leila wondered how much more patience he would have for this game they were playing. As if someone like him really had time for a personal perfume consultation...

She looked to see him sniff the strip and saw how he immediately recoiled from the smell. He grimaced, and Leila had to bite back a smile.

‘What is that?’

She reached across and took the paper back. ‘It’s extracted from the narcissus flower.’

His mouth curled up slightly. ‘Should I take that as a compliment? That I don’t immediately resonate with the narcissus?’

Leila avoided looking at him and started packing up her bottles, eager to get away from this man. ‘If you like any of those scents we tested I can make something up for you.’

‘I’d like that. But I want you to add something I haven’t considered...something you think would uniquely suit me.’

Leila tightened inwardly at the prospect of choosing something unique to him. She closed the case and looked at him. ‘I’m afraid I will be bound to disappoint you. Perfume is such a personal—’

‘And I’d like you to deliver it personally this evening.’ He cut her off as if she hadn’t even been talking.

Leila stood up abruptly and looked down at him. ‘Monsieur Saint Croix, while I appreciate the custom you’ve given me today, I’m afraid I...’

He stood up then too, and the words dried in her throat as his tall body towered over hers. They were too close.

His voice was low, with a thread of steel. ‘Are you seriously telling me that you’re turning down the opportunity to custom make a scent for the royal house of Isle Saint Croix?’

When he said it like that Leila could hear her mother’s voice in her head, shrill and panicked, Are you completely crazy? What was she doing? In her bid to escape from this disturbing tension was she prepared to jeopardise the most potentially lucrative sale she’d had in years? The merest hint of a professional association with a king, no less, and her sales would go through the roof.

In a small voice she finally said, ‘No, of course I wouldn’t turn down such an opportunity. I can put a couple of sample fragrances together and deliver them to the hotel later. You can let me know which you prefer.’

His eyes were a mesmerising shade of pewter. ‘One scent, Leila, and I want you to bring it to me personally. Say seven p.m.?’

Her name on his lips felt absurdly intimate, as if he’d just touched her. She glared at him but had no room to manoeuvre. And then she told herself to get a grip. Alix Saint Croix might be disturbing her on all sorts of levels but he was hardly going to kidnap her. He wouldn’t need to. That was the problem. Leila was afraid that if she had much more contact with him, her defences would start to feel very flimsy.

Hiding her irritation at how easily he was sweeping aside her reservations, she bent down and closed her suitcase—but before she could lift it off the ottoman he brushed her hand aside and took it, wrapped a big hand firmly around the handle.

Leila straightened, face flushed. He extended a hand and lifted a brow. ‘After you.’

Much to her embarrassment, he insisted on escorting her all the way down to the lobby and seemed to be oblivious to the way everyone jumped to attention—not least his security guards. He called one of them over and handed the thickset man the case, instructing him to carry it back to the shop for Leila. Her protests fell on deaf ears.

And then, before she could leave, he said, ‘What time shall I send Ricardo to escort you to the hotel?’

Leila turned and looked up. She was about to assert that she’d had no problem crossing the square on her own for some two decades, but as soon as she saw the look in his eye she said with a resigned sigh, ‘Five to seven.’

He dipped his head. ‘Till then, Leila.’

* * *

Once back in his own suite, Alix stood looking across the square for a long time. Leila’s reluctance to acquiesce to him intrigued him. Anticipation tightened his gut. Even though he knew this was likely just a game on her part, he was prepared to indulge it because he wanted her. And he had time on his hands.

He felt a mild pang of guilt now when he thought of what his security team had reported to him about her.

The Verughese family were wealthy and respectable in India. A long line of perfumers, supplying scents to maharajas and the richest in society. There were a scant few lines about Deepika Verughese, who had been Leila’s mother. She’d come to France after breaking off relations with her family, where she’d proceeded to have one daughter: Leila. No mention of a father.

In all other respects she was squeaky clean. No headlines had ever appeared about her.

He felt something vibrate in his pocket and extracted a small, sleek mobile phone. Without checking to see who it was, and not taking his eyes off his quarry across the square, he answered, ‘Yes?’

It was his chief advisor, and Alix welcomed the distraction, reminded of the bigger picture.

He turned his back to the view. ‘How are the plans for the referendum coming along?’

Isle Saint Croix was due to vote within two weeks on whether or not they wanted Alix to return as King. It was still too volatile for Alix to be in the country himself, so he was depending on loyal politicians and his people, who had campaigned long and hard to restore the monarchy. Finally the end goal was in sight. But it was a very delicate balancing act that could all come tumbling down at any moment.

The ruling party in Isle Saint Croix were ruthless, and only the fact that they’d had to reluctantly agree to let international observers into the country had saved the process from falling apart already.

Andres was excited. ‘The polls are showing in your favour, but not so much that it’s unduly worrying the military government. They’re still arrogant enough to believe they’re in control.’

Alix listened to him reiterate what he already knew, but it was still reassuring. Something bittersweet pierced his heart. When he regained the throne he would finally have a chance to avenge his younger brother’s brutal death.

Alix tuned back into the conversation when the other man cleared his voice awkwardly and said, ‘Is it true that your affair with Carmen Desanto is over? It was in the papers today.’

Alix’s mouth tightened. Only because of the fact that Andres was one of his oldest and most trusted friends did he even contemplate answering the question. ‘What of it?’

‘Well, it’s unfortunate timing. The busier you can look with very unpolitical concerns the better—to lull the regime on Isle Saint Croix into a false sense of security. Even if they hear rumours of you gaining support from abroad, when they see pictures in the papers...’

He didn’t need to finish. Alix would appear to be the louche and unthreatening King in exile he’d always been. Still, he didn’t like to be dictated to like this.

‘Well,’ he said with a steely undertone, ‘I’m afraid that, as convenient a front as Carmen might have proved to be, I wasn’t prepared to put up with her inane chatter for any longer.’

An image popped into Alix’s head of another woman. Someone whose chatter he wouldn’t mind listening to. And he very much doubted that she ever chattered inanely. Those beautiful eyes were far too intelligent.

On the other end of the phone Andres sighed theatrically. ‘Look, all I’m saying is that now would be a really good time to be living up to your reputation as an eligible bachelor, cutting a swathe through the beauties of the world.’

Alix had only been interested in a very personal conquest before now, but suddenly the thought of pursuing Leila Verughese took on a whole new dimension. It was, in fact, completely justifiable.

A small smile curled his lips. ‘Don’t worry, Andres. I’m sure I can think of something to keep the media hounds happy.’

* * *

When the knock came on Alix’s door at about one minute past seven that evening he didn’t like to acknowledge the anticipation rushing through his blood. The reminder that Leila was getting to him on a level that was unprecedented was not welcome. He told himself it was just lust. Chemical. Controllable.

He strode forward and opened the door to see Leila with a vaguely mutinous look on her beautiful face and Ricardo behind her. Alix nodded to his bodyguard and the man melted away.

Alix stood back and held the door open. ‘Please, come in.’

He noted that Leila hadn’t changed outfits since earlier. She was still wearing the smart dark trouser suit and her hair was pulled back into a low, sleek ponytail. She wore not a scrap of make-up, yet her features stood out as if someone had lovingly painted her.

The pale olive skin, straight nose, lush mouth and startling green eyes combined together to such an effect that Alix could only mentally shake his head as he followed her into his suite... How did such a woman as this work quietly in a perfume shop, going largely unnoticed?

She turned to face him in the palatial living room and held up a glossy House of Leila bag. ‘Your fragrance, Monsieur Saint Croix.’

Alix bit back the urge to curse and said smoothly, ‘Leila, I’ve asked you to call me Alix.’

Her eyes glittered. ‘Well, I don’t think it’s appropriate. You’re a client—’

‘A client who,’ he inserted smoothly, ‘has just paid a significant sum of money for a customised fragrance.’

Her mouth shut and remorse lit her eyes. Alix was fascinated again by the play of unguarded emotions. God knew he certainly hadn’t revealed emotion himself for years. And the women he dealt with probably wouldn’t know a real emotion if it jumped up and bit them on the ass.

She looked at him and he felt short of breath, acutely aware of the thrust of her perfect breasts against the silk of her shirt.

‘Very well. Alix.’

Her mouth and tongue wrapping around his name had an effect similar to that if she’d put her mouth on his body intimately. Blood rushed south and he hardened.

Gritting his jaw against the onset of a fierce arousal that made a mockery of any illusion of control, Alix responded, ‘That wasn’t so hard, was it?’ He groaned inwardly at his unfortunate choice of words and reached for the bag she still held out in a bid to distract her from seeing her seismic effect in his body.

With the bag in his hand he gestured for her to sit down. ‘Please, make yourself comfortable. Would you like a drink?’

Leila’s hands twisted in front of her. ‘No, thank you. I really should be getting back—’

‘Don’t you want to know if I like the scent or not?’

Her mouth stayed open and eventually she said, ‘Of course I do... But you could send word if you don’t like it.’

Alix frowned minutely and moved closer to Leila, cocking his head to one side. ‘Why are you so nervous with me?’

She swallowed. He could see the long slim column of her throat, the pulse beating near the base. Hectic.

‘I’m not nervous.’

He came closer and a warm seeping of colour made her skin flush.

‘Liar. You’re ready to jump out of that window to get away from me right now.’

One graceful brow arched. ‘Not a reaction you’re used to?’

Alix’s mouth quirked. The tension was diffused a little. ‘No, not usually.’

He indicated again for Leila to sit down and after a moment, when he really wasn’t sure if she’d just walk out, she moved over to the couch and sat down. Something relaxed inside him.

He put down the bag containing the scent while he poured himself a drink and glanced at her over his shoulder. ‘Are you sure I can’t get you anything?’

She’d been taking in the room, eyes wide, and suddenly all its opulence felt garish to Alix.

Those eyes clashed with his. ‘Okay,’ she said huskily. ‘I’ll have a little of whatever you’re having.’

It was crazy. Alix wanted to howl in triumph at this concession. At the fact that she was still here, when usually he was batting women away.

‘Bourbon?’

She half nodded and shrugged. ‘I’ve never tried it before.’

There was something incredibly disarming about her easy admission. Like watching the play of emotion on her face and in her eyes. Alix brought the drinks over and was careful to take a seat at right angles to the couch, knowing for certain that she’d bolt if he sat near her.

He handed her the glass and she took it. He held his out. ‘Santé, Leila.’

She tipped her glass towards his and took a careful sip, as he took a sip of his own. He watched her reaction, saw her eyes watering slightly, her cheeks warming again. His own drink slipped down his throat, making his already warm body even hotter.

‘What do you think?’

She considered for a moment and then gave a tiny smile. ‘It’s like fire... I like it.’

‘Yes,’ Alix said faintly, transfixed by Leila’s mouth, ‘It’s like fire.’

A moment stretched between them, and then she dropped her gaze from his and put her glass down on the table to indicate the bag she’d brought. ‘You should see if you like the scent.’

Alix put down his own glass and took the bag, extracting a gold box embossed with a black line around the edges. It had a panel on the front with a label that said simply Alix Saint Croix.

Alix opened the box and took out the heavy and beautifully cut glass bottle, with its black lid and distinctive gold piping. It was masculine—solid.

‘It’s quite strong,’ Leila said, as he took off the lid and looked at her. ‘You only need a small amount. Try it on the back of your hand.’

Alix sprayed and then bent his head. He wasn’t ready for the immediate effect on his senses. It impacted deep down in his gut—so many layers of scent, filtering through his brain and throwing up images like a slideshow going too fast for him to analyse.

He was thrown back in time to his home on the island, with the sharp, tangy smell of the sea in the air, and yet he could smell the earth too, and the scent of the exotic flowers that bloomed on Isle Saint Croix. He could even smell something oriental, spicy, that made him think of his Moorish ancestors who had given the island its distinctive architecture.

He wasn’t prepared for the sharp pang of emotion that gripped him as a memory surged: him and his younger brother, playing, carefree, near the sea.

‘What’s in it?’ he managed to get out.

Leila was looking concerned. ‘You don’t like it?’

‘Like’ was too flimsy a word for what this scent was doing to him. Alix stood up abruptly, feeling acutely exposed. Dieu. Was she a witch? He strode over to the window and kept his back to her, brought his hand up to smell again.

The initial shock of the impact was lessening as the scent opened out and mellowed. It was him. The scent was everything that was deep inside him, where no one could see his true self. Yet this woman had got it—after only a couple of meetings and a few hours.

CHAPTER THREE

LEILA STOOD UP, not sure how to respond. She’d never seen someone react so forcefully to a scent before.

‘I researched a little about the island, to find out what its native flowers were, and I approximated them as closely as I could with what I have available in the shop. And I added citrus and calone, which has always reminded me of a sea breeze.’

Alix Saint Croix looked huge, formidable, against the window and the autumnal darkness outside. Her first reaction when she’d met this man had been fascination, a feeling of being dazzled, and since then her instinct had been to run away—fast. But now her feet were glued to the floor.

‘If you don’t like it—’

‘I like it.’

His response was short, sharp. He sounded almost...angry. Leila was completely confused.

Hesitantly she said, ‘Are you sure? You don’t sound very pleased.’

He turned around then and thrust both hands into his pockets. His chest was broad, the darkness of his skin visible under his shirt. He looked at her closely and shook his head, as if trying to clear it.

Finally he said, ‘I’m just a little surprised. The fragrance is not what I was expecting.’

Leila shrugged. ‘A customised scent has a bigger impact than a generic designer scent...’

His mouth quirked sexily and he came back over to the couch. Leila couldn’t take her eyes off him.

‘It certainly has an impact.’

‘If it’s too strong I can—’

‘No.’ Alix’s voice cut her off. ‘I don’t want you to change it.’

A knock came on the door then, and Leila flinched a little. She was so caught up in this man’s reaction and his charisma that she’d almost forgotten where she was. The seductive warmth of the bourbon in her belly didn’t help.

Alix said, ‘That’s dinner. I took the liberty of ordering for two, if you’d care to join me?’

Leila just looked at him and felt again that urge to run—but also a stronger urge to stay. Rebel. Even though she wasn’t exactly sure who she was rebelling against. Herself and every instinct screaming at her to run? Or the ghost of her mother’s disappointment?

She justified her weakness to herself: this man had thrown more business her way than she’d see in the next month. She should be polite. Ha! said a snide inner voice. There’s nothing polite about the way you feel around him.

She ignored that and said, as coolly as she could, ‘Only if it’s not too much of an imposition.’

He had a very definite mocking glint to his eye. ‘It’s no imposition...really.’

Alix went to the door and opened it to reveal obsequious staff who proceeded straight towards a room off the main reception area. Within minutes they were leaving again, and Alix was waiting for Leila to precede him into the dining room—which was as sumptuously decorated as the rest of the suite.

She caught a glimpse of a bedroom through an open door and almost tripped over her feet to avoid looking that way again. It brought to mind too easily the way that woman had stripped so nonchalantly for her lover. And how Alix had maintained that nothing had happened in spite of appearances.

Why should she even care, when he was probably lying?

Leila almost balked at that point, but as if sensing her trepidation, Alix pulled out a chair and looked at her pointedly. No escape. She moved forward and sat down, looking at the array of food laid out on the table. There was enough for a small army.

Alix must have seen something on her face, because he grimaced a little and said, ‘I wasn’t sure if you were vegetarian or not, so I ordered a selection.’

Leila couldn’t help a wry smile. ‘I am vegetarian, actually—mostly my mother’s influence. Though I do sometimes eat fish.’

Alix started to put some food on a plate for her: a mixture of tapas-type starters, including what looked like balls of rice infused with herbs and spices. The smells had her mouth watering, and she realised that she hadn’t eaten since earlier that day, her stomach having been too much in knots after seeing Alix Saint Croix again, and then thinking about him all afternoon as she’d worked on his fragrance.

She could smell it now, faintly—exotic and spicy, with that tantalising hint of citrus—and her insides quivered. It suited him: light, but with much darker undertones.

He handed her the plate and then plucked a chilled bottle of white wine out of an ice bucket. Leila wasn’t used to drinking, and could still feel the effects of the bourbon, so she held up a hand when Alix went to pour her some wine.

‘I’ll stick to water, thanks.’

As he poured himself some wine he asked casually, ‘Where are your parents from?’

Leila tensed inevitably as the tall, shadowy and indistinct shape of her father came into her mind’s eye. She’d only ever seen him in photos in the newspaper. Tightly she answered, ‘My mother was a single parent. She was from India.’

‘Was?’

Leila nodded and concentrated on spearing some food with her fork. ‘She died a few years ago.’

‘I’m sorry. That must have been hard if it was just the two of you.’

Leila was a little taken aback at the sincerity she heard in his voice and said quietly, ‘It was the hardest thing.’

She avoided his eyes and put a forkful of food in her mouth, not expecting the explosion of flavours from the spice-infused rice ball. She looked at him and he smiled at her reaction, chewing his own food.

When he could speak he said, ‘My personal chef is here. He’s from Isle Saint Croix, so he sticks to the local cuisine. It’s a mixture of North African and Mediterranean.’

Relieved to be moving away from personal areas, Leila said, ‘I’ve never tasted anything like it.’ Then she admitted ruefully, ‘I haven’t travelled much, though.’

‘You were born here?’

Leila reached for her water, as much to cool herself down as anything else. ‘Yes, my mother travelled over when she was pregnant. My father was French.’

‘Was?’

Leila immediately regretted letting that slip out. But her mother was no longer alive. Surely the secret didn’t have to be such a secret any more? But then she thought of how easily her father had turned his back on them and repeated her mother’s words, used whenever anyone had asked a similar question. ‘He died a long time ago. I never knew him.’

To her relief, Alix didn’t say anything to that, just looked at her consideringly. They ate in companionable silence for a few minutes, and Leila tried not to think too hard about where she was and who she was with.

When she’d cleared half her plate she sneaked a look at Alix. He was sitting back, cradling his glass of wine, looking at her. And just like that her skin prickled with heat.

‘I hope I didn’t lose you too much custom by taking up your attention today?’

He looked entirely unrepentant, and in spite of herself Leila had to allow herself a small wry smile. ‘No—the opposite. The business has been struggling to get back on track since the recession...niche industries like mine were the worst hit.’

Alix frowned. ‘Yet you kept hold of your shop?’

Leila nodded, tensing a little at the thought of the uphill battle to restore sales. ‘I’ve owned it outright since my mother died.’

‘That’s good—but you could sell. You don’t need me to tell you what that shop and flat must be worth in this part of Paris.’

Leila’s insides clenched hard. ‘I won’t ever sell,’ she said in a low voice. The shop and the flat were her mother’s legacy to her—a safe haven. Security. She barely knew this man...she wasn’t about to confide in him.

Feeling self-conscious again, she took her napkin from her lap and put it on the table. That silver gaze narrowed on her.

‘I should go. Thank you for dinner—you really didn’t have to.’

She saw a muscle twitch in Alix’s jaw and half expected—wanted?—him to stop her from going.

But he just stood up smoothly and said, ‘Thank you for joining me.’

Much to Leila’s sense of disorientation, Alix made no effort to detain her with offers of tea or coffee. He picked up the bag that she’d had with her when she’d arrived and handed it to her in the main reception room.

Feeling at a loss, and not liking the sense of disappointment that he was letting her go so easily, Leila said again, ‘Thank you.’

Alix bowed slightly towards her and once again she was struck by his sheer beauty and all that potent masculinity. He looked as if he was about to speak some platitude, then he stopped and said, ‘Actually... I have tickets to the opera for tomorrow evening. I wonder if you’d like to join me?’

Leila didn’t trust his all-too-innocent façade for a second—as if he’d just thought of it. But she couldn’t think straight because giddy relief was mocking her for the disappointment she’d felt just seconds ago because he was letting her go so easily.

She was dealing with a master here.

This was not the first time a man had asked her out but it still hit her in the solar plexus like a blow. Her last disastrous dating experience rose like a dark spectre in her memory—except this man in front of her eclipsed Pierre Gascon a hundred times over. Enough to give her a little frisson of satisfaction.

As if any man could compete with this tall, dark specimen before her. Sexy. Leila had never been overtly aware of sexual longing before. But now she was—she could feel the awareness throbbing in her blood, between her legs.

And it was that awareness of how out of her depth Alix Saint Croix made her feel that had Leila blurting out, ‘I really don’t think it would be a good idea.’ Coward, whispered a voice.

He lifted a brow in lazy enquiry. ‘And why would that be? You’re single...I’m single. We’re two consenting adults. I’m offering a pleasant way to spend the evening. That’s all.’

Now she felt gauche. She was thinking of sex when he certainly wasn’t. ‘I’m just...not exactly in your league, Monsieur Saint Croix—’

‘It’s Alix,’ he growled, coming closer. ‘Call me Alix.’

Leila swallowed, caught in the beam of those incredible eyes. ‘Alix...’

‘That’s better. Now, tell me again exactly why this is not a good idea?’

Feeling cornered and angry now—with herself as much as him—Leila flung out a hand. ‘I own a shop and you’re a king. We’re not exactly on a level footing.’

Alix cocked his head to one side. ‘You’re a perfumer, are you not? A very commendable career.’

Unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice, Leila said, ‘To be a perfumer one needs to be making perfumes.’

‘Something I’ve no doubt you’ll do when your business recovers its equilibrium.’

His quiet and yet firm encouragement made something glow in Leila’s chest. She ruthlessly pushed it down. This man could charm the devil over to the light side.

‘Don’t you have more important things to be doing?’

A curious expression she couldn’t decipher crossed his hard-boned face before his mouth twitched and he said,‘Not right now, no.’

Leila’s stubborn refusal to accede to his wishes was having a bizarre effect on Alix. He could quite happily stay here for hours and spar with her, watching those expressions cross her face and her gorgeous eyes spark and glow.

‘Don’t you know,’ he said carefully, watching her reaction with interest, ‘that feigning uninterest is one sure way to get a man interested in you?’

Immediately her cheeks were suffused with colour and her back went poker straight with indignation. Eyes glittering, she said, ‘I am not feigning uninterest, Mr Saint Croix, I am genuinely mystified as to why you are persisting like this—and to be perfectly frank I think I’d prefer it if you just left me alone.’

He took a step closer. ‘Really, Leila? I could let you walk out of this suite right now and you’ll never see me again.’ He waited a beat and then said softly, ‘If that’s really what you want. But I don’t think it is.’

Oh, God. He’d seen her disappointment. She’d never been any good at hiding her emotions. She’d also never felt so hot with the need to break out of some confinement holding her back.

She hadn’t felt this hungry urgency with Pierre. He’d been far more subtle—and ultimately manipulative. Alix was direct. And there was something absurdly comforting about that. There were no games. He wasn’t dressing his words up with illusions of more being involved. It made her breathless.

Her extended silence had made something go hard in Alix’s eyes and Leila felt a dart of panic go through her. She sensed that he would stop pursuing her if she asked him to. If he did indeed believe she was stringing him along. Which she wasn’t. Or was she? Unconsciously?

She hated to think that she might be capable of such a thing, but she couldn’t deny the thrilling rush of something illicit every time she saw him. The rush of sparring with him. The rush each time he came back even though she’d said no.

Leila felt as if she was skirting around the edges of a very large and angry fire that mesmerised her as much as it made her fear its heat. She’d shut down after her experience with Pierre, dismayed at coming to terms with the fact that she’d made such a huge misjudgement. But now she could feel a part of her expanding inside again, demanding to be heard. To be set free. Another chance.

She’d never been to the opera. Pierre’s most exciting invitation had been to a trip down the Seine, which Leila had done a million times with her mother. The sense of yearning got stronger.

She heard herself asking, ‘It’s just a trip to the opera?’

The hardness in Alix’s eyes softened, but he was careful enough not to show that he’d gained a point.

‘Yes, Leila, it’s just a simple trip to the opera. If you can close a little early tomorrow I’ll pick you up at five.’

Closing a little early would hardly damage her already dented business. She took a deep breath and tried not to let this moment feel bigger than it should. ‘Very well. I’ll accept your invitation.’

Alix took up her hand and raised it to his mouth before brushing a very light, almost imperceptible kiss across the back of it. Even so, his breath burned her skin.

‘I look forward to it, Leila. A bientôt.’

* * *

At about three o’clock the next day Leila found herself dealing with an unusual flurry of customers, and it took her a couple of seconds to notice the thickset man waiting just inside the door. When she finally registered that it was Ricardo, Alix’s bodyguard, she noticed that he had a big white box in his hands.

She went over and he handed it to her, saying gruffly, ‘A gift from Mr Saint Croix.’

Leila took the box warily and glanced at her customers, who were all engrossed in trying out the samples she’d been showing them. She looked back to Ricardo and felt a trickle of foreboding. ‘Can you wait for a second?’

He nodded, and if Leila had had the time to appreciate how out of place he looked against the backdrop of delicate perfume bottles she might have smiled.

She suspected that she knew what was in the box.

She ducked into a small anteroom behind the counter and opened it to reveal layers of expensive-looking silver tissue paper. Underneath the paper she saw a glimmer of silk, and gasped as she pulled out the most beautiful dress she’d ever seen.

It was a very light green, with one simple shoulder strap and a ruched bodice. The skirt fell to the floor from under the bust in layers of delicate chiffon. On further investigation Leila saw that there were matching shoes and even underwear. Her face burned at that. It burned even more when she realised that Alix had got her size spot-on.

She felt tempted to march right across the square and tell him to shove his date, but she held on to her temper. This was how he must operate with all his women. And he was arrogant enough to think that Leila was just like them?

* * *

‘What do you mean, she wouldn’t accept it?’

Ricardo looked exceedingly uncomfortable and shifted from foot to foot, before saying sotto voce, mindful of the other men in the room, ‘She left a note inside the box.’

‘Did she now?’ Alix curbed his irritation and said curtly, ‘Thank you, Ricardo, that will be all.’

Alix had been holding a meeting in his suite, and the other men around the table started to move a little, clearly anticipating a break from the customarily intense sessions Alix conducted. He dismissed them too, with a look that changed their expressions of relief to ones of meek servitude.

When they were all gone Alix flicked open the lid of the box and saw the plain piece of white paper lying on the silver paper with its succinct message:

Thank you, but I can dress myself.

Leila.

Alix couldn’t help his mouth quirking in a smile. Had any woman ever handed him back a gift? Not in his memory.

He let the lid drop down and stood up to walk over to the window of his suite, which looked out over the square below.

For a large portion of his life, ever since his dramatic escape from Isle Saint Croix all those years ago, he’d felt like a caged animal—forced into this role of pretending that he wasn’t engaged in an all-out battle to regain his throne. The prospect of being on his island again, with the salty tang of the sea in the hot air... Sometimes the yearning for home was almost unbearable.

Alix sighed and let his gaze narrow on the small shop that glinted across the square in the late-afternoon sunlight. He could see the familiar slim white-coated shape moving back and forth. The caged animal within him got even more restless. The yearning was replaced with sharp anticipation.

It would be no hardship to pursue Miss Verughese and let the world think nothing untoward was going on behind the scenes. No hardship at all.

* * *

Leila looked at herself in the mirror and had a sudden attack of nerves. Maybe she’d been really stupid to send Alix’s gift back to him? She’d never been to the opera—she wasn’t even sure what the dress code was, except posh.

The scent she’d put on so sparingly drifted up, and for a moment she wanted to run and wash it off. It wasn’t her usual scent, which was light and floral. This was a scent that had always fascinated her: one of her mother’s most sensual creations. It had called to Leila from the shelf just after she’d locked up before coming upstairs to get ready.

It was called Dark Desiring. Her mother had had a penchant for giving their perfumes enigmatic names. As soon as Leila had sprayed a little on her wrist she’d heard her mother’s voice in her head: ‘This scent is for a woman, Leila. The kind of woman who knows what she wants and gets it. You will be that woman someday, and you won’t be foolish like your mother.’

She felt the scent now, deep in the pit of her belly. Felt its dark sensuality, earthy musky notes and exotic floral arrangement. It was so unlike her...and yet it resonated with her. But she felt exposed wearing it—as if it would be obvious to everyone that she was trying to be something she wasn’t.

The doorbell sounded... Too late to remove it now, even if she wanted to.

She made her way downstairs, her heart palpitating in her chest. She thrust aside memories of another man she’d let too close. It had been as if as soon as her mother’s influence had been removed Leila had automatically sought out proof that not all men weren’t to be trusted. But that had spectacularly backfired and proved her very wrong.

Walking through the darkened shop, Leila forced the clamouring memories down. She’d learnt her lesson. She was no fool any more. She still wanted something different from her mother’s experience, but Alix Saint Croix was the last man to offer such a thing. So, if anything, she couldn’t be safer than with this man.

She sucked in a big breath and opened the door. The sky was dusky outside and Alix blocked most of it with his broad shoulders. He was dressed in a classic black tuxedo and white bow tie under his overcoat. Leila’s mouth went dry. That assurance of safety suddenly felt very flimsy.

She wasn’t even aware that Alix’s eyes had widened on her when she’d appeared.

‘You look beautiful.’

She stopped gawking at him long enough to meet his eyes. And those nerves gripped her again as she gestured shyly to her outfit. ‘I wasn’t sure... I hope it’s appropriate?’

Alix lifted his eyes to hers. ‘It’s stunning. You look like a princess.’

Leila blushed and busied herself pulling the door behind her and locking it to deflect his scrutiny.

The outfit was a traditional Indian salwar kameez with a bit of a modern twist. The tunic was made out of green and gold silk, with slim-fitting trousers in the same shade of green. She had on gold strappy sandals that she’d bought one day on a whim but never worn. A loose chiffon throw was draped over her shoulders and she’d put her hair up in a high bun. She wore ornate earrings that had belonged to her mother—like a talisman that might protect her from falling into the vortex that this man created whenever he was near.

The driver of the sleek car parked nearby was holding the door open, and Leila slid into the luxurious confines as Alix joined her from the other side. She plucked nervously at the material of her tunic as they pulled away.

Alix took her hand and she looked at him.

‘You look amazing. No other woman will be dressed the same.’

Leila quirked a wry smile, liking the feel of Alix’s hand around hers far too much. ‘That’s what I’m suddenly afraid of.’

He shook his head. ‘You’ll stand out like a bird of paradise—they’ll be insanely jealous.’

Leila gave a small dissenting sound and went to pull her hand back, but Alix gripped it tighter and lifted it up, turning her wrist. He frowned slightly and bent to smell. Leila’s heart thumped, hard.

He looked at her. ‘This isn’t your usual scent?’

Damn him for noticing. Leila cursed her impetuosity and felt as if that scarlet letter was on her forehead for all to see. She pulled her hand back. ‘No, it’s a different scent—one more suitable for evenings.’

‘I like it.’

Leila could smell his scent too. The one she’d made him. She knew that it lingered on his skin from when he’d put it on much earlier that day—it didn’t have the sharp tang of having been recently applied. She thought of their scents now, mingling and wrapping around one another. It made her feel unbearably aware of the fact that they were so close. Aware of the warm blood pumping just under their skin, making those scents mellow and change subtly.

It was an alchemy that happened to everyone in a totally different way, as the perfume responded uniquely to each individual.

She finally looked away from Alix to see that they were leaving the confines of the city and heading towards the grittier outskirts. Nowhere near the Paris opera house.

She frowned and looked back at him. ‘I thought we were going to the opera?’

‘We are.’

‘But we’re leaving Paris.’

Alix smiled. ‘I said we were going to the opera. I didn’t say where.’

Flutters of panic made her tense. ‘I don’t appreciate surprises. Tell me where we’re going, please.’

His eyes narrowed on her and Leila bit back the urge to lambast him for assuming she was just some wittering dolly bird, only too happy to let him whisk her off to some unknown location.

Alix’s voice had an edge of steel to it when he said, ‘We’re going to Venice.’

‘Venice?’ Leila squeaked. ‘But I don’t have my passport. I mean, how can we just—?’

Alix took her hand again and spoke as if he was soothing a nervous horse. ‘You don’t need your passport. I have diplomatic immunity and you’re with me. The flight will take an hour and forty minutes. I’ll have you back in Paris and home by midnight. I promise.’

Leila reeled. ‘You said flight?’

Alix nodded warily, as if expecting another explosion.

‘I’ve never been on a plane before,’ she admitted somewhat warily. As if Alix might be so disgusted with her lack of sophistication that he’d turn around and deliver her home right now.

He just frowned slightly. ‘But...how is that possible?’

Leila shrugged, finding to her consternation that once again she was loath to take her hand out of Alix’s much bigger one. ‘My mother and I...we didn’t travel much. Apart from to other parts of France. We went to England once, to visit a factory outside London, but we took the train. My mother was terrified of flying.’

‘Well, then,’ said Alix throatily, ‘do you want to go home? Or do you want to take your first flight? We can turn around right now if you want.’

That was like asking if she wanted to keep moving forward in life or backwards. Leila felt that fire reaching out to lick at her with a tantalising flash of heat. Alix’s thumb was rubbing the underside of her wrist, making the flash of heat more intense. Leila thought of the car turning around, of returning to that square and her shop. She felt nauseous.

She shook her head. ‘I’d like to fly with you.’

Alix brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it lightly before saying, ‘Then let’s fly.’

Leila might not be half as sophisticated as his usual women, but even she knew that they were talking about something else entirely—just as the flames of that fire reached out to consume her completely and Alix moved close enough to slant his hard sensual mouth over hers.

She’d been kissed before—by Pierre. But his kiss had been insistent and invasive. Too wet, with no finesse. This was...

Leila lost any sense of being able to string a rational thought together when her mouth opened of its own volition under Alix’s and she felt the first electrifying contact of his tongue to hers. She was lost.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE ONLY THING stopping Alix exploding into orbit at the feel of Leila’s lush soft mouth under his and the shy touch of her tongue was the hand he’d clamped around her waist. He was rock-hard almost instantaneously. He’d never tasted such sweetness. Her mouth trembled under his and he had to use extreme restraint to go slowly, coaxing her to open up to him.

He felt the hitch in her breathing as their kiss deepened and he gathered her closer to feel the swell of her breasts against his chest. Right at that moment Alix couldn’t have remembered his own name. He was drowning in heat and lust and an urgent desire to haul Leila over his lap, so that he could seat her against where he ached most.

She pulled back suddenly and he cracked open his eyes to look down into wide green ones. Leila had her hands on his chest and was pushing at him.

‘Please—don’t do that again.’

Alix was on unsure ground. Another first. He wasn’t used to women pushing him away. And he knew Leila had been enjoying it. She’d been melting into him like his hottest teenage fantasy, and he felt about as suave as a teenager right then. All raging hormones and no control.

Drawing on what little control he did still have, Alix moved back, putting space between them. He looked at her. Cheeks flushed, chest rising and falling rapidly, eyes avoiding his. Mouth pink and wet. It made him think of other parts of her that might be wet. He cursed himself silently. Where was his finesse?

He reached out and cupped her jaw, seeing how she tensed. He tipped her chin up so that she had no choice but to look at him. Her eyes were huge and wary. There was an edge of something in her eyes that he couldn’t read. He felt a spike of recrimination. Had he been too forceful? But he knew he hadn’t. It had nearly killed him to rein himself in.

‘Did you have a bad experience with a previous lover?’

She pulled his hand down. ‘That’s none of your business.’

She avoided his eyes again and he wanted to growl his frustration. But they were pulling into the small private airport now, and staff were rushing to meet the car.

Alix got out and pulled his coat around his body, not liking that he had to conceal his arousal. He glared at the driver who was about to help Leila out of the car and the man ducked back to let Alix take her hand. When she stood up beside him, the breeze blowing a loose tendril of dark hair across one cheek, he had to forcibly stop himself from kissing her again.

Gripping her hand, when he usually avoided public displays of affection like the plague, he led her over to the waiting plane: a small sleek private jet that he used for short hops around Europe. He realised then how much he took things like this for granted. Leila had never even flown before.

He stopped and turned to her. ‘You’re not frightened, are you?’

She glanced from the plane to him and admitted warily, ‘It looks a bit small.’

He grinned and felt the dense band of cynicism around his heart loosen a little. ‘It’s as safe as houses—I promise.’

He urged her forward and up the steps, past a steward in uniform. He chose two seats opposite each other so he could see Leila’s expression. He buckled them both in, and then the plane was taxiing down the runway. With a roar of the throttle, it lifted up into the darkening Paris sky. Alix had had a discreet word with the pilot, and watched Leila’s face for her reaction as they climbed into the air.

Her hands were gripping the seat’s armrests, and when she cast him a quick glance he raised a brow while shrugging off his overcoat. ‘Okay?’

She smiled and it was a bit wobbly. ‘I think so.’ She put a hand to her belly as if to calm it.

Alix was charmed by her reaction. Her expression was avid as the ground was left behind, and her hands gradually relaxed as the plane rose and gained altitude and then found its cruising level. And then her face became suffused with wonder as she took in the fact that they were flying directly over the city of Paris.

It was perfect timing, with all the lights coming on. Alix looked down through his own window and saw the Eiffel Tower flashing. He’d taken this for granted for so long it was a novelty to see it through someone else’s eyes.

Leila felt as if she was in a dream. Her stomach had been churning slightly with the motion of the plane, but it was calming now. To be so high above the city and all its glittering lights...the sheer beauty of it almost moved her to tears. And it was distracting enough to help her block out how amazing that kiss had been. How hard it had been to pull away.

What had finally made her come to her senses had been the realisation that she was being kissed by an expert—who’d kissed scores of far more beautiful women than her.

‘Why did your mother hate flying so much?’

Leila composed herself before she looked at Alix, where he was lounging in the chair opposite, long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle, effectively caging her in. Despite her best efforts, one look at his hard, sensual mouth was bringing their kiss back in glorious Technicolor...the way it had burnt her up.

She forced her gaze up to his eyes and tried to remember his question. ‘My mother flew only once in her life, when she came to France from India. It was a traumatic journey for her... She was in disgrace, pregnant and unwed, and was suffering badly from morning sickness.’ Leila shrugged lightly, knowing she was leaving so much out of that explanation. ‘She always associated flying with that trauma and never wanted to get on a plane again.’

‘Aren’t you curious about your Indian roots and family?’

An innocuous enough question, but one that had a familiar resentment rising up within Leila. Her mother’s family had all but left her for dead—they’d never once contacted her or Leila. Not even when a newspaper had reported that some of them were in Paris for a massive perfume fair.

Leila hid her true emotions under a bland mask. She forced a smile. ‘I’m afraid my mother’s family cut all ties with us... But perhaps one day I’ll go back and visit the country of my ancestors.’

She took refuge in looking at the view again, hoping that Alix wouldn’t ask any more personal questions. The lights of the city were becoming sparser. They must be flying further away from Paris now.

But it was as if Alix could read her mind and was deliberately thwarting her. He asked softly, ‘Why did you pull back when I kissed you, Leila? I know it wasn’t because you really wanted me to stop.’

She froze. She hadn’t expected Alix to notice that fleeting moment when she’d felt so insecure. She hadn’t wanted it to stop at all...she’d never felt such exquisite pleasure. And the thought of him kissing her again—she knew she wouldn’t be able to pull back the next time.

An urgent self-protective need rose up inside her. She had to try and repel Alix on some level—surely a man of a blue-blooded royal line wouldn’t want anything to do with the illegitimate daughter of a disgraced Indian woman?

She looked at him, and he was regarding her from under hooded lids.

‘You asked before if I’d had a bad experience with a lover...’

Alix sat up straighter. ‘You told me it was none of my business.’

‘And it’s not,’ Leila reiterated. ‘But, yes, I had a negative encounter with someone, and I don’t really wish to repeat the experience.’

Alix went very still, and Leila could see the innate male pride in his expression. He couldn’t believe that she would compare him to another man.

‘I’m sorry you had to experience that, but you can’t damn all men because of one.’

Leila took a breath. Alix wasn’t being dissuaded. In spite of the flutters in her belly she went on. ‘In fact, if you must know, my mother was rather overprotective.’ The flutters increased under Alix’s steady regard. ‘The truth is that I’m not as experienced as you might—’

‘Are you ready for supper, Your Majesty?’

They both looked to see the steward holding out some menus. Relief flooded Leila that she’d been cut off from revealing the ignominious truth of just how inexperienced she was. She welcomed the diversion of taking the menu being proffered.

She imagined that Alix would believe she was still a virgin as much as he’d believe in unicorns. But thankfully, when they were alone again, he didn’t seem inclined to continue the discussion.

When she glanced at him, he just sent her an enigmatic glance and said, ‘I recommend the risotto—it’s vegetarian.’

Leila smiled. ‘That sounds good.’

When the young man came back, moments later, Alix ordered. Then he poured them both some champagne. When the flutes were filled and a table had been set between them, Alix lifted his glass and said, with a very definite glint in his eye, ‘To new experiences, Leila.’

She cringed inwardly. He didn’t have to pursue the discussion. He’d guessed her secret. She lifted her glass too, but said nothing. She got the distinct impression that he still wasn’t put off. And, as much as she’d like to tell Alix that flying in a plane was the only new experience she was interested in sharing with him, she couldn’t formulate the words. Traitorously.

* * *

‘Why is everyone looking at us?’

Alix looked at Leila incredulously. She had no idea what a sensation she was causing—had caused as soon as they’d stepped from his boat and into the ancient palazzo on the Grand Canal where the opera was being staged. Leila stood out effortlessly—like a jewel amongst much duller stones. Now it was the interval, and they were seated in a private area to the right of the stage. Private, yet visible.

His mouth quirked. ‘They’re not looking at us—they’re looking at you.’

She looked at him and blushed. ‘Oh...it’s the clothes, isn’t it? I should have—’

Alix shook his head, cutting her off. ‘It’s not the clothes...well, it is. But that’s because you are more beautiful than any other woman here and you’re putting them to shame with your sense of style. Every woman is looking at you and wondering why their finger is not on the pulse.’

Leila’s blush deepened, and it had a direct effect on Alix’s arousal levels.

‘I’m sure that’s not it at all. I’ve never seen so many beautiful people in one place in my entire life. I’ve never seen anywhere so breathtaking—the canal, this palazzo...’ She ducked her head for a moment before looking back at him. ‘Thank you...this evening has been magical.’

Alix had to school his features. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had thanked him for taking her out.

‘You’re glad you overcame your reluctance to spend time with me?’ he queried innocently.

Her green gaze held his and Alix felt breathless for a second. Crazy. Women didn’t make him breathless.

Her mouth twitched minutely. ‘Yes, I’m glad—but don’t let it go to your head.’

An unfortunate choice of words when it made him aware of the part of his anatomy that refused to obey his efforts to control it.

Leila looked so incandescent in that moment—a small smile playing around her mouth, eyes sparkling—that Alix had to curl his hands into fists to stop himself from kissing her again.

The lights dimmed and the cast resumed their places. Alix tore his gaze from her, questioning his sanity and praying that he’d have enough control not to ravish her like a wild animal in the darkened surroundings.

* * *

After the opera had finished Alix took Leila out of the palazzo and along the Grand Canal in his boat, to a small rustic Italian restaurant where he was greeted like an old friend by the owner. They ate a selection of small starters and drank wine, and to Leila’s surprise the conversation flowed as easily as if they’d known each other for months, not days.

Something had happened—either as soon as she’d agreed to this date or on the plane, when events had become a dizzying spectacle. Or maybe it had been when she’d chosen a different perfume for herself...

She’d stepped over a line—irrevocably. She felt as if she was a different person, inhabiting the same skin. As if she’d thrown off some kind of shackle holding her to the past. She was a little drunk. She knew that. But she’d never felt so light, so...effervescent. So open to new possibilities, experiences.

She wasn’t naive enough to think that it would be anything more than transient. Especially with a man like Alix. And that was okay. If anything it was a form of protection. He was practically emblazoned with Warning! And Hazardous! signs.

She must have giggled a little, because Alix said dryly, ‘Something I said was funny?’

Leila shook her head and looked at him, all of a sudden stone-cold sober again. He was beautiful. Their mingled scents wrapped around her. Leila imagined them curling around her brain’s synapses, rendering them weak. Making her want what he was offering with those slate-grey eyes—hot with a decadent promise she could only imagine.

Leila realised with a sense of desperation that she wanted whatever he was offering. She wanted to lose herself and be broken apart. She wanted to know what it was like. She wanted to taste the forbidden.

She didn’t want to go back to her small poky apartment above her failing shop and be the same person. Looking at life passing by across the square. She wanted life to be happening to her. She’d never felt it this strongly before. It was his persistent seduction, the perfume, the wine, the opera...leaving her country for the first time. It was his kiss. It was him.

Impetuously she leaned forward. ‘Do we have to go back to Paris tonight?’

Immediately his gaze narrowed on her. She was acutely conscious of the fact that his jacket and bow tie were gone and his shirt was open at the throat, revealing the strong bronzed column of his neck.

‘What are you suggesting?’

Feeling bold for the first time in her life, Leila said, ‘I’m suggesting...not going back to Paris. Staying here...in Venice.’

‘For the night?’

She nodded. The enormity of what she was doing was dizzying, but she couldn’t turn back now. Her heart was thumping.

Alix cocked his head slightly. ‘I think you might be a little drunk, Miss Verughese.’

‘Perhaps,’ she agreed huskily. ‘But I know what I’m saying.’

‘Do you now...?’ Alix looked at her consideringly.

For a second something cold touched Leila’s spine. Maybe she had this all wrong. Maybe Alix was just toying with this gauche girl from a shop until a more suitable woman came along? No doubt he was getting a kick out of her untutored reactions to flying and seeing the opera.

And now this... Maybe the thought of bedding a virgin wasn’t palatable to a man of his undoubted experience and sophisticated tastes? She thought of how that woman had undressed in front of him and her insides contracted painfully. She could never do that.

She looked away, searching for her bag and wrap. ‘Forget I said anything. I’m sure you have meetings—’

Suddenly her hand was clasped in his and reluctantly she looked at him. He was intense.

‘Are you saying you want to stay in Venice for the night to share my bed, Leila?’

She hated it that he was making her spell it out, but she lifted her chin and said, ‘If you’re not interested—’

His hand tightened on hers. ‘Oh, I’m interested. I just want to make sure you’re not going to regret this in the morning and blame it on too much wine.’

Leila stared back, suppressing an urge to say I’m blaming it on much more than that. He wouldn’t understand. ‘I want this—even if it’s just one night.’

Alix interlaced his fingers with hers. It felt like a shockingly intimate caress.

‘It won’t be one night, Leila, I can guarantee that.’

She shivered lightly. The way he said that sounded like a vow. Or a promise.

‘Signor Alix...?’

He didn’t even look at his friend. He just said, ‘We’re finished, Giorgio, thank you.’

But it was a long moment before Alix broke his gaze from hers and let go of her hand to stand up.

Leila couldn’t remember much of leaving the restaurant, or of the boat ride along the magical Grand Canal at night. She was only aware of Alix’s strong thighs beside hers on the seat, his arm tight around her shoulders, his hand resting disturbingly close to the curve of her breast.

She was only aware that she was finally leaving a part of her life behind and stepping into the unknown.

She couldn’t believe she’d been so forward, and yet she knew that even if given a choice she wouldn’t turn back now. This man had unlocked some deep secret part of her and she wanted to explore it. She didn’t care about the fact that Alix Saint Croix was famous or rich or royalty. She was interested in the man. He called to her on a very basic level that no one had ever touched before.

And as the boat scythed through the choppy waters she reassured herself that she was going into this with eyes wide open. No romantic illusions. She was not starry-eyed any more. Pierre had seen to that when she’d let him woo her. That had been just after the death of her mother, when she’d been at her most vulnerable. She wasn’t vulnerable any more. And Leila had no intention of shutting herself away like a nun for the rest of her life.

They were approaching a building now—another grand palazzo. A man stood on the small landing dock and threw a rope to the driver. They came alongside the wooden jetty and Alix jumped nimbly out of the boat before turning back to lift Leila out as easily as if she weighed nothing.

As he let her down on the jetty he kept her close to his body, and her eyes widened when she felt her belly brush against a very hard part of him. Her pulse quickened and between her legs she felt damp.

Then he turned, and held her hand as he strode through the open doors. Leila had to almost run to keep up and she tugged at his hand. He looked back, something stark etched onto his face. She refused to let it intimidate her.

‘What is this place?’

‘It belongs to a friend—he’s away.’

‘Oh...’

A petite older woman dressed in black approached them and Alix exchanged some words with her in fluent Italian. It was only then that Leila looked around and took in the grandeur of the reception hall. The floor was marble, and there were massive stone columns stretching all the way up to a ceiling that was covered in very old-looking frescoes.

Then Alix was tugging her hand again and they were following the woman up the main staircase. The eyes from numerous huge stern portraits followed their progress and Leila superstitiously avoided looking at them, sensing a judgment she wasn’t really blasé enough to ignore in spite of her bravado.

The corridor they walked into had thick carpet, muffling their footsteps. Massive ornate wooden doors were closed on each side. At the end of the corridor the woman came to some double doors and opened them wide, standing aside so they could go in.

Leila’s breath stopped. It was the most stunningly sumptuous suite of rooms she’d ever seen. She let go of Alix’s hand and walked over to where the glass French doors were open, leading out to a stone balcony overlooking a smaller canal.

She heard the door close softly and looked behind her to see Alix standing in the centre of the room, hands in his pockets, legs wide. Chest broad.

He took a hand out of his pocket and held it out. Silently Leila went to him, kicking off her sandals as she did so.

When she got to Alix, he drew her chiffon wrap off her shoulders and it drifted to the floor beside them. Then he reached around to the back of her head and removed the pin holding her hair up. It fell around her shoulders in a heavy silken curtain and he ran his hand through the strands.

‘I wanted to do this the moment I saw you,’ he said.

Feeling suddenly vulnerable, she blurted out, ‘Did you really not sleep with that woman after you pulled the curtains that night?’

His grey gaze bored into hers. ‘No, I did not sleep with Carmen that night. I wouldn’t lie to you about that, Leila.’

She found that she believed him, but she still had to battle the insidious suspicion that he would say whatever he wanted to get her into bed. Not that he’d had to say much—she’d all but begged him!

Furiously she blocked out the raising clamour of voices and reached up, touching her mouth to his. ‘Take me to bed, Alix,’ she whispered.

CHAPTER FIVE

AGAINST THE MUTED lighting of the opulent suite Alix looked every inch the powerful man he was. He took up so much space, and a sudden flutter of fear clutched at Leila’s belly. Could she really handle a man like this?

But then he took her hand and led her into another room. The bedroom.

Its furnishings were ridiculously, gloriously lush. A four-poster, canopied bed stood in the centre of the room, surrounded by thick velvet drapes held back by decorative rings. Through the windows Leila could see the Grand Canal, and boats moving up and down. The curtains fluttered in the breeze and yet she was hot. Burning up.

Alix came and stood in front of her. Leila was at eye level with the middle of his chest. Never more than now had she been so aware of his sheer masculinity and strength. She wished she had the nerve to reach out and touch him, but she didn’t. The boldness that had led her here seemed to be fleeing in the face of the stark reality facing her.

Alix tipped up her chin with a curled forefinger and Leila couldn’t escape his gaze.

‘We’ll take this slow.’

Leila swallowed. So much for trying to repel him with her inexperience. His eyes burned. And something melted inside her at his consideration. He pulled her forward then, until her breasts were touching his body, her nipples tightening in reaction. Both his hands went to her jaw, caressing the delicate bone structure before tilting her face upwards. And then his head dipped and his mouth was over hers.

Leila made a soft sound in the back of her throat. His tongue explored along the seam of her mouth until she opened up to him, and then he was stroking her tongue intimately, teeth nipping at her full lower lip. Her hands curled into his shirt, clutching. He was all hard muscle and heat and he tasted of wine.

When Alix drew back after long, drugging moments, Leila followed him, opening her eyes slowly, all her senses colliding and melting into one throbbing beat of desire. She’d never imagined it could be like this. After just a kiss.

Alix brought his hands to the small buttons running down the front of her tunic. His skin was dark against the silk and Leila watched as slowly the front of her tunic fell open to reveal her lacy bra underneath.

‘So beautiful...’ breathed Alix as he saw her breasts revealed, more voluptuous than Leila had ever been comfortable with.

He slid a hand inside her tunic and cupped one, testing its shape, its firm weight. The effect on her body was so intensely pleasurable that Leila was too embarrassed to look at Alix. She ducked her head forward and her hair slipped over her shoulders, the ends touching his hand.

She gave a little gasp when Alix’s other hand caught her hair at the back of her head and tugged gently. His fingers were squeezing her breast now, and her nipple was pinched tight with need. Leila wanted something but she wasn’t sure what. More.

When he bent to take her mouth again she whimpered. And then his hand was pulling down the silk cup of her bra and he was palming her naked breast, fingers trapping her nipple, squeezing gently.

Alix’s kiss was rougher than before, but Leila met it full-on, already feeling more confident, sucking his tongue deep, nipping his mouth. He was pushing her bra up now, over her breasts, freeing them. Pulling the top part of her tunic wide open.

When he eventually broke the kiss he was breathing harshly, eyes glittering like molten mercury.

There was something raw in his expression that made excitement mixed with sheer terror spike inside Leila. Alix moved back, tugging her with him, until he sat down on the edge of the massive bed.

Leila’s breasts were exposed—framed by her pushed-up bra and the tunic. She should have felt self-conscious, but she didn’t. Alix’s gaze rested there and then he cupped one breast and brought his mouth to it, teasing the hard tip with his tongue before pulling it into his mouth and suckling.

Leila thought she might die. Right there and then. She’d never experienced anything so decadent, so delicious, as this hot, sucking heat. When he administered the same attention to her other breast her legs buckled and she landed on Alix’s lap, his mouth and tongue lapping at her engorged flesh, making her squirm and writhe as a coil of tension wound higher and higher between her legs.

He broke away suddenly, his voice gruff. ‘I need to see you.’

He carefully stood Leila up again and she felt momentarily dizzy, holding on to his arm to steady herself. He stood in front of her and slowly started to peel her tunic up and over her head. After a moment’s hesitation Leila lifted her arms and it came all the way off, landing on the floor at their feet.

Then Alix deftly removed her twisted bra, and that disappeared too. Now she was naked apart from her trousers and underwear.

He was looking at her, eyes dark and unreadable. His hands were tracing her contours as reverently as if she was a piece of sculpted marble.

‘I want to see you too.’ Leila heard the words coming from her mouth and wasn’t even aware of thinking them. Dangerous.

He dropped his hands and stood before her, silently inviting her to undress him. Leila lifted her hands to his shirt and slowly undid his buttons, his shirt falling open as she moved down his massive chest.

When she got to where his shirt was tucked into his trousers she hesitated for a moment, before pulling it free and undoing the last buttons. Soon it was open completely, and she pushed it wide open and off his shoulders. Alix opened his cufflinks, and then the shirt slid off completely.

Leila was in awe. The sleek strength of his muscles under the dark olive skin was fascinating to her. There was a little hair around his pectorals and a dark line down through his muscle-packed abdomen, disappearing enticingly into his trousers.

She reached out and put her hands on him, spread her fingers wide. His scent was hypnotising her...earthy and musky and male. The scent she’d made for him mixed with his own unique essence. She bent forward to press her lips against his hot skin, her mouth exploring and finding the small hard point of his nipple. She licked it experimentally and Alix jerked.

She pulled back, looked up. ‘Did I hurt you?’

He shook his head and smiled. ‘No, you didn’t hurt me...sorcière. Lie down on the bed,’ he instructed.

Leila was only too happy to comply. She felt shaky. The taste of his skin was addictive. She collapsed onto the bed and Alix moved over her before pressing a kiss to her mouth and moving down, trailing his lips over her jaw and neck, down to her breasts, anointing one and then the other.

He pulled back slightly and looked at her before saying, ‘I’m going to take your trousers off...’

Leila bit her lip and then nodded. Her belly contracted when Alix’s fingers came to her button and zip, undoing them both, and then he put his hands to the sides of her silk trousers to slide them down.

She lifted her hips to help. When they were off Alix’s hands went to his own trousers, and with a swift economy of movement they were off too. Along with his underwear. He was now gloriously and unashamedly naked. Leila came up on her elbows, her eyes going wide at the sight of him.

His body was a honed mass of hard muscles and masculine contours. She’d never seen anything like it. All the way from his shoulders and chest, down to slim hips and strong muscled thighs. Between his thighs and lower belly was a thicket of dark hair, out of which rose the very core of his virility. Long and thick and hard. Proud.

As Leila watched he brought a hand to himself, stroking gently. It was so unbelievably sensual that her mouth dried even as other parts of her felt as if they were gushing with wet heat.

When he took his hand from himself Leila fell back against the soft covers of the bed. Alix reached forward and gently pulled her panties free of her hips and legs. Dropping them to the floor.

Now they were both naked, and Alix came alongside her on the bed. She could feel his bold erection against her thigh. A potent invitation. But she was too shy to explore him there.

Instead, he kissed her—long, drugging kisses that sent her out of her mind completely as his hands explored her body, squeezing her buttocks, her breasts, following the contours of her waist and hips. And then he was pushing her legs apart and long fingers were exploring her there, where no one had ever touched her. Not even herself.

In a moment of panic at this intimate exploration she reached down and put a hand on his, stopping him. She looked at him, breath laboured, feeling hot.

One of Alix’s thighs was between her legs and she could feel the heat of him there, very close to the apex of her legs, where his hand was. And as suddenly as she’d felt panic she felt an urgency she couldn’t understand. She took her hand away again.

‘I won’t hurt you, Leila.’ Alix promised. ‘Any moment you want to stop, just say and I will.’

She nodded her head. ‘Thank you...’

His hand started moving again, and when she felt him push one finger and then two inside her she let out a gasp, her head going back, eyes shut tight, as if that could control the almost violent reactions happening in her body.

He was moving his fingers in and out and she could feel how wet she was. His movements got faster and the heel of his hand pressed against a part of her that needed more friction. Without even realising she was doing it Leila lifted her hips, pushing into him, seeking more.

She was unaware of the smile of pure masculine satisfaction on Alix’s face as he watched her.

There was something coiling so tight and deep within her that Leila begged incoherently for it to stop, or break, or do something. It was painful, but it was also the most exquisitely pleasurable thing she’d ever felt. And then suddenly her whole body was caught in the grip of a storm and she broke into a million pieces. She felt like the sun, the moon, stardust, pleasure and pain. All at once.

When her body was as lax as if someone had drained every bone out of it, she opened her eyes and blinked.

Alix looked vaguely incredulous. ‘That was your first orgasm?’

Leila nodded faintly. She guessed it was. Living in such a small space with her mother hadn’t exactly been conducive to normal female exploration. And then she’d been so grief-stricken and busy...

The expression on Alix’s face changed from incredulous to intent. He moved so that his body lay between her legs, forcing them apart. Leila still felt sensitive down there, but as Alix moved against her subtly she found that excitement was growing again—a need for more even though more surely couldn’t be possible...

Alix kissed her, surrounding her in his heat and strength. Leila moved her hands all over him—down his torso to his hips, his muscular buttocks. And all the while he was rocking against her gently, and that urgency was building in her again...for something...for him.

He pulled his mouth away from her breast and she could feel the tip of his erection nudging against her opening, sliding in tantalisingly.

‘Are you okay?’

She nodded. She wasn’t on earth any more. She was on some new and exotic planet where time and space had become immaterial. There was no real world any more.

‘Yes,’ she said out loud, so that there was no ambiguity.

Alix’s jaw tightened. ‘This might hurt at first... Stay with me—it’ll get better, I promise.’

And with that he thrust in, deep into Leila’s untried flesh, stretching her wide. She gasped and arched against him, part in rejection of his invasion and part in awe at how right it felt in spite of the pain—which was blinding and red-hot. But she took a breath and looked into Alix’s eyes, trusting him.

He was so big and heavy inside her. And then he moved—slowly, deeper. Pushing against her resistance. And then he pulled out again. Leila could feel sweat break out on her brow, between her breasts. She’d never thought sex would be so gritty, base.

Alix was relentless, moving in a little deeper each time, and as Leila’s flesh got used to him, accommodated him better, the awful sting of pain faded, becoming something else. Something much more pleasurable. Even more pleasurable than before.

Something about Alix’s urgency was transmitted to her and Leila instinctively wrapped her legs around him. She felt inordinately tender in that moment, cradling this huge man between her legs, feeling the force of him inside her body.

His movements got stronger, more powerful. And Leila’s hips were moving, circling. He reached down between them and touched her there, close to where he was thrusting. Circling his thumb, making stars explode behind her eyes, making her body tight with need again.

She was gasping, her body arching against him, buttocks tightening as he pushed her to the very limit of her endurance and she fell again, down and down, from an even higher height than the first time.

She was coasting on such a wave of bliss that she was barely aware of Alix’s own body, pumping hard into hers, before he too went taut and with a guttural groan exploded in a rush of heat inside her.

* * *

Leila came to when she felt herself being lifted out of the bed, pliant and weak. She managed to raise her head and open her eyes to see he was walking them into a dimly lit bathroom...acres of marble and golden fixtures.

Steam was rising from a sunken bath that looked big enough to swim in, and Alix knelt and gently deposited Leila into the pleasantly hot water.

She looked at him, properly awake now. ‘What are you doing?’

He grimaced. ‘You’ll be sore...and you bled a little.’

Leila thought of the bed and the sumptuous sheets. Mortified, she said, ‘Oh, no!’

Alix looked stern. ‘It was my fault. I should have known to prepare...’

Another expression crossed his face then, something like dawning horror, but it was hard to see in the shadows of the room, and then it was gone, replaced by something indecipherable.

He stood up and Leila saw that he’d wrapped a towel around his waist. It still didn’t disguise the healthy bulge underneath, though, and her face flamed as she sank down into the bubbles.

‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

Alix left the bathroom and Leila moved experimentally, wincing when she felt the sting of something between pleasure and pain between her legs. She ached too—all over. But pleasurably.

Letting her head fall back, she allowed the water to soothe her body. Her brain was foggy but one thing was crystal clear: she was no longer a virgin. She’d allowed Alix Saint Croix to be more intimate with her than anyone else. And it had felt...amazing. Stupendous. Transformative.

It was as if this body she’d had all her life was suddenly a new thing. Her hand moved of its own volition up over the flat plane of her belly and cupped her breast. Her nipple was roused to a hard peak under her hand, still slightly sensitive. When Leila brushed it a zing of pleasure went to her groin.

She felt emboldened—empowered. Like a woman for the first time in her life. That perfume she’d chosen earlier...she got it now. She could own a scent like that and wear it with sensual pride. Dreamily, she smiled, her hand over her breast, fingers trapping her nipple, squeezing gently as Alix had done...

* * *

Alix felt marginally more under control dressed in his trousers. Up until a couple of minutes ago he had felt as if someone had drugged him and he’d lost any sense of rationale or control. And he had. And about something so fundamentally important to him that he was still reeling.

But he was already becoming distracted again, losing focus. He stood in the doorway of the bathroom, watching Leila cup her breast in her hand, a small smile playing around her mouth, and just like that Alix was hard again, ready for her.

That first initial thrust into her body... It had been heaven and hell—because he’d known that while he was experiencing possibly the most exquisitely sensual moment of his life she’d been in pain. Even though he’d been as gentle as he could... And then, when that pain had faded from her eyes and her body had begun to move under his, Alix hadn’t had a hope of retaining any sense at all. He’d become a slave to the dictates of his body and hers.

He’d had to push her over the edge—touching her intimately, taking advantage of her inexperience—because he’d known he couldn’t wait for her completion.

And then he’d exploded. Inside her. Without any barrier of protection.

Alix curbed the panic. Stepped into the bathroom. ‘How are you feeling now?’

Leila immediately dropped her hand from her breast and tensed, opening her eyes, her smile fading. But then it came back...shyly.

‘I’m okay. I think.’

Alix reached for a towel and held it out. Leila stood up and Alix couldn’t help watching as the water sluiced down her perfect body. Her skin was like silk. She was exquisite. Slim and yet all woman, with full hips and breasts. Alix gritted his jaw to stop thinking about how it had felt to be cradled by her hips and thighs. How right it had felt. Right enough to send him mad—to make him forget important things. Like protection.

Leila rubbed herself dry with the towel, avoiding his eye now, and then Alix offered her a robe. She turned her back to him to put her arms into it and when she turned around again, belting it, she looked worried.

‘Is something wrong?’

Alix felt a weight on his chest. Her eyes were so huge, so green. So innocent.

‘Come into the bedroom. I asked the housekeeper to send some food and drinks up.’

He took her hand and led her out. A table was set up near the window. A candle flickered in the dim light. The sounds of the canal lapping against the building came faintly from outside.

They sat down and Leila looked even more worried. ‘What is it, Alix? You’re scaring me... ‘

‘We didn’t use protection.’ He grimaced. ‘That is, I didn’t think of it. I presume you’re not on any form of contraception?’

Leila shook her head, damp tendrils of dark hair slipping over her shoulders. Her cheeks coloured. ‘No...I didn’t think of it either.’

Alix’s voice was harsh. ‘It was my responsibility.’

She avoided his eyes for a long moment, and then she looked back at him. ‘I think I’m okay, though. It’s not a fertile time in my cycle. I’ve just finished a period.’

Something eased in his chest even as something else pierced him. A sense of loss. Strange.

He took her hand. ‘I wasn’t thinking. Ordinarily I never forget. And I can’t afford to forget...’

He saw when comprehension dawned in those huge eyes.

Leila pulled her hand back. Her voice was stilted. ‘Of course. A man like you has to be more careful than most. I understand.’

Alix felt a bizarre urge to say something to reassure her, to tell her that it was nothing personal. But he couldn’t. Because it was true. He would have to father an heir with his Queen and no one else. His own father had created a storm of controversy by bedding numerous mistresses, who had all come forward at one time or another claiming to have had children by him.

It had been one of the many reasons the people of Isle Saint Croix had become so disillusioned with their King and overthrown him.

‘It won’t happen again, Leila. I’m sorry.’

Her eyes snapped back to his and Alix quirked a smile. ‘I don’t mean that. We will be doing that again, I just won’t forget about protection again.’

Food lay on the table between them, unnoticed, and Alix forced himself to try and retain a modicum of civility. He held up a piece of cheese. ‘Are you hungry?’

Leila shook her head and then looked away, embarrassed.

Alix reached across and took her chin, tipping it up. He smiled. ‘But you are hungry for something...?’

It entranced Alix that she seemed to have no sense of guile, or of playing the coquette. And why would she? She’d been a virgin. Her gaze dropped to his mouth and he saw the same insatiable appetite that had been awoken inside himself. His body hummed and soared with it.

She nodded, telling him silently what she was hungry for. Alix wanted to groan. ‘But you’re going to be too sore...’

Leila shook her head, her eyes on his now. Feminine and full of that innate knowledge that a man couldn’t possibly ever fathom. Amazing that she already had it. Alix had never really noticed it before now, because he’d never seen it as a spontaneous thing. The women he was usually with were all too cynical even to attempt it.

‘I’m okay. Really.’

Her husky words took him out of his reverie. He needed no further encouragement, so he dropped the food, stood up and led Leila back over to the bed.

* * *

When Leila woke up again it was morning. She opened her eyes and saw that the room was bathed in sunlight. She was on her own. But just as she thought that, Alix strolled out of the bathroom, straightening his tie. He was impeccably dressed. Shaved. Cleaned up. When Leila felt utterly wanton.

She sat up and clutched the sheet to her body, thoroughly disorientated. Alix leaned against one of the four posters of the bed and crossed his arms. A sexy smile played around his mouth. ‘You look adorable...all mussed up.’

Leila scowled, and then grew hot when she thought of how mussed up she’d become when Alix had taken her to bed for the second time. Somehow in the dimly lit bathroom and bedroom last night it had been easier to face this man. Now it was daylight, and a return to reality and sanity was here. And it was not welcome.

Twinges and aches made her wince as she leant out to the side of the bed to look for some clothes.

Alix was there in seconds. ‘Are you okay?’

Leila looked at him and couldn’t breathe. ‘I’m fine... What time is it?’

She had no clue what the etiquette of this kind of morning-after scenario was. A morning-after in Venice, after a night of more debauchery than she’d ever known she was capable of. Mortification washed through her in a wave.

Alix glanced at his watch, oblivious to her inner turmoil. ‘It’s after ten. I’m sorry about this, but I do need to get back to Paris for a lunchtime meeting.’

Leila forced herself to meet his eyes, even though she wanted to slither down under the covers and all the way to Middle Earth. ‘Of course. I need to get back too.’

Alix put his hands either side of her hips, effectively trapping her. ‘You’re not regretting anything, are you?’

His face was so close she could see the lighter flecks of grey in his eyes. And she knew that no matter how embarrassed she was right now, how gauche she felt, she really didn’t regret a thing.

She shook her head and he pressed a firm kiss to her mouth before pulling back.

‘Good. The housekeeper has sent up some breakfast, and I had some clothes sent over for both of us.’

‘You did?’ Leila boggled.

Alix shrugged and stood up. ‘Sure—I called my assistant in Paris and she got them sent from a boutique here in Venice.’

Of course, Leila thought wryly to herself. She’d almost forgotten for a moment who Alix was. The power he wielded. The ease with which he clicked his fingers and had his orders obeyed. The ease with which she’d fallen into bed with him...

She had to stop thinking about that.

Galvanising herself, Leila got out of bed and pulled the sheet off the bed, tucking it around her body, all the while acutely aware of Alix’s amused gaze.

‘I’ll have a quick shower,’ she said, and walked to the bathroom with as much dignity as she could while trailing a long length of undoubtedly expensive Egyptian cotton behind her.

Once in the bathroom, Leila could hear Alix’s phone ring and his deep tones as he answered. It was a welcome reminder that he was itching to move on, to get back to Paris and his life. And she needed to get on too.

As she stepped under the hot spray of the shower she told herself that if all she had was this night in Venice with a beautiful exiled king then she would be happy with that.

She valiantly ignored the physical pang in the region of her chest that told her otherwise. She was not her mother, and she was not going to fall for the first man she’d slept with.

* * *

An hour later they were back on Alix’s private jet, taking off from Venice. Alix was talking in low tones in another guttural language on his phone. She guessed it must be a form of Spanish. It was a relief not to have his attention on her for a moment.

Leila looked out of the window and took a shaky breath. Hard to believe her world had changed so irrevocably within less than twenty-four hours.

She wore the new clothes Alix’s staff had sent over. Beautifully cut slim-fitting trousers and a loose long-sleeved silk top, with a wrap-around cashmere cardigan in the most divine sapphire-blue colour.

They’d even sent over fresh underwear and flat shoes. She felt cossetted and looked after. Dangerous. Because he did this sort of thing with women all the time.

When they’d been eating breakfast, just a short while before, she’d caught him looking at her intently. ‘What?’ Leila had asked. ‘Have I got something on my face?’

Without make-up she’d felt bare. Exposed.

Alix had shaken his head. ‘No. You’re beautiful.’

And then he’d reached for her hand and she hadn’t been able to look away from him.

‘I want to see you again. Today...tonight. Tomorrow.’

Her heart had stopped, and then started again at twice the pace. ‘But this was just one night...’

Wasn’t it?

That was how she’d justified her outrageous behaviour. It had been a moment out of time.

Alix had looked a little fierce. ‘Is one night enough for you?’

Trapped in his steely gaze, she’d asked herself if she could do this. Agree to an affair with this man? Have more of him? Yes, a pleading voice had answered.

Would he even let her go after she’d acquiesced so spectacularly? She knew the answer. Slowly she’d shaken her head. It wasn’t enough for her either. She wanted more—shamelessly.

Alix’s fingers had tightened around hers. ‘Well, then...’

And now here she was, hurtling back towards the real world and a liaison she wasn’t sure she knew how to navigate. She heard Alix terminate his call and thought of the dress he’d bought for her to go to the opera, and these new clothes.

She turned away from the view and found him looking at her. Before she could lose her nerve she said quickly, ‘I don’t want to be your mistress. I appreciate the clothes this morning, but I don’t want you to buy me anything else.’

He looked at her for a moment, as if he truly couldn’t understand what she was saying, and then he shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Fine.’

Leila thought of something else and felt the cold hand of panic clutch at her gut. The prospect of press intrusion. Being photographed with Alix. It would inevitably bring scrutiny, and she did not want that under any circumstances.

She said, ‘We can’t go out in public. I don’t want to end up in the papers. I’m not prepared for that kind of intrusion.’

Alix straightened, and something flashed across his face—surprise?—before it was masked and Leila thought she might have imagined it.

‘I have an entire team at my disposal. I will make sure you’re protected.’

Leila looked at him. She thought of Ricardo...and of the fact that Alix had been in and out of her shop a few times now and no one seemed to have picked up on it. Maybe it would be okay. Maybe the skeletons in her closet wouldn’t jump out to bite her.

She forced a smile. ‘Okay.’

CHAPTER SIX

‘EARTH TO ALIX...HELLO? Anyone home?’

Alix blinked and looked at his friend and chief advisor, Andres, who had flown in from Isle Saint Croix to meet him. Andres was Alix’s secret weapon. Devoutly loyal to getting Alix back on the throne, he was also working as a spy, of sorts, in the current regime in Isle Saint Croix. He was the reason Alix was going to get reinstated as King.

‘Have you heard a word I’ve said?’

Alix knew he hadn’t. His head had been consumed with soft silky skin. Long dark hair. Huge green eyes like jewels. Soft gasps and moans. The heady rush of pleasure when he— Damn. He jerked up out of his chair. This was ridiculous.

Leila was like a fever in his blood. He couldn’t concentrate.

He went and stood at the window, and then after a few seconds turned back to his friend and said, ‘I’ve met someone new.’

Andres made a small whistling sound, his boyishly handsome face cracking into a wry grin. ‘I know you move fast, Alix, but this is your fastest ever. Usually you leave at least a week between switching partners. This is good, though—when will we see pictures hit the press?’

Alix folded his arms and scowled at his friend’s exaggeration. And then he thought of what Leila had said about wanting to avoid press intrusion. And, as much as he needed it right now, suddenly the thought of paparazzi hounding her was very unpalatable. It made him feel almost...protective.

There had to be a solution. His brain seized on an idea and it took root. And the more it did so, the more seductive it became.

‘Our supporters on the ground are aware that we are conducting a campaign of misdirection, aren’t they?’

Andres nodded. ‘Absolutely. They know that you’re primed and ready to return, no matter what the press says.’

‘Then if I was to leave and go to my island in the Caribbean for ten days it could only work in our favour?’

Andres huffed out a breath. ‘Well, sure... I mean, you’re just as contactable there as here... And if there are photos emerging of you frolicking in the sun with some leggy beauty the opposition will be taken completely by surprise when we pull the rug right out from underneath them.’

Alix smiled, sweet anticipation flooding his blood. ‘My thoughts exactly.’

Andres frowned. ‘But, Alix, you do know that your island is totally impenetrable by the outside world? No paparazzi have ever caught you there. It’s too far—too remote.’

Alix’s smile faded as he got serious. ‘Which is why you’re going to arrange for one of my most trustworthy staff on the island to take long-range grainy photos—I’ll let you know when is a good time. Enough to identify me, but not Leila. He can email them to you, and you can send them out to whoever you think should get them for maximum beneficial exposure. I want this controlled.’

Alix felt only the smallest pang of his conscience and told himself he’d still be protecting her identity.

Andres’s eyes gleamed with unmistakable interest at the lengths his friend was willing to go to for a woman, but Alix cut him off before he could say anything.

‘I don’t want to discuss her, Andres, just set it up. We’ll fly out tomorrow.’

* * *

‘You want to take me where?’

The blinds were down in Leila’s shop and she’d just closed up for the evening when Alix had appeared, causing a seismic physical response. She hadn’t heard from him since that morning, when they’d arrived back from Venice, and she didn’t like to admit the way her nerves had stretched tighter and tighter over the day, as she’d wondered if she’d hear from him again. In spite of what he’d said.

And now he was here, and he’d just said—

‘I have an island in the Caribbean. It’s private...secluded. I’ve cleared my schedule for the next ten days—I need to take a break. I want you to come with me, Leila. I want to explore this with you...what’s going on between us.’

Leila felt sideswiped, bewildered, along with an illicit flutter of excitement. ‘But...I can’t just leave! Who’ll look after my shop and business? The last thing I can afford now is to close up.’

Smoothly Alix said, ‘I can hire someone to manage the shop in your absence. They won’t have your knowledge, obviously, but they’ll be able to cover basic sales till you get back.’

Leila opened her mouth to protest, but the truth was she wasn’t really in a position to take orders for new perfumes until she found some factory space, so all she was doing in essence was selling what they had. She could mix perfumes on a very small scale, which was what she’d done for Alix. So she was dispensable.

Weakly, she protested. ‘But we’ve only spent one night together. I can’t just take off like this.’

Alix raised a brow. ‘Can’t you? What’s stopping you?’

Leila felt irritation rise. ‘Not everyone lives in a world where you can just take off to the other side of the earth on a whim. Some of us have to think of the consequences.’ But right then Leila knew she wasn’t thinking of financial or economic consequences—she was thinking of more emotional ones. Already.

Then Alix did the one thing guaranteed to scramble her brain completely. He came close and slid his hand around the back of her neck, under her hair, and tugged her towards him.

He said softly, ‘I’ll show you the consequences.’

His scent reached her brain before she even registered the effect it was having on her. Her blood started fizzing, and between her legs she was still tender but she could feel herself growing damp.

An acute physical reaction to desire. To this man.

Hunger, ravenous and scary, whipped through her so fast she couldn’t control it. And when Alix lowered his mouth to hers she was already lost. Already saying yes, throwing caution to the wind. Because the truth was that dealing with him in this environment was scarier—so maybe going to the other side of the world would keep them in fantasy land. And when it was over she’d come back to normality. Whatever normal was...

When the kiss ended they were both breathing heavily, and Leila was pressed between the counter and Alix’s very hard body. They looked at each other.

Shakily, Leila said, ‘This is just... It won’t last.’ She didn’t even frame it as a question.

Something infinitely hard came into Alix’s eyes and he shook his head. He almost looked sad for a moment. ‘No, it never lasts.’

Leila drew in a slightly shaky breath. One more step over the line couldn’t hurt, could it? She was doing this with her eyes wide open. No illusions. No falling in love. She was not her innocent, naive mother.

‘Okay, I’ll come with you.’

Alix just smiled.

* * *

‘There it is—just down there.’

Leila looked, and couldn’t quite believe her eyes. She’d never seen such vivid colours. Lush green and pale white sand, clear azure water. Palm trees. It was like the manifestation of a dream she wasn’t even aware she’d had.

She couldn’t actually speak. She was dumbfounded. This was the last in a series of flights that had taken them from Paris to Nassau and now in a smaller plane to Alix’s private island, which was called Isle de la Paix—Island of Peace.

And it looked peaceful from up here. They were circling lower now, and Leila could see a beautiful colonial-style house, and manicured grounds leading down to a long sliver of beach where foamy waves lapped the pristine shore.

She was glad she’d agreed to come here—because she knew this experience would help her to keep Alix in some fantasy place once their affair was over.

They landed, bouncing gently over a strip cut into the grass in a large open, flat area. Leila could see a couple of staff waiting outside and an open-top Jeep.

When they left the plane the warmth hit Leila like a hot oven opening in her face. It was humid—and delicious. She could already feel the effects sinking through her skin to her bones, making them more fluid, less tense.

The smiling staff greeted them with lilting voices and took their bags into a van. Alix led Leila over to the Jeep, taking her by the hand. When he’d buckled her in, and climbed in at the other side, he looked at her and grinned.

Leila grinned back, her heart light. He suddenly looked more carefree than she’d ever seen him, and she realised that he’d always looked slightly stern. Even when relaxed. But not here.

‘Would you like a brief tour of the island, madam?’

‘That would be lovely,’ Leila responded with another grin.

They took off, and Alix drove them along dirt tracks through the lush forest that skirted along the most beautiful beaches she’d ever seen. The sun hit them and the Jeep with dappled rainbows of light, bathing them in warmth. Leila tipped her head back and closed her eyes, revelling in the sensation.

When the Jeep came to a stop she opened her eyes again and saw that they were on the edge of a small, perfect beach.

Leila leant forward. The smell of the sea was heady, along with the sharper tang of vegetation and dry earth. She itched to analyse the scents but the view competed. It was sensory overload. And the most perfectly hued clear seawater she’d ever seen lapped the shore just yards away.

Alix jumped out of the Jeep and came around, expertly unbuckling her belt and lifting her out before she could object, strong arms under her legs and back. He walked them down to the beach. It was late afternoon, and still hot, but the intense heat of the sun had diminished.

He put her down and looked at her, raising a brow. ‘Have you ever skinny-dipped?’

Leila’s mouth opened and she blustered, ‘No, I certainly have not!’ even as she felt a very illicit tingle of rebellion.

Alix was already pulling off his clothes. He’d changed on the plane before they’d got to Nassau, into a polo shirt and casual trousers. Leila gaped as his body was revealed, piece by mouthwatering piece.

She’d only seen him naked in the dimly lit confines of the Venetian palazzo, and now he stood before her, lit by the glorious sun against a paradise backdrop.

He was stunning. Not an ounce of fat. Hewn from rock. Pure olive-skinned muscular beauty. And one muscle in particular was twitching under her rapt gaze.

Leila’s cheeks flamed and she dragged her gaze up. She sounded strangled. ‘I can’t—we can’t! What if someone comes along?’ She glanced behind her into the trees.

But then Alix was in front of her, his hand turning her chin back to him. She looked at him helplessly and he said, ‘Listen. Just listen.’

Leila did—and heard nothing. Not one sound that didn’t come directly from the island itself. No sirens or traffic or voices. Just the breeze and the trees and birds, and the water lapping near their feet.

‘It’s just us, Leila. Apart from a handful of staff at the house, we’re completely alone.’

A sense of freedom such as she’d never felt before made her chest swell and lightness pervade her body. She felt young and carefree. It was heady.

‘Now, are you coming into the water willingly? Or do I have to throw you in fully clothed?’

Leila started to shrug off her jacket, and said, mock petulantly, ‘Fine, Your Majesty.’

Alix watched her, stark naked and completely blasé. ‘That’s more like it.’

His eyes got darker as Leila self-consciously took off her shirt and trousers, very aware of their chain-store dullness.

When she was in her bra and pants she hesitated, and Alix growled softly, ‘Keep going.’

Leila fought back the memory of that other woman and reached behind her to undo her bra, letting it fall forward and off. The bare skin of her breasts prickled and her nipples tightened. Avoiding Alix’s gaze now, she pulled down her pants with an economic movement, stepping out of them and laying them neatly on her pile of clothes.

She was naked on a beach, in a tropical paradise with an equally naked man. The reality was too much to take in, so with a whoop of disbelief and sheer joy Leila ran for the sea, feeling the warm, salty water embrace her. And then she dived deep under an oncoming wave before she exploded into pieces completely.

* * *

Leila wandered through Alix’s house dressed in nothing but one of his oversized T-shirts, her hair in a tangled knot on top of her head. She’d never been so consistently undressed in her life, and after her initial self-consciousness she’d realised to her shock that she was something of a sensualist, relishing the freedom. Much as she’d exulted in the feel of her naked body in the sea on that first day.

Since they’d arrived at his house after skinny-dipping three days before, damp and salty from the sea, they’d barely left his bedroom. He’d retrieved food from the kitchen at intermittent intervals, and they’d gorged on each other in a feast of the senses. Leila’s inexperience was fast becoming a thing of the past under Alix’s expert tutelage.

When Leila had woken a short time before it had been the first time Alix hadn’t been in bed beside her, or in the shower, or bringing food back to the bedroom. So she’d come to find him.

And now she was taking in the splendour of his house properly for the first time. It was luxurious without being ostentatious. Mostly in tones of soothing off-white and grey. Muslin drapes billowed in the soft island breeze through open windows. It truly was paradise, and Leila felt a pang that her mother was gone and couldn’t experience this.

Little objets d’art were dotted here and there—tastefully. Leila stopped before a small portrait that hung in the main foyer area and her jaw dropped when she realised she must be looking at an original Picasso.

A soft sound from nearby made Leila whirl around, and her face flamed when she saw an attractive middle-aged, casually dressed woman looking at her with a warm smile on her face.

The woman put out a hand. ‘Sorry to startle you, Miss Verughese. I was wondering if you’d like some lunch? I’m Matilde—Alix’s roving housekeeper.’

She had an American accent. Leila forced an embarrassed smile. She hadn’t seen any staff yet. She gestured to her clothes—or lack of them. ‘Sorry, I was just looking for Mr Saint—that is... Alix.’

Matilde smiled wider. ‘Don’t worry, honey, that’s what this island is all about—relaxation. You’ll find Alix in his study, just down the hall. Why don’t I prepare a nice lunch for you both on the terrace? It’ll be ready in about half an hour.’

Leila smiled back at the woman, who was clearly friendly enough with Alix to be on first-name terms. ‘Please call me Leila—and that sounds lovely.’

The woman was turning away, and then she turned back suddenly and said, sotto voce to Leila, ‘You know, he’s never brought a woman here before.’

And then, with a wink, she was disappearing down the corridor, leaving Leila with a belly full of butterflies. She hated it that it made her so happy to know this wasn’t routine for him.

Leila wandered down the hall, with its gleaming polished wooden floors. She heard a low, deep voice and followed it into a room to see Alix, bare-chested, sitting at a desk with a laptop open before him. He was on the phone. And he was frowning.

The room was as beautiful as the rest of the house, with floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with books. Books that looked well used.

He looked up and saw her, and some indecipherable expression crossed his face before he said something Leila couldn’t hear and put down the phone. He closed his laptop.

Leila felt as if she’d intruded on something and put out a hand. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you.’

Alix stood up and Leila saw that he was wearing only low-slung, faded jeans. Her insides sizzled. He looked amazing in a suit and tuxedo, but like this...he was edible.

‘You’re not disturbing me. Sorry for leaving you...’

He came and stood before her and Leila imagined she could feel the electricity crackle between them.

‘I bumped into Matilde,’ she babbled. ‘She seems lovely. She’s making us lunch and it’ll be on the terrace in half an—’

Alix put a finger to Leila’s mouth and quirked a sexy smile. ‘Half an hour?’

Leila nodded.

Alix took his hand away and scooped Leila up into his arms before she knew what was happening. He was soon climbing up the stairs and Leila hissed, ‘She’s making lunch, Alix. We can’t just disappear—’

They were at the bedroom door by now, and the sight of the tumbled bed made Leila stop talking. Apparently they could.

* * *

When they finally did make it down to the terrace, much later that day, Matilde was totally discreet and delivered a feast of tapas-like food. Salads and pasta. American-style wings and ribs. Seafood—spicy fish and rice, crab claws with garlic sauce. Lobster. Chilled white wine.

Leila had wondered if they would even make a dent in the feast laid before them, but just when she was licking her fingers after eating spicy fish she caught Alix’s amused gaze.

‘What?’

He leant forward. ‘You have some sauce on the corner of your lip.’

Leila darted out her tongue and encountered Alix’s finger, because he’d reached out to scoop it up. Immediately a wanton carnality entered Leila’s blood and she moved so that she could suck Alix’s finger into her mouth, swirling her tongue around the tip, much as he’d shown her how to—

She let his finger go with an abrupt pop, aghast at how easily she was becoming a slave to this man and her desires.

She found herself blurting out the first thing that came into her head to try and diffuse the intensity. ‘Is it true that you’ve never brought a woman here?’ She immediately regretted her words. Damn her runaway mouth!

Hurriedly she said, ‘It’s okay. You don’t have to answer that—it doesn’t matter.’

Alix’s voice was wry. ‘I should have known Matilde couldn’t resist. She’s a romantic at heart after all—as I think are you, Leila.’

She looked at Alix, horror flooding her at the thought that he might think— She shook her head. She forced all the boneless, mushy feelings out of her body and head and said firmly, ‘No, I’m not. I’m a realist, and I know what this is—a moment in time. And I’m fine with that— believe me.’

Alix looked at Leila in the flickering candlelight. The island was soft and fragrant around them. Like her. Apparently he didn’t need to be worried that she’d got the wrong idea from Matilde, and he wasn’t sure why that thought wasn’t giving him more of a sense of comfort. What? Did he want her to be falling for him?

She had her profile towards him and he was stunned all over again at her very regal beauty. Totally unadorned and all the more astounding because of it. In the last couple of days her skin had lost its pale glow and become more rich. Her Indian heritage was obvious, giving her that air of exotic mystery. Her green eyes stood out even more.

He felt a pang of guilt when he recalled the conversation he’d had with Andres to set up the photo opportunity. It would be a far less intrusive photo than most of those he’d had taken with other women, so why did he feel so uncomfortable about it? And guilty...?

It didn’t help to ease his conscience when Leila looked at him then and he couldn’t read the expression on her face or in her eyes. It irritated him—as if she’d retreated behind a shield.

‘Do you think you’ll ever regain your throne in Isle Saint Croix?’

Alix blinked, jerked unceremoniously back to reality. Immediately he was suspicious—but then he felt ridiculous. She wasn’t some spy from Isle Saint Croix, sent to find out his movements.

Even so, Alix had kept his motivation secret for so long that he wasn’t about to bare his soul to anyone—even her.

He shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Perhaps some day. If the political situation improves enough for me to make a bid for the throne again... But there is a lot of anger still—at my father.’

Leila had turned more towards him now, and put her elbows on the table, resting her chin on one hand. The diaphanous robe she was wearing made it easy to see the outline of her perfect braless breasts and Alix was immediately distracted. He had to drag his mind out of a very carnal place.

‘What was he like?’

The question was softly, innocently asked, and yet it aroused an immediate sense of rage in Alix. He felt restless, and got up to stand at the nearby railing that protected the terrace and looked down over the lawns below.

He heard Leila shift in her seat. ‘I’m sorry. If you don’t want to talk about it...’

But he found that he did. Here in one of the quietest corners of the earth. With her.

He didn’t turn around. Tightly he said, ‘My father was corrupt—pure and simple. He grew up privileged and never had to ask for anything. It ruined him. His own father was a good ruler, but weak. He let my father run amok. By the time my father married my mother—who was an Italian princess from an ancient Venetian family line—he was out of control. The country was falling apart, but he didn’t notice the growing poverty or dissent. My mother didn’t endear herself to the people either. She spent more time gadding around the world than on the island—in Paris, or London, or New York.’

Alix turned around and leant back against the railing. He looked down into his wine glass and swirled the liquid. When he looked at Leila again she was rapt, eyes huge. It made something in Alix’s chest tight.

‘My father took mistresses—local girls, famous beauties, it made no difference. He had them in the castle whether my mother was there or not. I think her attitude was that once she’d given him his heir and a spare she could do what she wanted.’

Leila said softly, ‘You had a younger brother...?’

Alix nodded. ‘Yes—Max.’

He went on.

‘One day, both my parents were in residence—which was a rare enough occurrence. A young local girl was trying to see my father, holding a baby, crying. Her baby was ill and she needed help. She was claiming that it was his—which was quite probable. My father had his soldiers throw her and the baby out of the castle...’

Alix’s mouth twisted.

‘What he didn’t realise was that a mob had gathered outside, and when they saw this they attacked. Our own soldiers were soon colluding with the crowd and they turned on my father and mother. They shot my parents and my brother, but I got away.’

Alix deliberately skated over the worst of it—made it sound less horrific than it had been.

He drank the rest of his wine in one gulp.

Leila’s eyes shone with what looked suspiciously like tears. It had a profound effect on Alix.

‘Your brother...were you close to him?’

He nodded. ‘The closest. Everything I do now is to avenge his death and to make sure it’s not in vain.’

He knew instantly that he’d said too much when Leila frowned slightly. Clearly she was wondering how his living the life of a louche royal playboy tallied with avenging his brother’s untimely death.

She didn’t know, of course, of the charitable foundations he headed that supported the families of people who’d lost relatives in traumatic circumstances. Or the amount of times he’d gone on peace and reconciliation missions all over the world, observing how it was done so he’d be qualified to apply it to his own country when he returned.

Leila looked at Alix, so tall and brooding in the moonlight. Her heart ached for him—for the young boy he’d been, helpless, watching his own parents destroy their legacy—and taking his younger brother with them.

She thought of how she’d lied about her father being dead and it made her feel dishonest now, after he’d told her what had happened to him.

‘Alix,’ she began, ‘there’s something I should—’

But he cut Leila off as he moved, coming over to the table. He put his glass down. His eyes were blazing and she could see they’d dropped to her breasts, unfettered beneath her thin gown. Instantly heat sizzled in her veins and she forgot what she’d wanted to say.

‘I think we’ve talked enough for one evening. I want you, Leila.’ And then, almost as an afterthought, he said, ‘I need you.’

I need you. Those three words set Leila’s blood alight. She sensed that he needed to lose himself after telling her what he had. So she stood up, allowing him to see all of her, thinly veiled. He might have said he needed her, but she knew that this was about this.

And as Alix led her inside and up to the bedroom she reassured herself once again that that was fine.

* * *

‘Who would have thought you like to read American noir crime novels?’ Leila’s voice was teasing as she lay draped across Alix’s chest on a large sun lounger in his garden.

He lowered his book and looked at her, arching a brow. ‘And that you would like Matilde’s collection of historical romance novels covered with half-naked Neanderthals and long, flowing blonde hair?’

Leila giggled and ducked her head, and then looked up again. ‘It was my mother’s fault. She devoured them and led me astray from a young age.’

‘You must miss her.’

Leila unpeeled herself from Alix and sat up, pulling her knees to her chin and wrapping her arms around them. She looked out over the stunning view from their elevated height in the garden at the back of the house, where the pool was.

Quietly, Leila said, ‘I miss her, of course. It was always just the two of us.’

Leila was afraid to look at Alix in case he saw the emotion she was feeling. A mix of grief and happiness. And gratitude to be in this place. To be with this man and yet to know not to expect more. Even if her heart did give a little lurch at that.

Alix came up on one elbow beside her, his long half-naked body stretched out in her peripheral vision like a mouthwatering temptation.

‘The man you were with before—what did he do to you?’

Leila glanced at him. Damn. She’d forgotten that she’d mentioned Pierre, even in passing. She shrugged. ‘He was a mistake. I was naive.’

‘How?’

Leila bit her lip, and then said, ‘It was just after my mother died—I was vulnerable. He paid me attention. I believed him when he said he just wanted to get to know me, that he wouldn’t push me. But one night he came up to my apartment and said he was tired of waiting for me to put out. He tried to force himself on me—’

Alix sprang upright in one fluid move and caught Leila’s arm, turning her to face him. Anger was blazing from his eyes. ‘Did he hurt you?’

Leila was shocked at this display of emotion. ‘No. He...he tried to, but I had some mace. I threatened to use it on him. So he just insulted me and left.’

‘Dieu...Leila...he could have—’

‘I know,’ Leila said sharply. ‘But he didn’t. Thank God. And I was proved a fool for believing that he—’

Alix’s hand tightened on her arm. ‘No, you weren’t a fool. You just wanted reassurance and some attention.’

Words trembled on Leila’s lips. Words about how much she’d wanted to believe that love and security did exist. Could exist. But she couldn’t let them spill. Not here, with this man. He’d made no promises. He was offering her this slice of paradise—that was all and if she’d been foolish before she’d be triply so if she started dreaming about anything more with a man like Alix.

He urged her gently back down onto the lounger and pushed their books aside. Tugging her over his chest again, he cupped the back of her head, fingers threading through her hair. ‘The man was an idiot, Leila.’

He brought her mouth down to meet his and they luxuriated in a long and explicit kiss. Leila felt emotional—as if Alix was silently communicating his gratitude to her for trusting enough in him to let him be the one to take her innocence.

The kiss got hotter, more desperate. Alix’s free hand deftly untied the strings of her bikini and she felt the flimsy material being pulled from between their bodies. Then his hand was smoothing down her back, cupping her buttock and squeezing gently, and then more firmly, long fingers covering the whole cheek, exploring close to where the seam of her body was wet and hot.

Obeying the clamouring of her blood, Leila moved over Alix so that her legs straddled his hips, breasts pressed to his broad chest. With an expert economy of movement, barely breaking their connection, mouths and body, Alix managed to extricate himself from his shorts and disposed of Leila’s bikini bottoms too. Now there were no barriers between them.

Leila had got so used to their privacy being respected that she felt completely uninhibited. Her legs were spread and she could feel him, hard and potent, at her buttocks. Alix moved so that his erection was between them, and Leila luxuriated in moving her body up and down, her juices anointing his shaft, making him groan...making them both want more.

Until she couldn’t stand teasing him any more and rose up, biting her lip as Alix donned protection, and then letting her breath out in a long hiss as he joined their bodies and he was deep inside her. Nothing existed in the world except this moment. This exquisite climb to the top of ecstasy.

CHAPTER SEVEN

ALIX HAD HIS HANDS in his pockets and he was looking out over one of the back lawns to where Leila was deep in conversation with his head gardener. He smiled and realised that in spite of the fact that he was standing on the precipice of possibly the most tumultuous period of his life he’d never felt so calm...or content.

The last ten days had been unlike anything he’d ever experienced. He’d never spent so much time alone with a woman. Not even the woman he’d thought he’d lost his heart to all those years ago. That had been youthful lust mixed up with folly and arrogance and hurt pride.

Leila was easy to talk to. Disturbingly easy to talk to. He’d told her things that he’d never discussed with anyone else. Not even Andres.

And their chemistry was still white-hot. Alix frowned. He knew he had to let Leila go. Within days the news was going to break that Alix’s people had voted for him to return to Isle Saint Croix. His life would not be his own any more. And he couldn’t return to the island with a mistress. It would undo all his hard work. He had to return alone, and then find a wife.

He felt heavy inside, all of a sudden. And then Leila looked up and spotted him, a smile spreading across her face. She said something to the gardener and shook his hand. The old man looked comically delighted with himself and Alix shook his head. The Leila effect. Yesterday he’d found her in the kitchen, showing Matilde how to make a genuine hot Indian vegetarian curry.

She hurried towards him now with a box in her hand, dressed for travelling in slim-fitting trousers and a sleeveless cashmere top. He drank her in greedily...something elemental inside him growled hungrily. He wasn’t ready to let her go—and yet how could he keep her?

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to keep you waiting.’

Alix smiled even as an audacious idea occurred to him. ‘You didn’t. Was Lucas helpful?’

Leila smiled. ‘Amazingly! He’s even given me some flower cuttings to take home in special preservative bags. I’ve never smelled anything like them. If I can just distil their essences somehow—’ She broke off, embarrassed. ‘Sorry—we should get going, shouldn’t we?’

Alix’s chest felt tight. ‘Yes, we should. The plane is waiting.’

‘I’ll just get my handbag.’

Leila moved to go inside, but then stopped beside Alix and looked up at him. Her voice was husky. ‘Thank you...this has been truly magical.’

He reached out and cupped her jaw, running his thumb across the fullness of her lower lip. ‘Yes, it has,’ he agreed.

And right then he knew that he wasn’t ready to let Leila go, and that whatever it took to keep that from happening, he would do it.

* * *

‘Stay with me tonight?’

Leila looked at Alix across the back seat of his chauffeur-driven car. It was very late—after midnight—and the rain-wet streets of Paris were like an alien landscape to Leila. She realised she hadn’t even missed it. And she also realised that, in spite of her best intentions, she wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Alix.

She nodded jerkily and said, ‘Okay.’

The Place Vendôme was empty when they arrived, and they were escorted into the hotel with discreet efficiency. It gave Leila a bit of a jolt to see how the staff fawned over Alix, and how he instantly seemed to morph into someone more aloof, austere. She’d forgotten for a moment who he was.

When they entered his suite, low lamps were burning. Alix took off his jacket and Leila walked over to the window, feeling restless all of a sudden. She could see her shop, dark and empty, and a faint prickle of foreboding caused her to shiver minutely.

Then she saw Alix in the reflection of the window. He was looking at her. She turned around. The air shimmered between them. He came towards her and in a bid to break the intensity Leila glanced away, still a little overwhelmed by how much he made her feel.

And then something caught her eye on a nearby table, and when it registered she let out a gasp. ‘Oh, no!’

Alix had spotted what Leila had spotted just a second afterwards and he cursed silently and vowed to have whoever had left the papers here sacked.

It was a popular French tabloid magazine and there was a picture on the front. A picture of Alix and Leila on a beach. They’d gone there the day before. They were sprawled in the sand, their swimwear leaving little to the imagination, but they were not naked, thankfully. Her face was turned away, up to his, so she wasn’t identifiable—but he was.

Leila had already picked it up, but Alix whipped it out of her hands and threw it away. He said urgently, ‘They didn’t get your face...it’s okay.’

She was pale, shocked. She looked up at him. ‘You knew about this?’

Alix’s conscience stung so much it hurt. Funny, he’d never considered himself to have much of a conscience. Before.

‘My assistant sends me updates on any news coverage.’

Leila looked wounded. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

Alix gritted his jaw. ‘Because I was hoping you wouldn’t see it.’

Leila waved an arm. ‘Well, the whole of France has seen it now.’ She looked down to where the magazine was on the floor and read out, ‘“Who is the exiled King’s latest mystery flame?”’

Alix caught her chin and moved it towards him. He felt her resistance. When she was looking at him he said, ‘They don’t know who you are and I’ll make sure they won’t. Please—trust me.’

Something moved across her face—some expression that Alix didn’t like. Eventually she said, ‘This has to end after tonight, Alix. I’m not made for your world and I don’t want to be dragged through the papers as just another one of your women.’

Alix rejected everything she said, and a sense of desperation rose up inside him—that need to make her his. But he couldn’t articulate it. So instead he used his mouth, moving it over hers, willing her to respond—and she did, because she was as helpless against this as he was.

* * *

The following morning when Leila woke up it took her a long time to orientate herself. She was in a massive bed, with the most luxurious coverings she’d ever felt. She was naked and alone. And her body ached. Between her legs she was tender.

And then it all flooded back. Alix had led her in here last night and stripped her bare, as reverently as if she was something precious. Then he’d laid her down and subjected Leila to what could only be described as a sensual attack.

An attack that had been fully consensual.

It was as if everything he’d taught her had been only the first level, and his lovemaking last night had shown her that there could be so much more. Alix hadn’t been tender or gentle. He’d been fierce, bordering on rough, but Leila blushed when she thought of how she’d revelled in it, meeting him every step of the way, exulting in it, spurring him on, raking her nails down his back, begging hoarsely for more, harder, deeper...

Even the fact that her picture had been in that magazine, albeit not identifiable, had faded into the background now.

She had a vague memory of finally falling asleep around dawn, with Alix’s arms tight around her. Leila frowned as another memory struggled to break through her sluggish thought processes. Alix had kissed the back of her head and said, ‘You’re not going anywhere...this isn’t over...’

Leila frowned. Had she heard that? And what could it mean? The prospect that Alix had decided that something more permanent might come out of what they had made her silly heart speed up.

She needed to talk to him.

Leila got out of bed and made her way to the opulent bathroom that her small apartment could have fitted into twice over. Once showered and dressed, she made her way to find Alix, hearing his low, deep tones before she saw him.

She smiled. Even his voice made heat curl in her belly as she recalled the way he sounded in bed—all earthy and husky and desperate... Maybe, just maybe, there was something different between them? The fact that she wasn’t like his usual women—

Leila stopped in her tracks outside the door when she heard her name.

Alix spoke again. ‘Leila’s perfect, Andres. She’s beautiful, accomplished, intelligent, refined.’

Leila blushed to find herself eavesdropping like this—and to hear herself being spoken of this way.

But Alix sounded a little angry when he spoke next. ‘The very fact that she didn’t want to be seen with me is a point in her favour. She’s totally different to any other woman I’ve ever been with.’

Leila frowned minutely. A point in her favour? It sounded as if she was being graded.

She went to move forward, to let him know she was there, but when she got to the doorway she saw he was standing with his back to her, looking out of the window. So he didn’t see her.

And when he spoke again his tone had the little hairs standing up on the back of her neck.

‘To be perfectly honest,’ he went on, ‘I couldn’t have possibly engineered this to go better if I’d planned it to happen. We’re on the brink of a referendum that will return me to the throne and the ruling party haven’t a clue. They probably think I’m still sunning myself with her on a beach in the Caribbean. Everything is falling into place at just the right time.’

Leila stepped back through the doorway, out of sight, horror coursing through her, her skin going clammy with shock.

Alix laughed and it was harsh. ‘Since when has love had any relevance when it comes to the wife I will choose? The important thing is that she’s falling in love with me—I’m sure of it. This will be nothing like my parents’ marriage...toxic from the inside out.’

He continued, oblivious to the devastation taking place just outside the door as the full import of what he was saying sank into Leila.

‘How do I know? She was a virgin, Andres...a woman doesn’t give that up easily. To return to power with a fiancée by my side will put me in a much stronger position. Leila will make a great queen, I’m sure of it. She’s the right choice.’

He was silent again, and then he spoke in a low voice.

‘No, I’ve no doubt that she’ll say yes. If I need to reassure her that I love her too, to achieve my aims, then so be it. It won’t be a hardship. And the sooner we have children the better—an heir will be the strongest sign of stability for Isle Saint Croix. A sign of hope and things moving on.’

Leila’s heart was pounding so hard she thought she might faint. Sweat was breaking out on her brow.

She was a virgin...a woman doesn’t give that up easily. If I need to reassure her that I love her too...then so be it.

For a moment a sharp pain near her heart almost caused her to double over. What Alix was proposing to do made her feel sick. He would embark on a life with her based on lies and falsehoods just so that he could present the whole package to his precious island. An island that he was on the brink of regaining after he’d let her believe that it was a far distant possibility—not imminent. He’d lied to her face! And he would father a child purely to further his own political aims!

The irony was like a slap in the face—her own father had rejected a child for the same reasons. But Leila was in no mood to appreciate that dark humour now.

All their conversations took on a sinister glow now. His questions about her opinions on politics—had that been to make sure she wasn’t some kind of raving anarchist? His questions on her opinions on anything had just been an interview.

And the intensity of their lovemaking—had that been to make sure Alix felt she could sustain his interest long enough for him to father an heir?

What broke her out of her shock was the fact that Alix had stopped talking. Feeling sick, Leila walked to the door, silent on the carpet. He was still standing at the window with his hands in his pockets. Master of all he surveyed—including, as he obviously believed, his innocent, gullible lover. A ruthless man who saw her only as a vehicle to help him regain his throne.

Leila felt the slow burn of an anger so intense it made her tremble. She only wanted one thing: to walk away from Alix and forget that she’d ever met him, forget that she’d repeated the sin of her mother: falling for the first man to seduce her.

* * *

Alix’s brain was still whirring after the phone call. Had he really told Andres that he was prepared to make Leila his wife? His Queen?

Yes. He waited for a sense of regret, panic or claustrophobia. But even now it felt right. He’d never met anyone like her. She was sweet, innocent...and yet not so innocent any more. His body tightened as he recalled how quickly she’d learned, her shyly erotic, bold moves in bed, how she’d taken him in her mouth and tasted him a few short hours ago.

His body went still. A familiar figure walking quickly across the square came into his line of vision and his breath caught.

It was Leila, and she was carrying her holiday bag—the only woman he’d ever known not to travel with twelve pieces of luggage. Where was she going? His skin prickled uncomfortably when he recalled the phone conversation—was there a chance she’d overheard him?

But if she had why was she walking away? What woman would walk away from the prospect of a man like him making their union permanent?

A small voice whispered: A woman like Leila.

Alix was about to follow her when his phone rang again. He picked it up and said curtly, ‘Yes?’ He could see her now, disappearing into her shop, and he didn’t like the flare of panic in his gut. The feeling that if he didn’t follow her he’d never see her again.

‘Your Majesty, are you there? We need to discuss plans for when the result of the referendum is announced tomorrow.’

Tomorrow. Tomorrow was when his life would change for ever. That reminder was a jolt to Alix. A jolt that told him he was in danger of losing focus when he needed it most. Over a woman. Even if she was the woman he’d chosen to be his Queen, she was still just a lover, a woman, peripheral to his life.

Alix pushed the insidious feeling of something slipping out of his grasp out of his head and concentrated on the call. For half an hour. When it was finally over he went to look out of the window again, and when he took in the view, every muscle in his body locked tight.

Leila was across the square, closing the door to her shop. The blinds were down and she was dressed in jeans, sneakers and a jacket. With a wheelie travel bag.

And as he watched she hitched up the handle on her bag and started to walk swiftly away from the shop, the bag trailing behind her.

* * *

Leila was almost at the corner of the street when Alix caught up with her, catching her arm. She didn’t turn around and he felt the tension in her body.

‘How much did you hear?’ He directed the question to the back of her head.

She turned around then, and Alix steeled himself for some emotion, but Leila’s face was expressionless in a way he’d never seen before. It sent something cold through him—along with a very uncomfortable sense of exposure.

‘Enough. I heard enough, Alix.’ She pulled her arm free and said, ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a train to catch.’

Alix frowned. Just a couple of hours ago he’d left her sated and flushed from their lovemaking in his bed. He’d whispered words to her—words he’d never thought he’d hear himself say to any woman. That sense of exposure amplified.

‘Where are you going?’

Leila looked surprised. ‘Oh, didn’t I tell you? I’ve got to go to Grasse to discuss sharing new factory space with an old mentor of my mother’s.’

Alix felt panic and he didn’t like it. ‘No, you didn’t tell me.’

Leila looked at her watch. ‘Well, I must have forgotten to mention it—’

She went to walk around him but he stopped her with a hand on her arm again. It felt slender under his hand.

Leila looked expressively at his hand. ‘Let me go, please.’

‘You had no plans to go anywhere until you overheard that conversation.’

Her eyes blazed into his. ‘Don’t you mean your royal decree?’

Alix was aware that they were drawing interest from passers-by and he saw the glint of something in the distance that looked suspiciously like the lens of a paparazzi camera.

He gritted his jaw. ‘We need to talk—and not in the street.’

Leila must have seen something on his face, because she looked mutinous for a second and then pulled her arm free again and started back towards her shop.

Alix took her case from her hand, although she held on to it until she obviously realised it would end up in a tug of war. She let him take it and the incongruity of the fact that he, Alix Saint Croix, was tussling over a case in the street with a woman was not lost on him.

When she’d opened the door to her shop they stepped inside and she shut it again. Alix fixed his gaze on her pale face. ‘Why were you leaving?’ And without saying goodbye... He bit back those words. Women didn’t say goodbye to him—he said goodbye to them.

She folded her arms across her chest. She was mad at him—that much was patently obvious. ‘I was leaving because I need to sort my business out. And also because your arrogance is truly astounding.’ She unlocked her arms enough to point a finger at herself. ‘How dare you assume that I’m falling in love with you? We’ve only known each other for two weeks. Or did you think that because I was a virgin I had less brain cells than the average woman and would fall for the first man I slept with?’

Alix felt something violent move through him at the implication that there would be more men and that he’d just been the first.

Now she looked even angrier. ‘You told someone called Andres I was a virgin. How dare you discuss my private details with anyone else?’

Alix gritted his jaw harder. ‘Unfortunately the life of a royal tends to be public property. But it wasn’t my right to divulge that information.’

Leila huffed a harsh-sounding laugh. ‘Well, that’s a life I have no intention of ever knowing anything about, so from now on I’d appreciate it if you kept details of our affair to yourself. You can rest assured, Your Majesty, I’m not falling in love with you.’

Alix told himself she wouldn’t have run like that if something about overhearing that phone call hadn’t affected her emotionally.

His eyes narrowed on her. ‘So you say.’

‘So I mean,’ Leila shot back, terrified that he’d seen something else on her face. ‘I’ve saved you the bother of having to pretend that you feel something for me, so I’ll save you more time with the undoubtedly fake romantic proposal you had in mind...the answer is no.’

Alix lifted a brow. ‘You’d say no to becoming a queen? And a life of unlimited wealth and luxury?’

Leila’s stomach roiled. ‘I’d say no to a marriage devoid of any real human emotion living in a gilded cage. How can you, of all people, honestly think I’d want to bring a child into the world to live with two parents who are acting out roles?’

Alix’s eyes were steely. ‘You weren’t acting a role this morning.’

Immediately Leila was blasted with memory: her legs wrapped around Alix’s waist, fingers digging into his muscular buttocks. What had she turned into? Someone unrecognisable.

She huffed a small unamused laugh. ‘Surely you don’t mean to confuse lust with love, Alix? I thought you were more sophisticated than that?’

His face flushed at that but it didn’t comfort Leila. She felt nauseous.

‘Look,’ Alix said tersely, ‘I know that you’re probably a little hurt. The fact is that the woman I choose to be my Queen has to fulfil a certain amount of criteria. We respect each other. We like each other. We have insane chemistry. Those are all good foundations for a marriage. Better than something based on fickle emotions or antipathy from the start.’

Something dangerously like empathy pierced Leila when she thought of what he’d told her about his parents’ marriage.

And then she thought of his assessment of her being a little hurt, and the empathy dissolved. The hurt was all-encompassing and totally humiliating. The last thing she wanted was for him to suspect for a second how devastating hearing that conversation had been.

‘You never even told me you were so close to regaining your throne,’ she accused.

Alix’s jaw was hard as granite. ‘I couldn’t. Only my closest aides know of this.’

‘So everything—the whole trip to your island—was all an elaborate attempt to throw your opponents off the scent? And what was I? A decorative piece for your charade? A convenient lover in the place of the last one you dumped so summarily?’ Leila laughed harshly and started to pace. ‘Mon Dieu, but I was a fool, indeed. Two times in a row now.’

Alix sounded harsh. ‘I am not like that man, and you were not a fool.’

Leila’s gaze snapped back to his, but she barely saw him through her anger. ‘Yes, I was. To have believed for a second that a trip like that was spontaneous.’ She recalled something else about the conversation she’d overheard and gasped. ‘You had someone take those pictures of us, didn’t you?’

Alix flushed. He didn’t deny it.

Leila shook her head and backed away from him. The tender shoots of something that she’d been frantically trying to ignore finally withered away. She’d thought they’d been sharing intimate moments alone...he’d led her to believe they were alone on the island. She’d bared her body and soul to this man and he’d exploited that. She had to protect herself now.

She needed to drive him away before he saw how fragile she really was underneath her anger.

She affected nonchalance. ‘To be perfectly honest, Alix, I used you.’

* * *

I used you. Alix reacted instantly, with an inward clenching of his gut. Pain.

An echo of the past whispered at him—another woman. ‘I used you, Alix. I wanted back into Europe and I saw you as a means to get there and restore my reputation.’

He went cold and hard inside. ‘Used me?’

Leila nodded and shrugged lightly. ‘I wanted to lose my virginity but I’d never met anyone with whom it was a palatable prospect...until you walked into the shop.’

Her eyes were like hard emeralds.

‘It was only ever about that for me, Alix. And excitement—I won’t deny that. My mother was over-protective, but now I’m finally free and independent, and I’m not about to shackle myself to some marriage of convenience because you deem me a suitable candidate for being your bride and the mother of your precious royal heirs.’

A mocking expression came over her face.

‘I’m annoyed that you used me for your own ends, but that’s the extent of any hurt. And surely you don’t think you’re the first rich man to invite me up to his suite for a private consultation?’

She didn’t wait for a response.

‘Well, you weren’t the first, and you probably won’t be the last.’

Alix’s vision blurred for a moment at the thought of Leila going into another suite, smiling at some man, taking out her bottles. Getting under his skin. Concocting the perfect scent for him like a sorceress. Sleeping with him.

Darkness reared up inside him. She’d used him. Just as he’d been used before. He’d vowed never to let it happen again. Yet he had. The evidence of such weakness made him feel bilious. He’d been prepared to woo her into becoming his bride. He’d been prepared to take her into his life, parade her as his Queen. Prepared for her to bear his children. The heirs of Isle Saint Croix.

One thing broke through his mounting rage. ‘You could be pregnant.’

The thought was repugnant to him now, when a couple of hours ago he’d thought it might be something used to persuade her to agree to marriage.

Leila went a little paler, but then her chin lifted. ‘I’m not.’

Alix wanted there to be no doubt. None. ‘How do you know?’

‘I got my period this morning.’

Alix smiled humourlessly. ‘And I suppose you’d have me believe that if you were pregnant you wouldn’t come after me for everything you could?’

Alix was aware of her arms dropping and her hands fisting at her sides. He felt nothing, though. Only a desire to lash out.

‘Your cynicism really knows no bounds. And now I have that train to catch. Please leave.’

Alix took a step back and forced himself to be civil when he wanted to swipe a hand across the nearest glittering shelf covered in glass bottles and bring them all crashing to the ground. To crush Leila under the burning anger in his gut, forcing her out of this hard obduracy. Force her to be soft and pliant again.

The desire made him feel disgusted with himself.

He turned and walked out of the shop.

It wasn’t until Alix reached his suite in the hotel that his brain cleared of its dark haze.

He couldn’t even accuse Leila of avariciousness. There were a million other women who would have heard that conversation and used it to inveigle their way into his life, take everything he offered and more. But not her.

The dark irony mocked Alix.

He saw the rumpled sheets on the bed out of the corner of his eye—and something else. He strode into his bedroom and picked up the House of Leila perfume bottle, containing his signature scent.

An image came to him of Leila in the bath, after they’d made love for the first time. He saw it as clearly as if she was in the room right now. The small sensual smile that had played around her mouth, her hand on her breast, a nipple trapped between her fingers. That smile scored his insides now like a knife. She’d looked satisfied. Mission accomplished. I used you.

Acting on a rising tide of rage, Alix lifted his arm and hurled the bottle at the nearest wall, where it smashed into a million tiny shards and scattered golden liquid everywhere. And that smell reached into his gut and clenched hard.

He lifted the phone and gave curt instructions that he and his entire team were to be moved to another hotel. And just after that call he got another one from Andres. The man was excited.

‘The polls are in and they’re all suggesting a landslide victory. The government is panicking but it’s too late. This is it, Alix. It’s almost time to go home. When you return with Leila on your arm—’

Alix cut him off coldly. ‘Do not mention her name again. Ever.’

There was silence on the other end of the phone before the man recovered with professional aplomb and went on as if nothing had happened.

Alix listened with a grim expression.

When the conversation was finished, staff appeared, scurrying to do his bidding. Alix cursed himself for overreacting. Leila Verughese was just a woman. A beautiful woman. And it had been lust that had clouded his judgment. Just lust. Nothing more. If anything, it was a timely and valuable lesson.

By the time Alix was getting out of his car and entering his new temporary home, Leila Verughese wasn’t a recent or even a distant memory. She had been excised from his mind with the kind of clinical precision Alix had used for years to excise anything he didn’t want to think about. Women...the death of his brother.

His destiny was about to be resurrected from the ashes like a phoenix, and that was the most important thing in the world.

* * *

It was only when the train had left Paris far behind that Leila felt some of the rigid tension seep out of her locked muscles. Her jaw unclenched. The ache in her throat eased slightly.

She sent up silent thanks for the old friend of her mother’s who would let her stay for a while with her in Grasse. There was no meeting about sharing factory space, but it would get her out of Paris until Alix was gone.

And then the pain started to seep in from where she’d been blocking it out. The pain that told her it had taken more strength than she’d thought she had to stand in front of Alix and pretend he’d meant nothing to her. That she’d used him.

He’d used her. Thank God the press hadn’t discovered her identity.

Her naivety made her want to be sick. And that reminded her of the slightly nauseous feeling she’d had for the last few days—not strong enough to cause concern, but there in the background. She’d put it down to Matilde’s rich food.

She’d lied to him about her period. It hadn’t come yet. But she’d wanted him gone. If he’d thought there was the slightest chance... Horror swept through her at the prospect.

She put her hand on her belly now and told herself fiercely that she wouldn’t be pregnant, because the universe wouldn’t be so cruel as to inflict the sins of the mother on the daughter. It couldn’t.

If she was pregnant she didn’t want to contemplate Alix Saint Croix’s reaction. After their last conversation he would advocate only one thing to protect his precious ascent to power: termination. Because Leila Verughese had just comprehensively ruled herself out of the suitable bride stakes.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Seven weeks later

ALIX LOOKED OUT over the view from where his office was situated in the fortress castle of Isle Saint Croix. It was at the back, where the insurmountable wall of the castle dropped precipitously to the sea and the rocks below. The most secure room.

The window was open, allowing the mildly warm sea breeze to come in, bringing with it all the scents of his childhood that he’d never forgotten: earth, sea, wild flowers. And the more exotic scents of spices and herbs that always managed to infiltrate the air were coming from the main town’s market.

It had been a tumultuous few weeks, to say the least, but he was still here and that was something.

Leila. She was a constant ghost in his mind. Haunting him. Tormenting him. As soon as he’d returned to Isle Saint Croix on a wave of triumph the perfume of the island had reminded him indelibly of her. Of the perfume she’d made for him.

Was she sitting in a luxurious hotel suite right now, with her potions arrayed before her? Smiling at some hapless man? Enthralling him? Witch.

He still couldn’t believe she’d turned her back on the opportunity to become his Queen. Or that her rejection had smarted so badly. He told himself it was a purely ego-based blow. He’d chosen Leila because he’d genuinely believed she had the necessary attributes. Plus he’d had the evidence that they got on well, and he’d felt she had integrity and that he could trust her.

Not to mention the insane chemistry between them.

And all along she’d had her own agenda.

An abrupt knock at the door interrupted his brooding and made him scowl. ‘Come in.’

It was Andres, looking worried. Holding a tablet in his hand. When he got to Alix’s desk he was grim. ‘There’s something you need to see.’

He turned the device around and Alix looked down to see rolling news footage. It took a second to compute what he was looking at, but when he did his entire body tensed and a wave of heat hit him in the solar plexus.

It was a picture of him and Leila, arguing in the street that day seven weeks ago. He had his hand on her arm and she looked angry. And beautiful. Even now it took his breath away.

The headline read: ‘Want to meet the very fragrant mystery lover of the new King of Isle Saint Croix? Turn to page six...’

Alix looked at Andres. ‘Do it.’

Andres scrolled through and stopped. Alix read, but couldn’t really take it in. Words jumped out at him:

Illegitimate secret daughter of Alain Bastineau...next President of France?

Pregnancy test...positive...royal heir?

Does King Alix know if he’s the father?

Scandal and controversy don’t seem to want to leave this new King in peace...

* * *

Leila was still in shock. It hadn’t left her system yet even though she’d had since yesterday to come to terms with the news. She’d had it confirmed, after weeks of trying to deny the possibility when one period hadn’t materialised and then the next one. She was pregnant— approximately eight weeks, according to the doctor she’d gone to see after doing three home tests: positive, positive, positive.

Pregnant and without the father. Just like her mother.

A sense of shame and futility washed over her. It was genetic. She’d proved no less susceptible to a gorgeous man intent on seduction. The only difference being that this time around the father would have been quite content to marry the mother of his child.

Leila smiled, but it was mirthless. Perhaps that was progress? Maybe by the next generation her child would manage not to get pregnant and would avoid dealing with the prospect of rejection and/or a convenient marriage?

Oh, God. Leila clutched her belly. Her child. A son or daughter. With this legacy in its past. How pathetic. Bitter tears made her eyes prickle.

A furious pounding on the door of the shop downstairs made her jerk suddenly upright. She heard a clamour of voices. She was late opening up, but her clientele hardly arrived in droves, so desperate to get into the shop that they’d pound on the door like that.

Momentarily distracted out of her circling thoughts, Leila hurried down to the shop, thinking that perhaps an accident had happened.

More banging on the door...urgent voices. Leila fumbled with the lock and swung the door wide—only to be met with a barrage of flashing lights, shouting voices and people pushing towards her.

It was so shocking and unexpected it took a moment for what they were saying to sink in, and then she heard it.

‘Is it true you’re pregnant with Alix Saint Croix’s baby?’

‘Are you getting back together?’

‘How long have you been seeing him?’

‘Why did you fight?’

‘Are you in touch?’

‘Does he know about the baby?’

The voices morphed into one and Leila finally had the presence of mind to slam the door shut again before someone got their foot in the door. Just before she closed it, though, someone threw in a newspaper and it landed at her feet.

She bent down to pick it up. Emblazoned across the front page was a picture of her and Alix arguing in the street that day all those weeks ago, his hand on her arm, her face tilted up to his: angry. Hurt, humiliated. She cringed now to see her emotions laid so bare. So much for believing she’d been in control.

And the headline: ‘Leila Verughese, secret lover of Alix Saint Croix and the even more secret daughter that Alain Bastineau never wanted you to discover.’

They knew about her father.

Leila’s back hit the door and she slid down it as her legs turned to jelly. She barely noticed the pounding on the door, the shouting outside. She just knew that however bad she’d believed things to be just minutes before...when she’d known she was pregnant and it had still been her secret...they were about to get exponentially worse.

From somewhere came a persistent and non-stop buzzing noise. Leila dimly recognised that it was the phone. On hands and knees she crawled over to where the device sat under the counter. She picked it up.

Somehow she wasn’t surprised to hear the familiar authoritative male voice. It caused her no emotion, though. She was numb with shock.

It told her that in one hour Ricardo would be at the back lane entrance of her property with a decoy. She was to let him in. In the meantime she was to pack a bag, and then leave with him when instructed.

The shock kept Leila cocooned from thinking too much about these instructions, or the baying mob outside. And in just over an hour she let Ricardo in, with a girl who looked disconcertingly like her... Leila didn’t think twice about letting them borrow one of her coats for the girl, nor about the fact that he sent the girl out through the front. The baying mob reached fever pitch and then suddenly died down again as she heard vague shouts of, ‘She’s getting away!’

Ricardo was saying urgently, ‘It won’t be long, Miss Verughese, before they realise she’s not you. Where is your bag? We need to lock up and go—now.’

And then Leila was being escorted into the back of a car with blackened windows and they were racing through the streets of Paris. At one point Ricardo must have been concerned by her shocked compliance and pallor as he asked if she was okay. She caught his eye in the mirror and said numbly, ‘Yes, thank you, Ricardo.’

The shock finally started dissipating when they pulled up outside one of Paris’s most iconic and exclusive hotels. It seemed as if a veritable swarm of black-suited men appeared around the car, and one of them was opening her door.

Leila looked at Ricardo, who’d turned around to face her.

‘It’s okay, Miss Verughese, they’re the King’s security staff. They have instructions to bring you straight to him.’

The King. He was a king now. Leila blanched. ‘He’s here?’

Ricardo nodded. ‘He flew in straight away. He’s waiting for you.’

The man almost looked sympathetic now, and that galvanised Leila. No way was she going to be made to feel that she was in the wrong here. Her life had just been torn to pieces and it was all his fault.

The wave of righteous indignation lasted until she was standing outside imposing doors on one of the top floors of the luxurious hotel and the bodyguard escorting her was knocking on the polished wood.

Indignation was fast being replaced with nerves and trepidation and nausea. She was going to see him again.

She wanted to turn and run. She wasn’t ready—

A voice came from inside the suite, deep and cold and imperious. ‘Come.’

The bodyguard opened the door with a card and ushered her in. Leila all but fell over the threshold to find herself in a marbled lobby that would have put a town house to shame.

It was circular, and doors led off in various directions. For a second she wanted to giggle. She felt like Alice in Wonderland.

And then a tall, broad shape darkened one of the doorways. Alix. He looked even bigger than before, dressed in a three-piece suit. His hair was severely short and he was clean shaven. Leila immediately felt weak and hated herself for it.

She fought it back and lifted her chin. ‘You summoned me, Your Majesty?’

Alix’s face darkened. A muscle pulsed in his jaw. He didn’t rise to her bait, though, just stood aside and said, ‘We need to talk—please come in.’

Leila moved forward and swept past him with all the confidence she could muster, quickly moving into the enormous room with its huge windows looking out over the Place de la Concorde, with the Eiffel Tower just visible in the distance.

She’d tried not to breathe his scent as she passed, but it was futile. She found herself drinking it in...it seemed to cling to her...but she couldn’t find any of the notes she’d made for him. It was the scent he’d had before. She felt a pang of hurt. He wasn’t wearing her scent any more...

She looked out of the window and folded her arms over her chest, wishing she felt more presentable. Wishing she wasn’t wearing the same old dark trousers, white shirt, flat shoes. Hair up in a neat ponytail for work. No make-up.

‘Is it true? Are you pregnant?’

Leila fought the urge to bring a hand down to cover her belly protectively, as if she could protect the foetus from hearing this conversation.

‘Yes, it’s true,’ she said tightly.

‘And it’s mine?’

She sucked in a breath and turned around. ‘Of course it’s yours—how dare you imply—?’

Alix held up a hand. He looked cold and remote. She’d never seen him like this apart from at that last meeting.

‘I imply because I come with quite a considerable dowry.’

Leila bit out, ‘Well, if you remember, you have come to me—not the other way around.’

Alix dug his hands into his pockets. ‘And would you have come to me?’

Leila opened her mouth and shut it again, a little blindsided. But she knew that her fear of how Alix would have reacted would have inhibited her from telling him—at least straight away.

She avoided answering directly. ‘I’ve only just found out for sure. I haven’t had much time to take it in myself.’

That was the truth.

Alix looked so obdurate right then that it sent a prickle of fear down Leila’s spine. ‘I’m not getting rid of it just because I’m not suitable wife material any more.’

He frowned. ‘Who said anything about getting rid of it?’ His frown deepened and then an expression came over his face—something like disgust. ‘You suspected you might be pregnant that day, didn’t you?’

Leila’s face got hot. She glanced down at the floor, feeling guilty. ‘I hadn’t got my period.’ She looked up again. ‘But I didn’t want to say anything. I had no reason to believe it wasn’t just late, and I was hoping that...’ She stopped.

‘That there would be no consequences?’ Alix filled in, with a twist to his mouth.

Leila nodded.

‘Well, there are. And rather far-reaching ones.’

More than fear trickled down her spine now. But before she could ask him to clarify what he meant he moved towards her. He stopped—too close. She could smell him, imagined she could feel his heat. She wanted to step back, but wouldn’t.

‘You lied to me.’

Leila frowned. ‘But I only just found—’

‘About your father. You said he was dead.’

Leila felt weak again. She’d conveniently let that little time bomb slide to the back of her head while dealing with this.

She glared at Alix. ‘You lied too. You lied about the fact that you were poised to take control of your throne again and just using me as a smokescreen.’

Alix appeared to choose to ignore that. He folded his arms. Eyes narrowed on her. ‘Why did you lie about your father?’

Leila turned away from him again, feeling like a pinned insect under his judgemental gaze. He came alongside her. She bit her lip. He was silent, waiting.

Reluctantly she said, ‘It was my mother. It was what she always said. “He’s dead to us, Leila. He didn’t want me or you. And he only wanted me to prostitute myself for him. If anyone asks, he’s dead.”’

Alix stayed silent.

‘I was aware of who he was—his perfect life and family. His rise to political fame. Why would I ever admit that he was my father? I was ashamed for him. And for myself. It’s one thing to be rejected by a parent who has known you all your life, but another to be rejected before they’ve even met you.’

She and her mother had seen both sides of that coin.

Alix’s tone was arctic, he oozed disapproval of her messy past. ‘We found out that the press sat on the story of your identity in order to dig into your past and see if they could find anything juicy. And they did. Your father is already doing his best to limit the damage, claiming these reports are spurious—an attempt to thwart his chances in the election.’

Leila hated it, but she felt hurt. Another rejection—and public this time. ‘I’m not surprised,’ she said dully. And in front of Alix. Could this day get any worse?

Apparently it could. From beside her he said briskly, ‘The press conference will be taking place in an hour’s time. I’ve arranged for a stylist and her team to come and get you ready.’

Leila turned to look at Alix. ‘Press conference? Stylist? What for?’

Alix turned to face her. His expression brooked no argument. ‘A press conference to announce our engagement, Leila. After which you’ll be leaving with me to come back to Isle Saint Croix.’

For some reason Leila seized on the most innocuous word. ‘Back? But I’ve never been...’ Her brain felt sluggish, words too unwieldy to say.

A sharp pinging noise came out of nowhere and Alix extracted a sleek phone from his pocket, holding it up to his ear. He took it away momentarily to say to Leila, ‘Wait here for the stylist. I’ll be back shortly.’

And he was walking out of the room before she could react.

When she did react, Leila felt red-hot lava flow through her veins. The sheer arrogance of the man! To assume she’d meekly roll over and agree to his bidding just because he had a King Kong complex!

Leila stormed off after Alix, going down seemingly endless corridors that ended in various plush bedrooms and sitting rooms, and a dining room that looked as if it could seat a hundred.

She eventually heard low voices from behind a closed door and without knocking threw the door open. ‘Now, look here—what part of I don’t want to marry you didn’t you understand the first time I said it?’

Leila came to an abrupt halt when about a dozen faces turned to look at her. There were two women in the group, scarily coiffed and besuited. Alix was in the middle, looking stern, and they were all watching something on the television.

A man around Alix’s age detached himself from the group and came over to Leila, holding out a hand. ‘Miss Verughese—a pleasure to meet you. I’m Andres Balsak, King Alix’s chief of staff.’

Leila let him take her hand, feeling completely exposed.

Andres let her hand go and urged her in with a hand on her elbow. ‘We’re watching a news report.’

The crowd parted and Leila was aware of their intense scrutiny. She avoided looking at Alix’s no doubt furious expression.

The news report was featuring a very pretty town full of brightly coloured houses near a busy harbour. An imposing castle stood on a lushly wooded hill behind the town.

A reporter was saying, ‘Will King Alix be able to weather this scandalous storm so early into his reign? We will just have to wait and see. Back to you—’

The TV was shut off. Alix said, ‘Everyone out. Now.’

The room cleared quickly.

The reality of seeing that report, as short as it had been, brought home to Leila the stark magnitude of what she was facing.

She turned to Alix. ‘What exactly is it that you’re proposing with this press conference and by bringing me to Isle Saint Croix?’

Alix looked at Leila. She could have passed for eighteen. She was pale and even more beautiful than he remembered. Had her eyes always been that big? The moment he’d seen her standing in the foyer, his blood had leapt as if injected by currents of pure electricity.

And when she’d passed him, her scent had reminded him of too much. How easily he’d let her in. How much he still wanted her. How much he’d trusted her. Would she even have come to him to let him know about the baby? He had a feeling that she wouldn’t, and his blood boiled.

Damn her. And damn that sense of protectiveness he’d felt when she’d revealed the truth about her father. He couldn’t think of that now.

‘You’ll come because you’re carrying my heir and the whole world knows it now.’

Leila looked hunted, her arms crossed tightly over her chest again, pushing the swells of those luscious breasts up. They looked bigger. Because of the pregnancy? The thought of Leila’s body ripening with his seed, his child, gave him another shockingly sudden jolt of lust. A memory blasted—of taking a nipple into his mouth, rolling it with his tongue, tasting her sharp sweetness—he brutally clamped down on the image.

Leila was pacing now. ‘What is the solution here? There has to be a solution...’ She stopped and faced him again. ‘I mean, it’s not as if you’re really intending to marry me. The engagement is just for show, until things die down again...’

She looked so hopeful Alix almost felt sorry for her. Almost. Her reluctance to marry him caught at him somewhere very primal and possessive.

‘No, Leila. We will be getting married. In two weeks. It’s traditional in Isle Saint Croix to have short engagements.’

Leila squeaked, ‘Two weeks?’ She found a chair and sat down heavily. She looked bewildered. ‘But that’s ridiculous!’

Alix shook his head. ‘It’s fate, Leila. Our fate and our baby’s. The child you’re carrying is destined to be the future King or Queen of Isle Saint Croix. It will have a huge legacy behind it and ahead of it. Would you deny it that?’

Leila’s arms uncrossed and her hands went to her lap, twisting. Alix had to stop himself from going over and lacing his fingers through hers.

‘Well, of course not—but surely there’s a way—?’

‘And would you deny it the chance to grow up knowing its father? Surrounded by the security of a stable marriage? You of all people?’

Leila paled and stood up again. ‘That’s a low blow.’

Alix pressed on, ignoring the pang of his conscience again. ‘We have a child to think of now. Our concerns are secondary. If you choose to go against me on this I will not hesitate to use my full influence to make you comply.’

‘You bast—’

Alix spoke over her. ‘There’s not only our child to consider, but the people of Isle Saint Croix. Things have been precarious, to say the least, since I won back the throne. We are at a very delicate stage, and we desperately need to achieve stability and start getting the country back on its feet. Everything could descend into chaos again at a moment’s notice. This scandal is all my enemies need to tip the balance. Would you allow that to be on your conscience?’

Leila thought of the pictures she’d just seen on the TV of the pretty town, the idyllic-looking island.

She swallowed. ‘That’s not fair, Alix. I’m not responsible for what happens to your people.’

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘But I am, and I’m taking full responsibility for this situation.’

* * *

In the end it was the weight of inevitability and responsibility that got to Leila. And the realisation that she’d suspected all along that this might happen. Either this or Alix would have asked her to get rid of the baby. And the fact that he hadn’t...

She put her hand over her belly now, that newly familiar sense of protectiveness rising up. She’d felt it as soon as the doctor had confirmed her pregnancy beyond all question. Along with a welling of helpless love. So this was what her mother had gone through... It put a whole new perspective on her mother, and how brave she’d been to go it alone.

And Leila wasn’t even facing that. She was facing the opposite—a forced marriage to someone who pretty much despised her after she’d told him she’d used him. In a pathetic attempt to save face, to hide how hurt she’d been.

And now she’d have to live with that. But as long as she remembered Alix’s phone conversation she wouldn’t lose her way. He’d never intended this to be anything but a means to an end. And at least he hadn’t fooled her into thinking he’d fallen for her.

Her child would not suffer from the lack of a father as she had done. Feeling rejected. Abandoned. Unwanted. Alix might want this baby purely for what it represented: continuity. But it would be up to Leila to make sure it never, ever knew how ruthless its father was.

‘There, Miss Verughese, see what you think.’

Leila smiled absently at the stylist who’d been waiting with a rail of clothes when Alix had escorted her back through the suite like a recalcitrant child. Someone had also been there to do her hair and make-up.

She looked in the mirror now and sucked in a breath. She looked totally different. Elegant. She wore a fitted long-sleeved dress in soft, silky material. It was a deep green colour, almost dark enough to be blue. It was modest, in that it covered her chest to her throat, but it clung in such a way that made it not boring. It fell from her hips into an A-line shape, down to her knees.

Her hair was up in a chignon, showing off her neck. Her eyes and cheekbones seemed to stand out even more. She put it down to the artful make-up, and not the fact that her appetite had waned in the last month.

She was given a pair of matching high heels. And then Alix appeared. He’d changed suits and was now wearing one with a tie that had colours reflecting those in Leila’s dress. She reeled at the speed with which he’d reacted to the news and been prepared.

‘Please leave us.’

Once again the room emptied as if by magic. Alix’s cool grey gaze skated over Leila and she felt self-conscious. This man was a stranger to her. But a stranger who made her body thrum with awareness.

He held out a velvet box and opened it. Inside was a beautiful pair of dangling emerald and gold earrings. Ornate—almost Indian in their design.

She looked from them to him. ‘They’re beautiful.’

Alix said, ‘They’re part of the Crown Jewels. They were protected by loyalists to the crown while I was in exile. Put them on.’

Leila glared at him.

‘Please,’ he said.

She lifted them out, one by one, and put them on, feeling their heavy weight dangling near her jaw.

‘I have something else...’

Alix was holding out a smaller velvet box. Her heart thumped hard. She’d dreamed of this moment, even though she’d never have admitted it to herself—but not like this. Not with waves of resentment being directed at her.

Alix opened it and she almost felt dizzy for a moment. Inside was the most beautiful ring she’d ever seen.

Five emeralds—clearly very old. Set in a dark gold ring. It was slightly uneven, imperfect.

Leila reached out a finger and touched it reverently. ‘How old is this?’

Carelessly Alix said, ‘Around mid-seventeenth century.’

She looked at him, horrified. ‘I can’t accept this.’

Alix sounded curt. ‘It matches your eyes.’

Something traitorous moved inside her to think of him choosing jewellery because it matched her eyes. That he’d thought about it rather than just picking the first ring he saw.

Alix took the ring out of the box and took up Leila’s left hand.

Immediately her body reacted and she tensed. Alix shot her a look before sliding the ring onto her ring finger and Leila held her breath. It was as if the fates and the entire universe were conspiring against her, because it fitted her perfectly.

Alix’s hand was very dark next to her paler one, his fingers long and masculine. Hers looked tiny in comparison.

He didn’t let her go and she looked up, confused.

Alix’s expression was unreadable. ‘There’s one more thing.’

‘More jewellery? I really don’t need—’

But her words were cut off when Alix’s head lowered and his mouth slanted over hers. She was so shocked she didn’t react for a second, and that gave Alix the opportunity to coax open her mouth and deepen the kiss.

When Leila recovered her wits she tried to pull away, but Alix had a hand at the back of her head and stopped her from retreating. Everything sane in Leila was screaming at her to push him away, but her body was exulting in the kiss, drinking him in as if she’d been starved in a desert for weeks and had just found life-restoring water.

His scent intoxicated her, and before Leila could stop herself she was clutching at Alix’s jacket and pressing her body closer to his.

A sharp rap at the door broke through the fog and Alix broke contact. Leila didn’t have time to curse him or herself, because Andres was popping his head around the door and saying, ‘They’re ready for you.’

Alix said abruptly, ‘We’ll be right there.’

Andres disappeared and Leila realised she was still clinging onto Alix’s jacket. He was barely touching her. She took a step back. He was looking at her almost warily, as if she might explode. And she had almost exploded—in his arms. It was galling.

‘What was that in aid of?’ Her tongue felt too large for her mouth.

‘The world’s press are waiting for us downstairs. We need to convince them that this was a lovers’ tiff and we are now happily reunited. That the pregnancy is the happy catalyst that has brought us back together.’

The speed and equanimity with which Alix seemed to be reacting to this whole situation, not to mention his attention to detail—that kiss—just confirmed for Leila how ruthless he was. And how she’d never really known him.

She wanted to kick off her heels and run as fast as she could for as long as she could. But she couldn’t. Together they had created a baby, and that baby had to come first. Exactly as Alix had said.

She smoothed clammy hands down her dress and drew her shoulders straight. ‘Very well—we shouldn’t keep them waiting, then, should we?’

Alix watched Leila walk to the door and open it. Her spine was as straight as a dancer’s and her bearing was more innately regal than any blue-blooded princess he’d ever met. Something like admiration mounted inside him, cutting through the eddying swirl of lust that still held his body in a state of heightened awareness and uncomfortable arousal.

He’d tried to block out the effect she had on him, telling himself it couldn’t possibly have been as intense as he’d thought. But it had been more.

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