night’s sleep.’ And to convince him, she finished brightly, ‘I’ve never been to Dacia, but I believe it’s beautiful.’
‘Every bit as much as Sant’Rosa or New Zealand,’ he said ironically, ‘although in an entirely different way.’
She relaxed a little while he told her of its bloodstained history and eventual conquest four hundred years previously by a pirate. ‘He sailed into the harbour and imposed a rule that was ruthless and autocratic, but surprisingly enlightened for the time.’
‘He sounds familiar,’ she murmured dulcetly.
He directed an enigmatic glance her way. Her heartbeat shot into overdrive, a wild counterpoint to the drugging sweetness of desire that washed through her, merciless and compelling.
‘Are you calling me ruthless and autocratic?’ he drawled, eyes gleaming with tawny fire.
Laughter bubbled through her. ‘How intuitive of you to guess! Of course you are—you think nothing of ploughing roughshod over anyone who gets in your way.’
‘Admit that I always try to convince with sweet reason before I bring in the heavy artillery,’ he returned virtuously, the lazy note in his voice belying his words.
‘I’ll admit no such thing,’ she retorted. ‘Within a few hours of meeting you I found myself married to you, and I don’t recollect any sweetly reasonably discussion then.’
And a few days later she’d been in his bed, willing prisoner of a reckless, desperate passion that overthrew years of restraint and self-discipline.
Yet she couldn’t regret it, although the aftermath seemed likely to cause endless complications and heartache. Hastily she finished, ‘And now I’ve been hijacked to Dacia!’
‘Some situations call for action,’ he observed, straight-faced.
Lauren went very still. ‘Yes,’ she said, remembering the all-pervasive smell of fear on Sant’Rosa. ‘I don’t remember whether I actually thanked you for getting me off Sant’Rosa.’ She looked up as far as his chin. ‘I am very grateful. I know what could have happened if I’d been stuck there.’
‘I’d have taken care of you.’
Startled, she took in a face carved of granite, coldly determined, so implacable that a cold finger of foreboding ran down her spine. She’d known him as a beachcomber, as a man of action, as a lover, but her first impression had been of a pirate.
Now she suspected that the pirate persona revealed his true nature.
God, she thought, what have you got yourself into? You should have stuck it out in London…
She said sombrely, ‘I’d have been a nuisance, and as you pointed out then, I’d have put you in even more danger than you were already in.’
‘It’s over now; don’t worry about it.’ He stood up and smiled down at her, although his eyes were unreadable. ‘Drink up your tea, then try to catnap. I’ll see you once we land.’
Throat aching and tight with repressed emotion, Lauren watched him go, remembering moments when she’d lain on the bed in that house in Valanu and watched him walk towards the glass doors onto the terrace. Sunlight had gilded every powerful curve and line of his body, the smooth play of muscles, the lean strength of legs and arms. Unbearably stirred, she had closed her eyes against him, but that bronze image was burned into her retina and her heart.
She dragged her mind back to the present with relief. Both the china and the silverware had the same crest, the Dacian leopard, she’d noticed as she had poured tea.
If she’d had any sense she’d have asked Guy about the owner of the plane. Unfortunately her mind shut down when he came near.
She drank some tea and ate one of the small, delicious sandwiches, then leaned back in the seat and tried to sleep. It didn’t work. Thoughts of Guy tossed through her mind, so to give her restless brain something else to chew on, she reached for the discarded magazine and began leafing desultorily through its pages.
After several moments she realised she’d been staring at one page. Blinking, she focused. Beefcake, she thought as several handsome male faces gazed back at her with varying degrees of interest.
One of them was Guy.
Unable to believe what she was seeing, she shook her head, then gazed again at the photograph. Yes, it was Guy.
He was a model?
Stunned, she began to read the text beneath the photograph.
‘And the most gorgeous,’ it burbled, ‘if you like your royalty moody, magnificent and hard to catch, is Prince Guy of Dacia, billionaire…’
Lauren blinked again, her heart contracting into a cold, hard ball in her chest. Royalty? Prince Guy?
…and at thirty-two still unmarried and breaking hearts all over the world. We wonder if he’ll follow the footsteps of his cousins, Prince Luka, the ruler of Dacia, and Princess Lucia, Mrs Hunt Radcliffe, who both fell in love with New Zealanders.
Prince Guy of Dacia, Lauren thought woodenly, jettisoning hopes she’d barely recognised.
Oh, she knew that name; prince, hugely successful businessman, lover of beautiful women, and reclusive object of intense media interest. She closed her eyes, but when she opened them he was still frowning out from the page.
She’d heard of him, seen photographs—why hadn’t she recognised him when she’d met him in Sant’Rosa?
Because stubble had blurred the aristocratic features, and because—well, because you simply didn’t expect to find a European prince on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
And because she’d been so aware of him that she’d temporarily lost her mind!
Why hadn’t he told her? She bit her lip. Presumably he expected her to know that Bagaton was the family name of the Dacian royal family. Well, she hadn’t.
A turbulent mix of emotions—a stark, wholly irrational sense of betrayal, fury and dark desolation—razed every thought but one from her brain. She had been a complete and utter fool, wilfully ignoring anything that didn’t fit her first impression of him.
No wonder the Press had met her with such avid determination at the airport! This jet, with its luxurious seats and its atmosphere of privilege and power, its crested china and silver, was either his or his cousin’s—the reigning prince.
The distance between Lauren Porter and their world of birth and privilege loomed like a cliff face, dangerous and insurmountable.
How long would it be before someone started digging into her background? Her stomach tightened as fear kicked in. If they hadn’t already begun. She was already linked to Marc; would someone pursue that link and find out that she and her boss were half-siblings?
If anyone made the connections, she’d be revealed as the bastard daughter of Marc Corbett’s father, the cuckoo in her father’s nest. She could cope with that, but her parents would be exposed to sly, sniggering insinuations that would hurt them unbearably and strain her father’s precarious health.
