you,’ he said, knowing it was hopeless. ‘No one will know I’m there.’
‘I will know,’ Luka said inflexibly. ‘I gave them my word I’d go alone, and I intend to keep it.’ He looked down at the man he called friend and demanded, ‘Give me your word you won’t do anything to jeopardise this meeting.’
Dion met the Prince’s hard eyes with something like anguish. ‘You have it,’ he said stiffly, and stood back, holding the door open to let his ruler into the car.
Luka slid behind the wheel, his face sombre as he turned the key and heard the engine purr into life. Although he was early for the meeting, he was also a stranger to Auckland, so in spite of memorising the route he’d probably make enough wrong turnings to use up the extra hour.
Putting the car into gear, he eased it out of the parking bay and through the car park, slid his card into the slot and waited for the grille to roll back.
A security man posted there gave him a keen look and a respectful nod—another instance of the meticulous attention to detail by the conference planners.
The wet street appeared deserted, but his eyes narrowed when he saw a woman striding towards the corner; adrenalin pumped through him as he noticed the two men coming up behind her, leashed violence smoking around them like an aura. They were taking care not to make a noise—hunters with prey in their sights.
Luka’s hand thudded onto the horn and he stamped on the accelerator. The stalked woman jumped and whirled, mouth opening in a scream he could hear even over the squealing tyres and revving engine. By the time he’d driven across the footpath between her and the men she’d backed into the wall, hands in front of her in a classic posture of self-defence.
Trained? No, but ready to defend herself, Luka guessed with approval, himself expert in a lethal martial art. He leapt out of the car, but the two men were already sprinting across the street.
Luka ignored them. ‘Are you all right?’ he demanded harshly.
The street lamp revealed a face he recognised, a face that had lodged like a burr in his mind since she’d offered him a savoury before dinner. A highly appropriate offering, he’d thought then—oysters for sexual stamina. He’d looked into eyes, like a blast of winter set between black lashes and brows, and wanted her with a violence that startled and irritated him.
‘I’m fine, thanks to you,’ she said, the words coming clumsily.
Although she was pale her wide, soft mouth was held under tight discipline. Unwillingly Luka admired her self-control even while some part of him wondered what she’d look like when she lost it.
Wild; those fantastic ice-grey eyes half hidden by heavy eyelids, her hair tossed and tumbled like skeins of copper silk… The flush of passion would turn her skin to peaches and cream, and her mouth would soften into a sensuous welcome.
To take his mind off that purely male speculation—and the stir it created in his body—he suggested quietly, ‘You can drop your hands now. You’re quite safe.’
They fell to her sides. She managed a rapid, set smile and said, ‘Thank you.’
‘For what?’
Her teeth bit into her bottom lip for a moment before she answered, ‘For getting involved.’
‘Why wouldn’t I?’
‘Some people don’t,’ she said, dragging a sharp breath into her lungs.
Luka wrenched his gaze from the extremely interesting lift and fall of her breasts. In a voice he realised was too harsh, he demanded, ‘Who are you, and just what are you doing in a back street at this time of night?’
‘I’m Alexa Mytton,’ she answered, stiffening as her chin came up, ‘and I’m going to the taxi rank around the corner.’
‘Why not ask one of the doormen to get you a cab?’
So he’d recognised her. Something warm and satisfied, a kind of purr of femininity, smoothed over Alexa. Afraid she’d fall apart if she relaxed, she straightened her shoulders and said quickly, ‘I’m not a guest at the hotel. Thanks very much for being so quick to respond. I’ll—I’ll go now and get a taxi.’
‘I’ll walk there with you,’ he said with a crisp purpose that warned her he wasn’t going to leave her there alone.
Clamping down on a shiver, the aftermath of the terror that had surged through her, she said feebly, ‘You can’t leave your car blocking the way.’
‘Then can I offer you a lift to the rank? You are really in no fit state to walk there by yourself.’ A hint of impatience threaded his decisive voice.
Alexa knew she should say no and head briskly off. She glanced up into a face carved in granite, and then looked away, her stomach knotting; although definitely a dangerous man, there was no criminal menace about him. The peril radiating from him was the simple, sensual danger a potent male represented to a woman’s composure.
‘Thank you,’ she said tightly, repressing another shiver.
With courteous speed the Prince put her into the front seat beside him and drove around the corner.
And of course the taxi rank was empty—as was the street, apart from one man lurching from lamppost to lamppost. Alexa stifled a little hiss of dismay.
‘If you’ll trust me with your address I’ll take you home,’ the man beside her said with an aloofness that should have reassured her as he pulled into the empty space in the taxi rank, clearly not at all concerned by the prospect of any cruising cab-driver’s outrage.
‘Thank you, but you don’t need to do that,’ she told him swiftly. ‘Perhaps you could take me to the nearest police station—if it’s not too much trouble,’ she added swiftly when he hesitated.
‘Of course,’ he said remotely, and put the car into gear again. When she’d given him instructions he said evenly, ‘Promise me that you won’t again walk by yourself at night in the inner city.’
‘I don’t make a habit of it. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ she defended herself. ‘I suppose they thought it would be easy enough to grab my bag and get away before anyone arrived.’
‘Perhaps. And perhaps they didn’t want money.’
‘What else would they have wanted?’ she asked, then flushed at his derisive glance. A slow cold shudder tightened her skin. She’d only had one glimpse of their faces before they’d turned and sprinted across the street, but they were imprinted on her mind. ‘They can’t possibly have thought they could get away with…assaulting me on a public street when traffic and pedestrians could arrive—’
‘You forget the car,’ he broke in. ‘And surely your mother told you that beautiful women are always prey.’
‘What car?’ His words chilled her, yet she tingled because he’d called her beautiful.
The swift blade of the Prince’s glance skimmed her profile. ‘They’d parked down that little alley over the street. Didn’t you hear them drive off?’
‘No.’
