King Clayborne. ‘You were just unlucky,’ she said, moving away from the window and the image that had sparked off this unwelcome conversation with him in the first place.
The cathedral. The palace. The exotic gardens. They did it all. He even showed her the amazingly palatial building of the famous casino, although they didn’t actually go inside.
It wasn’t until they got back into the car that Rayne realised she’d switched her phone off before going into the cathedral and had forgotten to switch it back on. She chastened herself for letting everything go out of her mind simply because she was with King.
She started when her phone began to ring almost as soon as she had switched it on.
‘Lorrayne?’ Cynthia Hardwicke said when Rayne put the phone to her ear.
Immediately Rayne tensed up. King hadn’t yet switched the car’s engine on. Could he have heard the way her mother had addressed her?
Trying to sound normal, she wished her mother a happy birthday when she had finished enthusing about the bouquet Rayne had sent her.
‘I’m glad you like it,’ she breathed, relaxing a little, relieved to hear her mother sounding so buoyant. She envisaged Cynthia Hardwicke, with her grey-tinged auburn hair freshly tinted for her holiday, starting to regain the weight she had lost, her skin—usually as pale as her own—beginning to bloom again beneath a welcome Majorcan sun.
‘Like them? I can’t tell you how much they’ve brightened my day! But why did you have the message signed “Rayne”, love?’ She gave a little chuckle. ‘Weren’t you thinking?’
Catching her breath, Rayne cast a surreptitious glance at King.
He was scanning through various menus on his own phone. Checking appointments and deleting texts, she decided, her eyes drawn to that strong, steady hand that had driven her nearly mindless for him yesterday.
He still hadn’t started the engine, letting her take her call.
Killing time, she suspected, while he waited for her to finish. Nevertheless, she knew that although he was displaying all outward signs of being courteous and respecting her privacy by appearing otherwise engaged, that sharp brain of his was probably attuned to every agitated response she was uttering.
‘I couldn’t have been. I’m sorry,’ she added quickly, because she certainly didn’t feel happy being forced to deceive her own mother. ‘But you’re all right, are you?’ she asked uneasily, having sensed a flicker of interest from the man beside her since uttering that apology, even though he still appeared preoccupied with the obvious running of his business.
‘Of course I am,’ Cynthia Hardwicke assured her, although there was a curious note in the disembodied voice. ‘But are you? You don’t sound yourself, darling. Is anything the matter?’
‘No, of course not.’ She laughed to try and convince her parent that everything was as it should be, to try and behave normally.
‘Are you with someone?’
Rayne could feel herself growing hot and sticky from her toes upwards.
‘Who is it?’ Her mother persisted in wanting to know.
Rayne hesitated before replying. ‘It’s just a friend.’ Involuntarily, her gaze strayed to King and his heart-stopping profile. It exhibited forcefulness overlaid with unstinting sensuality. Authority and energy, harnessed with a magnetism that had the drawing power over a woman that the moon had over the tides. But he had obviously picked up the gist of the conversation because his mouth was twitching now in what she could only describe as sensual mockery. He clearly didn’t regard her as a friend, any more than she considered him one. Though for plainly different reasons where she was concerned!
‘I thought I knew all your friends,’ Cynthia pressed. Which was true, Rayne thought. She did. ‘You’re sounding pretty secretive. That’s not like you.’
‘It’s no one of any significance,’ Rayne stressed, already regretting the comment when she saw the way King was looking at her as she wound up the conversation and rang off.
‘Why didn’t you tell her about us?’ he enquired, turning all his attention towards her now.
‘There is no “us”,’ she reminded him tartly, feeling the heat of shame creeping up her neck and into her cheeks when a masculine eyebrow lifted in obvious dispute.
‘No? Not when I only have to touch you to send your hormones rocketing through the roof? I’d say that was significant enough to constitute an “us”.’
He’d also taken her out to breakfast that first morning. Showed her around Monte Carlo and bought her lunch today. Not to mention making his credit card available to pay for her mother’s birthday bouquet!
‘I’m sorry about the way I described you,’ she felt she had to offer, even if his reasons for helping her might be purely self-motivated. ‘But I had to put her off the scent.’
‘The scent of what?’ he asked smoothly.
‘That I’m here.’
‘In Monaco? Or with me?’
‘Both,’ she answered truthfully now. ‘She thinks I’m staying with my friend in Nice. If I told her I was in Monte Carlo on my own, she’d worry.’
‘And if you said you were with me?’
‘Then I’d have to explain how I came to be in Mitch’s house in the first place, and she’d worry even more.’ No, more than that. She’d have a fit, Rayne thought, shuddering to think what Cynthia Hardwicke would say if she knew that her daughter was hobnobbing with the family who had ruined her husband. Another shiver went down her spine as she thought of how easily she could become involved—especially with King—if she didn’t watch her step.
‘You don’t think she’d approve of you picking up older men?’
‘I didn’t pick him up,’ she reminded him, stressing the point. ‘I meant I’d have to tell her how I’d had my belongings stolen. With losing Dad so recently, Mum gets worked up about things and imagines something terrible’s going to happen to me. If she thought I needed her in any way, she’d be over here like a shot, and I couldn’t risk letting her do that.’ Even if the Claybornes hadn’t been in the picture. ‘She needs her holiday a hundred times more than I need mine. I don’t intend doing anything that would spoil it for her.’
‘That’s very commendable,’ he murmured, the sound rumbling deeply from his chest. ‘You love her very much, don’t you?’
His observation was, like his eyes, so direct and probing that she looked quickly away without answering, ashamed to let such a hard-headed character as he was see the welling emotion she had to fight to control.
King couldn’t take his eyes off her tight, tense features—the perfect structure of her forehead, the pert nose with those slightly flaring nostrils, the gentle curve of her cheek.
This girl was a real enigma, he decided, with his face a study in concentration. On the one hand she seemed guarded and extremely defensive, which aroused his natural suspicions, especially since he’d taken her as a gold-digger. Definitely like someone with something
