trickled through the clotted mass of indifference inside her. Emotions. Surprise, indignation…anger.
What kind of monster would do that to his father, and a great man like King Benedetto, too? And to think Durante had been the one she’d admired most among all Castaldinian princes, his self-made success intriguing her far more because it didn’t have the crown as its goal. As the king’s son, Durante was the one prince who was ineligible for the crown. And then, success didn’t describe what he’d achieved. He’d become one of the world’s richest, most powerful men, starting with investment banking, then branching into just about everything, garnering a worldwide reputation for being unstoppable, as well as inaccessible. But it was one thing to reject intimacy as evidenced by his misanthrope/heartbreaker reputation, another to reject the man who was his father and king.
“Why all this…antipathy?” she asked.
“Durante blames me for terrible things, things I haven’t been able to prove I wasn’t responsible for.” Okay. So it was more complicated than she could imagine. She really couldn’t form an opinion here. She shouldn’t. It had nothing to do with her. And she wanted it to stay that way. “But it doesn’t matter what he believes. He must come back, Gaby. It’s not only that I need my son—Castaldini needs his power and influence.”
Scratch the no-opinion status. No matter Durante’s reasons, he was a callous creep if he not only didn’t care about his father’s incapacitation but also about Castaldini’s troubles. And she was supposed to make him care?
She asked that, and the king nodded. “I know you can. You’ll come in with a fresh slate and views, with legitimate business offers and concerns. But give me your word that you’ll never tell him of our connection. That would make him send you straight to hell. And none of us can afford that. The situation is grave, and I must be clear. I want you to do anything to make him come back.”
His words had echoed long after their goodbyes. What he’d meant by anything was so glaringly clear, it was blinding. Seduction.
She was resigned to her femme fatale reputation. But it hurt that even the king thought seduction was one of her weapons, her only one, even. Still, she excused him. He was old and sick and desperate to resolve his problems, to secure his kingdom’s future.
And then, what he’d proposed was a worthy cause. If she succeeded—seduction certainly not on the menu of maneuvers she’d use—everyone would come out a winner. The king would have his son back—a reconciliation that was bound to make said son happier, too—Castaldini would get a heavy-hitter to help its regent pull its fat out of the fire, and she’d stabilize her company.
But the damned prince hadn’t even acknowledged her messages. She could think of only one reason. His initial background check on anyone who approached him must have accessed the usual slander. Seemed he’d thought such unsubstantiated filth enough to condemn her.
Furious, she’d called in a favor with one of his insiders and gotten his schedule for the next week. Besides being impossible to get hold of, he was also known for badgering the privileged into doing more for the world. This function was one of his traps where he wrung what he could get out of them for his favorite causes. She’d intended to intercept him, make him an offer he couldn’t refuse. At least, that had been the plan.
So far, all she’d done was stammer three sentences and got nothing out of him but that disconcerting stare.
She needed results, but she had to restart her own volition first. Or at least the autopilot that had steered her for months now.
One or the other must have kicked in, because she moved at last.
She leaned on the door as she opened it. The exuberance of jazz and the forced gaiety in the overcrowded ballroom slammed into her. But what almost knocked her off her feet was the power of his gaze. He’d been watching for her, as if certain she’d follow him.
Not that she could. Those people who had the same idea as her—of ambushing him here—left her no chink to get through.
He left her no air to breathe as his gaze drilled into her across the ballroom. She began to think it might not be a bad thing after all if she didn’t get a chance to talk to him alone.
She was a seasoned businesswoman who’d been through a battlefield of a marriage and divorce, who’d before and since been pursued by men, had thought she’d seen and tried all kinds, to her crushing dissatisfaction. But Prince D’Agostino fell far outside what she’d thought to be her inclusive experience. To lump him under “man” with those she’d had experience with was as accurate as lumping a top-of-the-food-chain predator with a jellyfish. Something very sure of itself told her she shouldn’t get closer. For any reason.
She should leave. Now.
She had to pry her gaze—her will—from his first.
Somehow she did, was at the door when a rough velvet whisper hit her between the shoulder blades. “Don’t run off yet.”
Logic said that omnidirectional/internal sound effect was the surround system’s doing. But there was no logic here. There was only the influence the voice exercised, the reactions it ignited. The certainty that it was talking to her.
She swayed around, found him on the dais in front of the mic, his gaze still cast on her like a stasis field.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “Thank you for paying the ten-grand admission fee. But because you’re getting…restless, I’ll fast-forward to prying some real contributions out of you. You have the auction list, but in light of a certain…development, I have made some changes. Now the first item on auction is…myself.”
Two
If Prince Durante D’Agostino had announced he was Superman and launched into the air to circle overhead, there wouldn’t have been a more drastic reaction to his announcement.
Not that it would have shocked her. He did look like some superhuman being as he dominated the scene just by standing there, the rugged nobleness of his features and his leonine forehead accentuated by the swept-back mane of raven satin, the jacket of his sculpted designer charcoal suit casually pushed back by the hand resting on his hip, his white shirt stretching across his torso, detailing the daunting power beneath. He looked like a modern god swathed in the trappings of the times that equalized other men but that didn’t begin to contain the influence he exuded, to disguise his in-his-own-league nature.
His gaze panned the ballroom yet somehow managed not to release hers. That alone kept her heart practically dropping to the polished Carrara marble floor. But what restarted her tremors was what she saw in those eyes—an intensity untouched by the cynical amusement with which he watched the mayhem he’d kicked up.
“Before you get too excited,” he finally said. “I’m not auctioning off all of me, just my ear. Considering how in demand it is, with so many of you attempting to talk it off, I’m offering one hour of its exclusive use.” His lips tugged into what had to be the most arrhythmia-inducing weapon ever deployed on susceptible females. And it had her in its crosshairs. “I already have an opening bid. One hundred grand.”
Now she knew how mamma mia had been coined. It had to have been a woman who’d first exclaimed it, as a brutally gorgeous male plucked her strings.
And she did feel like a marionette, compelled
