nodded and rolled her eyes to herself as they passed through the courtyard and up a creamy white staircase with a deep red carpet running through the centre. There was a very good reason why she hadn’t needed to know the word for ballroom for her project on ‘ma maison’.
The thought reminded her just how hypocritical it was to feel impressed by the palace when the man who lived here was guilty of the excess she loathed. She was even more ashamed to look down at her perfectly functional black jacket and skirt, teamed with a white blouse, and wish she had brought something a little more, well, worthy. Why should she be worried what clothes she was wearing to meet the prince? Just because he had a palace and a title didn’t mean she ought to act any differently from the way she would with any potential client. Any more than he should judge her on anything but her ability as a restorer, she thought defiantly, hugging her portfolio to her chest.
‘Here we are, Mademoiselle Greenway.’
‘Thank you,’ Cally whispered as the man signalled for her to enter the ballroom, bowed his head and then swiftly departed.
She entered tentatively, preparing to be blown away by the full impact of the magnificent marble floor, the intricately decorated wall panels and the high, sculpted ceiling that she could see from the doorway. But, as Cally turned into the room, the gasp that broke from her throat was not one of artistic appreciation, it was one of complete astonishment.
The Rénards. Hanging, seemingly innocuously, right in the centre of the opposite wall.
Cally rushed to them to get a closer look, momentarily convinced that they must be reproductions, but a quick appraisal told her immediately that they were not. She felt her heart begin to thud insistently in her chest, though she couldn’t accurately name the emotion which caused it. Excitement? She had wanted more than anything to discover the identity of the mysterious telephone-bidder, to have the chance to convince them she was the best person to carry out the restoration. Now it seemed that somehow he had found her.
Or was it horror? For wasn’t this exactly the fate of the paintings she had feared—shut away in some gilded palace never to be looked upon again? She closed her eyes and pressed her hands to her temples, trying to make sense of it, but before she could even begin a voice behind her cut through everything.
‘See something you recognise?’
A voice which made her eyes fly open, every hair on the back of her neck stand on end and every thought fly from her mind. Every thought, except one.
Leon.
Stop it, she scolded herself. The Prince of Montéz is French, of course he’s going to sound a little like him. God, she really did need to get out more if that one meaningless episode had the power to make her lose all grip on reality every time she heard a man with a French accent. The voice belonged to the Prince of Montéz, who had brought her here as his potential employee, so why was she still staring rudely at the wall? She turned sharply to face him.
The sight before her almost made her keel over.
Her imagination hadn’t been playing a trick on her at all. It was him. Irritatingly perfect him, his impressive physique all the more striking in a formal navy suit.
Her mind went into overdrive as she attempted to make sense of what was happening. Leon was a university professor; perhaps he’d been invited here to examine the paintings in more detail; perhaps this was just one of life’s unfortunate coincidences?
But as she stared at his wry expression—impatient, as if waiting for her tiny mind to catch up—she suddenly understood that this was no coincidence. Her very first appraisal of him in that sale room in London—rich, heartless, titled—had not been wrong. It was everything else that had been a lie. Good God, was Leon even his real name?
‘You bastard.’
For a second his easy expression looked shot through with something darker, but just as quickly it was back.
‘So you said last time we met, Cally, but now that you know I am your potential employer I thought you’d be a little more courteous.’
Courteous? Cally felt the bile rise in her throat. ‘Well, since I can assure you I am not going to be capable of courtesy towards you any time this century, I think I should leave, don’t you?’
Leon gritted his teeth. Yes, he did think she should leave, the same way he’d thought he should in London. But after countless hot, frustrated nights, when all his body had cared about was why the hell he hadn’t taken her when he’d had the chance, Leon was through with thinking.
He blocked her exit with his arm.
‘At least stay for one drink.‘
‘And why the hell would I want to do that?’
‘Because, yet again, you look like you need one.’
Had he brought her here purely to humiliate her further, to revel in how much he had got to her? She fixed a bland expression on her face, determined not to play ball. ‘I’ll have one on my way back to the airport.’
‘You have somewhere else to be?’ he replied, mock-earnestly.
She knew exactly what he implied—that she had nowhere else to be today any more than when she had protested the need to return to her hotel room that night. It was the same reason he’d known she would come at short notice. And exactly why staying here could only quadruple the humiliation she already felt.
‘No, you’re absolutely right, I don’t. But anywhere is pre-ferable to being on this dead end of an island with some lying product of French inbreeding who has nothing better to do than to toy with random English women he meets for sport.’
‘Woman,’ he corrected. ‘There is certainly only one of you, Cally Greenway.’
‘And yet there is one of you in every palace and stately home on the planet. It’s so predictable, it’s boring.’
‘I thought that you liked things to turn out exactly the way you expect them to—or perhaps that is simply what you pretend to want?’
‘Like I told you, all I want is to leave.’
‘It’s a shame your body language says otherwise.’
Cally looked down, pleased to discover that if anything she had stepped further away from him, whilst her arms clutched her portfolio protectively to her chest.
‘And do you always take a woman’s loathing as a come-on?’
‘Only when it’s born out of sheer sexual frustration,’ he drawled, nodding at the gap between them and her self-protective stance.
‘In your dreams.’
‘Yours too, I don’t doubt.’ He looked at her with an assessing gaze.
Cally felt her cheeks turn crimson.
‘I thought so,’ he drawled in amusement. ‘But think just how good it will be when we do make love, chérie.’
‘I might have been stupid enough to consider having sex with you before I knew who you were,’
