sprawled over the giant-sized bed.
Lucy wriggled up the bed a bit, resting against a bank of drift-soft pillows, and looked properly around the room for the first time.
So this was the Prince’s bedroom!
There was little to mark it out as a Royal residence—it just looked like home to a very wealthy man. The bed was bigger than any she had ever seen, and the view from the window was utterly spectacular. No cost had been spared in the restrained but elegant furnishings. It was minimalist and unashamedly masculine, without in any way being hard or cold.
Only a silver-framed photo beside the bed gave any indication of his identity, and unless you knew it could have been any snapshot of any rich and privileged family.
But it was not.
It was a picture of Guido, taken with his mother, his elder brother Gianferro, and their father the King. Guido, with his black hair and black eyes, looked to be about four or five. Lucy bit her lip, moving her eyes over the figure of the beautiful young Queen. There was no outward sign of her pregnancy with Nicolo—the youngest—and certainly no sign that within a year of that photo being taken she would be dead. Thank God humans could not see into the future, she thought, with a sudden stab of pain.
She stared at the young Guido. In the face of the child it was possible to see the man. His face was sweetly handsome, his expression almost grave, as if he was determined to be a grown-up boy for the mother whose hand he gripped so tightly.
But Lucy had only learnt all this subsequently. It was easy to find out things about someone when you were interested—and when they were in the public eye. Not that she had known that he was a prince when she’d met him. At least, not at first.
To Lucy, he had been just a heart-stoppingly gorgeous man who had struck up a conversation with her at a party.
IT HAD been one of those parties that Lucy hadn’t particularly wanted to go to—she had been on a stopover on her way back to London and desperate for some sleep—but the flight crew had overridden her objections. Apparently, parties didn’t get much better or more highly connected than this one. One of the other stewardesses had said that a prince was going to be there, but quite honestly Lucy hadn’t believed them.
Well, who would have?
When they had walked into the expensive Bohemian TriBeCa townhouse, Lucy had looked around her with interest. It had been like stepping into some lavishly appointed Bedouin tent—with embroidered cushions and rich brocade wall-hangings, and the heady scent of incense. The hypnotic drift of what had sounded like snake-charmer’s music had only added to the illusion of being on a film set.
‘When do the belly-dancers arrive?’ she asked drily.
‘Shh!’ someone hissed. ‘You know people tend to misunderstand your sense of humour!’
So Lucy decided to observe, rather than to participate, and went to stand in a darkened corner which nonetheless gave her a great view. She took a glass of punch with her and sipped it, then shuddered, hastily putting the glass down on a small inlaid table.
‘Disgusting, isn’t it?’ came a rich, accented voice from a few feet away.
Lucy was just about to protest that he had startled her when her words somehow died on her lips. ‘It’s…a little heavy on the spices,’ she agreed, blinking slightly, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing.
‘And the alcohol, of course.’
‘Well, there is that, of course,’ she echoed, and he smiled.
They stood looking at one another in the way that two people did at parties when there was a strong sexual chemistry between them.
Lucy was wearing a simple green velvet tunic dress—quite short, so that it came to mid-thigh and made her legs look endlessly long. But her baggy suede boots gave the outfit a quirky appearance. Her hair was loose, flooding down over her shoulders in a heavy Titian fall.
Guido thought that she looked like a very sexy bandit. Her face was pale and freckled—he liked the freckles—and her wide honey-coloured eyes were slightly wary—he liked that, too.
Lucy thought, quite honestly, that he was the most gorgeous man she had ever laid eyes on. But then, she had never seen a man who looked quite like this.
He was tall, and his body was both lean and powerful. His hair was as black as the night, and his eyes only a shade lighter, and he had an almost aristocratic bearing. She wondered if he was Italian, or maybe Spanish. He was certainly European.
And he almost certainly has a girlfriend, she told herself. If not one, then a legion of them.
Guido waited, but she said nothing, and he liked that even more. So, did she know? he wondered. And was she pretending not to? ‘You’re not from round here?’ he questioned slowly. ‘No.’ ‘You’re on holiday?’ he persisted. ‘Not really. I work for Pervolo Airlines.’ ‘As a pilot?’ ‘You ask a lot of questions.’
His eyes glittered. ‘One of us has to.’
Hers glittered back. ‘I’m a flight attendant, actually—but thank you for not making the assumption.’
‘Assumptions are such a bore, don’t you think?’ he questioned carelessly.
It was something about the way he spoke—some unknown quality underlying the velvet accent of his voice—which Lucy had difficulty recognising at first, because she had never heard it before. And then he gave her a silent clue in the proud way he was holding his head—in the dismissive little curve of his sensual mouth as a woman wearing so little that she might have been one of those belly-dancers started ogling him from the other side of the room.
It was privilege, Lucy realised. A sense of self-worth bordering on arrogance which radiated from him in a way which was almost tangible. Haughty, but with a devilish glitter to his eyes, he managed to be both gloriously touchable and yet impossibly remote at the same time.
‘You’re the Prince,’ said Lucy slowly, and she felt the slightest pang of disappointment. Just her luck to find someone who could have whisked her off her feet and then discover he was out of bounds! ‘Aren’t you?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘You knew?’
Lucy shook her head. ‘No. I’ve just guessed. Someone said there was going to be a prince here, but I didn’t believe them.’ Her eyes were candid. ‘What a bore for you—that everyone knows about you in advance.’
‘The perfect catch for the ambitious society hostess,’ he observed drily.
‘Yes, quite.’ So, was that arrogant? Or merely honest? Lucy expelled a sigh and gave him a small, regretful smile. She certainly wasn’t going to fill the stereotypical role of hanging around and being starstruck. ‘Well, it was nice meeting you—’
‘But we haven’t, have we?’ he said suddenly. ‘Met, that is. Perhaps we should remedy that?’ His smile was irresistible, and so was his voice, and he took her hand in his without warning. ‘I’m Guido.’
‘Lucy,’
