over her undeniable physical assets. Not for the first time, Charmaine had a moment of burning resentment over the genes which had combined her father’s height and Nordic fairness with her mother’s large blue eyes and womanly curves to produce a tall, head-turning blonde who’d first rocketed to modelling fame at the tender age of sixteen.
Nine years later, Charmaine’s precocious beauty had blossomed into a more mature but still widely recognisable look with her striking figure and extra-long but perfectly straight fair hair. Hourglass shapes were supposedly out of fashion, but Charmaine’s elegantly elongated version was eagerly sought after by designers, primarily because she could showcase their wares more effectively than her thinner colleagues. She was especially popular with swimwear and lingerie fashion houses and had made a small fortune being photographed in a state of dishabille.
Unfortunately, a side-effect of being seen on billboards and magazine covers in skimpy underwear and hardly there bikinis was that some men presumed her whole body was for sale, not just the image she projected. It was amazing how many wealthy men had thought they could buy her as their trophy girlfriend, or mistress, or even wife. Charmaine found this perversely amusing. Little did they know but she was the last woman on earth they would want in their beds.
The man staring at her at this moment would be severely disappointed if she agreed to whatever of those three intimate alternatives he had in mind. She was actually doing him a favour in rejecting his overtures.
With a small smile hovering on her lips, she lowered herself with an almost perverse pleasure into the seat he’d obviously kept clear for her, right next to his own and close enough for her to smell his expensive cologne and see that his black eyes were framed with the longest lashes she had ever seen on a man.
The rest of the box was empty, not even graced by the granite-faced bodyguard who’d either stood at the back or shadowed the prince everywhere he’d gone so far that afternoon. Clearly the bodyguard had encountered this particular scenario before, and knew to make himself scarce whilst his boss chatted up whatever lady his royal eye had fallen upon.
‘I have been eagerly awaiting your return,’ the prince said in that overly formal manner which only a British private-school education could have instilled in him. ‘You have finished your judging for today?’
‘Yes, thank goodness. I didn’t realise how difficult a task it would be, picking the winner from so many beautifully dressed ladies.’
‘If I had been the judge, there would have been only the one winner. And that is your lovely self.’
Oh, please, she thought wearily. Save it for a more impressed model.
Charmaine didn’t give voice to her irritation. Not yet. Instead, she waited patiently for him to put his foot further into his mouth.
‘I was wondering if you might be free this evening,’ he went on predictably. ‘I would very much like to have your company at dinner.’
What you’d like, my pompous prince, is to have me for dinner. Or afters.
Her eyes turned cold as his continued to smoulder.
‘I’m sorry,’ she returned with an upward tilt of her chin that lifted the brim of her picture hat and gave him a clearer view of her icy blue eyes, ‘but I’m not free tonight.’
Her first refusal did not deter him, as she knew it wouldn’t.
‘Perhaps another night, then. I hear you live in Sydney. You may not be aware of the fact, but I am in Sydney every weekend.’
Actually, she hadn’t been aware of much about the prince at all till today. Like a lot of sheikhs, he did not seek publicity. But a Melbourne racehorse-owning couple who were also guests of the prince today had been more than happy to fill her in when he was off presenting a trophy for one of the early races which his family had sponsored. Charmaine now knew he was in his mid-thirties and managed a huge thoroughbred stud in the upper Hunter Valley north-west of Sydney, a job he’d been doing very successfully for the last decade. Apparently, his royal family’s interests in horse-racing spread far and wide and they had similar breeding establishments in Britain and America. Prince Ali, however, was solely in charge of the Australian branch.
She’d also been discreetly informed of his reputation as a ladies’ man and a lover, although she wasn’t sure if that had been a warning or an advertisement for her host’s boudoir skills, a teaser meant to whet her appetite to experience the reality rather than the rumour. If so, his minions had been wasting their time. They’d definitely picked the wrong target today. And so had he.
She couldn’t wait to enlighten him of his mistake.
‘I will be back in Sydney by tomorrow afternoon,’ he went on suavely, his eyes never leaving hers. ‘I play cards with friends in my hotel suite every Friday night and attend the Sydney races every Saturday. To be truthful I rarely travel interstate. I only came to Melbourne this week because I had a horse running in the Cup last Tuesday and another in the Oaks today. Unfortunately, neither of them won.’
‘How sad for you,’ she said without a trace of true sympathy in her voice.
He didn’t seem to notice, however. Perhaps he could not conceive of the possibility that a woman would not hang on his every word, or feel anything but flattery over his obvious interest.
Charmaine almost smiled over the thought that Prince Ali of Dubar was about to have a new experience with the opposite sex. It was called…rejection.
‘Would you be free to go to dinner with me this Saturday night?’ he persisted, as she had known he would. ‘Or do you have further commitments which will keep you down here in Melbourne?’
‘No. I fly back to Sydney tomorrow morning. But I won’t be free to have dinner with you that night, either. Sorry,’ she added blithely.
His frown carried some confusion. ‘You have another engagement?’
‘No,’ came her succinct reply.
His frown deepened. ‘There is a lover who would object to your going out to dinner with me?’ he ventured in his bewilderment. ‘Or a secret patron perhaps?’
Charmaine’s irritation reached new heights, prompted by both his stuffy manner of speech and his presumption that there had to be some man stopping her from going out with him. It could not possibly be that she didn’t find him irresistible and didn’t want to go out with him. What annoyed her most, however, was his last inference that she might already be some wealthy man’s secret mistress.
‘I have no lover, or patron, as you put it,’ she replied curtly. ‘The fact is, your royal highness, I will never be free to go out with a man like you, so please save yourself the trouble and don’t ask again.’
His eyes flared momentarily with shock before going as hard as ebony, his dark brows gathering like clouds before the storm.
‘A man like me,’ he reiterated in clipped tones. ‘Might I ask exactly what you mean by that?’
‘You may ask,’ she answered coolly, ‘but you will not get an answer.’
‘Surely I have a right to know why you have turned me down so rudely.’
Some of the fury that Charmaine had kept bottled up for years bubbled up in her throat and found voice.
’Right?’
