held, the thicker the atmosphere in the air became. Sabrina was the first to look away, fixing her eyes on a point over his shoulder as she fiddled with the pearls. ‘I had assumed you were drunk but I can see now that you’re always...’ Her words faded as the vivid memory resurfaced. His breath the other day had not actually tasted of booze, just mint and... No, she was not going to go there!
‘Irresistible?’
Before she could react to the suggestion the antique string of pearls she was playing with snapped.
Sabrina immediately fell to her knees, trying to grab the pearls, which were bouncing across the polished wooden floor in all directions. ‘Oh, no! No, no, no.’
‘Relax, they’re not the crown jewels...’ He stopped, his teasing look vanishing from his face as she lifted her head and he saw that she was close to tears.
‘Just go away!’ she hissed. ‘I don’t give a damn about the crown jewels. They were my grandmother’s pearls.’
With a frown he dropped down, squatting on his heels beside her. He saw the little tremors that shook her shoulders and felt something twist hard in his chest. He did his best to ignore it, telling himself it was either indigestion or the threat of tears that had caused it. He’d never liked seeing women crying.
‘She left them to me. She always wore them and now they’re ruined! Everything is ruined...’ Dignity forgotten, on all fours now, she stretched to retrieve a pearl that had slipped under a chair, but as her finger touched it it bounced away. ‘I can’t do this! It’s so, so... No, I just can’t!’
‘What we need is a system. An inch-by-inch search. What do they call it—a fingertip search?’
The image that drifted into her head involved his fingertips moving very slowly, but the surface they were exploring, the secret crevices they were discovering, had nothing to do with the wooden floor! What was happening to her?
‘You count and I’ll retrieve.’
She struggled to drag her thoughts back to the present. The process felt like swimming through warm honey. There was a horrible temptation to taste it.
‘That really isn’t necessary,’ she managed finally, her voice carrying nowhere near the level of conviction she was hoping for. ‘I’m really not that sentimental.’
He had already lifted the heavy starched linen tablecloth; at her comment he glanced back over his shoulder. ‘Yes, you are, which is fine. Make yourself useful and hold this up. There are some under here.’
After a pause she did as he requested and lifted the heavy starched linen cloth while he reached under. A moment later several more pearls were dropped into her open hand.
She glanced at him from under her lashes. His dark hair was ruffled and there was a dusty smudge on the dark lapel of his jacket. Without thinking she reached out to brush it away. ‘You don’t have to do this, you know.’
‘I know.’
She had never seen anything as blue as his eyes; they were compellingly hypnotic. She fought a short internal battle and dropped her hand away, escaping the full impact of his eyes by looking up through the mesh of her lashes. ‘Well, thank you, I think that’s all of them,’ she said at last, closing her hand that was now full of the smooth pearls.
Sebastian rose to his feet before her and reached out a hand. After a pause Sabrina took it and allowed him to pull her to her feet. Her stomach made an unscheduled dive as her quivering nostrils picked up the scent of his warm body, the clean fragrance, the maleness.
He immediately released her hand but she could still feel the warmth of his fingers as she rubbed her hand along her silk-covered thigh. The stab of sexual desire that pierced her was so tangible it seemed to her guilty mind that it echoed off the walls like an accusation.
‘I’ve been meaning to get them restrung for ages.’ She began to babble. What was he trying to do to her? Nothing, came the depressing and shaming answer, he didn’t have to do a thing.
‘Lady Sabrina?’
She responded with relief to the sound of her name and the familiar respectful voice. ‘Yes, Walter?’ she said, moving towards the door where the major-domo stood.
‘I just wanted to let you know that the Duke and Duchess are in the small salon.’ He turned towards Sebastian and bent forward at the waist. ‘Sir, I believe that the royal party will be joining them there directly.’
‘I’ll be right there, Walter,’ Sabrina said, shifting the pearls from one slightly sticky hand to the other.
‘May I help?’
‘These are my—’
‘The late Duchess’s pearls.’ The major-domo gave one of his rare smiles and held out a hand. ‘I never saw her without them,’ he added when Sabrina looked reluctant. ‘They will be safe with me.’
Sabrina acknowledged the reassurance with a smile and tipped the pearls into his hand. ‘Thank you.’ She stood there, hopefully not looking as awkward as she felt as she turned back to Sebastian, who had watched the interchange in silence. Not quite meeting his eyes—some might call it cowardly but she called it sensible—she gestured towards the door. ‘I’ll show you the way, shall I?’ Without waiting to see if he accepted the invitation, she left the room, not caring if she gave the impression of running away. Any woman with an ounce of common sense would run in the opposite direction when they saw Sebastian Zorzi, though she doubted there were many who did. Luckily she had never been one of the number who were drawn to danger, even when it wore a suit as well as he did. He probably looked even better without the suit!
Face flushed with shame, she speeded up, but she had only gone a few yards before he fell into step beside her.
‘I never met your grandmother. But I’ve heard a lot about her. She sounds like quite a character.’
‘She always said exactly what she thought.’ And her outspoken grandparent had thought that the plan to marry her granddaughter off to seal the reunification deal was an appalling plan and she had said so, often. ‘Chloe is very like her. Not in looks obviously.’ Her grandmother had been tiny and delicate while her sister would not have looked out of place in an Olympic rowing team.
‘But not you?’
‘Gran was a rebel,’ Sabrina said, aware of the emotional ache in her throat but not of the wistful quality to her observation as she thought of the old lady who had been such a big part of her early years. ‘So, no, we are not alike. I’m a good girl, remember?’ she said, forgetting her intention not to look at him and angling a resentful look up at his dark, lean, insanely handsome face.
Sebastian intercepted the glare and held her eyes as he raised a dark sardonic brow before allowing his stare to sink to her mouth, heat sparking in his heavy-lidded eyes as they moved across the full soft curves. ‘Not always,’ he purred throatily.
She looked away quickly, feeling the heat climb to her cheeks as the volume of the background hum of sexual awareness that she had been successfully dealing with up until now became a deafening clamour.
‘We all make mistakes. I think the trick is in not repeating them,’ she said. Two could play the innuendo game! ‘Here we are,’
