“If you sell that earring to anyone but me, I will become a bigger problem than any you already have.”
He hit the screen and a whoosh sounded.
Rozalia internally winced at the complication she’d just caused her cousin. Sorry, Gizi.
“Look, I didn’t come here for a war.” Time to try placating again. “Is it so unreasonable that I’m curious? Your mother was willing to talk to me. Why won’t you let me buy you a drink and ask a few questions?”
“Because I don’t like liars, Ms. Toth.”
“When have I lied to you? I’m exactly what I appear to be. A long-lost relative—”
“You’re not my relative,” he stated with enough force it pushed her back an inch.
On the surface, it sounded like a rejection. Part of her was even a little stung by his vehemence. He didn’t want to be associated with her, which was very insulting. Her brain was already gathering to make a haughty reply.
But as she met his gaze, a current of electricity crackled between them. His words took on new meaning. Even a necessary truth.
Her grandmother had been pregnant with Istvan Karolyi’s daughter, Gisella’s mother, when she came to America. Rozalia’s mother was the product of Eszti’s marriage to Benedek. All Rozalia’s fascination with the Karolyi connection was wrapped up in the romance of the story. She didn’t have a drop of blood tie in it.
Which made fantasizing about this man’s bottom lip okay. Or rather, it was still a dumb thing to do, but at least it wasn’t morally wrong.
Staring at it, she found herself longing to soothe the tension from the wide shape of it, lick and discover his taste and textures, feel his mouth cover hers and—
A strange light grew to a hot gleam in his gaze.
She realized she was leaning in.
With a small gasp, she pulled back, but he stayed exactly where he was, moving nothing but his eyes. He took his time sliding his perusal down her clean if wrinkled T-shirt and clean, faded jeans. Her chest grew tight, nipples stinging. Heat burned into her loins. Finally his gaze came back to what had to be a culpable expression on her face.
“Where are you staying?” His tone had gone from sandpaper to whiskey.
She swallowed. Licked her lips, drawing his gaze to her own mouth. Oh, dear.
“Um.” For a second, she honestly couldn’t recall. Then managed to give him the name of her hotel.
He dismissed it with a curl of his lip. “My place, then. We’ll have dinner. You can show me exactly how persuasive you claim to be.”
VIKTOR WATCHED THE pert Ms. Toth sit straight, looking wary and disconcerted when a moment ago she had been looking very...receptive. Her delicate scent had closed around him as they’d sat here, beguiling with its notes of vanilla and fresh air, sunscreen and something sensual and light and a tone he instinctively identified as her.
“You’ll show me the earring?” she asked, eyeing him while showing him her profile.
“I’ll give you an opportunity to tell me why I should.”
A pause, then a small, decisive nod. “Fair enough.”
He knocked on his window and told his driver where they were going. Then he wondered what the hell he was doing. Picking up a student taking a gap year would be bad enough. This woman was dangerous.
Not that she looked it. She projected innocence with her casual clothes and naked face. She chewed the corner of her mouth as though having second thoughts.
The virgin act wasn’t normally his thing, but there was something in the way she nervously licked her lips that made desire dig sharp talons into his vitals. It wasn’t a hunter’s instinct to plunder the helpless. That wasn’t his thing, either. Rather, he sensed she was quietly fighting a betrayal of her attraction toward him—one that exactly matched the sexual heat he was struggling against.
That was compelling.
In those seconds when she had looked at his mouth, silently begging him to ravage hers, he’d nearly given in to... Hell, had he ever felt such anticipation for a woman? His emotions had been buried alongside his brother, never to be resurrected. But as the hunger in her gaze had fixated on his lips, he’d felt something other than cynicism and the relentless press of obligation.
He had seen, oddly, an open door to freedom, when every other woman struck him as the bait inside a cage.
This one had to be bait, as well. She came from duplicitous stock, he reminded himself, redonning his cloak of skepticism. He didn’t doubt she was the granddaughter of the woman who had stolen his great-grandmother’s earrings, given the way she had misrepresented herself to steal into today’s appointment. This doe-eyed innocence had to be an act to throw him off whatever it was that she really wanted.
It was very likely the way her grandmother had gotten the better of his great-uncle. Family legend had it that Istvan’s thieving lover had claimed to be carrying a Karolyi bastard to gain entry to the house. The only reason his mother had agreed to meet Gisella was to ensure there wouldn’t be any scandalous—and false—claims against the estate. There was such a thing as DNA testing and his mother had intended to insist on it.
Was that why Rozalia had come instead of the woman who would have had to undergo a blood test? He wondered what she really wanted. It couldn’t be merely a glimpse of an earring. He would spare his mother the work of getting that answer by taking Rozalia Toth to Kastély Karolyi himself.
When they arrived, he had his driver pause to tell the gatekeeper to get rid of the paparazzi at the fence. As they carried on up the drive, beneath the bower of branches, he caught Rozalia sending him a pithy look.
He lifted a brow in query.
“They’re just tourists, aren’t they?” she said. “The house is listed in a guidebook as one of the best-preserved examples of classic architecture in Eastern Europe. I took a photo myself when I was here earlier today.”
Something in that remark jarred, but he was also reminded of why he was of such interest to long-lens photographers right now. Damn his mother and her matchmaking and rumormongering. In her quest to see the next heir produced, she had singled out the daughter of a family friend—one of many associations cultivated over the last twenty years with the sole purpose that his mother would have the pick of the litter when the time came.
Trudi, an heiress from Austria, was suitably finished at boarding school. She excelled as a socialite, walking the line of interesting without being scandalous. She wrote freelance fashion articles and managed charity events for her father’s auto manufacturing corporation—one that dovetailed nicely with some of Rika’s steel interests. Viktor had had dinner with her twice. Both evenings were pleasantly civil and ended in an underwhelming kiss.
Yet his mother insisted on sowing whispers of a forthcoming
