Maharaja's Mistress

by Susan Stephens

  But there was a puzzle here. He and Tom had kept in touch, but Tom never mentioned his sister and he had never asked. He and Tom had always respected each other’s confidences, and though he had often wondered about Mia, he hadn’t wanted to pry into her life. Yet here she was in Monte Carlo, offering to be his co-driver—

  Could he accept Mia’s offer?

  And open Pandora’s box?

  Mia was his best friend’s baby sister and therefore untouchable, but there had always been a spark between them. Back in the day that had manifested itself as constant taunting, teasing, bickering—but now…

  Mia was all grown up. And he was experienced enough to know that if that same fire existed between them—and this telephone conversation seemed to suggest that it did—that persistent little spark could flare into an inferno—

  Since when did he draw back from playing with fire?

  This time he should—

  And maybe he didn’t want to.

  Sex…Was never far from his mind, and he couldn’t pretend he hadn’t imagined taming the wildcat when they’d been younger. Mia’s unaffected charm—her spirit, her quirky, contrary, upbeat nature—had always been enough to goad him to the point of distraction, and when the explosion came he fully expected the result to be everything it promised to be—

  Which was why he must never touch her…

  But it didn’t hurt to meet for a drink. Plus Mia had always been one of the sharpest tools in the box and he could use a keen pair of eyes reading the route for him tomorrow. He might consider using her. Why not? He didn’t want to pull out of the race at this late stage so he couldn’t afford to be proud. And having won the junior section of several world class rallies certainly put Mia Spencer-Dayly in with a shout.

  Monte Carlo equalled more, Mia mused, taking a deep breath as she prepared to start work at the glamorous hairdressing salon—more money, more glamour, more security, more everything. Definitely more intrigue than anywhere else on earth.

  Which she would be adding to tonight when she met Ram—

  When she met Ram…the Maharaja…

  The man everyone was talking about. It hardly seemed possible. And what would her old childhood friend make of her new persona? She’d always been a bit of an oddball when it came to fashion, but her most recent look was what you might call a bit of a change from lollipops and pigtails…

  As she examined her reflection in the mirror Mia remembered the day she had breezed into Monsieur Michel’s salon to ask for a job. The canny old survivor had quickly guessed she had no qualifications in the hairdressing industry. She was only lucky that her noble-sounding name had got her foot in the door. It turned out that Monsieur’s troubled early life had left him with a weakness for the sort of eccentric folk who bumbled along the best they could in genteel poverty as Mia’s parents always had. Mia would be his meet-and-greet girl, Monsieur had declared, removing at a stroke any possibility of an amateur snipping dead ends from his duchesses.

  Monsieur had seen the lot over the years, and instead of turning his face away from Mia’s injuries, which she dreaded—or gushing over her, which was almost worse—the eccentric proprietor of Monte Carlo’s most glamorous beauty salon had promptly renamed her Arabella, the Terror of the Seas, after the infamous pirate queen, Arabella Drummond, insisting Mia ditch her health scheme patch and adopt the jewelled creation he had specially created for her.

  The novelty of wearing a costume, of which the eyepatch was just a small part, had held immediate appeal. The dressing up box had been Mia’s favourite escape at home—but this was fancy dress taken to new and exotic flights of fancy. She hadn’t known such fabulous outfits existed, or could be made—but then she hadn’t had much experience of theatrical costumiers before. Her dark, spiky hair lent itself to dramatic make-up, Monsieur Michel had insisted—sympathetically leaving out the fact that it also helped to cover her scars. So now she wore a big gold hoop in one ear, tiny leather hot pants and thigh-high leather boots, while an important-looking pad and pen hung in a pouch from the studded leather belt she wore slung low on her hips—not that there was anything written on the pad, but Monsieur Michel said she had to be ready for all eventualities—and if she was at a loose end she could always direct her talents towards the skilful use of a brush and pan.

  Like all his staff, Mia adored her eccentric employer and knew Monsieur Michel’s only purpose was to make everyone feel welcome under his roof. He gave her the sort of nonjudgemental friendship Mia badly needed. The accident that had left her scarred and blind in one eye had led to six months of hell in rehabilitation, and had rocked her self-belief to the foundations. It had taken time to rebuild her life and she hadn’t done so quietly. She could never do that. She always had to walk on red-hot coals just to know she was alive. A winter working as a ranger in the frozen north out of touch of everything happening in the world had been just the start of her recovery. After that, she had come here, to the most glamorous principality on earth, where the language was French and the currency was good looks or money—and as she had neither, she wasn’t exactly off to a good start—but she had reasoned that if she could make it here she could make it anywhere, and Monsieur Michel had helped her to make that happen.

  Mia would be the first to admit that her new look was ‘in your face’. It flaunted the fact that she was injured. There was nothing remotely apologetic about it. So she had a duff eye. So what? This was who she chose to be now. She had never been pretty, but at least now she had something that set her apart. Arabella Drummond? Dead-eyed Tic, more like, Mia concluded wryly as a muscle jumped in her damaged cheek.

  Picking up a copy of that day’s newspaper, she glanced one last time at the front-page photograph of Ram. With perfect irony, he was one of the best-looking men in the world. But there was a definite improvement, she decided, studying the picture intently. Perhaps it was the air of danger surrounding him…Ram wasn’t even in his prime yet but he was clearly having fun getting there. Any sensible woman would run a mile…

  Which was why she would be meeting with him tonight…

  ‘No more mirror-time. You look beautiful, chérie, and clients are waiting.’

  Monsieur’s arrival meant Ram had to go on the back burner for the time being—not his seat of choice, but she had to concentrate on her duties, which wasn’t going to be easy with the Maharaja in town.

  But when Monsieur Michel swung the door wide Mia knew that loyalty to her employer would soon sort that out. In Monsieur Michel’s view of the world lay the root of his success. Monsieur could always see beyond the flawed shell to the person underneath. Beauty was in the eye of the beholder, he never tired of telling his staff. And Monsieur Michel saw beauty in everyone—

  ‘Chop chop!’ he exclaimed, shooing Mia ahead of him.

  Neither of them was under any illusion as to why Mia was so valuable to the salon. They both knew there wasn’t a woman in the place who wouldn’t feel more beautiful when they compared themselves to Monsieur Michel’s flawed pirate queen.

  The trouble with Ram’s rally car was sorted out sooner than expected. He took a shower and changed, and then his thoughts turned to meeting Mia. Why not bring the appointment forward? There had been far too many simpering, low-fat milksops in his life recently. Wasn’t it time to take a walk on the wild side and eat some clotted cream? Mia had never made life easy for him and he was bored with easy.

  Mia and he hadn’t parted on the best of terms. The last time he’d seen Mia had been at Tom’s engagement party when he had already known that his fate was cast in stone. He was to return to Ramprakesh and take part in an arranged marriage. It was how things were done—

  How things used to be done.

  He’d bought Mia a dress in Paris—a goodbye gift totally over the top, he realised now. In hindsight, that gift seemed little more than a crass attempt to soften the words when he told Mia he was leaving to get married and take up his place in a world she could never be a part of. A crass attempt at tell
ing Mia he loved her and would always love her, but he had to give her up without ever really knowing her.

  While they’d packed the dress he’d had a vision of one last dream night together. He’d been young then. He was cynical now and couldn’t believe he hadn’t considered the possibility that their dream night would go wrong from start to finish.

  But that was then and this was now. And he was eaten up by curiosity. There were so many blank spaces to fill in between that night and this.

  Monte Carlo was so much more than a race track, Ram reflected as he walked the short distance to Mia’s place of work. The principality of Monaco was a tiny pink jewel, rich in culture and tradition set to perfection on an aquamarine sea. It was also a place where Mia was beginning to feel at home, he gathered. Five star plus suited her? It had never used to. Mia had always been dismissive of pomp and ceremony and all in favour of keeping it real. So what was she doing on the French Riviera where dreams were made of money? Or tinsel.

  What wasn’t Mia telling him?

  He’d soon find out.

  Perching on the staffroom window sill eating a doughnut during her break, Mia had almost managed to convince herself that with this type of view she could forget Ram—

  Well, that was a laugh. Staring at another flawless blue sky was bliss, but it was overshadowed by a pair of mocking eyes. Was she up to this? She stared unseeing out of the window. Maybe she’d go to the beach later to chill out in readiness for meeting Ram. Ram would never go to a public beach, though the beach was fabulous. You could dream there—you could be anyone you wanted to be. You didn’t have to go onboard one of the zillionaires’ yachts in order to feel special in Monte Carlo. In fact, there were far fewer complications if you decided not to go onboard—

  ‘You have a visitor, Mia.’

  Mia’s heart stopped dead. Monsieur Michel had just entered the staffroom. A visitor? There could only be one visitor. Who else knew she was in Monte Carlo?

  ‘If you want I can send him away?’ Concern clouded Monsieur Michel’s face as he came close enough to see the shock on Mia’s face.

  ‘No—No, that’s fine,’ she said, licking the sugar off her fingers and rallying fast. ‘I’ll see him.’ Springing down from her perch, she rinsed her hands in the sink. She wasn’t going to turn this premature visit into a drama. Better to face Ram now and get it over with. She wasn’t a child to be overawed by him.

  No, Mia mused, catching sight of herself in a full-length mirror as she left the room. She was hardly Miss Sugar ‘n’ Spice these days.

  Chapter Three

  ‘I HAVE made my private sitting room available to you,’ Mia’s kindly old employer told her with obvious concern.

  ‘Thank you, Monsieur.’

  ‘And you only have to tug on the bell-pull if you need me.’

  Monsieur’s concern was genuine and it touched her. ‘Thank you, Monsieur, but I’m happy to see him.’ On this occasion, a small white lie surely wouldn’t hurt.

  Bold resolutions were one thing; acting them out was something else, Mia realised, glancing anxiously around as she crossed the salon full of mirrors. Everyone else was carrying on as normal, which seemed odd until she remembered that their world was still turning at the prescribed speed. But why should she worry about how she looked or what Ram thought of her? This was her life and Ram could accept it or not. But he was in for a shock—and not just because of the unconventional outfit. She’d always been alternative where fashion was concerned, but she hadn’t always been scarred. But she had wanted this. No one had forced her to make contact with Ram. She had wanted the challenge and the chance to prove herself on her own terms.

  And it couldn’t be worse than Tom and Ram’s Leavers’ Ball. The event had been held in aid of charity and was the hottest ticket of the year. She’d been sixteen, so of course she didn’t have a date—she never had a date. She usually managed to frighten boys away with whatever outlandish new look she happened to be sporting.

  On this occasion Ram had teased her into making up a foursome with her brother Tom and his girlfriend, when Ram’s date had gone down last minute with flu. He’d even told her she looked lovely when they both knew that was a lie—she had cut her black hair aggressively short that year and had dyed some of the spikes pillar-box red—but the chance for the ugly duckling to turn up with a hot, eighteen-year-old prince and shock all those pretty girls had proved irresistible. Not that she had improved any on the fashion stakes. She could never compete with the pretty girls and so she didn’t try. Her dress was a hand-me-down some well-meaning aunt had passed on to her mother. ‘It’s vintage,’ she remembered telling Ram defiantly, pretending the ankle-length, sludge-green chiffon with its smattering of sequins was what she wanted to wear. Tall, hard-muscled Ram, acting like the prince he was, had shrugged and offered her his arm. Looking back, Mia guessed it must have been a charity event for him in all senses of the word.

  But she was a very different person now—she could cope with anything Ram threw at her.

  Which was why her heart was going crazy?

  Opening the door onto Monsieur Michel’s private quarters, Mia shut the bustle of the salon out. She needed a moment to clear her head and leaned back on the door. She and Ram hadn’t parted on the best of terms. The last time they met had been at Tom’s engagement party when Ram’s behaviour had confused her. She had been so desperate for him to see her as a woman and had really taken trouble to look nice for once. They were both adults, Ram had told her when she had tried to engage him in conversation, and his life was moving in a different direction. He might have acted coolly, but he’d bought her a goodbye present—and there was even a moment when she’d thought he was going to kiss her, but nothing came of it. Why did he have to humiliate her like that? The dress was a parting gift, she’d realised later—a rich boy’s pay-off for a childhood friend he would no longer have any time for.

  She wasn’t pretty enough or interesting enough to hold Ram’s attention—she could see that now, but back then she’d been young and so very vulnerable. Ram leaving had been like a licence to run wild. The endless and ultimately unsuccessful search to put something in his place transformed her from daring tomboy to adrenaline junkie—treading the thin line between thrill and disaster became her only purpose, until the accident and an enforced stay in a burns unit brought her into contact with people far worse off than she was, by which time she was sick of her empty life and Ram was long gone.

  And now he was back.

  Courage. That was what the doctors had told her she would need after the accident when she had to face the possibility of losing her sight.

  Courage. Did she have it? Did she have enough?

  With Ram Varindha just a few feet away, it was time to find out.

  And still she hesitated outside the panelled door. She had only visited Monsieur Michel’s private sanctum on one previous occasion and that was for her interview. She remembered the room beyond the door being cool and pleasantly shaded. It overlooked a pretty courtyard that had walls coated in lush green vines and vivid purple bougainvillea. The décor inside the room could best be described as shabby chic, but its overriding theme was cosy. A couple of sofas faced each other across a well-worn rug, while gilt-framed mirrors dulled by time hung on expensively papered walls and an ancient grand piano rested silent in the shade.

  Well, she couldn’t stand here all day. Tilting her chin at a defiant angle, she seized the handle and entered the room only to discover that with Ram in the room Monsieur’s cosy sitting room was anything but cosy.

  Closing the door behind her, she remained in the shadows with her back pressed against the wall. How she wished she could turn the clock back—wished she could be someone else altogether—someone perfect and appealing.

  Ram had no such inhibitions and had taken up the position of power in the centre of the room. Her spirit soared and rushed to greet him, and immediately drew back, sensing his aloofness.

  ‘Mia?’

 
There was shock in his voice.

  ‘You approve of my outfit?’ She knew it wasn’t about that. She knew the question in Ram’s voice related to her eyepatch. And the rest. She lifted her chin, dying a little inside when she saw the expression in his eyes.

  Quicksilver fast, Ram switched to his customary urbane manner. ‘You never fail to surprise me, Mia. How long have you been hoisting the Jolly Roger?’

  As they locked gazes, she realised that with perfect irony Ram’s eyes were obscenely beautiful. Even more beautiful than she remembered, just as he was infinitely more compelling. How could she have forgotten how attractive he was—how brazenly masculine?

  ‘I’m surprised to find you working here, Mia.’

  ‘Oh?’ She planted a hand on one hip. She refused to apologise or explain to this stranger, with his beautiful, mocking, all-seeing eyes, why she had chosen Monsieur Michel’s salon as her sanctuary.

  ‘I thought you hated all things flash?’

  ‘Flash? I prefer to think of this as theatre.’ She raised a brow as her old adversary’s gaze swept slowly over her and did some assessing of her own. In jeans and a form-fitting top, with his bronzed feet naked in simple sandals, the aura of erotic possibility Ram threw off was alarming. He was every bit as tall and powerful as she remembered, and every part of him was lithe, toned and ultra-fit, but there was something cold in his eyes, and that was new. It was as if Ram had left the fun years behind—much as she had herself. She felt instinctively that this was not the hard-living playboy the gossip-mongers thought they knew so well, but a man who had experienced most things. It seemed the fantasy sweetheart of her childhood had turned into a tough, uncompromising man—and one who didn’t even pretend not to stare at her injuries.

  ‘I had no idea, Mia—’

  ‘How could you?’ She braced herself to walk deeper into the room…closer to Ram. Let him stare. ‘I asked my family not to broadcast the news. And before you ask, I can do anything anyone else can do and probably twice as fast—providing I don’t blink at the wrong time.’