After a fierce internal debate, she picked up the house phone. A lifetime of etiquette hammered in by the duchess demanded she advise Dev of her intention to grab a bite at a local café. Fiancé or not, furious or not, he deserved the courtesy of a call.
Relief rolled through her in waves when he didn’t answer. She left a quick message, then took the elevator to the lobby. Slipping out one of the hotel’s side exits, she hiked up the collar of her sweater coat. It wasn’t dusk yet, but the temperature was skidding rapidly from cool to cold.
As expected this time of day, the sidewalks and streets were crowded. Parisians returning from work made last-minute stops at grocers and patisseries. Taxis wove their erratic path through cars and bicycles. Sarah barely noticed the throng. Her last meeting with Dev still filled her mind. Their tense confrontation had shaken her almost as much as being snatched off the street and tossed into a delivery van like a sack of potatoes.
He had every right to be angry about the photographer, she conceded. She was furious, too. What had hurt most, though, was Dev’s assumption that Beguile had staged the kidnapping. And that Sarah was part of the deception. How could he love her, yet believe she would participate in a scam like that?
The short answer? He couldn’t.
As much as she wanted to, Sarah couldn’t escape that brutal truth. She’d let Paris seduce her into thinking she and Dev shared something special. Come so close to believing that what they felt for each other would merit a padlock on the Archbishop’s Bridge. Aching all over again for what might have been, she ducked into the first café she encountered.
A waiter with three rings piercing his left earlobe and a white napkin folded over his right forearm met her at the door. His gaze flickered to the ugly bruise on her cheek and away again.
“Good evening, madame.”
“Good evening. A table for one, please.”
Once settled at a table in a back corner, she ordered without glancing at the menu. A glass of red table wine and a croque-monsieur—the classic French version of a grilled ham and cheese topped with béchamel sauce—was all she wanted. All she could handle right now. That became apparent after the first few sips of wine.
Her sandwich arrived in a remarkably short time given this was Paris, where even the humblest café aimed for gastronomic excellence. Accompanied by a small salad and thin, crisp fries, it should have satisfied her hunger. Unfortunately, she never got to enjoy it. She took a few forkfuls of salad and nibbled a fry, but just when she was about to bite into her sandwich she heard her name.
“Lady Sarah, granddaughter to Charlotte St. Sebastian, grand duchess of the tiny duchy once known as Karlenburgh.”
Startled, she glanced up at the flat screen TV above the café’s bar. While Sarah sat frozen with the sandwich halfway to her mouth, one of a team of two newscasters gestured to an image that came up on the display beside her. It was a photo of her and Gina and Grandmama, one of the rare publicity shots the duchess had allowed. It’d been taken at a charity event a number of years ago, before the duchess had sold her famous pearls. The perfectly matched strands circled her neck multiple times before draping almost to her waist.
“The victim of an apparent kidnapping attempt,” the announcer intoned, “Lady Sarah escaped injury this afternoon during a dramatic rescue by her fiancé, American industrialist Devon Hunter.”
Dread churned in the pit of Sarah’s stomach as the still image gave way to what looked like an amateur video captured on someone’s phone camera. It showed traffic swerving wildly as Dev charged across two lanes and planted himself in front of oncoming traffic.
Good God! The white van! It wasn’t going to stop!
Her heart shot into her throat. Unable to breathe, she saw Dev dodge aside at the last moment, then leap for the van door. When he smashed the driver’s face into the wheel, Sarah gasped. Blobs of béchamel sauce oozed from the sandwich hanging from her fork and plopped unnoticed onto her plate. She’d been in the back of the van. She hadn’t known how Dev had stopped it, only that he had.
Stunned by his reckless courage, she watched as the street scene gave way to another video. This one was shot on the steps of the Palais de Justice. Henri Lefèvre was being led down the steps to a waiting police transport. Uniformed officers gripped his arms. Steel cuffs shackled his wrists. A crowd of reporters waited at the bottom of the steps, shouting questions that Lefèvre refused to answer.
When the news shifted to another story, Sarah lowered her now-mangled sandwich. Her mind whirled as she tried to sort through her chaotic thoughts. One arrowed through all the others. She knew she had to call her grandmother. Now. Before the story got picked up by the news at home, if it hadn’t already. Furious with herself for not thinking of that possibility sooner, she hit speed dial.
To her infinite relief, the duchess had heard nothing about the incident. Sarah tried to downplay it by making the kidnappers sound like bungling amateurs. Charlotte was neither amused nor fooled.
“Were you the target,” she asked sharply, “or Devon?”
“Devon, of course. Or rather his billions.”
“Are you sure? There may still be some fanatics left in the old country. Not many after all this time, I would guess. But your grandfather… Those murderous death squads…” Her voice fluttered. “They hated everything our family stood for.”
“These men wanted money,” Sarah said gently, “and Dev made them extremely sorry they went after it the way they did. One of them is going to need a whole new face.”
“Good!”
The duchess had regained her bite, and her granddaughter breathed a sigh of relief. Too soon, it turned out.
“Bring Devon home with you, Sarah. I want to thank him personally. And tell him I see no need for a long engagement,” Charlotte added briskly. “Too many brides today spend months, even years, planning their weddings. I thank God neither of my granddaughters are prone to such dithering.”
“Grandmama…”
“Gina tends to leap before she looks. You, my darling, are more cautious. More deliberate. But when you choose, you choose wisely. In this instance, I believe you made an excellent choice.”
Sarah couldn’t confess that she hadn’t precisely chosen Dev. Nor was she up to explaining that their relationship was based on a lie. All she could do was try to rein in the duchess.
“I’m not to the point of even thinking about wedding plans, Grandmama. I just got engaged.”
And unengaged, although Dev appeared to have a different take on the matter.
“You don’t have to concern yourself with the details, dearest. I’ll call the Plaza and have Andrew take care of everything.”
“Good grief!” Momentarily distracted, Sarah gasped. “Is Andrew still at the Plaza?”
Her exclamation earned an icy retort. “The younger generation may choose to consign seniors to the dustbin,” the duchess returned frigidly. “Some of us are not quite ready to be swept out with the garbage.”
Uh-oh. Before Sarah could apologize for the unintended slight, Charlotte abandoned her lofty perch and got down to business.
“How about the first weekend in May? That’s such a lovely month for a wedding.”
“Grandmama! It’s mid-April now!”
“Didn’t you hear me a moment ago? Long engagements are a bore.”
“But…but…” Scrambling, Sarah grabbed at the most likely out. “I’m sure the Plaza is booked every weekend in May for the next three years.”
Her grandmother heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Sarah, dearest, did I never tell you about the reception I hosted for the Sultan of Oman?”
“I don’t think so.”
“It was in July…no, August of 1962. Quite magnificent, if I do say so myself. President Kennedy and his wife attended, of course, as did the Rockefellers. Andrew was a very new, very junior waiter at the time. But the letter I sent to his supervisor commending his handling of an embarrassingly inebriated presidential aide helped catapult him to hi
s present exalted position.”
How could Sarah possibly respond to that? Swept along on a relentless tidal wave, she gripped the phone as the duchess issued final instructions. “Talk to Devon, dearest. Make sure the first weekend in May is satisfactory for him. And tell him I’ll take care of everything.”
Feeling almost as dazed as she had when Elise Girault’s smarmy ex-lover manhandled her into that white van, Sarah said goodbye. Her meal forgotten, she sat with her phone in hand for long moments. The call to her grandmother had left her more confused, more torn.
Dev had risked his life for her. And that was after he’d confronted the photographer from Beguile. As angry as he’d been about her magazine stalking him, he’d still raced to her rescue. Then, of course, he’d accused her of being party to the ruse. As much as she wanted to, Sarah couldn’t quite get past the disgust she’d seen in his face at that moment.
Yet he’d also shown her moments of incredible tenderness in their short time together. Moments of thoughtfulness and laughter and incredible passion. She couldn’t get past those, either.
Or the fact that she’d responded to him so eagerly. So damned joyously. However they’d met, whatever odd circumstances had thrown them together, Dev Hunter stirred—and satisfied—a deep, almost primal feminine hunger she’d never experienced before.
The problem, Sarah mused as she paid her check and walked out into the deepening dusk, was that everything had happened so quickly. Dev’s surprise appearance at her office. His bold-faced offer of a deal. Their fake engagement. This trip to Paris. She’d been caught up in the whirlwind since the day Dev had showed up at her office and tilted her world off its axis. The speed of it, the intensity of it, had magnified emotions and minimized any chance to catch her breath.
What they needed, she decided as she keyed the door to her room, was time and some distance from each other. A cooling-off period, after which they could start over. Assuming Dev wanted to start over, of course. Bracing herself for what she suspected would be an uncomfortable discussion, she picked up the house phone and called his room.
He answered on the second ring. “Hunter.”
“It’s Sarah.”
“I got your message. Did you have a good dinner?”
She couldn’t miss the steel under the too-polite query. He wasn’t happy that she’d gone to eat without him.
“I did, thank you. Can you come down to my room? Or I’ll come to yours, if that’s more convenient.”
“More convenient for what?”
All right. She understood he was still angry. As Grandmama would say, however, that was no excuse for boorishness.
“We need to finish the conversation we started earlier,” she said coolly.
He answered with a brief silence, followed by a terse agreement. “I’ll come to your room.”
*
Dev thought he’d done a damned good job of conquering his fury over that business with the photographer. Yes, he’d let it get the better of him when he’d accused Sarah’s magazine of staging her own abduction. And yes, he’d come on a little strong earlier this evening when she’d questioned whether he’d hold to his end of their agreement.
He’d had plenty of time to regret both lapses. She’d seen to that by slipping out of the hotel without him. The brief message she’d left while he was in the shower had pissed him off all over again.
Now she’d issued a summons in that aristocratic lady-of-the-manor tone. She’d better not try to shove the emerald at him again. Or deliver any more crap about their “arrangement” being over. They were long past the arrangement stage, and she knew it. She was just too stubborn to admit it.
She’d just have to accept that he wasn’t perfect. He’d screwed up this afternoon by throwing that accusation at her. He’d apologize again. Crawl if he had to. Whatever it took, he intended to make it clear she wasn’t rid of him. Not by a long shot.
That was the plan, anyway, right up until she opened the door. The mottled purple on her cheek tore the heart and the heat right out of him. Curling a knuckle, he brushed it gently across the skin below the bruise.
“Does this hurt as bad as it looks?”
“Not even close.”
She didn’t shy away from his touch. Dev took that as a hopeful sign. That, and the fact that some of the stiffness went out of her spine as she led him into the sitting area.
Nor did it escape his attention that she’d cut off the view that had so enchanted her before. The heavy, room-darkening drapes were drawn tight, blocking anyone from seeing out…or in.
“Would you like a drink?” she asked politely, gesturing to the well-stocked minibar.
“No, thanks, I’m good.”
As he spoke, an image on the TV snagged his glance. The sound was muted but he didn’t need it to recognize the amateur video playing across the screen. He’d already seen it several times.
Sarah noticed what had caught his attention and picked up the remote. “Have you seen the news coverage?”
“Yeah.”
Clicking off the TV, she sank into an easy chair and raised a stockinged foot. Her arms locked around her bent knee and her green eyes regarded him steadily.
“I took your advice and thought more about our…our situation.”
“That’s one way to describe it,” he acknowledged. “You come to any different conclusions about how we should handle it?”
“As a matter of fact, I did.”
Dev waited, wanting to hear her thoughts.
“I feel as though I jumped on a speeding train. Everything happened so fast. You, me, Paris. Now Grandmama is insisting on…” She broke off, a flush rising, and took a moment to recover. “I was afraid the news services might pick up the kidnapping story, so I called her and tried to shrug off the incident as the work of bumbling amateurs.”
“Did she buy that?”
“No.”
“Smart woman, your grandmother.”
“You might not agree when I tell you she segued immediately from that to insisting on a May wedding.”
Well, what do you know? Dev was pretty sure he’d passed inspection with the duchess. Good to have it confirmed, especially since he apparently had a number of hurdles to overcome before he regained her granddaughter’s trust.
“I repeat, your grandmother’s a smart woman.”
“She is, but then she doesn’t know the facts behind our manufactured engagement.”
“Do you think she needs to?”
“What I think,” Sarah said slowly, “is that we need to put the brakes on this runaway train.”
Putting the brakes on was a long step from her earlier insistence they call things off. Maybe he didn’t face as many hurdles as he’d thought.
His tension easing by imperceptible degrees, Dev cocked his head. “How do you propose we do that?”
“We step back. Take some time to assess this attraction we both seem to…”
“Attraction?” He shook his head. “Sorry, sweetheart, I can’t let you get away with that one. You and I both know we’ve left attraction in the dust.”
“You’re right.”
She rested her chin on her knee, obviously searching for the right word. Impatience bit at him, but he reined it in. If he hadn’t learned anything else today, he’d discovered Sarah could only be pushed so far.
“I won’t lie,” she said slowly. “What I feel for you is so different from anything I’ve ever experienced before. I think it’s love. No, I’m pretty sure it’s love.”
That was all he needed to hear. He started toward her, but she stopped him with a quick palms-up gesture.
“What I’m not sure of, Dev, is whether love’s enough to overcome the fact that we barely know each other.”
“I know all I need to know about you.”
“Oh. Right.” She made a wry face. “I forgot about the background investigation.”
He wouldn’t apologize. He’d been up front with her about that. But he did attempt to put it in pers
pective.
“The investigation provided the externals, Sarah. The time we’ve spent together, as brief as it’s been, provided the essentials.”
“Really?” She lifted a brow. “What’s my favorite color? Am I a dog or a cat person? What kind of music do I like?”
“You consider those essentials?” he asked, genuinely curious.
“They’re some of the bits and pieces that constitute the whole. Don’t you think we should see how those pieces fit together before getting in any deeper?”
“I don’t, but you obviously do.”
If this was a business decision, he would ruthlessly override what he privately considered trivial objections. He’d made up his mind. He knew what he wanted.
Sarah did, too, apparently. With a flash of extremely belated insight, Dev realized she wanted to be courted. More to the point, she deserved to be courted.
Lady Sarah St. Sebastian might work at a magazine that promoted flashy and modern and ultrachic, but she held to old-fashioned values that he’d come to appreciate as much as her innate elegance and surprising sensuality. Her fierce loyalty to her sister, for instance. Her bone-deep love for the duchess. Her refusal to accept anything from him except her grandmother’s emerald ring, and then only on a temporary basis.
He could do old-fashioned. He could do slow and courtly. Maybe. Admittedly, he didn’t have a whole lot of experience in either. Moving out and taking charge came as natural to him as breathing. But if throttling back on his more aggressive instincts was what she wanted, that was what she’d get.
“Okay, we’ll do it your way.”
*
He started toward her again. Surprised and more than a little wary of his relatively easy capitulation, Sarah let her raised foot slip to the floor and pushed out of her chair.
He stopped less than a yard away. Close enough to kiss, which she had to admit she wouldn’t have minded all that much at this point. He settled for a touch instead. He kept it light, just a brush of his fingertips along the underside of her chin.
A Business Engagement Page 13