by Various
There was a jolt. Emily’s eyes flew open.
Luis’s face swam in front of her, and for a moment the warmth washed through her again as she looked into the golden pools of his eyes. It was his hands on her shoulders, holding her, his thumbs gently massaging her collarbones.
She sat up. The plane had landed, she realised groggily. That explained the sensation of falling, although not why her stomach still had that feeling you get in a lift, speeding upwards.
‘We’re here,’ Luis said tonelessly, letting her go.
Emily blinked, trying to drag her unwilling brain back to consciousness. How typical that after two nights in the hotel where sleep had proved irritatingly elusive, it had claimed her now with such undignified thoroughness. God, she’d probably snored. Or had her mouth ridiculously open for the past two hours.
‘This is Santosa?’ she muttered, bowing her head as she fumbled with her seat belt.
‘Yes. There’s a car waiting to take us to the palace.’ Luis had got to his feet and he towered over her so that she felt dizzy just looking up at him. Instead she focused on his hand, hanging loosely at his side, which was right in line with her gaze. His skin was smooth and tanned to the colour of golden syrup and his fingers were long, but broad and unmistakably strong.
She shivered, the dream still vivid in her head, her body still tingling with sensations that were half remembered, half imagined.
Hastily she got to her feet as he stood back to let her go ahead of him into the aisle. At the door of the plane the damp heat hit her. It was like walking into the steam room in the pool complex at Balfour, and that combined with standing up so quickly after being deeply asleep made the blood rush from her head. She faltered on the stupid high heels she’d hoped would make her seem more grown-up, gripping the hand rail for support. And then Luis’s arm snaked round her waist.
‘All right?’
She nodded, not letting herself lean against him. ‘Stood up too quickly,’ she gasped. ‘And the heat…’
They reached the bottom of the steps, but he didn’t loosen his grip on her waist. Instead she felt his other hand move to the front of her jacket, his fingers working deftly at the buttons.
‘What are you doing?’ Looking up at him she made to pull away but he held her tighter, pulling her into his body as he freed the last button and threw open her jacket.
‘Cooling you down,’ he said gruffly. ‘You’re way too hot.’
If the heat of the day had felt intense before, it was nothing compared to the molten lava of desire that erupted inside her, flowing through her veins so her whole body glowed with it. Oh, God, this was what she’d feared. This was the reason why she’d turned down this job, because she knew she didn’t have the sophistication or the defences to withstand his careless, arrogant flirting.
But he didn’t look arrogant now. His face bore none of that sardonic mockery she’d seen so often, and there was a stillness about him that made her stomach turn over. For a heartbeat neither of them moved. His eyes were hidden behind aviator sunglasses which disconcertingly mirrored Emily’s own face back at her, but she was barely aware of that because all she could focus on with any clarity was his mouth. The way his top lip rested on the fuller bottom one—the sharp indentation at its centre, and the slight sheen of sweat on his skin.
The sticky heat ebbed around them, giving the day a strange, slow-motion feel, like swimming through honey. Still drugged with sleep, Emily found herself remembering how it felt to be kissed by that mouth, unconsciously parting her lips and letting her tongue move over them as a breathy sigh escaped her…
He froze, and in the split second before his mouth came down on hers she glimpsed an expression on his face that was almost like pain. And then she was melting into him and he was kissing her with an urgency that was utterly at odds with his habitual insouciance. His arm was still around her waist, holding her up, and he slipped his other hand beneath her jacket, moving up over her ribs. Forked lightning zigzagged through her, nearly splitting her in two, as he brushed her breast, bare beneath the thin silk of her rose-pink camisole.
A tremor went through him, and for a moment the kiss went from urgent to almost savage. It was as if he was acting against his will, but was powerless to do anything to stop. And then he was pulling himself away, straightening up, setting her back on her feet again without his arms to hold her up.
Behind him, Tomás was coming down the steps of the plane, his expression thunderous.
‘Your Highness, the car is waiting.’
In the car it was cool again. Emily felt the air conditioning turn the sweat in the small of her back to ice water and bring some sense back into her feverish brain. They began to glide smoothly forward across the tarmac and she watched the plane that had brought them from London and familiarity getting smaller as they left it behind.
She didn’t dare look at Luis, slumped at the opposite side of the seat. Everything that she had been afraid of was happening already and she’d only got off the plane a few minutes ago, she thought despairingly. Her hands tightened around the guidebook she still held and she looked out of the window. They were driving along a road flanked by palm trees and a few low houses in shades straight from a child’s paintbox. Even the flowers in the window boxes were unfamiliar—exotic splashes of scarlet and magenta and egg-yolk yellow that she didn’t recognise as being like anything from home.
But that wasn’t surprising. Nothing here was like home. Even she was different.
‘I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.’
Startled, she looked round. Luis was watching her, his eyes hooded and his face grim.
The apology took her completely by surprise. She had expected the same cold lack of remorse as he’d shown in the hotel and had been ready with the convenient indignation, but the bleakness in his tone made it all dissolve into ashes.
‘No, please…it was my fault too. I—’ She broke off just in time, biting back the words that were in danger of tumbling out of her mouth. I wanted it. ‘I was still half asleep,’ she finished weakly.
He sighed. ‘Even so. It was…wrong.’
Was it? A cold, heavy sense of disappointment, of desolation, settled in the pit of her stomach and she turned to stare unseeingly out into the green, unfamiliar landscape. How could it be wrong when it felt so right? Impulsively she opened her mouth to say this, but one glance at his face made the words dry up and lodge in her throat.
In profile he looked as if he’d been carved from stone. Cold, hard, utterly emotionless—a tombstone effigy of the man who had kissed her with such violent passion only a few minutes ago.
But maybe he wasn’t kissing her, she thought as icicles dripped down her spine. She’d just been there.
The silence fell over them like a suffocating blanket. Gradually she became aware that she was gripping the guidebook on her knee so hard that her fingers had gone numb. She flexed them painfully back into life, and opened the book, desperate for some escape from the humiliating realization that Luis had kissed her because she was convenient, because she was a female pair of lips and he was bored and frustrated and because that was what he did. The history of Santosa was as good a diversion as any.
Portuguese explorers discovered Santosa by mistake when they were attempting to return home from their voyage around the new world. The ships, weighed down with cargoes of brazilwood, floundered on the rocky cliffs on the south-west point of the island and many sailors were lost. However, one of the survivors was Henrique Cordoba, Duke of Santosa—a flamboyant nobleman, notorious rake and favourite of the king, who had been sent on the voyage to escape gambling debts and a series of scandals involving the wives of other high-profile members of the court.
It must be a family trait. She turned the page, and felt the breath catch in her throat as she found herself looking straight into familiar, laughing golden eyes.
The Santosan royal family today, said the caption underneath. King Marcos Fernando and his sons, the Crown Pr
ince Henrique and Prince Luis.
The photograph had been taken some years ago, she realised with a lurch of her heart. Luis’s face was younger, more open, with none of the hardness and cynicism that were etched into it today. His smile was wide and untainted by irony, and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with his brother he looked heart-stoppingly handsome.
Her gaze shifted to Rico. His colouring was darker than Luis’s, his hair shorter. He looked quieter and, compared with Luis’s dazzling charisma, almost severe.
‘What are you reading?’
‘Nothing.’ She tried to shut the book, but he was too quick for her. Taking it from her he glanced at the cover, and then turned back to the page she’d been reading. His expression hardened as he saw the photograph, but she watched his lip curl as he read out a passage from beneath it. ‘The present monarch, King Marcos Fernando, enjoys a level of popularity amongst his people that is almost unique. His eldest son, Henrique, known as Rico, has been groomed all his life to one day take his father’s place on the throne, and is held in high regard and great affection by the Santosan people. Oh, dear,’ he said scathingly. ‘Not the most up to date edition, is it?’
‘It was a present from Kiki.’
‘Very thoughtful. Clearly she didn’t think I’d be much of a tour guide, but I’ll do my best. Look—here we are approaching the gates to the palace, home of what used to be one of the most popular royal families in the world.’
His tone was mocking but Emily felt her insides freeze as she saw the chips of ice in his eyes. Mutely she turned her head away, gazing out of the window at the imposing stone gateway that loomed up ahead of them.
The car slowed and the sun was blotted out as they passed beneath it. Guards stood aside, their faces blank beneath their helmets, guns braced across their chests. Glancing upwards Emily saw the savage teeth of a portcullis rearing above them.
‘It’s like a prison,’ she joked weakly.
Luis didn’t smile. ‘Welcome to the royal household.’
Chapter Seven
JOSEFINA placed the newspaper down on the table and gave a brittle laugh. ‘It wasn’t quite the image we were hoping for.’
‘Nice picture of Tomás,’ Luis said blandly, glancing at the huge front-page photograph of him kissing Emily Balfour at the foot of the plane steps beneath Tomás’s grim gaze. ‘Very statesman-like.’
‘Which, with respect Your Highness, is more than can be said for you.’ Tomás looked pained. ‘We talked about this. We’re trying to present you to the people of Santosa in a new light, as responsible and—’
‘Caring. I know. And there I am, being caring. Miss Balfour was far too hot and I was helping her to cool down.’
Tomás’s eyebrows shot up. ‘By undressing her on the tarmac?’
‘By taking off that awful jacket, yes. I’d say that was very caring of me,’ Luis said in a bored voice, turning the paper over and ostentatiously flicking through the back pages to the football scores. Despite his outward display of nonchalance a pulse was beating in his temple and he could feel knots of tension tightening in his shoulders.
‘But, sir,’ Tomás persisted, ‘I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t—’
Luis laid down the newspaper with exaggerated care. His patience hung by a thread. ‘It wasn’t planned, Tomás,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘It was just…’
What? a small voice in his head taunted. Unavoidable? Irresistible? Inevitable? Because that was how it had felt at the time. And if his own guilt and the ghosts of Rico and Christiana hadn’t been able to stop him, then Tomás and Josefina and the dictatorial demands of the bloody press office had no chance.
‘Sir.’ Josefina’s deliberately placating voice broke into his thoughts, dragging him back to the present. Across the table she clasped her hands together, her long, shiny, scarlet nails reminding him of the bloodstained talons of some bird of prey. ‘Sir, I hate to discuss your private life like this, but—’
‘Really?’ Luis arched an eyebrow. ‘I thought you loved discussing my private life. You’ve made a career out of it, in fact. You and many of the world’s gossip columnists, tabloid journalists, newspaper editors and the entire Santosan government.’
Her painted mouth shaped itself into an apologetic smile. ‘Well, sir, you must understand that it’s now a political matter rather than simply a personal one. Unless we can persuade the people of Santosa that you’ve left the mistresses and fast cars and wild parties behind you, the Royal House of Cordoba’s five hundred years of rule could be in serious jeopardy. The people want a king they can look up to, Your Highness. Someone…regal.’
‘Maybe we should advertise for the position.’ Luis idly coloured in the bikini pants of the winner of this year’s Miss Santosa contest, who was staring mistily out from page three in her tiara and a sash.
Josefina stood, pacing along the length of the polished table and giving him a great view of her lush curves, encased today in a tight emerald-green dress. ‘Sir, it’s not a job. It’s your heritage. Your birthright. Your destiny.’
Luis opened his mouth to argue, but shut it again, throwing down his pen and leaning back in his chair with a resigned sigh. What was the point? It didn’t matter what Josefina called it, or how she and the palace press team packaged it; it couldn’t alter the truth.
It had been Rico’s birthright. Rico’s destiny. It was Luis’s punishment. His prison term.
He rubbed a weary hand over his face and looked up at Josefina with a chilly smile. ‘Of course. Thank you for reminding me. So what do I need to do?’
‘“The time has come for you to be married,” the queen told the handsome young prince. “Tomorrow night, all the eligible young ladies from every high-born family in the kingdom will gather here for a ball, and you must choose your wife from amongst them.”’
Emily paused, holding out the book so that the little girl could see the picture. Luciana was sitting at the opposite end of the window seat, her dark eyes fixed warily on Emily’s face, but now she looked down at the book and edged a tiny bit closer. Encouraged, Emily pointed to the picture and said softly, ‘There’s the prince, in his smart clothes for the party. Isn’t he handsome?’
Solemnly Luciana nodded. ‘Like Uncle Luis,’ she said in a voice so quiet Emily had to lean right down to hear it. ‘Uncle Luis is the Prince of Santosa. He’s handsome.’
Straightening up abruptly, Emily cleared her throat. ‘Yes, yes, he is, isn’t he?’ she said brightly, picking up the book again and resisting the urge to hold it right up in front of her face so Luciana wouldn’t see her discomfort. ‘Anyway, let’s get back to Swan Lake. Where were we…? Oh, yes. Prince Siegfried was angry and frustrated. He didn’t like the idea of marrying a girl of his mother’s choosing, no matter how elegant her manners or how noble her birth. He wanted to marry for love. The queen looked sad. “You are a prince, my son, and a prince has many luxuries, but choice is not one of them. And neither, I’m afraid, is love. You must—”’
‘Stop whining and just enjoy the fast cars and the champagne,’ interrupted a familiar ironic voice from the doorway.
The book jerked violently in Emily’s hands and her throat closed instantly, stopping her midsentence. At least a dozen acerbic responses to his comment jumped into her head, but all of them died on her lips as she looked up and saw him coming towards them, his hands in his pockets.
‘Hello, Luciana, how are you? I haven’t seen you for ages.’
And Emily hadn’t seen him since yesterday, which had been enough time for her to play down his gor-geousness in her mind and have a good go at fooling herself that kissing him had been no big deal. Seeing him now, shockingly attractive in a soft, pale blue collarless shirt and faded jeans, was seriously unsettling.
Luciana quailed a little, as if she’d like to hide behind Emily, but dutifully she slid down from the window seat and bobbed a small, shy curtsy before shrinking back again. A bolt of shock and anger shot through Emily, but Luis’s bland smile didn
’t falter.
‘Please, carry on with the story,’ he said tonelessly. ‘I’d quite like to know what happens.’
Emily kept her attention focused on Luciana. Someone had to, she thought stiffly. She’d barely met her, but it was obvious that the child was seriously troubled. No wonder. From what she’d seen so far it appeared that the royal method of dealing with an orphaned child’s grief seemed to be to hide it behind etiquette and protocol.
‘It’s fine,’ she said briskly. ‘We can finish it later. I’m sure you’d like to talk to your niece, as you haven’t seen her for a while.’
Just for a second she saw alarm flare in his eyes and felt a perverse sense of satisfaction. He could overlook her, and treat her as if she was insignificant, but she wasn’t going to let him do the same to Luciana.
‘What book is it?’ he asked politely, looking down at her.
‘Stories from famous ballets,’ Luciana whispered, twisting her fingers together. ‘Emily gave it to me.’
‘Well, it was from Uncle Luis, really,’ Emily said quickly. ‘And all the other things.’
‘Thank you, Uncle Luis.’
‘You’re welcome,’ Luis said, raising an eyebrow at Emily. ‘Other things?’
She lifted her chin and met his eye. ‘Ballet clothes. Leotards and tights and shoes.’
‘Proper ones, not just for dressing up,’ Luciana added, pride momentarily overcoming her shyness. ‘Ones that real dancers wear, like Emily.’