Passion and the Prince

Language could be every bit as filled with subtle textures that held concealed messages as art.

Her suitcase had been wheeled away. Marco was standing to one side of her, and the doors—her escape route—were directly in front of her. Refusing to look at him, Lily headed determinedly for them.

She almost made it—would have made it, in fact, if at the last minute he hadn’t beaten her to the doors, with Machiavellian timing and a male stride that easily outpaced her high-heeled gait. He barred her escape by the simple expedient of placing his arm across the closed doors.

There was nowhere for her to go—nothing for her to do other than either stand where she was, a safe couple of feet away from him, or walk into him.

Walk into him? In a series of images inside her head she could see the physical contact there had already been between them. She could feel again her own inexplicable reaction to it. The ante-room was empty, the air in it cool, but she could feel perspiration breaking out along her hair-line. Why had this had to happen? Why had he had to come into her life?

Wasn’t there an even more important question she should be asking herself? her inner critic taunted her. Shouldn’t she really be asking why he disturbed her so much? Why his mere presence was enough to cause a scarily powerful undertow of emotions and sensations within her?

He’d touched her first. And, like her, he had recoiled at that first contact as though he had suffered the same shock of sensation and awareness that had electrified her. That should surely have put them on a level battleground. But somehow it had not. Somehow he remained in possession of the higher ground.

It didn’t matter what he had or had not experienced, Lily told herself protectively. What mattered was what had always mattered to her, and that was maintaining her own security—emotionally, mentally and physically.

Marco frowned. What was that scent she was wearing? It was so delicate and alluring that it made him want to move closer to her to catch its true essence. Which no doubt was exactly why she was wearing it so sparingly, he thought cynically, reminding himself that he had far more substantial and important questions he wanted answers to than the name of her scent.

‘Does the trust know about the kind of work you do in your spare time?’

He was threatening her, or at least attempting to threaten her, Lily recognized. Even if he had not put that threat into exact words. Anger and fear burned a caustic path over her emotional nerve-endings. He was wrong about her. He was misjudging her. He probably thought he was far too important for her to risk offending him by standing up to him. She had a right to defend herself, though, and that was exactly what she was going to do—as little as she liked being put in a position where she had to explain herself to him.

‘I wasn’t working—as such. I was simply doing a favour for … for a friend, and standing in for them at the last minute.’ It was the truth, after all.

Marco felt his anger against her grow and burn even more hotly. She was playing with words, using those that suited her and discarding those that did not. Just as she played with the vulnerable young lives of silly young fools like his nephew. ‘So the trust doesn’t know?’

‘There is nothing for them to know. I did a favour for … for someone, and—’

‘A favour? Is that what you call it? I have a very different name for what you were doing.’

How could this woman, this Dr Lillian Wrightington, be the same woman he had caught trying to bribe his nephew into modelling for her?

It seemed impossible … but it wasn’t. Quite plainly Dr Wrightington was a woman who lived two very separate lives. What could possibly motivate a woman highly qualified and presumably able to command a respectable salary to involve herself in such sleaze? The anger and pain he had felt over Olivia’s death surged through him. He could taste it in his mouth, feel it burning his emotions.

They had been childhood friends, expected by their families to marry one day. Theirs would have been a platonic union    , a business arrangement, and Olivia had assured him that she wanted the same thing, too. Only she’d been leading a secret life, duped into chasing fame as a model, and it cut deep to think that the girl he’d thought he knew had been deceiving him all that time.