I want one hour with you."
Prince Durante D'Agostino froze at the foyer's threshold.
That voice. Coming out of nowhere. So low he shouldn't
have heard it over the live jazz music blaring its
infectious energy from the ballroom where the charity
function was in full swing.
He heard nothing but its softness. As if faders had been
hit, boosting it, dousing every other sound. More. As if
it had been generated inside his head, a caress of a
thought, making all else recede from his awareness. An
awareness that bristled with responses so tactile that
every hair on his body rose as if he were caught in a
field of static electricity.
He frowned. What was all this, over hearing a woman's
voice? Over yet another blatant invitation?
A scowl seized his face as he swung around to the
offending entity. And everything receded farther.
Disappeared. He felt as if his blood stopped in his
arteries even as everything else hurtled through him.
Heat, sensations. Urges.
Eyes. From the shadows behind the foyer's door, they
transfixed him. Pieces of heaven. Staring up at him from a
face that was what the offspring of an angel and a siren
must look like.
Then the impossible creature spoke again. "One hour. I'll
pay one hundred grand for it."
His eyes dragged away from the clear skies of hers to the
lips spilling that offer. Dimpled, dewy and flushed as if
she'd been sucking on bloodred cherries. They were still
again, slightly parted. But he could see them as they'd
wrapped around each syllable of her spell, could imagine
them nibbling and suckling their way down his body…
He shifted, stunned to feel himself hardening, zero to one
hundred in two seconds.
Aroused? Here? From just a look and a few words?
He expanded his chest in an effort to draw in more oxygen,
to drive blood to his head instead of his loins. He
managed only to suck in her scent—clean, with a tinge of
jasmine and a deluge of pheromones. Every cell in his body
twitched, revved.
Then she stepped out of the shadows and he forgot any
intentions or delusions of subduing his body.
This might not be happening anyway. He might still be in
the back of his limo, dreaming this apparition as he dozed
off on the way to the charity event he was sponsoring.
Thirty-six sleepless hours must have taken their toll on
his nervous system. It would explain her, the epitome of
his every far-fetched fantasy. From hair the shade of fire
he'd once seen in a painting and wondered if it truly
existed in nature, a waterfall of silk his fingers itched
to twist through, to a complexion of such clear olive that
it offset the vividness of her hair and the lightness of
her eyes, to features sculpted and aligned in such an
unusual way that they screamed character and whispered
sensuality, to curves and swells in the abundance and the
distribution to answer his every specification.
But she was no figment of his overworked mind. She was
real.
What was unreal was her effect on him. Women had been
throwing themselves at him since he'd turned seventeen,
and even then he hadn' t operated on hormones. Then had
come this woman.
She'd aroused everything in him just by breathing those
words, by being near. Now, by just looking at him, she had
his imagination flooding with images and sounds and
sensations and scents, of drenched silk sheets and hot
velvet limbs, of cries rising in the dark along with the
aromas of arousal and satisfaction.
Was this it? The overtures of the breakdown Eduardo and
Jade claimed he was teetering on? Was this surreal
reaction the first crack before a chasm tore his psyche
wide open? Not that he cared. If this was a breakdown,
maybe it was exactly what he needed.
"I have a check right here." She fumbled inside her
evening purse. "Make it out to the charity or cause of
your choice."
He watched her supple hands, with those neat, short,
unadorned fingernails, found himself imagining grabbing
them, sucking each finger until she was begging for his
lips and teeth and tongue elsewhere… everywhere.
He took a step toward her, maybe not to translate fantasy
into action, but to feel her—any part of her—against him,
to confirm that she—and what she evoked in him—was real.
She stumbled back. He surged forward to stop her, only to
become trapped in the swarm of people who'd materialized
between them.
Maledizione. He hadn't even heard them approach. Now there
was nothing but the cacophony of their intrusion, the
encroachment of their self-interest.
"Prince Durante! You're finally here!"
"Prince Durante, this way."
"You must come this way first, Prince Durante."
"I have someone who's dying to meet you."
"Me, too, and you'll definitely want to meet him first."
He was suddenly sorry that he'd left his bodyguards
outside.
He fought the urge to signal them to disperse the throng
who'd so rudely fractured the pristine intensity that had
cocooned him with her. But they might rush to deal with
the situation with inappropriate force. They'd been jumpy
ever since Jeremiah Langley had stabbed him a month ago.
Apart from bellowing for everyone to get the hell away
from him, he had no recourse but to let them sweep him
along, watch her recede as she remained standing where
she'd first intercepted him in that evening gown that
could have been spun from the hues and radiance of her
eyes. The last thing he saw of her before the ballroom
doors closed was her arm falling to her side, the check
held limply in her hand.
He buzzed his head bodyguard, muttered an order to keep
track of her if she left. He couldn't risk losing her.
Only then did he start playing the evening's sponsor,
burning to wrap everything up so he could do what he
really wanted to do. The first thing in years that he
couldn't wait to do. Seek her out, give her whatever she
wanted and experience that eagerness and exhilaration
she'd inspired in him, something he hadn't felt in… ever.
Gabrielle Williamson's eyes clung to one thing among the
ebbing wave of people. The man they'd swept along, the one
who towered above them all.
So that was Prince Durante D'Agostino.
She'd thought she knew what he looked like from endless
photos in newspapers and magazines, including her own
publications. She'd known nothing. Every photo had
downgraded him to the man who deserved every letter of his
reputation as the world's most notorious, eligible and
panted-after royalty.
In reality he was a… a god.
And she'd approached him—okay, ambushed him more like—with
her pathetic offer. A hundred grand felt ridiculous now.
But what would an hour with a god rate?
The ballroom door closed, severing the mesmerism of those
azure twin stars he had for eyes.
A tremor hit her. A second hit harder. Then a deluge broke
out, until she was shaking like a rag in a storm.
What was wrong with her? She was the one who was supposed
to surprise him into agreeing to give her that hour. To
make a solid pitch before he asked questions. Especially
about who she was. She'd wanted to eliminate—or at least
postpone— the prejudice her name had already elicited from
him. She'd wanted a fair hearing.
But seeing him in the flesh, even from the back, had
almost blanked her mind. Then he'd turned, and everything
had vanished.
She'd forgotten where she was, what she was supposed to
say, could only stare at him. She'd moved only when the
tractor beam of his will had forced her forward for his
inspection. And boy, had he inspected. She'd felt…
inspected down to her cellular level.
Then, those people had charged him, saved her from doing
that rag-in-the-storm impression in his presence. They'd
also taken him away before he'd said yes. And he'd been
about to. Or she could have been imagining that, along
with his surreal impact on her.
Imagining shimagining. She was a thirty-year-old divorcée
who hadn't had fantasies even as a young girl. Being the
only child of parents whose marriage had sunk daily into
the dark realities of bankruptcy and depression hadn't
been conducive to flights of fancy.
That was part of the convoluted journey that had brought
her here today, on a mission to save her own company from
bankruptcy, while repaying the man who'd supported her
family during those desperate years. King Benedetto of
Castaldini— Prince Durante's father.
After her father went bankrupt, the king, a friend and
former business associate, had convinced him to move his
family closer, to Sardinia, so that the king could be of
more help. And he had more than helped, had continued to
do so after her father's death six years later. He'd
supported her and her mother and financed her education
until she'd graduated from journalism school.
She'd since insisted on repaying her family's debts with
interest. But while she'd needed to settle the financial
debt, she'd always cling to the emotional one.
It had been because of that bond, along with what had been
solid financial advice at the time, that she'd invested
heavily in stocks and assets in Castaldini. It was partly
why Le Roi Enterprises, her publishing company, was in
trouble now. The kingdom had been hit by a steep recession
after the king's stroke six months ago.
His condition had been hushed up until his recovery hadn'
t conformed to his doctors' optimism. His grim prognosis
had leaked out, and Castaldini's stock market had crashed
like a meteor.
He'd called her a couple of weeks ago, requesting a video
meeting. He'd said he had a solution to all her problems.
She remembered that call…
She'd waited for the meeting to start, contemplating how
to turn down his offer of more help. It was one thing to
settle her father's debts and see to their household
upkeep, but another to float a company with multinational
subsidiaries. She didn't think he could afford anything of
this magnitude now. And she couldn't be so deeply indebted
again, even to him. She'd been so driven to repay her
family's debt that she'd done something as crazy as marry
Ed. But… could she afford to turn down help, when hundreds
of people depended on her for their jobs?
Then a stranger came onto the screen. It was seve...