Читать книгу A Ring To Secure His Crown - Ким Лоренс, Kim Lawrence - Страница 9
ОглавлениеSEBASTIAN SET HIS shoulder to the stiff door that opened out onto a small Juliet balcony. It gave suddenly, filling the warm room with a welcome breeze. The view was as dramatic as the plumbing was idiosyncratic. His shower had run cold and then it had almost scalded him. Oh, well, maybe it was time he learnt how the other half lived, even if that half could claim a heritage as illustrious as his own, such as it was.
For a moment his lip curled into a cynical smile. For reasons obvious when you considered his nickname at school had been the royal bastard, Sebastian had never been able to take the whole heritage thing seriously.
A tap on the door made him turn, but before he could respond Luis walked into the room, his normal smile absent.
‘Reading your body language I’d guess you were just told you’ve got weeks to live, or you’ve just had a heart to heart with our father. How is His Royal Highness?’
Luis’s heavy sigh and despondent attitude would normally have evoked a sympathetic reaction from Sebastian, but today the only thing he felt was a surge of irritation. Didn’t Luis realise that until he showed a bit of backbone the King was never going to stop trying to micromanage his life? Maybe not even then, Sebastian, a realist, conceded. If he were in his brother’s shoes...
But you’re not, are you, Seb?
Luis gets the crown and the girl.
‘I didn’t think you’d come, neither did...anyone.’
‘You asked.’
Actually his father had ordered, which under normal circumstances would have guaranteed Sebastian’s nonappearance, and yet he was here. So why? He rubbed the towel across his dripping hair and veered away from the question in his head before it formed.
‘I asked the last three times I came to visit the Summervilles.’
‘You know I have an allergy to duty.’
‘So you keep telling everyone. Seriously—’
‘It is a very serious allergy.’
‘I wanted you to get to know Sabrina.’
‘It’s you she’s marrying.’ And me she’s kissing, he thought, the sharp twinge of guilt he felt drowned out by the stronger slug of lusty heat that accompanied the memory of those soft, sweet-tasting lips. If Luis had kissed her more often maybe she wouldn’t have melted in his arms.
That’s right, Seb, because it’s never your fault, is it?
He waited for the familiar hit of mingled frustration, sympathy and affection as he watched Luis walk, shoulders hunched in defeat, across the room. Instead, Sebastian found himself feeling anger and something that, had the circumstances been different, he would have called envy.
But of course it wasn’t.
Envy would mean that his brother had something that he wanted, and Luis didn’t.
Luis was welcome to the crown.
There had been a time when they were growing up that being pushed into the background and being referred to as the spare had got to Sebastian, but that had been before he had recognised that it was a lot worse for Luis, carrying the expectations of a country on his young shoulders. Luis had no choices—even his wife was picked out for him.
Luis was welcome to his bride; Sebastian had his freedom. His father had told both of his sons that privilege came with a price; well, so far he’d been proving his father wrong. Sebastian enjoyed the privileges that came with his title without any of the responsibilities.
And Sebastian didn’t want to marry Sabrina—he didn’t want to marry anyone—he just wanted to take her to bed. Even thinking about her now, and that miracle of a mouth of hers, made smoky desire slither hotly through him.
He ignored it. He’d kissed Sabrina and he wasn’t going to do it again, even if the primal attraction that drew him to this woman was stronger than anything he could ever remember feeling. He knew himself well enough to know that it would pass—it always did.
And in the meantime there were plenty of women to kiss who were not about to marry his brother, who were not about to throw away their lives. Her business, he reminded himself, her choice.
Luckily he had recognised, before the entire kiss incident in the car had got out of perspective, the real danger of building it up into something it was not. She had an incredible mouth, beautiful lips and they made him hungry. The need to taste had swept away every other consideration in his head, but it had been what it was: a ‘perfect storm’ moment. Or maybe a perfect moment of madness, fuelled by the alcohol he’d imbibed much earlier in the morning at the nightclub, where he had been even more bored than usual.
The chances were, seeing Sabrina here, in her natural environment, as a woman who represented everything he had been rebelling against and rejecting all his life, that he would regain his normal objectivity.
‘I didn’t expect you to come, but I’m glad you did. I do appreciate the support.’
‘Support?’ Sebastian queried with a frown.
‘I can’t say I’m exactly looking forward to tonight.’
‘Performance anxiety or...don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts?’
Luis turned away but not quickly enough to hide his flush of annoyance at the joke that presumably offended his highly developed sense of duty. If it was annoyance?
Guilt? Could he have hit a nerve? Was his brother having second thoughts? Sebastian dismissed the possibility almost straight away, no matter what his personal feelings. For Luis, duty, no matter what form it took, came first.
‘So how is the blushing bride?’
‘Fine... I guess.’
‘You guess? You mean you didn’t spend the night saying hello?’ Sebastian said, immediately imagining himself saying a very long hello.
‘I only just arrived and she...we... She doesn’t blush.’
Sebastian’s brows lifted. ‘Oh?’ he said, remembering the delicious rosy tinge that had washed over Sabrina’s pale skin.
‘Not that that is a bad thing.’
Sebastian’s eyes narrowed in his brother’s face. ‘Which means that you think it is.’
Luis looked guilty. ‘She just isn’t always what you’d call very spontaneous.’
Sebastian cloaked his expression as he heard the echo of that soft little mewling cry as she’d opened her mouth to him. His body hardened helplessly at the memory of her soft breasts pushing into his ribcage.
The effort of fighting his way free of those intrusive memories delayed his response. ‘Spontaneity can be overrated.’ It could also be great...she would be great in bed.
Never going to find out, Seb.
He was a bastard but not that much of a bastard.
‘Exactly, especially when your every move is being scrutinised. She has all the qualities to make the perfect Queen.’
The speculative furrow between Sebastian’s dark brows deepened as he listened to his brother, sounding very much like a man who was trying desperately to convince himself that he believed in what he was saying.
‘I’m sold,’ he murmured drily. ‘How about you?’
Luis dodged the soft question and his brother’s speculative stare. ‘Marriage is all about teamwork.’
‘So I hear.’ He had never given marriage much thought aside from concluding fairly early on that it was not for him, about the same time that he had nearly made a fatal error. ‘I nearly proposed once,’ he remembered, a rueful smile tugging the corners of his mouth upwards as he tried and failed to visualise the face of the woman who he had decided, at nineteen, was the love of his life.
‘You!’ His brother’s jaw hit his chest before he recovered. ‘You’ve been in love?’ Luis shook his head. ‘Who? When? What happened?’
‘What always happens—the glitter rubs off. I found out she snored and her laugh grated, but for a while I believed that she was perfect. Actually, I’ve believed quite a few were perfect since, the difference being I no longer expect it to last.’
In Sebastian’s opinion, if you were looking for a formula for unhappiness it would be hard to come up with a more sure-fire method than tying yourself to one person for life based on a short-lived chemical high.
‘Perfect? Like you, you mean?’
Sebastian winced and grinned, watching as Luis, his expression growing distracted, moved to one of the two chairs arranged at the foot of the bed. Sebastian held up a warning hand.
‘I wouldn’t do that. I made the same mistake. The leg dropped off. I’ve propped it.’
Luis made a detour to the other chair.
Sebastian’s gaze moved around the room of faded grandeur. ‘It’s not what I was expecting. They really are strapped for cash. No wonder,’ he observed cynically, ‘they are so willing to sell their daughter off to the highest bidder.’
‘They’re not selling her!’ Luis protested. ‘Sabrina understands. She respects—’
‘Our mother understood,’ Sebastian interrupted, wondering if the anger he felt would ever go away. Anger at the system that had trapped his mother in a marriage that had, in the end, destroyed her. ‘And that didn’t turn out so well.’
‘It’s not the same!’ his brother protested, flushing as he surged to his feet.
Sebastian arched a brow. ‘From where I’m standing it looks like a classic case of history repeating itself.’
Luis’s horrified rebuttal was immediate. ‘I’m not like...him.’
Then break the blasted cycle!
Sebastian didn’t voice his thought. What would be the point? He knew his brother would never challenge their father, and, if the positions were reversed, was he so damned sure that he would? Easy to criticise from where he stood.
‘I wonder, Seb. What do you think he’d do if he knew...?’
Sebastian’s irritation slipped away as he walked across to where his brother stood and laid a hand on Luis’s shoulder. ‘He won’t,’ he said firmly. ‘We burnt the letters. No one knows they ever existed.’
The young brothers had not known at the time they discovered the love letters hidden under a floorboard that despite breaking off the affair after she discovered she was carrying her lover’s child she had continued to see him after the child she had conceived with him had been born.
The irony was that they were right, there was a royal bastard, only it wasn’t the son that the scandal-mongers had identified.
‘As far as the world is concerned, the affair only started the year I was born.’ Sebastian could see no reason anyone should ever know. ‘We are the only two people who know, unless you plan on telling him?’
Luis shuddered. ‘I stood by and watched you being bullied at school and then at home when we both know that you should be King. I have no legitimate claim to the throne. I’m not even his son.’
Sebastian shook his head. ‘Be glad of that every day. Be glad of it, Luis!’ he said, his voice gruff with ferocious sincerity. ‘You’ve escaped the taint that I carry. I’m the son the bastard deserves. You will make a better King than I ever could be. You’re the one who has made all the sacrifices...and you are still making them.’ Sebastian straightened up, relaxing the grip on his brother’s shoulders. ‘You don’t have to marry her, you know. You could say no.’
Luis shook his head and dodged his brother’s gaze. ‘Easy for you to say. I’m not—’
‘Selfish as hell?’ Sebastian thought of where being unselfish had got his mother. He’d choose selfish every time.
Luis’s gaze lifted, just as his brother vanished into the bathroom. ‘I’m not a rebel like you. I need to... I care about what people think about me.’
Sebastian re-emerged with a fresh towel, which he rubbed vigorously over his damp hair.
‘And this marriage isn’t about me, it’s about bigger things. I’m realistic about it.’
‘So how does she feel about it?’
Luis gave an uncomprehending shrug. ‘How do you mean?’
‘I mean what does Sabrina expect from this marriage? Is she realistic too?’ He gave a sudden shrug, annoyed with himself for wasting time on a subject that was none of his business. ‘Is the warm glow of doing the right thing enough for her too?’ He began to vigorously rub his already towel-dried hair, asking himself where this swell of outrage was coming from. She’d made her bed and she seemed happy to lie in it...with his brother. ‘Hell, Luis, do you two even talk?’
‘We have a lifetime to talk,’ Luis responded, not sounding as though the life he saw stretching ahead filled him with joy. ‘But you mean sex, don’t you? It’s not like you to be so squeamish. Actually no, I haven’t slept with her.’
‘That’s not what I meant, but as you’ve shared aren’t you taking this untouched virgin bride stuff a bit too far, Luis?’
Luis laughed. ‘Even father doesn’t expect that.’
‘How incredibly liberal-minded of him.’ Sebastian was still struggling with the implication of some of Sabrina’s unguarded comments. Was it really possible that Sabrina had not had a lover, out of fear of falling in love?
‘What if you’re not compatible? Have you thought of that?’
Luis for once looked annoyed. ‘For God’s sake, Seb, this isn’t about how good she is in bed!’
As the comment unlocked a stream of graphic images that flowed relentlessly through his head, Sebastian lowered his eyelids to half-mast. His jaw clenched as he struggled to stem the flow and pretended an amusement he was a long way from feeling. ‘But it would help.’
It would help him even more, Sebastian mused darkly, if he could stop thinking of unfastening glossy honey hair and watching it fall over bare shoulders, pushing it back to reveal small firm breasts...
Oblivious to the tension underpinning his brother’s taut delivery, Luis laughed. ‘I really like her.’
‘Like?’
Luis tipped his head in acknowledgment. ‘She’s sweet,’ he began with the attitude of a man who was clutching at straws.
‘And,’ he ploughed on with determination, ‘she has a lot of common sense.’
Were they even talking about the same woman? Sebastian wondered, thinking about the woman who had attempted to punch her way out of his locked car just to avoid being shut in there with him.
He recognised she’d been driven to this drastic move by desperation and fear and he had fully intended saying something to soothe her, but the expression on her face when she’d recognised him, the fact that she’d looked as though she had just discovered she had jumped into a car beside the Devil himself...he simply hadn’t been able to resist playing up to her prejudices a little.
But then she had challenged his own firmly embedded prejudices. In the abstract he had been able to despise Sabrina Summerville, or at least the idea of her, a woman who, despite coming from a different generation, was just as willing as his own mother had been to be a compliant, political pawn.
The first surprise had been the desire that had twisted inside him when he’d found himself sitting just inches away from her, which shouldn’t have happened. He had seen the photos. He already knew that she was good-looking, admittedly more classy than classically beautiful. But what those photos had not prepared him for was the crystal clarity of her skin, the sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her small straight nose, the deep liquid darkness of her eyes that seemed to reflect her every mood like a mirror. And last, but definitely not least, the pink lushness of her amazing lips.
The blood-roaring primal intensity of his reaction had effectively blocked everything else from his mind for what might only have been seconds, but could have been an hour.
And the hits had just kept coming!
He’d expected a passive victim; he had got a feisty fighter, who clearly thought he was a total waste of space. What had got to him the most had been the conflict in her eyes, her vulnerability.
He’d just wanted to tell her not to do it. Not to marry Luis. Instead he’d kissed her...a greedy response to a need that had been visceral in its intensity.
‘I’ve never seen her lose her temper,’ Luis said.
Sebastian could not control the bark of laughter that bubbled up from his chest as he lifted a hand to his cheek where the imprint of her fingers had lasted, but he didn’t react to his brother’s puzzled look.
‘Perhaps you should try giving her cause and see what happens?’
‘She’s very pretty,’ Luis added, his tone almost defensive as though he expected his brother to deny the fact.
Was Luis serious? The woman was beautiful. She wasn’t his type, he had never leaned in the direction of cut-glass delicacy, but even he could recognise her natural beauty, the rare ‘get out of bed with her hair mussed and still look knockout gorgeous’ beauty, not that he would ever get the chance to prove his theory.
She was his brother’s.
The reminder slowed the heat rising inside him but did not stop its slow, inexorable progress.
What are you, Seb? Fifteen? Get a grip, man!
‘Are you asking me for an opinion?’ Sebastian struggled hard to tap into the sympathy he normally felt for his brother, who was the one expected to make a marriage of convenience, the one looking ahead to a life of being the acceptable public face of the crown.
‘No, yes? I suppose?’ His brother produced one of his genuine smiles, seeming to suddenly shrug off his mood with an ease that Sebastian envied.
‘Maybe you should go on a date.’
‘With Sabrina?’
‘Well, the dating ritual is kind of what people do before they get married, unless you have one of those “wake up in Vegas with a tattoo, a hangover and a wife” marriages. I can recommend the first two as a way of passing a weekend.’
Luis’s eyes slid from his brother’s as he sketched a smile. ‘I haven’t thanked you yet, for getting her out of that press scrum.’
‘Glad to be of help,’ Sebastian said, wondering about the change of subject and his brother’s unusually evasive attitude. Luis, he decided as he studied his brother’s face, looked positively shifty.
‘I’m sure she took it all in her stride.’
Sebastian clamped his jaw as he fought a compulsion to defend Sabrina from the criticism he could hear behind this faint praise. ‘You’d have preferred she’d have fallen apart?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Actually she was pretty shaken, but she came out fighting.’ He saw no point adding that the fight had been mostly directed, quite deservedly, at him.
Luis got to his feet. ‘She was lucky you were so close.’
‘She might not agree... I’d been drinking.’
Luis looked amused. ‘Fall asleep and snore, did you?’
Sebastian’s eyes fell. ‘Not exactly.’
* * *
Sabrina stubbornly refused to acknowledge the lump in her throat as she unpacked. The task didn’t take long. There wasn’t much, just a few pieces of clothing and personal items she had hastily crammed into a holdall.
They represented the majority of her things from the London flat she’d shared with a couple of girlfriends, or had up until two days ago.
The embassy staff hadn’t wanted her to return at all that day, but in the end she’d been given the begrudging go-ahead for half an hour with what they’d termed a discreet security presence, which had turned out to consist of a team of four large dark-suited men.
Sabrina had retained enough of her natural sense of irony—just—to wonder what non-discreet looked like, as two of the silent, unsmiling figures had stared straight ahead as she’d packed and written a note for her flatmates, who had both been sleeping after a long night shift. The other two minders had been, as they’d put it, securing the exits... She really didn’t want to know what that involved! Though the dawning realisation that soon this bizarre would be her normal had made her lose whatever humour she might have seen in the situation.
When it had come to making a goodbye visit to the research unit where she had worked for just over the last year she’d changed tack, not requesting permission, instead just announcing her intention the next morning. Wait, no, it had been this morning. Things were happening so fast it was a struggle to retain any sense of time in this speeded-up version of her own life. She had hidden her surprise when the tactic had worked. Perhaps in the future she should stop saying please and simply demand?
Being the future Queen had to have some benefits.
You’re getting ahead of yourself, Brina. You’re not even a princess yet.
Her ironic grin barely surfaced before it vanished, because soon she would be.
She supposed she didn’t really have the right to feel so shocked, it was hardly news, but in the past it had been a distant thing. Now it was all very real and there was no more pretending that her life was normal.
An expression of impatience drifted across her heart-shaped face, firming the lines of her delicate jaw and soft full lips as she cut off the self-pitying direction of her thoughts.
It is what it is, Brina, so get over it, she told herself sternly as she shook out the silky blouse she was clutching and put it on a hanger.
Was it actually worth the effort of unpacking?
The rate at which things were moving now would mean this wouldn’t be her home for much longer. They were talking June wedding. Weeks away, not months or years. Once more she stubbornly ignored the flurry in her belly, less butterflies and more a buzzard’s wings flapping this time in the pit of her stomach.
Her determined composure wobbled, as did her lower lip, as she pulled out the last item. The outline of the white lab coat she held up blurred as her dark eyes filled with hot tears.
She dashed a hand impatiently across the dampness on her cheeks and blinked hard as her thoughts were inexorably dragged back to when the colleagues she had worked beside for the past year had given her an impromptu leaving party. Some party poppers left from New Year had been pulled from a drawer and dutifully popped, exciting a mild overreaction from the security men, one of whom had flung her to the floor.
Someone whose name she didn’t even know was willing to put himself between her and a bullet. She could see the surreal realisation hit her friends almost as hard as it did her.
In the subsequent dampened party atmosphere someone had handed around sausage rolls hastily bought from the twenty-four-hour mini-mart on the corner, and then they had presented her with the lab coat, a crown emblem sewn onto the breast pocket.
She had struggled to smile at the joke while accepting the leaving present and hugs of colleagues, who’d all said how much they were going to miss her, while she had tried hard not to think about how much she would miss them. She’d miss, too, the challenge of her work—unlike the challenges that lay ahead, this one had been of her own choosing.
Despite the hugs she’d been able to see they were looking at her differently, thinking about her differently. The realisation had saddened but not surprised her. Experience had taught her to expect no less. It was why once she’d had a choice in such things she had never advertised her title or background. She’d wanted to be accepted for who she was with no preconceptions.
She would always treasure her time at university, both as a medical student and then staff member at the prestigious research unit. Dr Summerville was a title she had earned and was proud of. Lady Sabrina, daughter of the Duke and Duchess of East Vela, was simply an accident of birth, the same accident that would see her promotion to Princess and one day Queen of the soon-to-be-reunified island kingdom.
She had relished the opportunity to be judged for her ability and not who her parents were. She had liked that when people had asked her where she was from, East Vela had drawn a puzzled frown and an inevitable, where is that? Or, don’t you mean Vela Main?
There were big advantages for someone who did not like attention of being a royal from somewhere so obscure, the main one being that a third-division royal did not rate heavy security—one of those things she was learning that you did not fully appreciate until it vanished.
For the last few years Velatian politics had seemed a long way away, and she had kept it there, enjoying her freedom, her taste of real life. Sure, she’d been able to hear the clock ticking down, and the knowledge of what lay ahead had never vanished, but she had always known that her parents would make sure she was eased gently into her future role.
But there had been no gentle easing, more like a total immersion. A sink-or-swim introduction of what it meant to be Queen-in-waiting.
One day she had gone to bed as Dr Summerville, an invisible white coat in a laboratory, and had walked out into the street the next morning to calls of, ‘Lady Sabrina, when is the wedding?’
Her eyes clouded with memories as she rubbed her arm where the imprint of his fingers was beginning to turn from black to a more mellow yellow. She squeezed her eyes shut but couldn’t block out his face...or her guilt, or the feeling in the pit of her stomach when she remembered how his mouth had felt against hers, his taste, the raw sexual energy he exuded.
She lifted both hands to her head and yelled, ‘Go away!’
‘Why? What have I done?’ Sabrina’s eyes flew open as her sister walked into the room and flung herself face down on the bed.
‘There’s a wasp...do you mind?’ Sabrina said, pretending a crossness she didn’t feel because she was glad to see her sister. She eased a dress out from under Chloe’s prone form. ‘I am wearing this tonight.’
Chloe propped her chin on her steepled fingers and scanned the garment that Sabrina hung on a coat hanger and hooked over her wardrobe door.
Chloe gave her verdict. ‘Nice, love the fifties vibe, but you could show a bit more cleavage.’
Sabrina raised a brow.
‘You did ask,’ her sister said.
‘No, actually I didn’t.’
‘Well, you should. Have you any idea how many people read my fashion blog? I am considered a fashion guru.’
‘And what do you think Dad is going to consider about that?’
Sabrina angled a nod in the direction of the micro miniskirt her sister was wearing in neon green.
‘He won’t see it,’ Chloe said with a grin as she rolled over and pulled herself into a sitting position, her long legs tucked under her.
It was then Sabrina saw what her sister was wearing on top.
Chloe gave another million-voltage smile and held her arms wide to proudly show off the T-shirt. Sabrina had seen identical ones in the tourist shops in the capital of Vela Main, where the iconic image was reproduced on everything from tea towels to mugs. It was of the Venetian Prince who had fought for, and gained, independence for Vela.
‘You like? I’m showing my hands-across-the-border solidarity. They say his eyes follow you round the room.’
‘They do,’ Sabrina said shortly. She had seen the original on the wall of the great hall in the royal palace.
‘Don’t you think their Pirate Prince looks like the bad brother? I can’t see how anyone could have thought he was a bastard,’ Chloe added, pulling the fabric outwards to look at the face of the Venetian Prince famous for being the man who had fought dirty to secure Vela Main’s independence from Venice. That, and his career as a successful pirate.
It was Luis who had pointed out the similarity during a day trip her family had made the previous year to take lunch with the royal family at Vela Main.
‘His eyes really do follow you around the room,’ she had said, staring at the original of the much-reproduced image.
‘Sebastian has the same trick,’ Luis had said.
‘He was very handsome. Him,’ she’d added, pointing at the portrait and adding hastily, ‘Not your brother.’
Luis had laughed at her embarrassment. ‘You might change your mind when you two finally meet. I’d like to say Seb got the looks and I got the brains, but...’
‘I think you’re very smart, modest and good-looking.’
Whenever doubts had crept in Sabrina had reminded herself that Luis couldn’t have been more unlike his hateful brother if he’d tried.
They were day and night, Sebastian definitely being night, even though his eyes had made her think of the brightest, most blindingly blue summer sky when he’d bent his head and fitted his cool, firm lips to hers.
She felt the guilty heat rise through her body as she reminded herself that she could have stopped it from happening!
Belatedly aware that Chloe was staring at her, she shook her head.
‘A bit,’ she conceded before changing the subject. ‘God, you look like an advert for something healthy...or toothpaste?’
‘And you, sweetie, look like you were doorstepped by the national media.’ She held out her arms. ‘Hug?’
‘Yes, please.’
Sisterly hug exchanged, they sat down on the window seat side by side.
‘I’m quite jealous of the number of hits you got...did you watch it?’
Sabrina did not pretend not to understand; she had heard she had gone viral. ‘No, I was there.’
‘Don’t look so gloomy. I know many women who would pay to get chucked into the back seat by Sebastian Zorzi, and you were wearing nice undies.’
Sabrina’s eyes widened. ‘You couldn’t...?’
Chloe chuckled at the shocked reaction. ‘No, just a lot of leg.’ Her expression sobered. ‘Seriously, though...?’
Sabrina angled an enquiring look at her sister’s face.
The grin re-emerged. ‘He is seriously gorgeous! How about a double wedding? I’m up for it if you are!’
‘What, and share my day in the spotlight?’ Sabrina said, struggling to reply in kind because the image of her sister, dressed in white, standing beside a tall, lean, handsome figure made her feel a little queasy.
‘Because we all know how much you love that.’ Chloe’s smile vanished. ‘Brina, are you all right? I’m just trying to lighten the mood, you know. Are you really going to do it?’
‘Do what?’
‘Go through with this crazy medieval marriage of convenience? You can’t let yourself be used this way, Brina. It’s so wrong.’
‘I don’t have a choice.’
‘There is always a choice, Brina.’
Sabrina shook her head and veiled her eyes with her lashes. It was true, but now the time was here she wished she believed it. ‘I want to marry Luis. He’s a nice guy.’
Chloe’s expression grew serious as she took her sister’s hands in hers and said gravely, ‘Don’t you think you deserve better than nice? A husband who thinks you are more important than anything?’
After a shocked moment Sabrina brought her lashes down in a protective sweep as she swallowed the emotional lump in her throat. Chloe had voiced the thoughts she didn’t dare even allow herself to think.
‘Since when did you become a paid-up member of the soppy romantic club?’
Chloe’s smile was back as she jumped to her feet. ‘I hide it well. So how about I do wear this tonight?’ She moved her hand down the tiny skirt she wore. ‘And flirt with the sexy Sebastian?’
Sabrina struggled to respond to her sister’s teasing smile, managing some sickly approximation of an answering smile despite the tight feeling of rejection in her stomach.
‘Chloe, be careful. Sebastian Zorzi, he isn’t the sort of man you play with.’
She thought of eyes so blue they took your breath away and felt a little shiver trace a sinuous path down her spine as the memory surfaced, both terrifying and seductive. She didn’t want Chloe to be exposed to the danger he represented.
Or maybe you don’t want her to be kissed.
‘He’s dangerous.’
Chloe laughed. ‘He sounds better and better. Now how about a glass of wine to get us in the mood, or to at least prepare me for the undoubted cold shower that awaits me when I go to my room? Perhaps when you’ve sold your body for the good of the country we can get the plumbing fixed?’ She grinned and produced a bottle from the capacious handbag she had dumped by the door. ‘Glasses?’
